The last post

This will be the last post of this rehearsal period. We are finishing now for Christmas and working on the missing narrative. We need to work out where The Pilots are going and when they will get there? Why are they pretending to be pilots? What is the journey they are going on? Mole says he always imagined that as the journey of bombers to their terrorist destinations. What they pass on the way. Mole and Tim say the first time they talked about the project they were plotting a journey from where they were born to where they live now. We talk about the months and the passing of time and how that is a structural thing. At the moment we only have January and August. We've got some work to do. The Pilots meet again at the Arnolfini in Bristol in February 2008.

Watch this space

This is the transcript of the section Tim and I worked on this week. Keeping the times when we lost our place or couldn’t work out who had to say what or stand where. Finding the gaps in between the text. Now we have to find out how to fill the gaps left behind. Watch this space.

Tim: It’s just so hot. That should be you.

Mole: Mmm… well maybe I’m standing near the heater here

Tim: Yeah you stand by the heater then

Mole: goes to stand near the heater, Tim comes back to mic.

Mole: Can I do this without trousers; it’s just that I'm a bit HOT

Can I do it without socks?
Just in my underpants

Tim: YES OK WHATEVER
I don’t know what that is

Mole: YES OK WHATEVER

Tim: There’s a line missing there
You bastard you stole my line…
This is so confusing

Mole: Shall we try it again?

Tim: No keep going
I think it’s fine

Mole: Err… we

Tim: Yeah

Finishing sentences

No you’re not you’re…

Fucked up and insecure

You’re…

Fucked up and insecure

You’re finishing each other’s sentences. I do that all the time. did that all the time. I used to finish my Dad’s sentences. Now I don’t finish my own sentences. My mum does that. I keep guessing the end of her sentences. ‘Where did I put that… Mouse? Pterodactyl?’ We talk about how if Mole and Tim are filming their journeys from airports then they are living the role of pilots and coming to venues to work out who they are. When they are performing they are off duty. When they are not performing they are flying. When they are not flying they are performing. When they are performing they are not performing. The students who came to the work in progress last week said that you are very good at ‘Performing as if you’re not performing.’ Tim says in the new section: ‘Do I need to write this down? I’m going to write this down.’ As I’m reading it with him I see that line in the script and it still feels like it isn’t there. We are always performing not performing. Tim says ‘Yes I think we’ve really got into that mode with this performance.’

Narrative

Mole asks ‘What is the narrative?’ and I say it reminds me of a transcript from 9/11 where an air steward is describing what she sees out of the window. ‘I see water. I see buildings. I see the city.’ There is something about describing what you see at the end. I feel like it’s something locating them or locating us on this journey we are taking or not taking. Maybe that’s what we’re missing at the moment. The sense of (dis-)location. We talk about how maybe Mole is getting dressed in front of the heater into his Pilot outfit. Getting dressed. Getting ready for the beginning of the Story Part Two. ‘We had passed the flyover etc.’ Mole says we have to work out what that narrative is and whether it’s just a description of places we’re passing. Or whether it’s something more clever. I wonder if we walk from the nearest airport to the venue and document the journey. Taking photographs of a power station, a disused railway line, an out of town nightclub and a grand old theatre.

Good Pilot Bad Pilot

We talk about the moment where Tim says ‘I’m a good cop and you’re a bad cop’ and whether that should be a ‘good pilot and a bad pilot.’ One who wants to get you to your destination safely and one who wants to hijack you and commit an act of terror.’ I say ‘I have a knife in my pocket. In your jacket.’ because I borrowed Tim’s coat earlier for the Dr Zhivago moment. I’m holding something sharp to your throat.’ A box cutter. I think about what the terrorists used on 9/11. We talk about language and how this feels like I’m talking to the audience. Taking them hostage on an aeroplane. I am a bad pilot. We talk about how ‘Fuck’ was flippant earlier but has become a threatening word here.

I’m going to kill you, no I’m going to fucking kill you, if you don’t listen I’m going to take you all with me. I’m going to fucking kill you; I’m going to fucking kill you. If you don’t listen, I’m going to take you all with me.

