Chemistry

Sometimes there's a bubbling up of excitement in the mid chest region. Sometimes it rises up, spills backwards over the shoulders and down the spine into goosebumps. That's how I feel right now about this collaboration, this play, the theatre wizardry we are embarking on. It feels like all this time I have been biding is about to pay off. At last. The planets are aligned and I've got the right people around me.

I'll go into more detail later about who is who and their bios and experience. For now - all you need to know is that we are good ingredients. A choreographer-designer (Jen); a writer-director-facilitator (Tamara); a performer-storymaker-dancer-musico (Nhlanhla); and two creative performer-collaborators (Jess and Ndu).

Jen and I should have worked together ages ago. There's a good spark here. Nhlanhla and I have - and we work together beautifully. We have a similar vocabulary for what makes us smile and we fill in each other's gaps well. I can do words, visuals, conceptual stuff, and the more practical sides like marketing. He's got stories in his blood and theatrical imagery in his bones. Ndu is a 4th year student. Her audition made me cry. She has a rare something. She can channel character through her like liquid, but also a real presence. Something almost dangerous about her. Like the liquid she channels through her is flammable and could ignite at any second. Jess has a solid integrity coupled with an inventiveness that I'm loving. I barely know these girls, and we've had so little time together for working, but it feels delicious to be nosing our way through the dark together in search of the gold we know is in here, somewhere.

I think this is what makes the space exciting: its a proper collaboration. Not for us girls the big messy egos and ownership issues. We gonna open this wide open, there's plenty to go around, something for everybody. That's what excited me about Joburg when I first got here and that's the philosophy I want to maintain. Not being dewy eyed - there are always stickinesses and issues. Naturally. But this one, I know, has legs. Maybe even wings. And I declare it before you, witnesses all.