Beautifully Confused

by Becka McFadden So this blog is about performance and perhaps this is a semi-hijack. Though perhaps not. Once, not so very long ago, I did a PhD grounded in the sociology of theatre and performance. The fundamental premise of this school of thought - unsurprisingly - is that what we do on stage is not distinct from what is happening in the world. Making art, we both respond to and co-create the social world in which we continue to live, love, vote, pay taxes and make more art. A brief anecdote by way of illustration. During the dark days (though how comparatively luminous they seem in retrospect!) of George W. Bush's run for re-election, I was doing my MA in Theatre. Our programme was organised such that you could hold an almost fulltime-time job and still do it, as a result of which our classes started around 4:30 and rehearsals often continued past midnight. The night of the election coincided with a significant rehearsal of a political twentieth century European play that

Because sometimes you find yourself sitting in a cafe with a copy of the I-Ching to your left and it’s in Polish. But you’ve seen it here before - not in this cafe, but in this city. In English, the last time, at a significant moment, even if proffered by an untrustworthy individual. It came, that time, at a moment of needing to trust. It came back the summer before last, in the wake of a decision that was in some ways good and an in others bad. A gently insistent reminder to attune to The End in Sight.  I ask myself what hexagram is that? I can’t remember. Can I find it? Will I recognise it in Polish? 64. Przed Spełnianiem. Koniec Przed Spełnianiem.  When things flow, there’s a sense of continuity and overlap - coexistence of time/space. I feel forward and back, accumulated experiences shimmer. I’m attracted to this aesthetic of shimmering lately. I see it in my head as a collection of loosely woven baskets, which sit inside of one another. Their weavings cross and contradict