Hello Tim

Tim’s mum sends him an email to say ‘Hello Tim. I’ve read the blog. Are you quite sure you know who you are?’ Mole says 'I like the way you use the microphone'. You’re always looking to the front when you speak but you’re looking at Tim in between. It’s very clean. I like the pauses. The bits in between. I like the way you’re not sure who says what or who stands where. I think we should just transcribe what you did yesterday and see if the two ends of the tunnel meet. I think you should say ‘We passed the security fence or the cameras.’ Like surveillance cameras or photographic cameras. This is where it begins to be something else. Its only little things. Just words. I like this repetition here. It’s not just repeating it’s a point of reference. Referring to something that’s already happened. A point of reference on a map. It’s doing it again but its different but it has a different setting or the situation is different.

Something else

We watch a video of Tim and I working through the untouched sections yesterday and Mole says ‘It’s starting to make sense. It’s about something else. That missing hole. Tim has this habit of repeating my first words. And for the first time I did or you did which means the roles have switched. It worked until the moment you put electrodes on Tim’s fingers. Then it became something else. Too explicit. Too in your face. I’m trying to remember when it began to make sense. And when it became about something else.’ We try the Trophy Text at the end of the day. After saying ‘It happened here, and here, and here, and over there and somewhere here’ I start dancing. It feels like a prediction. Later on Tim asks where I am and says ‘I get it, your John and your dancing?’ and I reply ‘I’m John and I’m dancing.’ I say ‘I’m in a night club and I’m vulnerable and I’m scared and I’m not sure whether this is the right dance for this song’ and it ties in with earlier when Mole says ‘I want to be vulnerable and alone’ and Tim takes his microphone away.

Thank you

We spend the afternoon looking at the text working out what we've worked on and what we need to work on. We have the beginning and the end and in between we have the bits we haven't looked at - at the moment called The Pilots - Untouched. The first section of The Pilots - Untouched is called the First Trophy Text and it's an award acceptance speech. I wonder if this comes out of Tim being on the floor. His 'Please go on without me' text always sounded like a bad parody of an Oscar nomination clip and now I wonder if it was. And maybe he stands up and he takes a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and maybe he says:

Thank you, no really I thank you, I’m not kidding, please believe me…

I’d like to thank you.
No you
All of you.
For coming,
For listening.
For taking the time.

Stop

Its great to get this,
To receive this acknowledgement.
For all of the work, the struggle and the pain.
Its all been worth it, up until now I thought I was walking through the wilderness, I though that I was taking a pointless journey.

And this changes all that.

Ive never received anything like this.

Somewhere here

Last week Tim and I worked together on what happens after Mole says 'Your motivation is this gun I've got pointed at your head?' and Tim head butts the microphone. It feels like he's dead but at the moment he's still talking. We find a piece of text on page 24. It's sad and mournful and it fits with Tim being still. Mole shifts his focus from Tim to the audience. The show travels from light to dark, comic to confessional.

Lift your head up and listen, you’re supposed to be quiet, you’re supposed to be paying attention, that’s the rule
I speak, you listen
You listen to me because I’m standing here.
I’m trying desperately to reconstruct something for you
I’m trying to make sense
I’m not lying; I’m not making this up.
This is all true,
This isn’t nothing this really happened.
It happened here and here and here and over there and there and somewhere here...

Who am I?

I watch video of Mole and Tim working on Friday when I wasn't here. Tim is standing on a speaker and I ask why. Mole says they were thinking of statues and speakers as plinths and playing 'Who am I?'

Tim: Who am I?

Mole: Youre Kofi annan
Youre The King of Sheeba
Youre Dr Zhivago, I haven’t a fucking clue who you are

Tim: Who are you?

Mole: I’m nobody

Tim: You are Nicole fucking Kidman. You are George fucking Clooney. No, you’re George fucking Bush. You’re George…you’re fucking George. You’re George George. You’re George the fucking airline pilot. How do you feel?

Mole: How do you want me to feel?

Tim: You’re George and Its raining.

Mole: You’re George and Its sunny.

Tim: No you're George and its sunny.

Mole: You're George and it's raining.

Tim: I'm George and it's raining.
I am entertainment.
I am entertainment.

I move you watch
I speak you listen

Mole: Don’t look at me no don’t look at me like that I insist… Please I insist don’t look at me look at him, he’s irresistible, watch, watch him very very closely, he doesn’t move, don’t look at me look at him.

