RESEARCH / REFLECTION / PROCESS / PERFORMANCE @yescomeonalicebb-blog - Tumblr Blog

Learning How to Die - Luca Rutherford

Here is a link to a page online about this artists work. Rachael and i spent time discussing how my work links to this and what the artist does to be able to talk about death without it being overly sad, too personal, excluding or cheesy.

https://www.cptheatre.co.uk/production/learning-how-to-die/

Photograph Task Excerpt 7

Photograph Task Excerpt 6

Photograph Task Excerpt 5

Photograph Task Excerpt 4

Photograph Task Excerpt 3

Photograph Task Excerpt 2

Task from Rachael - Write about your own, your friends’ and celebrity’s childhood photographs with the same authority that you would write about your own. Tell me what happened before and after.

Photograph Task Excerpt 1

Task from Rachael - Write about your own, your friends’ and celebrity’s childhood photographs with the same authority that you would write about your own. Tell me what happened before and after.

Cape Wrath and the Whiskey Toast

After attending 2 lectures by Alex Kelly on his performance Cape Wrath, i was inspired by his toast to his Grandpa and by the irony he displayed in commenting that his Grandpa’s favourite whiskey isn’t a good quality one.

So in making the final part of my show i wanted to offer my audience a drink, in the style of Kelly’s performance, and found that this issue of no one remembering what drink she had, and this also being important in the inquest to her death, offered a good opportunity for this.

Mirror - Text

Alice remembers me standing in front of the mirror, the one in the living room, the one hung too high for her to see into. I remember Alice, holding her tight against my chest, rocking back and forth and side to side. Sometime i would sing to her, sometimes i would close my eyes, sometimes i would take a big, deep breath.

Dying - Text

If I’d have known I would’ve given Alice a hug. I would’ve told Nick not to worry. I would’ve bought my house and I might have even gotten married. I would’ve spent all my money on red wine and house plants and stayed up all night playing card games at Kirkstall Abbey. I would’ve made the cat fish fingers and cut them up for him. I would’ve dyed my eyebrows and I would’ve worn something much nicer than my horrible old pyjamas.

It was a sunny evening in May and I was cooking dinner for my sister. I had an Amaretto and coke and the summer breeze came in through the open kitchen window.

First there was a tummy ache. Then there was back pain underneath my left shoulder. The pain felt like biting your tongue or catching your finger on the side of a hot saucepan. The pain got worse, I sat down, I lay down and the pain got worse. The pain was a hot needle. It was like getting stung by 100 wasps. It was like a gust of wind that knocked the breath out of me.

There was a phone call to the NHS helpline. There was an ambulance. At A&E there were packets of paracetamol and codeine and I was sent home.

There was still pain. I paced backwards and forwards and couldn’t stay still. There was another phone call, there was another ambulance. More pain, more painkillers.

I never thought I would die like that, but you don’t know though, do you? It was sudden but so uneventful.

After it happened there were 2 doctors and 2 nurses and a consultant crowding around me in the tiny little room. They kept rushing in and out and around the bed. Everyone kept talking about me as if I wasn’t there anymore and they kept on repeating my name, Yvonne, Yvonne, Yvonne.

My sister Cathy was trying to call our other sister Bernie, and I would’ve told her not to bother because she was on one of her typical European adventures touring the coast of Italy or up the side of an Austrian mountain.

And I still can’t believe our Anthony turned up. It is so much like Anthony to try to steal the limelight as soon as something isn’t about him.

And those bloody pyjamas! Why did I wear those horrible pyjamas? If I’d known I would’ve brought something to change in to.

Running - Text

From my bedroom at my Mum’s house, at 22 Harold Terrace, Hyde Park, Leeds, LS6 1PG, on a Saturday morning, To the armchair in the corner of the living room, to the A&E department at the Leeds General Infirmary, in the Jubilee Wing, To a cubicle, behind a curtain, to waiting in the corridor, to waiting in the family room, From feeling everything at once to feeling nothing at all.

