28 Days Greater:
Cancelled, but alive and kicking
May 12, 2020
Tonight I was slated to stand up a new solo piece of work for the first time. It was a challenge I set myself at the beginning of this year: to make something on my own, something small, to write and perform with materials I already own (though…maybe I bought a big pink dress.)
The show, called 28 Days Greater, is a clever spoof (I thought) on the zombie apocalypse film 28 Days Later, which, when I dreamt it up in early January, had a different resonance than it does now. Intended to explore a greater balance of power between the feminine and the masculine, it proposed a deep lean into strategic hope and fecundity over chaotic fear and depravity. Inspired by the structure of my menstrual cycle, I planned to perform 28, 2-minute vaudevillian acts of resistance against the narrative I grew up with about my period: to hide, to self-deprecate, to not be crazy on those pre-menstrual days, to not even consider the possibilities in my own natural power systems.
The generous Camden People's Theatre emailed last week to say that they had gathered together some funds from other artists earlier in the season and would be able to pay me for the one night I would have performed.
£48 is the amount they will pay me. It’s small, but it’s not. It’s groceries, or a helpful hand towards rent, and most meaningfully it’s a gesture that tells me I belong, not only to an industry, but with artist peers who have my back.
With the £48 I am treating myself to a small bottle of whiskey accounting for the time I took to write the following:
It’s a start.
It’s an outline poem template for more things to come.
It’s drawn out of prioritising listening these past 8 weeks, and out of a longing to express different power capacities that I’ve been thinking about for the last year.
For your reading pleasure and imagination...
28 Days Greater
A template-poem-outline for a new solo performance to be performed tbd
by Carolyn Defrin
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Be with the darkness
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Stay with the pain
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Don’t forget the backup plan
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Forget
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Then move with remembering
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Prepare for clarity while cocooning in a blanket, a pancake or a double whiskey
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Turning point 1: Open up
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Call Jacinda for a chat about empathy, transparency and clear direction
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Notice the new things that have always been there
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Listen first
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Feel weird, be weird
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Dance (with ghosts or real people)
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Use other metaphors besides war to discuss struggle
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Turning point 2: Sweat with Jane Fonda and discuss protest culture
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Bloody marys for all who want them
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Fly on a bicycle with Nina Simone
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Fly in writing
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Fly in a new contraption of your own design
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Cook gratuitously for the people that matter here and now
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Believe in the power of small and regular
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Turning point 3: Fall and be aware of the fall; this temporary out of body-ness is temporary. Everything moves. Including anxiety and fear.
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Fail. Admit failure. Take time to be with failure for yourself.
It’s longer than you’ll end up recounting to someone else. -
Eat the whole thing
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Live in between and be many
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Contradict yourself
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Call mom, remember she’s got the right advice even though it comes from a place she knows differently than you.
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Be with the rage, the judgement, the fear, and the tender soft gentle spirit that needs your attention right now and try not to blame it on others.
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Turning point 4: Lie down. Let down your guard. Stop.
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(sometimes) it’ll come. Or it won’t, and then you’ll devise a new plan
Back to 1: Repeat, but with more knowledge than you had the last time, even if you can't feel it.