PRESENCE

An animal is completely present. You could never really accuse it of living in the past with its regret or worrying about the future and yet it has an innate sense of both. It knows where it’s come from and where it’s going even as it is utterly present where it is.

In the Factory’s work the focus is on the now, not on something fixed, prepared and past but on the ‘liveness’ of the the present moment. However I think sometimes in working hard to be in the moment there maybe a danger of going to far the other way so the moment itself isn’t valued. The moment isn’t measurable by time but it has a weight and size to it that needs to be acknowledged or else it is undervalued in the search for the next moment and the next and the next.

If you’re running on a treadmill there is really only one place that is the moment. Go too slow in feeling the tragedy or comedy of a moment and you will fall off the back of the treadmill. Go too fast and you’ll constantly be ahead, searching for the next moment before it’s there, falling off the front missing the moment entirely. It’s a fine balancing act (and a poor metaphor) and it may be more exciting for an audience to watch actors fall off the front searching, than have them fall off the back indulging, but ultimately the liveness of animals and children acknowledges both without sacrificing the immediacy of the moment. That is what we should strive for isn’t it?

Man on a wire.

So the inventiveness of the actors with props/obstructions/secrets and each other etc isn’t an end in itself but a measured shot of adrenaline that stops us falling off the back of the moment. At the same time we shouldn't overdose our systems as this will send us flying off the front.