From seeing my friends in the park, to sitting in silence on the sofa at 22 Harold Terrace, From an empty fridge, to my Dad’s house, to school to sit my exams. From the school gates, on Holtdale approach, to Pinderfields Hospital, in Wakefield, to the Mortuary building.

From an empty house, to a takeaway, From early morning meetings at Lester Morrill’s solicitors, with 100 files in the small basement meeting room, back to a cold house, back to boxes of clothes. To the Leeds North West Council Housing Office near Servia Hill, From knowing, to not knowing, to sleepless summer nights, to making cups of tea in messy kitchens.

From the Coroner’s Court near Cross Belgrave Street, in Leeds City Centre, To noise, to questions, to having no answers, From 22 Harold Terrace, Hyde Park, Leeds, LS6 1PG, to 5 Aberdeen Grove, Armley, Leeds, LS12 3QY, From then to now.

Photograph - Text

I managed to look away from the camera just as this photograph was taken. I thought I looked terrible and I didn’t want anyone to take my picture. When I think about it now I realise that I have probably never looked, you know, as young or as happy. All of the things that people tell you but you never realise until afterwards.

When I look at it now I feel like I didn’t really know who I was or I feel like I knew exactly who I was but I couldn’t see it for what it was at the time.

Evening, summer sun - Text

The summer, evening sun was shining in through the window, a lovely, deep orange colour. I sat on that chair and turned it in towards the room to keep the sun out of my eyes. I opened the front door for some fresh air, which went straight from the living room out onto the street. It was a terraced house, in Leeds, one of the ones with steps directly out onto the Yorkshire flag stone pavement. The pavement was warm from the sun. I had taken off my shoes so that I could feel the stone’s lovely roughness and heat beneath my bare feet. I smiled as the open door let even more orange-y light into the living room. Our sofa was third hand from one of Alice’s Dad’s friends when we had no money and I remember thinking the orange and green blanket I threw over the top of it matched the light outside. I tried to hold on to the picture of how beautiful this evening was. I remember the feeling of how the light hit my face.

She will be remembered / I will be remembered - Text

She was remembered with a buffet at the Brudenell Social Club. She was remembered with candles. She was remembered as a Mother.

She will be remembered in the orange evening sun. She will be remembered by the chest full of unorganised, important papers under the dinning room table. She will be remembered as a strong woman and a weak woman. She will be remembered as hard working, as having no job, as having 6 jobs. She will be remembered as mashed swede and homemade chips. And she will be remembered as a late-night game of backgammon and a bottle of red wine.

She would like to be remembered as a strong woman, as hard working, as a Mother. She would like to be remembered as having great boobs. She would like to be remembered as someone who was kind to animals. She’d like to be remembered as graceful, as fearless. She would like to be remembered as a fridge full of food, as a strong cup of tea, as homemade bread and a cardigan made of wool.

I will be remembered with a buffet in a church hall. I will be remembered with candles and flowers. I will be remembered as a short, green fringe, as long legs, as long toes. I will be remembered as a cup shaped like a cat. I will be remembered as being too sensitive, as someone who cried at the first episode of Phoenix Nights in the bit when he gets stuck on his stair lift in the dark.

I want to be remembered as a Sunday dinner. I want to be remembered as a big beach ball or a sandcastle. I want to be remembered as a good quality sleeping bag on double air bed. I want to be remembered as a good swimmer. And I want everyone to forget that I couldn’t ride a bike. I want to be remembered as graceful. I never have been but it would be nice to be remembered like that. I want to be remembered as someone who was never scared, as fearless and brave.

Of course, I don’t know how my Mum would want to be remembered. There was no time for her to tell us and probably not time for her to prepare. When someone dies and it takes a long time we say how agonising and drawn out it has been and that we would want it to be quick. And when it’s quick we realise there was not enough time to decide on the story, the biography, the truth, the trace or the mythology that exists after you have gone.

