Q&A with Amit
Yesterday Amit hosted a live Q&A on Facebook for members of our Engage group to ask all of their burning questions. Here are some of the big questions he was asked, and what he had to say.
To watch the full video, head to our Gecko: Engage Facebook group.
Are you inspired to make theatre about the current situation?
I have to be completely honest, I don’t feel myself drawn to anything entirely reflective of this virus, as it were. I’m beginning to make a new show at the moment and so my thoughts are very much with that new piece of work. I’m trying to keep my thoughts focused on all the ideas around that and talking to the creative team on a daily basis, as we prepare to go into the studio. Having said that, it’s difficult to imagine that there won’t be (if you pardon the phrasing) some infection of some kind that’ll come out of this, I don’t know what that is but I’m sure it’ll happen.
How long does it take from the first idea for a show until the premiere?
There’s a lot of ways I could describe that, I used to think it was 2 years and then I realised it was 3 years, and I’m edging towards 4 years now. I think the reason it’s difficult to pin that down is because – when does it start, and when does it end? It certainly never ends, I continue to make enormous changes to a show as the piece is performed – I understand it more. So I still feel like I’m going through a series of drafts as we perform the show. I certainly don’t know the show at all until the first performance, and so it would be strange to call the first show the beginning. Largely speaking I say 3 years to make a Gecko show, but it never really ends.
How do you approach directing work you’re also performing in?
The only way that that’s possible for me is to make work in concerted periods of development. This means several weeks in the studio, then the same out of the studio, then back in the studio, then back out of the studio. If it wasn’t for these periods of reflection, I wouldn’t have a clue what I was doing - I would really be flapping about. The way I approach it is to make sure I have the time for my ego and the sense of what it is I’m pushing for in the studio, in that heightened place, to allow that to soften and for me to really reflect on what’s working, what’s meaningful, what I like, what makes sense to me, and why something is or isn’t working. I film everything, I document everything. The other major thing to say is time, I try to give the process a lot of time. The in and out part of it requires time, but time also is a specific part of the methodology for being in something and not in something. It is in every way that we make work, time is essential.
How often do you audition for company members?
Every few years I have some auditions. I really love the opportunity to meet people, it might be that I just meet a couple of people in that time, but it gives me the opportunity to get to know those few people. They make come into the broader ensemble, may come in to replace someone in a show, or may be a part of a new creation. The direct answer is every few years, but I’m also looking for great and wonderful people. When we have residencies that’s an opportunity for me to meet new people as well.
What would you say the main style features of Gecko are, and where would you suggest students start when making work?
The first thing about making work is – start. That sounds incredibly simplistic but it really is true. It doesn’t have to be an amazing idea to begin with, but you do need to start. From that moment of beginning, realisations will occur. That’s essential, you have to begin and there has to be a positivity and an openness in general, surrounding that beginning. That’s one thing I would say. The other thing I would say about where to start is make it personal, make it meaningful to you. If the students have to reflect on something, try to understand why that’s important to you personally. Again, the reservoir of creativity will flow much more meaningfully, and you will be able to invest so much more if it’s coming from you specifically.
In terms of Gecko’s style and technique it’s quite difficult to put across in a succinct and short way. Breath, being present, the sense of being authentically present, playfulness. I like to talk about being serious and loose – the sense of being seriously involved in the game that you’re playing. That game might be whatever it is in the room, but there’s a seriousness and there’s also a fluidity and a looseness about how you play it. In so doing you get a lot of information; a lot of results can come from that. It has to be serious, but you have to be open and receptive, to what comes out of that.
Have you got any inventive ways to create physical theatre with an ensemble over Zoom?
Chris Evans, who is one of the ensemble members, has just been making a piece with a university. I wasn’t in the process so I don’t know how he got on, but the thing about making a piece of work, directing and creating something, is that most of the process of that is about listening, asking questions, and trying to get to the heart of what is meaningful to you or to the group if it’s the group that’s making it. All potentials are at play in that moment. I think I’ll be able to give more specific examples about how to work with Zoom once I’ve had a chance to reflect on the piece that Chris Evans made, and how he got on.
Can you reveal anything about the show in the pipeline?
I don’t think I can, damn! So annoying, but we will be able to very soon apparently. Sorry about that, but it’s coming! Very very soon we’re going to be able to make some announcements.
Can you talk about how you use breath in your work?
