The Warp and the Weft — Week One in the Room
After months of planning, researching, and prepping — we’re in. The first week of The Warp and The Weft rehearsals has been a joyful mix of movement, myth, music and a good sprinkle of silliness in there too.
DAY 1 - SUNDAY 17th August @THE GLITCH
We kicked off on Sunday at The Glitch with our first full day together as a team. It was so exciting to have the first day of rehearsals happen in our performance venue, and it felt like the perfect way to kick off the project. We all battled various TFL delays and diversions but eventually made it to the space - special shout has to go to India coming with a HUGE suitcase all the way from Pembrokeshire! There’s always a bit of first day nervous energy, but the room was full of generosity, play and curiosity. We started by setting the tone for how we’d like to work — sharing personal manifestos with prompts like “I believe...”, “I want to...”, “I know...” — and mapping out the themes and politics we want to carry with us. From there, we dove into the Barkcloth story. Using research on its cultural and spiritual history, we devised a set of movements based on the physical process of making barkcloth: stripping the bark, boiling, beating, stretching. The gestures were visceral and rhythmic, and we started building movement phrases that wove those textures with feeling. We ended by combining all our movements together into a sequence which will then be woven into the barkcloth story. - Watch the video below to find out more about barkcloth…
DAY 2 - TUESDAY 19th AUGUSt @LEWISHAM YOUTH THEATRE
Tuesday was all about Arachne. This is a very special story for me as it is really where it all began. Arachne’s story featured in my undergraduate dissertation and I feel a close kinship with her. Working from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we picked apart the myth - its dynamics of power, punishment, artistry and resistance - and discussed the moments which really stood out to each of us. Then we split up the story into a sequence of the key events and blocked it out using freeze frames for each one. We then began developing a weaving movement language: passing the shuttle through frames, combing the warp, striking the weft. We explored how this weaving technique might be taught to the daughter by the mother and how it might change as the weaver becomes more and more virtuosic. We are yet to explore the movement for the tapestries of Minerva and Arachne, but we can’t wait to do so! - If you want to read more about this story I would recommend the translation linked below.
DAY 3- THURSDAY 21ST AUGUST @LEWISHAM YOUTH THEATRE
On Thursday, we shifted to a more recent textile resistance: the Suffragette Handkerchief. When researching stories for this piece last year I found this story about the Sufferagettes. Embroidery and fabric work were key to the Sufferagettes movement, most notably in the hand made banners they used, but this story was something more unusual. In Holloway Prison during 1912 a group of inmates embroidered their signatures into a handkerchief. These inmates were suffragette prisoners, serving varying sentences for their participation in the March 1912 window-smashing demonstrations in London, organised by the Women’s Social & Political Union. They were also survivors and participants of the famous Holloway hunger strikes. In the accounts of imprisonment in Holloway, we learn that after four weeks, women were allowed to leave their dismal cells to ‘take their needlework or knitting to the hall downstairs, which was more airy, and sit side by side, although talking was still forbidden.’ Through the handkerchiefs, the women subverted the materials available to them in prison, and by using this typically intimate, ‘feminine’ craft, they could make a powerful point about the restrictions placed on women’s right of self-expression, endured in both incarceration and in freedom. These textiles gave voices to the women named. This story of rebellion became our entry point. We read about hunger strikes, force feeding, and the way embroidery became an act of survival and defiance. There was something so affecting about the quiet power of those stitches - made in silence, by women denied their voices - and how needlework, so often dismissed as a domestic craft, became a political weapon. The movement of this session took a more clown-like approach, exploring how the women might be trapped and how the women might revolt using the very fabrics intended to constrain them. - If you want to read more about this story, the article below is a really great read…
DAY 4- Friday 22nd AUGUST @LEWISHAM YOUTH THEATRE
We closed the week on Friday with the Names Project quilt. Watching the video of Cleve Jones never fails to make me cry, it is such an affecting reminder of the tragedy of the Aids Epidemic and how memory, grief and protest can live in fabric. We talked about the quilt as an archive, as a lifeline, and as a revolution and discussed how important this story is to tell. We also reflected on how this story was told in the previous draft of this project and how we might be able to add some clarity to the piece. We then started to devise some movement and choreography based on the explosion of queer culture in San Francisco in the 80s, prior to the AIDS crisis, and the freedom and joy the community was able to find. Next time we work on this story we will go on to explore the journey from this explosion of joy to the devastation of the virus.- If you want to understand more about the aids quilt I really recommend this video - although if you are anything like me you might want some tissues on hand!
We ended this session by moving into the Waulking section. Waulking was the last stage in the production of homespun tweed. During this process, the cloth would be beaten rhythmically, usually by hand, to shrink and soften it. It would generally be carried out by a group of between eight and twelve women on a hard surface, such as a table, and was known as luathadh in Gaelic. Waulking songs would be sung throughout the process in order to keep the rhythm and make the work a little easier. Typically, one woman would sing the verses of the song and the others would join in on the chorus. It was also a social occasion being one of the few times a group of women would gather without men present and allowed them to speak freely with one another while working the fabric. We learnt a Waulking song and then began to devise movement based on the physical actions of the process. To develop this movement further we wanted to try it with fabric, so we borrowed some big lengths of fabric from the LYT cupboards and started our own Waulking circle. This led us to think about the columns at The Glitch which offer both an obstacle and opportunity and so we began to get excited about how we could physically embed architecture into the work. We are looking forward to the next time we can work with this piece in the performance space. If you want to find out more about Waulking I highly recommend the video below.
Overall, this was an amazing week - great fun, incredible work was created and an ensemble has started to be built! A full-on, generous, moving week of weaving stories and bodies together. Everyone in the room is so smart, open and playful - I think we’re going to fly. Next week, we dive deeper into more of the stories and refine some of the work we have already got - I can’t wait!
See you next week,
Izzy