I will never know how she would like to be remembered and I don’t know how I will really be remembered but I still like to try and guess.

No one can remember what the last drink was that my Mum had on that sunny May evening. The doctors and the lawyers say she came to A&E so drunk that they didn’t believe her symptoms. We say we know that’s not true. I say I saw her have one drink. In the house, there was a bottle of amaretto and a bottle of whiskey, each with a small amount taken from the top.

I’d like to invite you now to choose a drink of either, if you would like, and take one of these envelopes. Inside there is a question I would like to invite you to answer. While you sit and answer we will listen to Dusty Springfield and when the song is over I would like to ask you to hand your envelope to another audience member to read out loud to the group.

Script - First Draft

Characters:

Yvonne #1: Represents the wild woman, sometimes reckless, fun, glamorous, life-and-soul. However, she also has a darker side, depressed sometimes and often fragile. She has had low paid jobs, has been unemployed. Beautiful and exciting but often retreats into herself. She was badly hurt by Alice’s dad, whom she was with since being 16. She is concerned about what people think of her in terms of being young and naïve and self-conscious.

Yvonne #2: She is clean, tidy and in control. She has 3 jobs, she is successful (thought not amazing jobs), she has money, has her life together. Sometimes this becomes self-flagellating and perfectionist. She is very concerned about what people think of her, in terms of her having her life in order and being a ‘good’ Mother, a ‘good’ person, successful.

Yvonne #3: She is peaceful, serene, believe in energy and spirits. She is defined by being a Mother, it is her greatest achievement in a life that she otherwise thinks is not too extraordinary. Everyone adores her. She is inward facing, she sometimes lives through her child. She is sentimental.

Section 1 – Opening Image:

Audience enter to find 3 women in different areas of the space. The lighting is dim. They are each performing on action, for example holding a child up in front of the mirror, getting dressed, tidying some papers away into a draw etc. They are moving in slow motion. There are small ‘scenes’ around the room, areas of furniture, ornaments that make small areas of a home. There is a pile of CDs. There are piles of books. There are photographs, drawings done by a child. There is a sofa. There is a dining table, a coffee table, several lamps. There are plates and cups on various surfaces. There is sound. The audience can walk around the space. This lasts for 10 minutes. At one points one of the women runs, as if running towards or away from something. She is not scared but determined. Another woman wraps herself in a blanket on the floor. The women switch ‘stations’ periodically. Two are not in the same place at once. They are silent.

There is a cue and one of the women begins to speak.

Section 2 – Setting the Scene:

Yvonne #1: The last time I was there the room was quite messy. I took my slippers off, my flip flops, the pink ones that Alice had gotten me a few years before hand, in front of the sofa, at the left-hand side, by the fireplace. I know this because they were the very light pink, baby pink, ones that had gotten really grubby because I’d had them so long. I took them off and left them on the floor in front of the sofa.

The table was cluttered, as usual, with stuff. (She looks around to find objects to clutter the table with.) Just stuff, I can’t even tell you what sort of stuff, life stuff? You know, a few letters, some cups and a plate from earlier that day, some filter tips from Nick’s cigarettes, a couple of CDs.

(Aside as she moves things and looks at some CDs.) Yes, I still listen to CDs. I actually do it all the time. I love CDs, I have hundreds of them. I was young in the 90s, right, so CDs were cool and I don’t want to digress any further.

Anyway, the table was covered in shit, actually so was the coffee table, and the rug needed vacuuming-

(She is cut off.)

Yvonne #2: It wasn’t like that at all. It really wasn’t like that.

I had cleaned. There were people coming over, Catherine was coming over. I wouldn’t leave it like that.

My flip flops were upstairs, so I’ll get rid of those (she moves them out of the space). There was a fruit bowl on the table and a bottle of wine. (Arranging them) Like this, or a bit further this way.

And this chair wasn’t facing towards the window (she moves the chair). The evening sun was glorious (puts a lamp on, shinning towards the audience) so I turned it in towards the room, to keep it out of my eyes.

