Today was my first day working with the EAPs – my fellows on Hope Street‘s Emerging Artists Programme. A lot happened.
My role from here on out is going to be changing; I’ll be moving away from doing the research myself and starting to guide my fellow performers in research of their own – of which, more anon. This post is going to be dedicated to reflecting on my research so far, and looking at where I go from here.
Tessa sent me a very long list of storytelling traditions to have a look at, and over the past (very hectic) weekend I’ve been digging up stuff on as much of that as I can – there was even one point where I pulled my laptop out at a house party and spent an hour boning up on the traditions of mummers’ plays, which may account for the paucity of my social calendar come September. In the process I found loads and loads of really interesting stuff, including Ewan MacColl’s account of the making of the radio ballads, a National Theatre video series on Commedia dell’Arte, and a blog about penny dreadfuls and the increase in literacy in Victorian England. This is only scratching the surface of what I’ve found, and I haven’t had the chance to more than skim-read the stuff I’ve found. If I ever manage to finish the vast pile of experimental literature I’ve acquired I’ll still not want for reading material for weeks at the least.
So that’s the story so far. I’m not going to say that my research endeavours have ceased – and I will doubtless come back to them in the coming days and weeks, because there’s three weeks of research currently sat on my computer and I can’t adequately detail it all in the space of four posts (though I have tried). But my day-to-day activities are going to be a bit different – I’ll be spending less time hunched over my laptop on my own, rifling through census details for Kirkdale in 1891, and more time actually communicating with real live people. I’ve even got a desk; it’s in a library and everything (or at least it is when Hope Street’s admin staff don’t keep nicking it). In other words, I’m becoming less of a pure researcher, and moving into the murky waters of dramaturgy.
This is where the fun starts. I hope.
Huyton Couture 