On February 18th I will be filming a poetry and improvised music collaboration
about my personal experience with anxiety.
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Classically trained pianist, Craig Addy will be accompanying me on the grand piano for a long, twisting and very personal 5 part narrative poem. Rick Etkin will be directing the project with Teo Van Raalte in charge of sound.
The overarching theme of this piece is anxiety, but Left Opened also explores important topics like loneliness and the desire for connection, the ‘success’ (rock bottom and breakthrough) narrative and how we relate that to healing… or fixing, and finally how we come to define/ understand ourselves and who we are.
This project has been in development for the last 2+ years, and I am incredibly excited to see it finally nearing completion. I’d like to share a little bit about what we’ve been working to create.
More about the project:
Let’s start with what this poem is not…
This is not a prescriptive poem about anxiety intended to ‘help’ anyone who has ever struggled. The experience of anxiety is way too personal and nuanced, and that would be impossible.
Left Opened is also not an inspirational ‘I beat this, and you can too!’ piece, because that makes too much light of something that can be quite debilitating. That narrative vilifies anxiety and turns it into our enemy. That’s not the story I want to tell. It’s also not the story that I’ve lived.
But this is also not a hopeless poem. I believe that change is possible. But letting certain parts of us die and fall away has a cost; it’s not easy, and healing is a process not an event. One thing I absolutely believe is that in health there is movement, and this is absolutely a poem about movement. This is where dance is going to play a role.
Rehearsals for this project began at the beginning of 2017. Craig and I spent over 6 months workshopping the piece, figuring out how it moved, and exploring the way we listened and worked off one another. Since then, the poem has gone through at least 10 edits. As my relationship to anxiety has changed over these last two years, what I want to say with this piece has become increasingly succinct and clear.
One of the most interesting parts of the project for me is the improvisation. Anxiety can bring with it a fear of what’s going to happen next. But in this very ephemeral and collaborative piece, we never truly know what’s going to happen next. Nothing is perfect, everything is a conversation, and we can never repeat what we’ve already created.
What we’ll be filming on the day will be a result of how we listen and collaborate with one another. For me, this stands in contrast to the experience of anxiety, and it is this juxtaposition that I want to try and capture and share.
Interested in Helping?
Filming will be taking place on Monday, February 18th at the beautiful Annex Theatre.
We mostly have our full crew in place, but may be in need of 1 or 2 additional camera assistants. We will be having multiple cameras running on each take and may need additional people to help this run smoothly.
If you’re interested and/or would like to learn more, please send me an email at christine(at)9creativelives(dot)com
Stay Tuned for More Updates!
After filming, I will be sharing set stills and behind-the-scenes updates on this blog. Post-production may take awhile, and afterwards we’re going to try the festival route before releasing the finished video to the public. Stay tuned. More updates will be coming soon.