Welcome to Axolotl

The Basics

After reading this sign, take off your shoes and any jackets or sweaters that you don’t want to wear. Select a blindfold. You will be asked to put on a blindfold and enter the space for 2 hours of interaction and exploration without sight.  At the beginning, you will be led one by one into the space.  We’ll take your shoes and bags and stick them somewhere safe.  After that, we don’t know what will happen.

There are no rules.  We do not have a set plan or schedule of things that will happen.  We (performers and audience) improvise — take in what we are experiencing and make decisions based on each moment.  You create your own experience in collaboration with the others that you meet and with whom you share the space.

What do you do?  ‘whatever you decide to.  Talk, touch, move, find stillness or silence, ask questions, find answers, be verbal or  non-verbal. There are no rules.

Give yourself permission.  Also pay attention and be aware of your actions and interactions…

At the end of two hours, you will be signaled to remove your blindfolds and we’ll gather to share experiences.  This is another lens on what has happened (the piece is still happening).  Afterwards, we will close formal discussion and you can either continue to hang out informally with other audience and performers or head out.

More reading 

 

Who are you?

 What do you want?

 

Experience can be purely kinesthetic, having to do with the felt experience of the body and movement 

Experience can be filled with emotional content and felt meaning … or not.  Emotional content as it arises can be light or dark… follow your curiosity into whatever realm interests you, feels relevant or important.   

Exploration can contain words.  What do you want to talk about, really, and why?  What do you want to know?   What would you ask 

Your experience may also be beyond words.  You don’t have to talk.

Experience can be as simple or complex as you take yourself to. 

Your experience and exploration can be simple and material. It may be metaphorical, a kind of theatre.

What do you bring to your search for experience?  What are you open to find?  Is there such as thing as chance, or do we invoke our own experiences 

This is a space of permission… you are invited to act in ways that you might not otherwise.  What new rules and order do we find, when we let down the old ones?

You don’t have to do anything.  You have permission to do nothing.  Activity, passivity, receptivity are all choices you can make.

What if you do something?  What if you do nothing?  There are always things happening… what is your participation?

Explore self, explore space, explore other.  Where does our curiosity take us?

In the space, you may find bodies, emotions, ideas, movement, objects or experiences soft and sharp…be curious.  Be careful 

Boundaries – what happens when you run across them …your own or someone else’s?  What is a boundary?

You are a participant in creating your experience.  You can always change it.

Performers – there will probably be a few amongst those whom you will meet.  What is the difference? Is there any?  Is it important?

There is no secret plan or score, except for the secrets we all carry and the intentions we bring to our lives.

We are all imperfect beings striving after experience.  What do we need to be careful of with this imperfection, and what is interesting in the imperfection itself?

Again, you have permission.  You create your experience.  Who are you?  What do you want

Some Logistics 

Grab a blindfold that feels comfortable and snug, so it will stay on easily as you move around 

There is a basket for eye glasses, if you wear them, so you can retrieve them easily at the end of the piece. 

You may want to use the toilet before the show.

Please turn cell phones off.

Good luck.