Fire extinguisher

Mole sends an email to cheapfireextinguishers.co.uk

We would like to know if it is safe to use a foam extinguisher in a theatre performance on a person. And if so could this be something that you could supply for us.

cheapfireextinguishers.co.uk send an email to Mole

I wouldn't recommend that any extinguisher is used on a person unless they were on fire. There are Health & Safety implications regarding the Foam touching skin and if it gets in eyes, ears, nose, mouth etc or is ingested. I would recommend that you do not do this and find perhaps a safer alternative.

Les Dawson

We talk about what is real and what is pretending. Tim mentions Les Dawson having to play the piano perfectly in order to play it badly. Mole says Les Dawson lived round the corner from him in Blackpool. He says we need to know this show really well to look like we don't know what we're doing. Really not performing but there being some confusion about what's on stage but what's not onstage. What's already there. Witnessing something rather than watching a performance or being told to. Performances are meant to carry you through. With this you're always knocked back. It puts you back into the real world. The theatre. It doesn't carry you away into a magical world. We are conscious. Constantly. Of where we are. We're supposed to take you somewhere. But we're not. But we are. It's going to take us ages to work this one out.

Power station

In rehearsal last week we said the heater was a bus. Then it became a car. Today it becomes a power station. In this child play landscape where ladders are mountains and microphones are guns. We talk about how people we know used to say power stations are cloud machines. And how we use a fire extinguisher as a smoke machine which turns Tim into a cloud so it’s a sort of a cloud machine too. Mole says it’s an important moment. Clouds and smoke are the same thing. Or they look like the same thing. Tim and Mole talk about pyroclastic flows and smoke and ash and steam and bombs. We argue about how to spell pyroclastic. Tim says with an a. I say with an o. We still don’t know.

That's as far as we got

Tim was typing up the text earlier and during the read through we get to the point where he stopped. He says ‘That was as far as we got’ and Mole says ‘It’s all right’ and then they carry on from ‘Have we got anything easy.’ We decide to keep it in the text at that moment. It makes sense as a bridge. Slipping in and out of the text. The rehearsed and the real. There is something about us acknowledging the unfinishedness of the script. The uncertainty of the future of the script that we’re stuck in.

There's an H in it

There’s an H in it

There’s an H in what?

Hello

Hello?

Hello John?

Hello. Oh Sorry. My name is John and I’m an airline pilot.

I’ve got something here. It’s an airmail from John it says

‘My name is John and I’m an airline pilot’

We are bridging the gaps. Working out where to put question marks and how to get from one moment to the next. From Dr Zhivago to Hello. From Mole to George to Andrew to Tim to John. The Dear John letter always felt a bit incongruous. Coming out of nowhere. Now it appears like a plane on the radar bleeping across the screen. Like the phone that went off by accident during Tim’s Dear John monologue last week.

Question marks

Monday 10 December 2007

We are at Lakeside in an empty space. We arrive late and there is nothing here. An industrial heater and a couple of chairs. Mole says ‘I’m sorry. I’m not in the right space.’ We sit on the floor and read through the script in the red glow of the heater. Mole says it’s like the old days with Station House Opera huddled around a fire in an old building. The weird thing about the read through is that it’s impossible to work out when they are reading and when they are making mistakes. The breakdowns in the text seem so real. When Mole says ‘I don’t know what to say?’ It sounds like he genuinely doesn’t know. Then he says ‘Can you put a question mark in red after ‘I don’t know what to say.’ And you realise it’s a part of the script. He says to Tim ‘If there’s some gaps in the text, some holes which we’re not filling, then I think that’s what we’re doing with the question marks. We're trying to fill in the gaps.'

Marginalia

Mole is in a meeting. Tim is typing up changes to the script. I'm looking at the text trying to work out what to work on next. I find notes in the margins that I don't remember writing. I remember I was on a National Express coach on the way to Leeds. I remember borrowing a pen from the person next to me and forgetting to give it back. I don't remember the words and why I wrote them. I'm trying to work out what I was thinking when I made the notes. This is what I wrote in the margins.

