Polyrythmns

Music day today, starting early with the gang making its way to Grove School in Handsworth.

Minato had asked for a chance to spend time with a group of young children, to collect their childhood songs, and we worked with a Year Two class [7 years old] for the morning. Drumming, clapping, dancing and singing their way through Japan, Korea and the UK, via Africa, America, India and Australia. It was another lively session, and Minato particlularly enjoyed the clapping games ['A sailor went to sea sea sea..']

Back in the rehearsal room we did a session filling in some of Blue's back story. Toyoko went into role as his mother, and we heard her anxieties for her son, with his special talents which are so aften misunderstood. The actors also improvised some name-calling and other episodes from his childhood, before we re-approached the moment where he is found, hidden in the building site. There was more poignancy, and tension around.

At lunchtime we went en masse to see CTC'c lovely production, Five, which is on in the Door, which will also be our venue for our world premier in May 2009. It was a timely visit - a play which is simple yet beautiful, with no language.

After lunch we talked a little about the morning workshop, and the roles of music within the play. Minato spoke about two musical elements which had symbolic power. One for him was the simple call and response, which the actors had done with children in the morning. This for Minato represents the communication between parent and child, missing in the case of Blue. It is an element which our play needs to contain, to represent the communication that is developed without language but across barriers.

The other symbolic concept we are now exploring is polyrythmn. African musicians had worked with him, presenting complex ways of putting together seemingly incompatible beats. Where this combination works, the different rythmns combine, while the individual is still in evidence. This echoes the symbolism central to the play - difference is at one time both surmountable and in itself to be celebrated. Whether this is the difference between the complementary primary colours of red blue and yellow, between Blue and the child seen as normal, between cultures and languages, or between the different rythmns of africa...all have this twin potential.

The music will provide a soundtrack, and yet be also an integral part of the storytelling. The production of Five had that element to it, although the musician was more of a character than ours is likely to be... Dance too, may be an element... in the world under the ground perhaps, and there will be many times when we are close to dance - digging, climbing etc. Or maybe the children themselves will sing and dance.

We also decided to explore at some time the inventing of a new tri-lingual clapping game of our own. Maybe three elemenst which complement each other...back to those polyrythmns again....

In the evening, the company watched the REP's own production of Wuthering Heights, and liked the set...we wondered how Byung Ho would feel if we came up with a set design like that, given that he wants ours to fit in as hand luggage.......