The coffee table was closer to the chair and it wasn’t covered in anything. Nick had left an ash tray there but I made sure to move it before Catherine came. My house isn’t a mess, don’t remember it like that because it wasn’t.

Yvonne #3: The flip flops were by the sofa. They were crossed over, on top of each other like this. (She arranges them as she describes.) You missed that, both of you missed that. That’s important. I took one off on top of the other, (looks to audience) I always do, I just like the way they look when they are on the floor like that. I know it doesn’t make a difference, really, but I like it.

The rug was clean, the floor was clean, the kitchen was clean.

The mantel piece had my lovely gold candlestick in the middle but I left my make-up dotted across it, below the mirror, the one with the cherubs on it, because I’d gotten ready there may be only 30 minutes before.

The sun was coming in through the window, a lovely deep orange colour. I opened the front door, which went straight from the living room out onto the street. It was a terraced house, in Leeds, one of the ones with steps straight out onto the Yorkshire flag stone pavement. The pavement was warm from the sun. I felt it’s lovely roughness beneath my bare feet. I smiled as the open door let even more orange-y light into the living room.

There was my orange and green throw over that ugly red leather sofa, the one I received third hand from one of Alice’s Dad’s friends when we had no money. (Puts throw over a chair/sofa.) I remember thinking the blanket matched the light outside.

There wasn’t any wine on the table. There wasn’t a fruit bowl. There might’ve been some of Alice’s things. I don’t remember that.

I don’t care how close the coffee table was to the chair. I don’t remember. That isn’t how I remember it. That isn’t important.

Yvonne #1: I was drinking Amaretto and Coke.

Yvonne #2: I was drinking Whiskey and Coke.

Yvonne #3: I was drinking Amaretto and Coke.

Yvonne #2: It was whiskey and coke. I made it over here in the kitchen. The kitchen was small, in the style of those Victorian terraces. There was only work surfaces along one side, the side opposite the door as you came in.

The whiskey bottle was at the back of one of the cupboard above. I poured a small amount of whiskey into a small glass and topped it up with Coke.

Yvonne #3: It was Amaretto. I remember the smell.

Yvonne #1: I hate the smell, but I like the way it tastes.

Yvonne #3: I remember the smell on my lips.

Yvonne #2: This was the one drink that I had to myself, before my sister arrived.

Yvonne #3 (or 2?): I was in the middle of cooking dinner when my sister, Catherine, arrived. I made her a drink.

(Music begins. Son of a Preacher Man- Dusty Springfield.)

Yvonne #1: (Getting distracted.) The thing about Dusty Springfield is, and not everyone knows this, but she was so unhappy. She put on a brave face but she was so deeply unhappy. It’s so sad. I sometimes think you can hear it in her voice. I sometimes think that you can hear the real person inside trying to get out.

(Yvonne #1 moves to an area to sing along to some of the song. She is singing passionately. There is now a spotlight on her.)

Section 3 – Motherhood:

Yvonne #3: This is a photograph of my daughter Alice. This was taken when she was 1. There aren’t many photographs of me and there aren’t many of us together.

When she was born, and she came out ginger, I was horrified, if I’m being honest. She is still a bit ginger here and it makes me laugh now.

Eventually, one day, Alice’s Dad will frame this and give it to her and she will have it in her bedroom, in front of the make up where she does her make-up. But that is just a fact. That isn’t something I remember.

I remember this photograph being taken. I was looking away from the camera because I thought I looked terrible that day. When I think about it now I realise that I probably never looked so good, you know, so glamorous, so young, all of that sort of thing that people always say to you but you never realise until after the fact.

I remember looking at her and thinking that she was perfect. Not in the way that other people talk about their children, she wasn’t perfect like everyone else’s child – she was really perfect. She was so long and she had eyes like plates.

