In Residency with Jamie Hale
Early this autumn, we collaborated with Unlimited to support Jamie Hale and their team to spend some focused time developing their work Quality of Life is Not a Measurable Outcome in our MAYKing Space. Drawing from Jamie's own experiences, Quality of Life is Not a Measurable Outcome celebrates disabled survival and joy, clawed out of a world where institutionalisation and death are a constant threat.
During the week, Jamie was joined by director Phoebe Kemp and deaf poet DL Williams, working with movement in the space as well as exploring the intricacies of BSL translation and script development. We spent some time speaking to Jamie about their experience in the MAYKing Space & wanted to share it with you as part of our hope to give greater insight into the processes and ideas from some of the artists we’re lucky to be working with.
What have you been up to during your residency?
On Monday, DL and I spent the afternoon working on a 90 second segment of the show, DL being the Deaf Signer who translated my show into BSL for R&D in 2021. Rather than sticking to a model of a show in spoken English with the best BSL translation we could manage, we went back to it and asked “how can we change the BSL and spoken English to create something that works far better in both languages”?
We wanted to make sure that the pace of my speech and their signing were reaching the important moments at the same time, and that the combination of our parts is greater than the sum of them. We asked how we can make it so that the non-signing hearing audience are also able to get lots from the BSL.
That meant figuring out how to get the more visually-recognizable-to-a-non-signing-audience signs to come at the same time as my spoken words, and quite a lot of rewriting. We did a lot of thinking about how you translate the idea of an ancient building, versus an old building, versus a listed building, versus a historic building in a way that is the right length. It was incredibly detailed work. Then on Tuesday we had Rachel Robinson — whose background is in documentary filmmaking — in filming us. The concept we're working towards is; if you only have one of us in a space in person, and the other on screen, how can you create something that gives signing and non-signing, hearing and deaf audiences more than just watching a play in BSL with a voice over in English or watching a play in spoken English with BSL in the corner?
We did a lot of recording of DL signing it and filming me speaking it. Then we projected the footage of one of us performing onto the projector and filmed the other person performing alongside. You get the film of a person and the film to try and capture this real simultaneity. It's been really interesting, something that I've not really seen in theatre before. I've obviously seen stuff that's been translated, but to try and do it in sync - that is quite fresh. It's done more with work which is in BSL and then performed with the spoken English track than it is for spoken English, and performed in BSL. It went from translation to co-creation of the script, which was really interesting.
I have also been doing some strange and bizarre movement exercises. I have made more faces than I knew a human face could ever make and I have been pushed and pulled around the room by invisible balls. I have also pushed and pulled invisible balls around the room. I've discovered that there's an awful lot of different ways you can move around the room when still pushing or pulling the same invisible ball, which I don't think I necessarily realised. There's been a lot more focus on intentionality of movement because in my practice, I've generally seen movement on stage as a way of getting from A to B; I am here, I want to perform there. I need to move between the two. So this has been a lot more about intentional movement.
What has been the most enlightening part of doing the residency?
The residency – by the time we produced it, put it together and worked out how we were doing it – had sort of become two separate residencies in one, one of which was the linguistics and performance residency and the other of which was the movement presidency.
The linguistics and performance one is very focused on the actual show, whereas the movement one is a lot more focused on my practice and how that will inform the show. I think for the BSL side, there was a light bulb moment for DL and I when we moved from translating the script into BSL into co-creating a bilingual script from what we currently have. It feels like we've gone beyond where we planned to go and found that there was a level past getting my script and DL's translation performed together as well as possible; getting this joint creation. It's made me realise that – funding permitted – before I look to do full rehearsals and a run, I want to do a month or so that's just on translation, and finding those beats, and really co-creating a script that works.
Whereas the movement stuff is more about, can I relax in my skin? Can I be willing to be silly? Can I learn to not worry about looking odd or being stared at? It’s a crash course in movement as a theatrical tool, which isn't really something I've engaged with. In my show, the movement is either my chair, or its people picking me up, moving me around, tipping me out of wheelchairs backwards. I've not really thought of all the different ways in which a wheelchair can move, I've just done them. So that's been really interesting.
How have you found doing a residency away from home?
Being away from home is a challenge in terms of disability stuff. That side of things has gone moderately smoothly, but could definitely have gone more smoothly. I don't think I've done a residency away from home before, I've taken a show and I've kind of gone away with a show but that's been a bit different. I don't do an awful lot of it because it's so logistically complicated. Here, I’ve very deliberately set work to do that I wouldn't be able to do over zoom. And, honestly, work that to some extent I would struggle to do even on a local residency. If I'm doing a residency down the road from where I live, then I will be doing a lot more thinking about if I should get up and walk the dog beforehand, will I do my emails, do I need to sort out my room, etc. Whereas a lot of this stuff has been so mentally absorbing that I've been able to be a lot more embedded in it.
Last night over dinner, Chris and I were talking about the show and kicking around ideas like flying on stage and all sorts of things. I've been able to be a lot more focused on my work and the show than I would have been in a residency that didn't involve staying in a rather grim Travel Lodge room, just because you're concentrated a lot more. Fewer distractions.
Any further things with this that you'd like to promote?
After the sharing, the next stage is going to be going back and doing some fundraising to realise the work in the detail that I’m now looking at. I think I've come away from it wanting to do more work than I thought I wanted to do.
I also have another project where we will be commissioning a set of short monologues performed by an ensemble cast, but they're all performed naked. And it's this whole thing of having the kind of body that people stare at constantly, and the way that people stare without wanting to stare, and without wanting to be caught staring. Its the idea that now you can stare all you want, only I'm looking straight back at you and you can't look away because I'm on a stage. Quite, kind of, empowering and confrontational. I did an R&D of that at Camden People's Theatre last year in which I was the performer – never again. We're trying to develop that out and work it into a broader play, we're going to be looking for performers soon. I think we've got a show coming up at HOME Manchester in April, which I'm directing. Its four monologue performances woven into a whole. So those are the big creative projects at the moment.