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.