It’s fundamental in every phase of the creation of Gecko work. It’s fundamental in how we perform the work, and it’s fundamental in how we generate and create a certain kind of feeling with the audience. There are many different ways to talk about breath, it really does touch every aspect of what we’re doing. First and foremost, finding your breath in the creation space when we are beginning to make work is not easy for everyone, so we have to train to allow the breath to fall out of us in as authentic a way as possible. When I say that I mean that the breath is reflective of your inner world, that your breath reflects your emotional state in any one moment. So allowing ourselves to connect with our breath authentically means that when we go into improvisations and we start to explore and make work, breath will align with our emotions and we will find that we are able to express ourselves truly, to really export ourselves into the space. And this is very fundamental to the style of the company, that you are continually exporting yourself authentically into the room and then towards and to an audience. This is a critical part of the way that we invent, and the way that we create, and the way that we make. It’s also a tool for communication because we are not a company that use a single linguistic form of communication to express ourselves onstage. So breath becomes an animalistic and human emotion which extenuates our intentions at every moments onstage There are practical, logistical parts of the breath as well which help us to be together in terms of choreography, movement and intention.
Where’s the most unexpected place you’ve found inspiration?
That’s really hard. The reason that’s so hard is because I find inspiration in absolutely anything and everything, and it’s weird, it’s a weird and wonderful and beautiful question. But it’s weird because, the thing about inspiration for me is it’s almost always unexpected for me somehow, it hits me at 4 o’clock in the morning, or it hits me when I’m in the park and I hear a conversation, or in a café and I hear an argument, or something that someone says to me on the phone which is part of a conversation about tax returns. It really is that beautifully open. I think the thing is, maybe this has resonance, is that when I’m making something I have a hard drive that opens up in me, which I presume and invite all of my life and everything that happens to filter through in the hope that it will ingest and categorise, in some way, everything that I’m experiencing in that time that I’m making, so that I can call upon that and it can have value when I enter the studio and start to make or start to draw. I wish I had something really specific to say, but it is so much the case that it is endlessly unexpected.
Does the current situation change anything about your new building or is it still all systems go?
All systems go I hope! We’re an adaptable, creative, fluid organisation. We will always be creative and be responsive to what’s happening in the world, so I don’t imagine that there isn’t an enormous amount of creativity in all ways that we will require a building for. So in my mind it’s all systems go!
How did any of the work that you did with street children and facilitating drama with those communities influence any of the work you did after?
It had a profound effect on how it influenced how I work. Fundamentally I was working with young people in a culture in which you don’t have any shared references - no shared cultural references, no shared spoken language - and yet you’re dealing with trauma or children that have had a traumatic start in life. I think what happened for me in that time was that I found that the archetypes of human behaviour, through emotions there was a universality about that language. Physically and emotionally. And that physicality and emotion were one in the same thing. So I think that I felt that I understood those young people and they understood me very well. And so I think my point about that was, from that moment there was nothing else I wanted to do other than to pursue a language that was physically, emotionally and authentically embedded into everything that I was after and wanted to do. It certainly took me even further away from a linguistic intellectual relationship with an audience that I wasn’t interested in, and that confirmed it in every way, shape and form. It affected everything I do and everything I’ve done since. It was hugely informative. It took me into an arena of where I wanted to play, and how I wanted to play. So it certainly affected that in that sense, fundamentally.
Could you talk at all about the importance of synchronised movement in Gecko work?
The repetition of motif, symbolism, metaphor. These things are very important in terms of how we ingest the world, and certainly how it plays out for me. I think I see a Gecko piece often, I sense it and feel it, rather like a piece of music that has verses and choruses and elements that we revisit and we revisit it again and again. It’s a complicated dream world that you enter in a Gecko show, and we need to return to the motifs occasionally so that we have more and more opportunity to marry them with the narrative of our own lives. So a metaphor is brought about and we need to experience that a number of times. That’s one of the reasons why there’s repetition. In terms of synchronicity I think that the shared voyage of a group of people is something that I’m interested in because I’m fascinated by community and the potential that people can come together. Also I don’t think one can discount the beauty of people moving together. There’s something so fundamentally human about how we can connect with each other. I’ve often had people tell me after a show ‘I cried because there was something so beautiful about what I was seeing, it touched me deeply and opened up a facility to other parts of the piece’.
Do you intend to hold any course or training for performers in the future?
We will never stop making interactions, courses, connections, with performers in the future That’s not ever going to stop. We will always find a way to connect with people. What is there if we can’t find a way to connect with each other? Certainly I feel that, in the absolute depths of what it means to be Gecko, it is fundamentally about relationships. That’s a great thing to ask, and it is unequivocally answered in yes, we will always do that. Whether that’s online, or however we do that, it will always happen.
I’d love to hear more about your personal influences – what did you take from your experiences with people like Lindsay Kemp, Steven Berkoff, David Glass?
