Genevieve McClean is the director of the show, and she's a bit busy, so a few words on making the show FLOCK were had over a coffee.

How did this happen? Directing Flock has been an intuitive process. Phantom billstickers came to the party and sponsored national poetry day and it felt like it was time to put my hand up.  

Over the last six years I've done a few things, but largely, as is often the way becoming a mum hijacked the professional creative trajectory I was on. So I did a few things. I made a documentary film for a client and twice I just went Right making a show now and got some people swept up in the momentum. The first one was a historical account of a building we 'inhabited' in Lopdell house for the fringe festival. These Four Walls, Then I made a performance installation in the Civic called The Girls. Which referenced the dancers in the Civic of the late 1920s. So with poetry, I, I've always cared about words, how words travel, and different forms for words.  

So here are all these poets and there's been a massive resurgence of interest in spoken word since I started doing it in the early nineties. So I put the word out that I was going to direct an interdisciplinary poetry work informed by butoh and physical theatre. And I put out a call to audition which was quite fascinating because poets right? Audition? Don't know what you're talking about. A number of people wanted in and then got scared off when they realized it was not entirely an autonomous process. Actually a lot of autonomy is still with the writers, they're performing their own works, but I've directed the performances quite specifically. Which is brave of them! I couldn't be more pleased with how the work is turning out. But yeah it's unpredictable. That's part of the nature of interdisciplinary work, we're breeding a hybrid here, and we're not sure precisely what it will look like!  

So the rehearsals are a series of workshops in which I offer techniques from my experience as an actor. Opening the voice and body, it's a stretch because It's about hitting extremes, not that we use them all the time. But we have over the course of the last two months created a group vocabulary in voice and body that we can draw on for performance. The OldFolk's Ass is a great venue, although it's slightly derelict, and also because it's slightly derelict, but it's wonderfully sturdy and ..old! The sense of 'inhabiting the building' with the history of the space is there, but essentially this is a group of diverse poets come together under one roof and then amalgamated under my direction. In fact that is very much in keeping with the original manifesto of the Old Folks' Association which was to embrace diversity.
We're all fizzing along towards our performance night like a line of gunpowder. There's an urgency to the work I think because with the extra preparation and our determination the artists home in on what they're wanting to deliver. You know poets poetry, we know many people wrinkle their noses at poetry and yet it has a role in all of our lives. You find poetry resides alongside important social occasions ritual, uprisings, battle, and of course weddings and funerals. Important occasions, love, loss. Some things require words to be formed carefully or urgently or both. They do! Yeah. So I think it's ok to say that we're nervous, excited and proud and very nearly ready for our audience on the 26th. We'll meet the audience with... it's a beautiful convergence. Like a surprise party! I think some of our friends are quite curious like hmm wonder what it is! Anyway I am really looking forward to it. Honoured. Bit nervous but excited. Yep.