A Trio – performed during Mamuska at The Backloft, December 5th, 2008.

Written and performed by Fitzgerald and Stapleton
with Mary Frances Stamp.

Lights up

performer a is downstage centre; she remains in this position through-out the performance. Her position on the floor is sculpted by her vigilance at maintaining contact between two and three-quarters of her body surface area and the stage floor. She reads her body as a gate. This metaphor translates into movement as her perception of the darkness and light, movement and silence, space and matter of her environment act in infinitesimal variation on her body. On the floor she pivots in the play of these forces against the fulcrum of her body’s resolute anchorage in its sense of here and now.

performer b enters from stage right. From her position in the wings she watches the lights come up to full and from this moment on her performance is a question, each moment she keeps the question at bay by refusing to answer – her unrelenting refusal to site herself in a particular place and time pushes her forward and she cuts across the performance as a dried out ball-point pen bites into a page – her path stiffens behind her like graffiti carved into wood – she treads the narrow edge of a broken heart.

With each foot step serving as a channel dredged to drain her presence from the stage performer b bleeds her way upstage along a high arcing path. When she reaches the pinnacle of her journey upstage she can venture stage left at will, until her path begins to jaggedly descend downstage centre. At this point performer b applies a varnish of distortion to all her movement. When she notices this is beginning to shine and change she enters a period of transition which brings her to the floor. As her heart nears the stage floor she perceives the distance spinning away from her on all sides at once. Close to her lowest point she surrenders movement into stillness and hits the numb void.

Suddenly, in a daring feat of physical virtuosity performer b is resurrected and gone from the stage. All that she has been repressing now flowers in her wake like the foam that bounces behind a ferry.

performer c executes a series of entrances and exits at her own discretion through-out this performance. She is the siphon for excess emotion and she balances the energy created by the other performers. At one stage performer c approaches performer a and their proximity creates a friction which illuminates a few moments of human togetherness.