That’s a very big question. These experiences were enormous. When I left drama college in 1995 I did feel that I was dismayed by how dull so much of the theatre I was experiencing initially was. And then I was very lucky to work with the people that you’ve mentioned. This was a wonderful drop into their worlds, these visual, emotional, physical worlds that these wonderful human beings had already created. They were incredibly different beings, and their voyages were extremely personalised.
Lindsay is just a one-off remarkable human-being who devours and eats every second of life and shares it in this most gorgeous, sumptuous, wonderful way. The experience of being with someone who so envelopes everyone in his arms in that way is extraordinary. There is also something utterly uncompromising, brutally to the point, about who he is and what he wants to be that also is very powerful. Unmistakeably this has to be this way, because I want to feel released and relinquished through this moment, I need it for me – I’m speaking with Lindsay’s voice in that sense – I need this to be my redemption and my channel, and everyone’s going to come with me on that. So there is something beautiful and wonderful about that.
David’s process, which took me to those children in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil and so forth, the process was rigorous, incredibly detailed, opened up a beautiful methodology and process for understanding the network of creativity and how those things can link together. So remarkably bright and intelligent and his structuring of his process is always something I’ll be incredibly grateful for, in terms of having experienced them.
Steven, I had a much shorter experience with. The world that I dropped into there was a sort of brutal, harsh, fairly immediate world. I didn’t have as much of an experience with Steven. But certainly, utterly personalised and utterly brilliantly specific in what he wanted. So all of that left me feeling fuelled and fired-up and engrossed in those worlds, and actually facilitated even more of a desire to have my own language. I got to a point where I had to do that. I was getting on Lindsay, Steven and David’s nerves. I remember David one day saying, ‘Shut up I’m the director!’. And that was kind of like ‘Oh, maybe I need to stop and get on with my own things now’.
When you’re out of the studio how do you go about reflecting, writing and thinking creatively? Do you always feel motivated or are there specific times of day or places you prefer working in?
You can’t always feel creative of course, and I don’t always feel creative, but I never find it a massive struggle if I want to have some time to be creative. I can usually take myself into a place psychologically, physically and emotionally to connect with the ideas I’m trying to connect with. I certainly am a human being, like everyone else, that needs privacy and needs that time to be able to reflect. I like to be in a coffee shop at times where there’s life around me and I can feel that humanity is happening around me, but I also like to be in nature, and I feel inspired by that too. But I don’t have huge blocks, I always find there’s something I can connect with. Sometimes it’s really specific – I want to think about resolving some practical problem, how do I make sense of this lighting thing that I’m thinking about? Or there’s some choreographic thing. So, I usually have something that I can envelope myself into and get involved with, And if not I always find that I can channel my moment into conversations with the creative team. That’s the beauty of making theatre, there’s always people that you can talk to and connect with, In Gecko there are very long-established wonderful relationships – I always feel comforted by that, and provoked, and inspired. It’s really important to know sometimes that there are people that you can connect with. That’s always been the case for 18 years with Gecko.
Do you have any tips on fostering the level of commitment and energy that the Gecko ensemble always seem to have in the rehearsal room?
I think the important thing to say about this is you have to take the time to build up a non-judgemental environment in which trust grows. This is absolutely critical. You can’t get there without that. How do you do that? This is about a methodology in which, day by day, games and exercises are built up. I think it’s quite difficult to go through every single aspect of that, maybe we could do that through some of our online YouTube exercises, but maybe we could also do that at a Gecko workshop. It’s quite tricky to go through that in detail at this moment.
Where do you feel your work is still lacking? What’s something you’ve learned recently that you’d like to grow in the coming period?
I think that it’s so fundamental to the process, the journey of growing and learning, that I never actually feel rested, I never feel entirely safe. I think David Bowie once said that you should always feel that you’re slightly treading water, that you’re not comfortable. I never feel comfortable, I always feel that I’m not quite sure. I never feel that there isn’t a universe of stuff to learn. I want to listen more deeply, I want to have the time to reflect more intensely on everything that’s happening in the room, I want to be more honest, I want to be more reflective of myself and the world around me. It’s an endless and constant voyage, making a Gecko show. It’s an emptying of one’s soul and it’s a filling of one’s soul at the same time.
I remember you saying in a post-show Q&A that you work with more older performers with different world/life backgrounds to tap into your show. Has this mindset changed as you work with people of all different ages?
My interest in working with people is that I want to work with wonderful human beings. I don’t really care where they’ve come from in terms of their training. I want to work with a broad range of human beings. The work is incredibly athletic and difficult in all ways, emotionally. Whoever walks through the door, whatever their age, wherever they’re from, who they are, what their training is, I really don’t have any category for that – I just want to work with open, gifted human beings of any age. Usually they tend to be people that are 30 and up, and the reason for that is just because until you have trained and had a few years to experience the world, the tendency to be a little bit over-critical is at play for those first few years. So allowing people to have had time to work through that seems to be a fundamental thing.