Similarity / Simulacra / Simulacrum
Tapping into iconoclastic roles
Real show
What is this conversation?
Becoming Tim or finishing his sentences
Thinking / writing / reading
Love rhythm
Time check
Sound check
Rhythm
Starting point
I don't know where this is going
Is this you Mole as
Mole from Reckless Sleepers or
Mole performing Trophy texts
Crux
Internal
External
Munch waiting
Is
Isn't
About your relationship
Someone who makes me feel safe
I'm lost and confused
Waiting
Left
What is your answer
Is it an opportunity for you
to tell them about me
By now you should be there
It's got stuff in it
Presumption
What is here?
?
there is just enough space around the
metaphor for the illusion to perform
Important
SHIFT
You will stop coughing
Sometimes I
Cable
Heater
Liked looking up
Mic left hand
Planes
Dust etc.
I'm listening
Yeah
A heater as a seat
I'm in London
Big Ben
Burn sambuca turn glass upside down
suck gas out with a straw - only supposed to suck
Call it the Gas Chamber
Glocal
I'm busy doing nothing
Nothing the whole day through
King Arthur's space ship
Disney film
Introduction - echoes / collisions
Visual
Research
Heart murmur
When are you speaking to audience
Beautiful
Q&A
Introduction
It isn't finished

Praying

There was a moment when you were on your knees on the floor and you looked like you were praying or a prisoner or an image of an execution. I don't want to load that on too heavily but that image is there. Looking back now as I write this I imagine the terrorists praying on a generic motel carpet on the morning of 9:11 or at the airport facing east. That inbetween space again between checking in and taking off. Or a prisoner at Abu Graib again kneeling naked in a pool of his own urine with a hood on his head and an American GI doing a thumbs up to the camera. Or You Tube footage of a hostage being beheaded before it is taken offline and you hear about it and half of you wants to see it and the other half can't believe it could happen. All these moments that deal with acts of terror are starting to emerge from the piece and I wonder if this is where the show is heading now. Heading into darker territory.

Tunnel vision

Thursday 6 December

We watch a video of the work in progress. At the end of the show Mole says 'This isn't finished' and the audience laugh. I wonder if Mole should say that at the end of every show. After the video Mole says 'It's like a tunnel. We're digging a tunnel. We've got the ends and we've got the beginning. It's like when they build canals. One team at each end and they meet. I do know once they didn't actually meet. One end was higher than the other. We've got the end and the beginning and we're going forward. When you're making you always do the beginning and the beginning's always good. I suppose we're going backwards becuase we've got the ending and that's weird. Knowing how something ends before we've finished making it.' We talk about Oceans 13 and how they couldn't have bought the Channel Tunnel drills because they were left under the channel and how the drills were made of diamonds. And how the British bought a second hand drill and it was crap. Unbelievable. It's like my Dad was the production manager 'I've found this drill in the Sunday supplement'. 'I saw it in the Exchange and Mart.' We had this house full of batteries because half the house was battery operated.

Desktop

Tim starts his rant at the audience and a mobile phone goes off on the desk stage left. The desk is covered in scripts. A laptop with a clock on its desktop. A cafetiere. A couple of cups. A plate with chocolate brownie crumbs on it. A pile of DV tape cases. An Arts Council annual report. Post for Reckless Sleepers. A Hi-fi catalogue. A watch. A biro. A copy of Reckless Sleepers' book. A mobile phone. And the phone keeps bling bling blinging and Mole laughs. Tim gets more and more annoyed with Mole. 'Stop laughing. It's not funny. Why do you never take anything I do seriously.' Afterwards someone in the audience asks if the phone was meant to go off. At the same time the phone was bling bling blinging I was switching my mobile phone off and it occurred to me that I could be ringing the phone on the desk if I wanted. To ask Mole and Tim how they think it is going. I don't think they'd answer.

There's something wrong

We do another work in progress to invited guests and someone arrives late - Mole tells Tim to open the door to let him in. When he sits down he turns to the person sitting next to him and asks 'Have they started yet?' Mole says 'We could go back to the beginning' and does a summary of the show so far for the person who came in late. A fast recap of where we are and what they imagine to be in the space. Sunglasses and flash bulbs and famous people. The audience is quiet. Mole sings Space Oddity and stops singing on the line 'There's something wrong' as if there is something wrong with the show. A recurring motif. Mole and Tim respond to all the sounds. Sirens outside and someone in the corridor making a racket. They turn to look. Mole says 'There's something wrong. This isn't right. This isn't how I want to be looked at'. It feels true to this audience. There's something wrong.

