Learning Testimony by Graham Henderson for the Melbourne Fringe

"Testimony" by Graham Henderson, directed by Suzanne Chaundy and performed by me will premiere at the Melbourne Fringe September 2010. A fifty minute solo performance piece "late-show of demi-god dreams" runs the release.
I've tried a different process of learning text for Testimony. Ordinarily I think the thoughts and speak the lines out loud in my bedroom, or whisper them to myself on trams and avoid the stares of fellow passengers. This time I decided not to vocalise the text until I'd learnt it.The idea was that rather than to rely on the muscularity of producing words with the elecutionary muscles, I would just think the thoughts. In performance this might help to focus on the rationale of the whole piece. After all, the performance is about an hour of layered poetry that looks at the labyrinth of the self in the context of one who is ostracised from normal society; the myth of the minotaur becomes an analogy for the monster within the self at one in the same with the fear of the stranger in society. A subtle complex exploration that requires the performer to consider each point of reason as it transpires, so that the argument of the performance builds with logic. If the logical build is well-constructed then the emotional and dynamic journey will come for the ride. I'm now two-thirds of the way through learning, have started text analysis with Suzanne (the director), and I couldn't bare the torture any further. I had to speak the words. It interested me the stages of personal relation to the text that transpired. At first I found the text immensely difficult to learn. Without the confirmation of the act of speaking, the words didn't seem to stick. And occasionally I would catch myself mouthing words. But gradually I became accustomed and enjoyed the freedom of walking the streets of Collingwood/Fitzroy or riding on a tram with a page of script in my pocket stepping through the text in my mind. But last week, after a month of learning, I couldn't continue. I merely had to speak the lines. And wondered why I should torture myself in this way. I spoke. The release that I felt in doing so was cathartic. And the voice of the character was a music to me. Not that I feel it was misplaced to explore that non-vocal process, in fact now that I am talking out loud to myself in my bedroom committing the lines, I value the icy concentration that the original process has engendered – the development of rationale continues though the practice of cadence associated with meaning – weighting words as I've come to call it.