What is your process of creating a musical landscape for your show, and is it related to language in any way narratively-speaking?
I work with all aspects and all facets of the show all of the time, as much as possible – music, design, physicality, lighting. Everything all of the time. As I’m working towards a new show now I’m talking about all of those things already. So the simple answer to that is that everything is one, and everything’s coming from the same place. As soon as the show has a heartbeat we are all slaves to that idea, that journey that’s beginning and unfolding. I work with a brilliant musician called Dave Price who I’ve been working with for maybe 18 years now. Dave is very close to the process as well as the other members of the creative team. Everything evolves slowly. So there’ll be a little idea, Dave and I will talk about it, we’ll try it, we’ll strip it away, a new idea will emerge from that. Or just one stem – just the cello, loose the percussion. So everything evolves slowly.
Have you ever had a moment here you have lots of thoughts and ideas for a project that it becomes too chaotic? If so, how do you pinpoint a seed idea and keep the focus on this idea?
Usually my sense about an idea is that it is incredibly strong, personal, simple and also societal. I have a good sense when I strike on something that that seed idea has all of those things. If I walk into a workshop and I have a couple of slightly different ideas, I try them in the first 3 or 4 weeks. I’ve done it so many times. The one that really resonates always wins – the one that is personal, the one that is emotionally connected to me and then the whole of the group is the one that we pursue. The one that has societal resonance is the one that we pursue. So, the truth outs, is what I would say about that.
Do you have any tips or tricks for looking after your body when you’re in such a physically demanding company?
I’ve come to realise that, especially with the performers in the company and when I’m performing in the company, there are absolutely the personal physical needs of everyone individually that are very specific to those people. Broad range of ages, broad range of training, but also broad range of physical, psychological and emotional needs that are to do with preparing yourself, either to create or perform. I try to give everyone some time to go back to some basics about how they want to prepare themselves, how they want to look after themselves. Whether that’s a much more aerobic thing that some people seem to need, or whether that’s a very yoga-based thing, or a dance stretching thing, or an actor’s way in. And that needs to happen. I think the performers that I work with know their bodies extremely well, so they know how to get there, they know how to deal with that, they know how to protect themselves. So giving people the space to look after themselves individually is important.
Running alongside that is how do we then bring ourselves in together as a group. I think we try and do things together which allow ourselves to set ourselves up rhythmically and emotionally so that we’re in the same soup when we start to play and perform. I do a kind of workout with the company, which I think is also fun.
What are some tips on how to get into choreography/movement directing as a career?
I think the only thing I can say about that is, when I started to make work I had already spent 7 or 8 years working with lots of different people who made work. That was very important. When I started to make stuff I had a feeling for what it was I wanted to make and I allowed myself the time to experience trial and error. I think that’s very important. Giving yourself time. And finding a space where you don’t feel judged, and you feel that you can be playful without limits. It’s about getting into spaces where you don’t feel that you’re under pressure.
How do you create your physical scores and movement sequences?
The whole thing is a voyage like writing a score for a piece of music, or a symphony for a whole group of people. Some of the notes on that score come from the detail of emotional expression – if this is a moment of exploration to do with frustration and resentment, in the playing of trying to find that some of the notes comes from that physical exploration. Then we detail that musically, or we work in juxtaposition to that. Nonetheless some of the score comes from there.
Some of the score comes from gently supporting what we’re doing, some of the score comes from guiding the audience down a certain emotional route. In terms of movement it is about the sense of being as honest as one can, and having the physical dexterity and skill to allow your body to express its inner world. So your emotional inner world is really the thing that I’m looking to uncover when we’re in the room. If I can get to a place where we’re scoring and looking at that physicality, and then we’re learning and being specific with it or leaving it very free, that’s the centre of Gecko physicality and movement. It requires enormous physical discipline and it requires enormous emotional openness. I’m looking for those things in people, so usually it comes from people that have trained a lot physically.
How do you check back in with yourself after a long emotional, physical and psychological performance or rehearsal?
It’s a really important question and I’ve found over the years that if I don’t find a way to check in with myself, then I’m going to have problems. The process of making the shows is so all-encompassing psychologically, spiritually, physically, in every single way. I have to find time to reflect, I have to find some privacy, which has really been a key issue that has been difficult for me. Nature, privacy, family, friendship, community. It’s trying to meet those needs and trying to listen to yourself moment by moment, and understanding what those needs are, and finding a way to meet them. It’s a really beautiful and real question. As you get older you don’t spring back as fast as you did so you have to be even more careful.