Sometimes

Sometimes I forget to ask how to spell Dr Zhivago. Sometimes I forget to start the music. Sometimes I forget to put on the coat. Sometimes I forget that I've got to count to 60 just at the point where Tim says I'll be back in a minute. There's so much in my head. It's got an H in it.

One of the students yesterday said Mole should talk about how much he has happening in his head before he leaves the room. A list of things he needs to do. A mental checklist. Mole tries it as he comes back into the studio. Sometimes. We do one more run before a group of promoters come to another work in progress. There are more moments we can recreate. Mole tells Tim to watch the cable. Tim hears the Town Hall clock strike three and says he's in London and he can hear Big Ben. Mole sits on the heater instead of the window sill and I suggest he could say later on 'We're using a heater as a seat.' Mole goes to Tim's mic and it is too high for him so he has to stand on his tip toes and he looks like he's 'stopped for a moment to watch the planes take off.' We see that the shoes and the suitcase have connections to acts of terror. Taking your shoes off at the airport to prevent shoe bombers and carrying a camera case that gets searched by suspicious customs officers. Sometimes.

Fade In

Tim is on the floor and Mole moves the mic over his mouth and then moves it away again. Slowly turning the microphone stand. It's like a manual fade in and out. A mechanical sound cue. Mole says 'I've been thinking about clouds, I've been thinking about foam parties in Ibiza, I've been thinking about gymnasts when they clap their hands and I've been thinking about bombs, clouds, smoke, steam, ash. It's the same thing. It's just particles, it's just steam.' Tim says 'Let's get a kettle onstage.' I wonder if he should keep talking about the kettle and making tea and coffee and being self-sufficient. Mole points out that in this section they are not having a conversation at all - they are on different planes. Maybe they talk to themselves rather than each other. Keep talking. Coming together for 'What's my motivation here.' 'Your motivation is this gun I've got pointing at your head.' The mic Mole fades in and out over Tim's face is now the gun he predicted earlier.

Time

I know it's coming from you Tim. I'm pushing it up but I need to push it down. I was wondering Tim. He needs assistance etc. And then you say 'I don't know what to do here. I need assistance.' I was thinking that just repeating it but changing he to I. And then continue until 'What's my motivation?' And I can put the curtains up. I don't know how much Tim says for you to do that. This is preparation for me to be on the floor where we can perhaps push it a little further. It's all about death I remember. I think we're probably now getting back to where we were at the end of Leeds. I remember where we were. Can we try that? What we've tried before. There's a moment when Mole rigs a lantern and maybe he's rigging it for something that happens later. It's this separating moments as much as possible. This idea of time. The separation of time. And this sort of non-linear thing we have in Schrodinger's Box. Playing with time and the time it takes to play.

Sound Cues

Mole says 'We stopped for a moment and watched the planes take off' but when he gets to moment a plane flies overhead and he pauses. 'We stopped for a moment... [plane flies overhead] and watched the planes take off.' Perhaps the show should only tour to venues beneath busy flight paths. Later on Tim is on the floor and Mole says 'What can you hear? Or what can't you hear?' and the clock on the Council House at the Old Market Square starts to strike 12. Sirens and cars slip into the piece all the time. I've been thinking about how if we make mistakes then the sound check will mean making sure the sound doesn't work instead of making sure that it does. The sound cue is to miss the sound cue. At the moment the soundtrack to the piece is the sounds outside the space. Aeroplanes and town hall bells are our accidental sound cues.

Object to object

Tim and Mole do an 'object to object' run a sort of stagger through what we have so far working out where they stand and what goes where. It's like skimming the surface of the show. But it gives them a freedom away from the script to try things out and they start to climb ladders. Singing from the top rung. Leaning on speakers. Moving from object to object.

I'm here

Where?

Who?

You

The lights are out

I don't know where this is going

Oh shit

I stand here

Let's do a sound check

Hello

Put the sound on first

Let's do a sound check

Hello

Can you hear me

Hello

Hello Tim

I think we need a lead up here

What do you mean?

