This follows on from being unlimited.
Lee Simpson and I had a conversation about stage directions. I fucking love that I can have a conversation with someone about stage directions. Hells, I’ve blogged about stage directions.
We agreed that as writers putting down an initial draft, we have stage directions. We just have them, because they just exist. They are inherent to the action we’re transcribing, and we need them as the threads that hold it all together.
At a later date, we then have to be part of the group that studiously ignores the stage directions, because that’s right. Because that’s the process: it’s our job to put them in and then our job to ignore them. Both.
That’s what collaboration is: the cutting of the threads. It’s freedom.
This isn’t just a way of doing theatre. It’s what theatre is. It just is, inherently. It can’t help itself. Like the guidelines of Open Space Technology, which are just what happens.
And that’s why he had to give it away. All Harrison Owen did was realise what it is, and point to it. He didn’t really discover it so much as notice it and point it out to other people. I mean, you do, don’t you? You notice something, you point it out.
(So look, look! Look at those people on the tube with the headphones on! They’re not going to Bethnal Green, or to Chancery Lane. They’re going to freedom for a while. How cool is that?)
This leads onto something that isn’t a conclusion.
