four - cubism
A musical, in theory... part 2 of 14
A musical called four is the work of theoretical theatre* I’m currently sharing. Click here for the start of the story.
Here is cubism.
When I chose this musical to share here, I went through my old notes on the show. I am now twenty-five years older than those notes: a quarter of a century further on as an artist, writer, storyteller. Person. Much has changed.
One of the most useful pieces of advice anyone ever gave me was… well, it was more like permission than advice. I was talking to the brilliant writer Robert Shearman about adapting novels for performance, and he said, “Take what you want and leave the rest”.
It’s advice I’ve applied in all kinds of situations since then, and this is one: I took my old notes and cut out all the words that stood out to me today, then threw the rest away. What you see in these pictures is what I kept, along with some scribbled thoughts from the writer I am now. It’s been an absolutely joyful process, full of surprises.
Twenty-five years ago, I felt obliged to use linear narrative, and the narrative I scribed was unsurprisingly flat: it had some story in it, but it had no me in it. It couldn’t have had me in it: I didn’t really know my own self until I was diagnosed neurodivergent a few years ago. Now I know more about how neurodivergence impacts my life, and I know more about how I’ve spent a lifetime building up ways to compensate for that stuff.
When I cut out the words in my old notes that stood out to me, I didn’t second guess it, just found myself with a pile of little words and phrases and things that I moved around like a puzzle and glued into a concertina notebook.
I had made notes in the past about cubism, and I still see this as a cubist musical: all the dimensions of the family laid flat on the page, people and past and present and future. The (mis)remembered house, the imagined house, the dream house. The last day, the last hour, and also all of the years they’ve lived in the house, and all possible futures, all laid out flat together, all existing simultaneously.
And there’s a storm brewing outside…
So this is the shape of the show:
Mother, father, daughter, son
One house, four floors, moving day
Four composers (positions open)
Past, present, future, compressed time
Memory, imagination, dream dimensions
Click here to read the previous post: four
Click here to read the next post: mother
*This may be theoretical theatre, but it’s still protected by Copyright © 2000-2025 by Jenifer Toksvig All Rights Reserved. Though I may be inspired by conversation and ideas, as long as you don’t infringe my copyright, anything you write in response to this belongs to you. Obviously. The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard is translated into English by Maria Jolas, quoted here where referenced for the purposes of researching this work.