Like one two

One two

Three

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

It's no good

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Tim: It's no good I can't go on any more you go ahead without me it's OK please leave me here and you go on

Mole: Please don't stop I think this is some of your best work

Tim: Just leave me I can't go on any more go on please don't stop

Mole: Time's running out we've got to keep moving

It felt weird yesterday. I was a bit confused about who was saying what. Who was playing who. It felt like we were both the same voice. I don't understand that line. This sounds like some kind of war movie to me - a man down in the jungle - an oscar nomination clip. We tighten up who says what. Mole starts to sound like the man in control of Tim again. The child playing with a broken action man on the floor. Tim says: 'It's my legs you see?' I'm not sure how it fits but it speaks the same language of old war movies like Donald Pleasance in the Great Escape because of the way Tim says it. I wonder if it's another prediction and later on something happens to Tim's legs. Maybe they get broken like the goalkeepers arms in Escape to Victory. 'Make it a clean break skip?' Everything is threaded together. I find a note on my script from three months ago: 'There is just enough space around the metaphor for the illusion to perform.' I've no idea what it means. It's no good.

Predictive text

In this predictive text we are gathering new histories for objects, for performers, for the show itself. Mole now says 'We are using the microphone as a gun' before we use it as a gun. Mole moves a ladder for Tim to throw across the stage later in the show. Tim says 'He'll be back in a minute and then we will move on' and after Mole goes out he comes back in a minute. Literally. We predict the show will be 58, 59, 60 minutes long. We say it takes about a third of this for us to warm up. And it does. And it's happening as we say it. There is always this notion of us being stuck somewhere between past and present, the rehearsal and the performance or the performance at one venue and the performance at another. Wherever and whenever it takes place this show is a work in progress. The text is evolving to involve previous occurrences and accidents. The Pilots is gathering histories as it goes.

Mistakes

Tuesday 4 December

After a talk about the company history, Reckless Sleepers do a work in progress of The Pilots for BA Theatre Arts students from New College Nottingham. It is a very different experience. We do the technical set up with an audience. Mole takes down a light. I plug in a laptop to play the music but forget to check if it's on mute. We don't check the levels of the mics or even if they're switched on. Again the audience are talking as Tim starts the show. One of the students turns to me and says 'Has it started yet?' There are so many accidents. It feels unready. Unsteady. Underprepared. There is a moment when Tim forgets to turn on Space Oddity but Mole waits until he finishes the sound check before asking him to start it again but this time with the music. He starts again and plays the music but nothing comes out because I forgot to turn off the mute. Mole says 'Sorry. Can we do that again? Honestly that was a mistake. That wasn't supposed to happen.' When Mole goes out for his Dr Zhivago walk he forgets to start the Dr Zhivago soundtrack. When he comes back bringing with him the smell of cigarette smoke he says 'I forgot to start the music'. After the show the students say they never doubted any of it was a mistake. Can we make any more mistakes?

Clouds

As we stand there and stare at the clear blue sky the wind suddenly gets up and starts gusting from the west and this cloud appeared and moved across the sky. A big white fluffy cloud like you see on the weather forecast with three bulbous blobs. And the cloud suddenly gets bigger and bigger and greyer and greyer and these black lines start to come out of it and it's raining and pouring and pouring and the rain slowly slows down and the cloud slowly evaporates into the blue. The cloud disappears into the blue sky. I look up at the blue sky.

Tim reads the text as he slowly drops to the floor. Mole has a lightbulb moment and says 'It's about smoke. That's the subtext.' We remember a conversation we had on the last day in Leeds. Talking about smoke machines, foam parties in Ibiza and fire extinguishers. The smoke of a bomb. The smoke of a smoke machine. We print that entry on the blog out. Mole and Tim are on their feet. We film them reading the text of the conversation we had in Leeds on the last day. From a conversation in the ICA dressing room to a conversation in Leeds Met Studio. Rolling.

Get in

We spend the afternoon setting up the space. Two mics. Two speakers. Four ladders. Four speaker stands. One heater. One fan. Four cables. A lighting desk. A sound desk. A desk. A pile of papers. A packet of Belgian Marlboros and a spare microphone. A packet of Swan filter tips and an HDV camera. A packet of Drum tobacco and a mobile phone. A row of chairs for the audience tomorrow and a tripod. A dustbin. A TV monitor on a stand. A yellow floor stand. Tim stands centre stage.

