AOA Season 5 Ep 6
Molly: Hello and welcome to a podcast about creating experimental art in trauma-informed and sustainable ways that support artists, our communities and the organization as a whole. I'm your host, Molly, and you're listening to Any Other Anythings.
Molly: In this season, we are focused on the latest project being produced by Grey Box Collective. It is titled Positive Ruminations. So, this is an event that will feature four new works and each episode of this season of Any Other Anythings will feature conversations from the creative teams developing the new work, and we are really focusing on capturing the process and sharing out the things we find interesting along the way. Hope that you enjoy the season of Any Other Anythings.
Alright, hey all, you get me for this episode of Invisible Work, specifically talking about Finger Painting [for grown-ups]. So Finger Painting [for grown-ups] in process has had a lot of transition and so we haven't been able to really capture the journey along the way. So I'll talk a little bit about Finger Painting [for grown-ups], and yeah, hopefully that helps.
So, Finger Painting [for grown-ups] is about busy culture, and this is the only piece really that is based off of something that has been written as a script. So in 2008/2009-ish? I wrote Finger Painting [for grown-ups], and like, I honestly don't totally remember writing it. It was kind of like a, a download, if you will. And I do remember like, sitting underneath, I had a lofted bed in my dorm room, and my desk was underneath it, and I do remember sitting there and kind of coming up with the idea. And so the concept originally is it's this, it follows this inner child and it is her last night to be alive, basically.
And part of her mission is to reconnect with her, her grown-up, her adult. And if she does not reconnect with her grown-up, help her grown-up reconnect with her being the inner child, then she will no longer exist. And the grown-up will lose that connection with their inner child, like permanently. And yeah, so that's the premise.
And it's basically about like how capitalism and busy culture destroys that connection with play and creativity. And when, right, so obviously like the original piece is very much connected to the relationship between an inner child and the grown up. And when Finger Painting was first staged in 2009-ish and then again, in 2013/2014-ish duets were a huge part of the development process. Like even though it was a large ensemble, like say that I don't even know, like eight, nine ish people, the piece was developed in smaller groups in mostly duets, some trios. And so here we are now in 2024 and through Finger Painting [for grown-ups] has returned to being a duet.
And we have been playing with kind of those ideas of what are the movements of childhood? What are the movements of grown ups? What are the movements of busy culture, the movements of capitalism, like what are billionaires movements. I think we actually talk about that in the next episode.
So yeah, and we happen to be rehearsing at Childsplay Theater in Tempe for this development process. And there's a playground like right outside. And so in one of the rehearsals, I sent the performers out onto the playground to like draw inspiration. Even just walking into rehearsal one day I saw a grownup pushing two kids on the swings and it was something about the back and forth of the kids on the swings and opposition, and then how the adult had to shift their body weight from one side to the other to push one kid at a time. And yeah, so it's been lovely kind of to have to walk by a playground every time we go to rehearsal for Finger Painting [for grown-ups]. So yeah, it's that juxtaposition.
And as I will talk about actually in the next episode cause I have already recorded that one. I talk about how part of being in the gray, messy area of life is understanding the relationship between two extremes. And I think we often juxtapose or put in an opposition of each other childhood and adulthood. And so we're starting to understand the relationship between those two. Okay. I hope that counts as like invisible work for this episode. I hope you found it interesting and yeah, I'll leave it there. Thanks y'all.
Hey, listener. Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to check out another episode of any other anything's greatly appreciate your presence. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to find out more about this podcast, the speakers and Grey Box Collective. You can also go to greyboxcollective.com/podcasts for a full transcript of this episode. Thank you again for listening. Thank you again for being here. Greatly appreciate it. Take care of yourselves and each other.
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