Prior to Speechless, I have never worked with anyone on the team before, save for Francesca. I had no idea how to stake my place in the line-up of these poets, and yeah, sure, at that point, so far, we’ve just been playing games and hanging out for lunch, so when Mike said we’ll have to start sharing our commissioned pieces to the group so that we can start on shaping the show, I was both nervous and excited. Nervous that I wouldn’t measure up to these wonderful artists and I would be exposed as a sham, and excited to hear their wonderful works.
Anyway, backtrack a bit. Pooja was the last to arrive in London, so she missed out on all the fun we had over the weekend. First thing we did on the Monday that she arrived was share with her what we’ve been doing so far, including the activity where we went out to the market outside The Albany and got an item that we could take home to our homes as souvenir, and that item should express for us what “freedom” means, and it couldn’t cost more than a quid.
For my item, I got a set of coloring pencils because I thought freedom means coloring beyond the lines we have drawn around ourselves. Aoife got some bubbles liquid, and was it Malika who bought a mute bell? Wel, someone did bought a mute bell, and, not to be outdone, Yen bought a bell that says “Ring for Sex”. Priya discovered an album she really liked, more for the jacket, really, and Mike bought a bag of “English Conference Pears” and took home some old school wisdom about being a good husband from the lady who sold him the intriguingly named fruits. Jacob bought something cool, and smart, but I can’t remember what it is, probably a robot. Phuong didn’t get anything, but instead, she said she’ll bring with her the pound coin as a token of her stay in the UK, and currency is a form of freedom for her.
Ok, once we’re all accounted for, including Ms. Nansi who showed up for work straight from the airport after a 16-hour flight, we gathered our chair in a semi-circle, and one by one, shared our works.
This is Jacob Sam-La Rose. To read Jacob’s work on Speechless, click here. Jacob’s pieces didn’t change much from when he shared them with us the first time to our last performance at the Southbank Centre because his were the most polished of the lot. His pieces were so amazing that there was no more room for improving them.
This is that guy called Siege who thinks he’s all so funny and shit. To read his work on Speechless, click here. Anyway, I had a mug of ginger tea in front of me there because, as I’ve mentioned before, I choke so much everytime I perform that it’s no longer funny. Seriously. Of all the pieces in the show, I think, mine went through the most revisions. For some performances, I even affected a Southern accent, until Mike made me drop it, and I’m glad he did, because I finally felt more sincere without the accent. And I tend to improvise lines, much to the embarassment of everyone around me. Usually, when I’m bored with my own material, I throw a curveball (or as Mike puts it, “pulling a fast one”) to the audience, and at some point in the tour, I stopped improvising so much because I realized, I was dangerously bordering on being a stand-up act that the audience is getting distracted from the message. Anyway, enough about me, here are more photos:
This is Malika Booker, the woman who held my hand when I was about to choke to death on my own tongue. She introduced us to the wonderful world of Jamaican cuisine, and as you can she, her jewellry has cost hours of delay in international airports. To read her work, click here. Be warned. Her poetry is known to grab the audience by the balls, and cut them off with a kitchen knife.
This is Liu Liang Yen. He believes in the inherent kindness in each and everyone of us, but said kindness he refers to as “nymphomania” as well. So, when he calls you a nymphomaniac, you should take it as a compliment. I know I do. To read his work, you have to click here. He travels around with a plastic, 3-inch high model of Astroboy. Astroboy (or “Atomo” in its original Japanese title) is a bionic kid who shoots (pew-pew-pew!) lazer beams out of his ass. This is true. Click on the link to watch the OBB of the 1983 animated series Astroboy. You have to be Asian to appreciate the fact that a pre-teen kid partial to nudity is wearing rocket powered shinguards that let him fly, and blast death beams from his cybernetic anus.
Surprisingly, though, Hollywood remade Astroboy using CGI, and will be in theatres next year!
This is Priya Kulasagaran. She also goes by the name Priya K. To read her work, please click on this link. She’s a tough chick who knows more people in the UK than the average English person. You can drop Priya K. anywhere in the UK, and she can ring someone up to pick her up. Also, she’s really good for our male 15-45 demographics.
This is Aoife Mannix. Recently, she launched her new poetry collection and her first novel. To read her work in Speechless, click here now. She’s getting married soon, too. She’s from Ireland by way of the U.S., and has a generous spirit that aims to teach the entire human race to say I-Love-You to each other in Irish. I have heard her pieces several times, and they’re consistently, all-year-long funny. There are different types of humor, and laughter comes from varied parts of the body; I’d like to think there are laughs that come from the guts, some come from the brain, and Aoife’s humor seem to draw laughs from the heart.
This is Stilleto Scars author Pooja Nansi, and you can’t stop this woman from shopping, or from going on a Jane Austen walking tour. To read Pooja’s work on Speechless, better click here. It’s difficult to tell when Pooja is being sarcastic, and when she’s being really sarcastic. I have several photographs of her and Priya doing weird poses with a coffee mug, and I’m planning on auctioning them off on E-bay in the near future. Ms. Nansi is in charge of the education of a group of Singaporean high school students who are mighty fearful of her not getting any caffeine in the morning. She loves a hot cup of Bombay Bad Boy late in the evening, and you can shake her all night long, but only if you’re AC/DC. Wait, that doesn’t sound right… or does it?
This is Da Thao Phuong. She usually performs accompanied by a Video Art specially created for her performance. To read her work and its translation into English, click here. She is a bottomless well of infinite serenity. I have never seen her panic, except for the time when it snowed right after we saw Toni Morrison live in the Southbank Centre, and I was almost hit by a cab while crossing the slick, slippery, slushy streets of London. She is the mother of a bundle of joy named Benjamin, who she fondly refers to as “Osama Bin Jamin”. Osama Bin Jamin, Phuong is proud to announce, has just recently learned to walk. I told her that within two years from learning to do so, children forget all they learned about walking and would be on a default speed of “Running Like A Little Bugger”, usually under the tables of strangers in a restaurant and head-on towards oncoming traffic.
Once everyone has done their piece, Francesca and Mike scheduled individual consultation schedules for everyone. As dramaturg, Francesca was in charge of guiding us with our re-writes, while Mike worked with us on the performance aspect of our poetry. Francesca Beard‘s songs were written especially to serve as links between the performances, and if you want to read them, they are available here.
If you have seen our show, you would notice that we had a thing going where one poet introduces the next performer, who in turn introduces the one after him, and so on. Those introductions you heard from us came from an exercise where we paired up and ask each other questions that Francesca Beard came up with. Here are the questions:
- What is your favorite time? When do you feel most particularly free?
- What is the place that makes you feel most safe?
- Talk about something which you are proud of.
- Talk about something which are ashamed of.
- What color makes you feel most free?
- What is the smell of freedom?
- What is the soundtrack of freedom?
- -10: 3 Questions that the interviewer is free to ask on his own discretion.
Asking ourselves these questions gave us surprising, enlightening, interesting answers. After this activity, it felt like we knew each other better, having opened up on the universal topic of freedom contextualized in the very personal lives of poets.
We were getting closer and closer to our first show!