Section 4 – Growing Up:

Yvonne #2: This is a photograph of me when I was probably about 25. That is the age Alice is now. It’s strange to remember these things and know that as well.

I was very shy.

Yvonne #1: I wasn’t. I was a model. I was beautiful. I walked into the room and I owned that room.

Yvonne #2: No, I was very shy.

Yvonne #1: It sounds like I’m joking when I say that, but I’m not.

Yvonne #2: It really wasn’t like that at all. To be honest, sometimes I felt like I hated myself.

Yvonne #1: Well I must have been good at hiding it, if that’s how it was.

Yvonne #2: I was so young. I had been on my own for so long. I had been with Alice’s Dad for so long. I didn’t know really know who I was.

Yvonne #1: I knew exactly who I was. Stood there in that photo I knew exactly who I was. I had people who fucking cared about me, I had some independence, I had a life for the first time, really and properly.

Yvonne #2: I don’t know if I want to talk about this anymore. I just don’t remember it like that.

Section 4 – Motherhood:

Yvonne #3: I used to tell anyone that would listen that I always knew Alice was going to be a girl. Don’t say it’s ridiculous yet, just hear me out. I told Alice this story so many times, I have remembered this again and again and if you repeat something enough it fixes in your brain, you know in your neural pathways.

One night, I had a dream. In this dream, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a transit van. I think it was the same, or similar, van to old red post van that Alice’s Dad drove at the time.

In my arms was a new born baby, tightly swaddled in a white blanket. I realise, obviously, that this isn’t a safe way to drive with a baby. In the dream I am looking down through the windscreen of the van, or maybe through the roof. I’m looking down at myself in this situation.

After a short time I can see the baby’s face more clearly, just for a moment I get a fleeting glance of the baby’s face and I see that she is a girl.

Deciding on a name wasn’t easy. Obviously, I had had this vision that she was going to be a girl so never asked the doctors for a sex, but still me and Alice’s Dad, John, couldn’t decide. To cut a long story short, we were given a baby names book by a friend, on the second page we saw the name Alice and so very quickly we closed the book and put the whole issue to rest.

My name, which is Yvonne by the way - I’m sorry I don’t think I’ve introduced myself – was chosen because my parents fell out with the Catholic church and so gave me a specifically non-biblical name to contrast with my siblings. I liked that explanation, it like that it has a bit of drama to it.

I think it’s probably the right time to tell you something now, and this isn’t something I remember. This is something Alice remembers, something that she remembered while she was writing this. Alice doesn’t remember it very clearly. When she closes her eyes and pictures it, the whole scene is smoky, hazy or like the whole scene is floating on the surface of a pool of water.

Alice holds her hands on the surface of the water, as if she’s trying to hold on to it. It isn’t stable, it moves and it slips through her fingers. (Maybe video projection of this here? Or the actor doing something with water?)

Simply put, our family friend turned to Alice and said, (into a microphone) ‘Well, of course your Grandma never wanted your Mum and made her feel that everyday of her life.’

So I sit here, talking to you all, looking at photographs, remembering holding my lovely baby in my arms. I think about never being wanted by my own fucking Mother and I wonder how I could ever love a child when I was never taught how.

But I just do.

(She assumes this position as she says this next part.) Every chance I get I stand in front of the mirror, the one with the cherubs, in the living room, above the mantel piece and I hold her tight against my chest. I bounce her up and down and side to side. Sometimes I sing, sometimes I just breath (take several deep breaths into a microphone?)

(Yvonne 3 takes a member of the audience to the mirror and holds them like a baby. Talks to them, maybe sings?)

Then there is another dusty song? I just don’t know what to do with myself?

An act of recording ourselves, Itself, An event, A memory, A dwelling, A childhood, A trauma keeps replaying itself over - if not in the body then in the fixtures of dormant walls and surfaces, where in the spaces and gaps of invisibility it appears, half woken, ready to emerge. how to open the doors, air out the rooms, exorcize the ghosts?

Mark Jeffery, 2005: 172

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