Other People’s Rehearsals

4 May 2007
Edit Kaldor - Point Blank
Strange. With our own opening for That Night Follows Day coming up in the evening but the cast of kids all at school of course, we somehow have the whole day free. Seemingly (and sadly) unable to face a day in the Brussels sunshine or doing something other than work Richard and I find another dark room with no windows to sit in and go to watch a rehearsal for a new performance by Edit Kaldor, a piece called Point Blank.
Its going to be great I think. Her first solo piece Or Press Escape remains a real highlight performance for me from the last ten years, and this new one looks set to be a great follow-up to it – related in its formal structure and conceits, but pushing out in new directions too. In these pieces looking at how our lives and thought-processes can be approached through the model of the computer screen and software, and the computers’ structure of folders, communications and data storage, Edit’s doing something that I think very few other people (in performance at least) are approaching.
The funny thing about watching other people’s rehearsals (or visiting their studios) is that somehow things (issues, structures, problems) can often seem so much more visible to you than they are when you’re looking at your own work. At times this is very much a mirage, I know. But often it seems you can see the problems that other people are facing – including dilemmas and possible avenues for solution and escape – in ways that  you can’t with your own material, which is always somehow too close and too overly invested-in to be seen clearly.