Nothing

Mole says he wants to write a book. A little book about nothing. I've realised a lot of the work we do is about nothing. The text at the end of The Pilots is about nothing. 'What are you doing? Nothing.' Busy doing nothing. Nothing the whole day through. We talk about Beckett and how he said Waiting for Godot was a play where 'Nothing happens... Twice.' We talk about non-events and anti-climaxes and how nothing happens in The Pilots. Mole's performance lecture was about nothing happening. We ask what happens in a show where nothing happens? I don't know what happens. Maybe nothing happens... Once.

We didn't take you anywhere

About half way through the work in progress Mole says 'I'm sorry we didn't take you anywhere.' It feels too soon in the show to say this. Tim has already said 'We are supposed to take you somewhere. But you're still here' Maybe it should be 'I'm sorry we haven't taken you anywhere... yet.' We apologise in increments for not taking the audience on the journey we said we would in the publicity, before they sat down, before the show began 56, 57, 58, 59... minutes ago. We know how long the show should be because it says so in the script. The work in progress finishes. It's 30 minutes long. We're half way there.

The edge of melodrama

I forgot about the music that Mole plays before he leaves the space. Tim talks over the Dr Zhivago soundtrack. There's an H in it. The music adds so much to the scene and Tim plays it on the edge of melodrama. Letting the audience make it funny. He walks to the window and on cue Mole appears on the hill beind the studio walking into the wind and imaginary blizzard. The audience laugh. Watching it now Mole says 'This is a really important moment in the show. There's so much happening in this moment. Timing.' When Mole comes back. Catching his breath. Saying hello to the audience like a breathless lover. He loses his place in the script and after three months what felt like a moment feels like a minute. 'We need something there,' says Mole. Tim nods.

One Two

Tim and Mole do a sound check. One. Two. One. Two. I realise on the video there is a symmetry. Two men. Two pilots. Two mics. Two ladders. I wonder if there is two of everything. Two monitors. Two lamps on stands. Two projectors. Two of everything. The Leeds Met Studio seen through a wide angle lens looks like a theatre space within a theatre space. Like Schrodingers Box. A place of mathematics and rules and codes and numbers. A space of symmetries and dualities. Tim is floating to David Bowie again. With his script in his hand. Like he's stuck in space but also stuck in the future of the script we talked about.

Fade Out

We watch the video of the work in progress at Leeds Met three months ago. The audience are chatting waiting for it to start. Mole says 'I like this. We should use this.' Tim stands up to start talking and the audience become quieter. 'There's a real fade out. A real focus.' I wonder if we can recreate this. Like a Janet Cardiff installation. A choir talking before they're about to sing. Off duty. Offstage. I wonder if we should revisst the conversation from the ICA dressing room. Tim and Mole offstage. Off duty. Before the show as part of the show. And when the show finishes. Is there a way of a post-show discussion being part of the show etc. Something Teresa Brayshaw mentioned after the work in progress at Leeds Met three months ago. Back to the beginning.

I know where you are

Mole wants to film the Club Tropicana video in Blackpool. Where he was born and raised. He says it hasn't changed much. We talk about cities changing. Landscapes shifting. Unfinished buildings. Streets that look like works in progress. I talk about a street in Bristol I walked down last night and how every facade was covered in scaffolding. Tim says 'I know where you are'. But I'm not there any more. I'm in Nottingham. It's as if he is saying 'I know where you are in your head.' It's another 'Whereabouts in the world?' moment we had in Leeds. Confusing realities and notions of time and place. It's good to be back.

Reunion

Monday 2 December 10am

The Pilots. Reunion. We meet up again at Preset in Nottingham. Sitting round a table in the Reckless Sleepers. Coffee. Notebooks. We remember what it's like to talk about The Pilots after two months away. It's about pretending. We talk about pilots outfits. Whether they need to fit or not. And going to Blackpool and riding donkeys on the beach. We talk about filming the Dr Zhivago moment and whether we need live CCTV footage of Mole leaving the venue. Or whether we can prerecord it. We see a lantern in the office. Like a search light. Something that says film premieres and air raids, glamour and war. Something from another time. Another world. Something with a history. We decide the show needs a van. And a projector to show the Club Tropicana video. Set up in the space. Like the lights. And the control desk. On show. Onstage.