So, here on a train from to Liverpool (change at Preston with time for a cuppa). Carlisle, our current stop, reminds me of childhood holidays to the lakes – caravans, long life milk and tearing up grassy slops until I had to collapse and catch my breath. The running more.
We made attempts to stay connected when we all realised with sadness that AOMO would not be happening in 2020. We met on Zoom and I valued the connection, the offered sessions and, at least, a flavour of AOMO-physical and a thread of continuity, hope for a return to flesh.
The realisation that we wouldn’t meet face to face in 2021 formed into a real sense of disappointment and an urgency to keep the flame alive. We met again, virtually and, over a couple of days, got a bit more conference-ish and not just reunion-ish. There were conversations about, and examples offered of how some of the AOMO community had transitioned their work online. Others were waiting for the Great Return/Emergence.
We wished each other well, hoped for proper breakthrough, and here I am, on the train to Liverpool.
I had planned to bring some experimental theatre, as I usually do to AOMO and Covid19 thwarted it at that time, but not forever. It still makes sense to do it. I pondered doing it online and an inner voice said no. Learning patience is something that did me good.
I am spending the month at the Edinburgh Fringe, also more properly “back’. Creating FringeReview back in 2006 is now a hobby that has got delightfully out of control and it feels strange to be travelling down to Liverpool and then back from my temporary home in August at the world’s largest arts festival, also an event in recovery and re-emergence mode.
Much of what I am bringing to AOMO this year took place in my home town in Brighton. It is very experimental and continues a creative inquiry I began at AOMO in York in 2012. It’s a solo piece of theatre, but also something else. I hope you find time to come to the performance because I seek help with this creation. Here’s the invite to The Debrief.
How do we recover from trauma? Is it possible, even necessary these days to crowd-source it? Are the days of expert and client/patient numbered? I am bringing some deep questions to AOMO but also recognise a need in myself for some very blank pages.
I’ll also be finding space to share a little of my recent autoethnographic research into how we become satisfyingly and purposefully active in the space between a virtual and a physical place, a university, a school, a place for learning.
Up at the Edinburgh Fringe there is a such a strong and shared sense of relief that the festival is back. Back to what? Certainly back to some form of normality. Back to physicality and NOT-Zoomery. Back to familiarity as well. The Fringe looks remarkable like it did in 2019. Huge, unsustainable, a cacophony of creativity and hope. There is some underlying disappointment that it hasn’t transformed in some way, that the Covid-years haven’t delivered the (promised) deep rethink. Perhaps it has. Perhaps everyone just wants at least one year of back to the comforting recognisable how-things-were.
I am glad to be back, on a train to AOMO, hoping it will be the same as it was, but also hoping it will be different.
Rational Madness Theatre 