A huge thank you to everyone who came out to The TCP Show, we are so grateful for your support!
As many of you know, we were fortunate to work with many amazing artists on this production. Our writer, Samantha Mehra was one such talent. Ultimately we did not use as much of her wonderful text in the direct performance as we once thought, however it is all there, embedded in the movement. Samantha’s text and the images therein inspired each section of the work and helped to inform our choreographic choices. We worked closely with Samantha on edits and she was incredibly generous with her work, creating an amazing space for collaboration!
Here below we have posted her original text for you to read, prior to any shifting and re-working. We hope you enjoy! Thank you Sam!
Character 1 (Man/recluse):
I live in a hallway, always.
Every step forward, backward, cowering moment,
I am in a hallway, of some kind.
Of many kinds.
The cold spinal space between head and heart,
Productive rooms where everyone else seems to linger
I stand half-dressed in between them
Paused in stride
This hallway has mirrors, did I mention?
Where I jab at my own reflection.
Laughter, warm embraces where sternums kiss,
All I have to offer is a hole in a sock.
A biting ache of the cold air hitting
That lonesome soldier of a big toe
Squirming to get back in line
To the state of Feelin’ fine
But, who am I kidding? It was never meant to be.
On the train, the hallway between home and city
While everyone sleeps with gaping mouths,
heads cocked, thoughts momentarily muted
Some stand asleep, swaying with sensible beauty, like bobbing buoys on
An ocean. The train making subtle turns, careening down slight hills,
The sleep-standing folks, sliding their palms up and down the hand rails
Like elevator shafts.
I am awake, rattled,
Isolated in between him and her
Catching breaths of relief only when the journey stops
And the doors open
Character 2 (Crazy Angelina, the anorexic ballerina):
I’m walking away from somewhere a). I’m walking towards somewhere b).
This is choreography.
Supported by a bar, a pair of anti-social hands,
Feigning romance or streuth or whathaveyou,
I cling to the gravity,
My hair comes undone;
The braid pooling down my back grooves in and out,
an ebony spine chopped off by fleeting hands
ethereal, weightless and gaitless in the downstage left.
Two end of points of light,
the ends of my longest fingers
I ache to span them gloriously,
But my wings atrophy on the journey outward
I’m land-bound. I fail.
The ribs, my ribs, the ribs of the tape under my heel,
the ribs of the distant piano keys keeping time, the ribs of the bars,
the ribs of the vertical curtain. The architectural texture
of my partner’s hands are hard-pressed to contain me;
a slew of tragic flaws placing me in the margins,
the wings.
I want to fit into the boxes, the balconies,
but somehow am always ill-fitting.
I am asked to move back, further, further.
Until I am upstage right,
And so, I turn to the hunger.
The hunger is my oldest friend.
Character 3: The fidget
You know you’re afraid of feeling alone when
You are engaged in the project of
filling up space
Blasting music into your ears to get from point a to point z
To suppress the murmuring sound of the sky train,
Or the high-pitched screaming that pervades your ears,
Brought on only by the most complete silence.
Your ears make their own noise when there is nothing to hear;
The body doesn’t want to be alone with itself either.
Pacing fidgeting crossing and uncrossing legs and arms
The boundless fear of stillness causing
A dance of tick-tocking limbs
To fill up the time, to shake the airwaves as you wait
for whatever circumstance
Laughing at the slightest smudge of humour
Just in case someone decides to say nothing
We must not risk the impending awkward silence
We must not risk it
The galaxy might explode if we let it become too quiet.
I may not know much at all,
But I do know that
the lonely person is the one who laughs too often.
So often, that her
voice sounds scuffed up like it
Dragged itself along the pavement,
Like it has laughed itself to tears.
Character 4: Our street.
The houses on my street were synonymous
With the people inside them.
Number 42, across and down the road,
was a woman, and a green garage door.
Number 36, across and down the other way,
Was man, wife, three kids, and a lawn of dying grass.
We were number 39, a couple with an only child,
And a horse chestnut tree which was casually
And gloriously dying.
The judging, the watching amongst us,
Filled our street with heart-melting
Calm.
But what is becoming of my neighbourhood?
my numbered neighbours
Uprooted and disappeared
Replaced by new houses
Without memories Without sun-faded walls or worn floors
Unremarkable
Without history depth or accident
Standing here, looking down the long and winding
Graveyard of my neighbourhood
Where 42, 36, and us 39s surveilled and swooned
Staining doorknobs and chipping porch paint
Over many hours, filing and sculpting our
Homes with our repetitive journeys,
None of these houses are alive.
No one is watching. I feel unwatched.
What is happening to my neighbourhood?
Character 5 (the obsessive dreamer):
The moment of waking up, after a vivid assault of a dream,
Is a splash of cold water on the face,
A smack on the cheek that brings you instantly and completely
Into dark silence, from everything, to nothing.
To snap back into reality, 3am or thereabouts, should be
Reassuring, a breath or two of relief
An adjustment of pupil 1 and pupil 2
and then back to sleep.
Wine helps, too.
The dog that bites a vast chunk out of my knee in a sun-filled park,
the Japanese print hanging at the end of my childhood hall, of a woman scorned, that comes
to life and chases me into my own recesses, to smother me.
The invisible child who I misplace, the swallowed teeth
The crushing blow that I cannot administer
The furnace as monster.
The nonsensical, the whimsical, the fatal
For all the sweat and tears they give me,
For the damage to my guts they cause me,
I miss them when I snap to,
In the middle of the night.
Character 6 (Old Hal, as he lays trying to die but they won’t let him):
Mr. Oldpoorsonofabitch, how are you feeling today? They all ask me,
looking pretty well like ageless idiots.
But of course, with absentee fleeting gasps all I can do is blink,
think of my deflating lungs,
If I had my way, my will, my still functioning opposable thumbs
I’d put up For Lease signs in the most pathetic of my body’s parts
Starting with my eye sockets
Then my ear drums
The hollow pores of my mind where
Vital information would come to drink
Then the abandoned lots in my dried up gums
Where my incisors used to live in their glory days.
I’m Mr. Oldpoorsonofabitch, I would say,
And I’m having a moving day sale.
Everything can be bargained for,
Just come and see me and make an offer
You won’t be sorry.
The only thing, not up for negotiation,
Is the imprint of my old poor back half
On the bed where I now lounge.
I never saw what I looked like from behind,
But I am sure
It is impressive, and pure.
Character 9: Dysplasia.
To be lonely is commonplace for the human
So I open the blinds and see it elsewhere
The moon in the day time,
A pock-mark on the sky, it hangs awkwardly
It missed its flight
Like the ragged bird without its flock
Pecking at the sewer grate
The shadows that hide behind objects,
The spaces where light cannot reside
The blocking of a passageway
A bubble, a pocketed gurgle in the throat
Or the ones we created
That prevent the nitty gritty from getting
Into our tiny rooms.
The absence of water on a stretch of sand,
The pull of the tide that leaves the beach
A dismal grey carpet, revealing the dirty
Underbelly of all that it has stolen,
Killed, watered down
The fossilized bodies of things long dead,
The sunglasses without lenses,
The wreckage of a toy boat,
All decorated against their will by
The lace of seaweed.
But the tide comes back in,
And so the moment passes.
But it does not pass for me.
Character 8 (Vignette): In the library.
Hands pacing along books lined neatly, alphabetically
I crinkle like paper, flaking at the dog-eared edges
Nothing is lonelier, more devastating
Than an unopened book.
Come – join me in the hallway.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN DY
