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15
also feel all of life crumbling, disintegrating in the face of time, it wounds you, but it is beautiful, necessary. That’s what I get from it. I get feelings from things and that’s my influence, rather than “I like that aesthetic I want to do something like that”. And if things do inspire me in that way, I immediately try to cull it, because I know it’s not coming from me, and is downright lazy.
Since Between Teeth transform experiences into artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
Jimmy: I am in no way interested in designating my memories, my experiences onto the stage. They come from two very different mediums. The medium of my internal reality is very different to the medium of the performance world. And also it would have to go through too many different mediums; my internal reality into then the reality of the every day and then onto the performance space. It would be messy, be boring and dishonest and wouldn’t speak anything for me. Secondly I think performance; in the way that we; Between Teeth, work is that it’s always a collision. Our memories, if they do find their way in to the work, never remain ours, they never remain the individuals. They always collide like bits of debris and become a completely different structure, a different object. It’s the collision of all of our experiences collided into material reality, that’s all our shows are in essence. Liam: I’d say as well that, the autobiographical aspect is so uninteresting for us because it’s operating at that surface level that we’re not interested in. If there are experiences of ours that make it into the show, we want to tunnel right down to the very core of them to enact something that’s not just going to be true for me or Taylor or Jimmy. If we use these kinds of things we want to find the absolute heart of it, the absolute core that has a broader human relevance, rather than an autobiographical interest. Jimmy: Of course you have to perform your fears and your hopes, and what keeps you awake at night, what makes you cry in the morning when you wake, of course you have to stage that. The point is, that it never remains singularly what it is, everything must transform as soon as other individuals with agency are introduced into the space. As free agents, nothing can remain theirs as soon as they begin to collide with each other. I don’t even exist in the ‘performance world’, Jimmy Addy does not exist there; small traces of me might make their way there, but nothing that you would be able to specify as autobiographical
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating? them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my
Jimmy: Of course, there has to be. This for me is the most inspiring point that Grotowski made: that any actor who works outside of structure is a coward. I may be overstating that a little, but that’s how I decided to take it, and I think he wouldn’t entirely disagree. For me this is 100% infallible truth: if you’re not working within parameters (a structure), then everything goes and if everything goes then absolutely nothing goes, nothing works. I’m very very sure of that. However, in the same way that his [Grotowski’s] technique should allow the actor, or holy actor as he calls it, to kind of sacrifice himself to the ‘act’, what I’m interested in is having these very controlled measures; in terms of the training and in terms of the rehearsal process which, when put into a ‘live’ performance context, cannot survive. I don’t think technique should be able to survive on stage. I don’t think parameters should be able to survive on stage; at least they shouldn’t remain undamaged. What I aim at as a director is a technique that overcomes itself. For me, the technique, to use a metaphor, should be the tools with which you start the fire, but I’m not interested in the fire itself, I’m interested in what arises from the ashes.
Taylor: Similarly for me in a performer context is that you [Jimmy] obviously impose very strict rules on us when we’re rehearsing or when we’re going through any exercise, but that’s not what interests me to perform. What interests me to perform is when I take the rules and as Jimmy says, burn them. I burn them and make them my own or I find my own way through them. My way through doesn’t have a typical logic but somehow I know intuitively I have to go through it anyway. And there is childishness to that, a childishness that has been created through discipline, where I can take these rules, take these parameters and find what personally moves me in them.
How do you see the relationship between the emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
Jimmy: It’s always emotional first, for me, as the director and therefore also the first spectator of the work. I feel something in relation to an object, a human or an idea, and then I think about it deeply for some time, and then I gather with others in the rehearsal space and together we construct something, and hopefully it will make me feel something again. Also, I am very interested in dislodging the way the spectator processes stimuli. Dislodging what we might call a ‘top down’ process of understanding which is based on feeling something from ones understanding, and instead, not understanding something, feeling it and then somehow making some sense from that, some intellectual provocations.