Its first feature is a feeling of restlessness which tends to involve copious amounts of house cleaning and an inability to sit still for 5 seconds. The other charming feature of post-show-state is emotional deadness. Was I sad it’s over? Nope. Was I happy it’s over? Nope. Glad it went well? Nope. What were my feelings about the future of the show? Meh. Was it worth all the hard work? Bah. Shrug.

I embraced the first symptom of my unfortunate frame of mind in an attempt to wear myself out. I cleaned the house, cut my hair, washed every item of clothing I own, answered ALL my emails, made a puppet, filed my receipts, wrote a show proposal, planned a workshop, stewed a weeks worth of carrot soup and even baked a flipping cake (WHO AM I?).

The second symptom, the emotional vacuum was harder to combat, nothing was raising a smile, a tear, anything but a grunt. Sweet emails from the Roost team? Nope. A good review? Whatever. This insanely beautiful song about building a house? Nice try ipod, but in post-show state I’m made of stone. Very dull, cold, grey stone.

While robotically sorting my receipts I had this talk from the RSA on in the background, for no other reason than I like the RSA talks and it was near the top of the list. It’s about all kinds of things, but mainly the importance of empathy to humans. The speaker, Dr Brene Brown describes the purpose of her work as a social work researcher, and her place in the world as to provide useful, comforting empathy. Not sympathy, empathy, to make proper connections with other human beings which say ‘me too, I know what you feel’. She finishes her talk by showing a picture of someone touching someone else’s hand, a perfect, physical expression of ‘me too’.

It reminded me of something my stupid mechanical brain had glossed over when it happened during a performance of Roost. There is a point in the play, where everything has gone wrong for the characters. One of our performers, Annie, has had a particularly hard time in our story and is sitting alone, close to the audience. The performers have been playing with the audience throughout and established that there is no barrier between the stage and seating area. They’d established it so well, and staged (amongst a pretty absurd setting) such genuine, recognisable human emotions that one evening at that moment a woman in the audience, a complete stranger, subtly reached out and squeezed Annie’s hand. To comfort, to empathise, to say ‘me too, I know what you feel’.

I’m quite a visual person, words aren’t my favourite way to communicate (which is why our long suffering Company Manager has such trouble getting me to write these blogs!) so like the speaker I can’t really sum up my thoughts and feelings about Roost any better than with that moment. Ten thousand words about the best and worst parts, about how right or wrong we got it and what the point of the show was can’t say anything clearer than that image.

One person’s hand on another’s to say ‘me too’.

Emotions reinstated. Love of theatre reignited. Get ye gone post-show blues.

The challenge, which was set by Greenwich Theatre, was too good not to take. Not only did we want to make a great show for an audience who are often excluded from theatres, we wanted to learn more about what makes an excellent experience for everyone. It was our instinct that though a toddler and a 40 year old seem very different, we could discover some common ground, some golden moments of fundamentally human behaviour which could make our other shows better for all.

After making the show (massive thanks to Director/guru Matt Addicott) and 18 months of touring Woodland we’ve learnt a lot, here are some observations the tour performers have made along the way, they are very much about all people, not just children:

• Being told that theatre is a special treat makes it feel like one.
• Walking in to a completely silent room can be a bit intimidating.
• Choosing how to make yourself comfortable when sitting down takes away a potential distraction.
• A laugh from an audience member early on lets everyone else know it’s OK to enjoy yourself.
• Being part of a group makes you brave, holding hands makes you pretty close to invincible.
• Being offered food in the theatre can be calming or distracting depending on its timing.
• Feeling as if your reactions are being watched and assessed when you’re in an audience is intimidating.
• Being able to see the sky and natural light helps you feel relaxed.
• A sudden change of volume or pace can grab your attention.
• People are very good at sensing atmosphere from music.
• It’s very tempting to join in with a pronounced rhythm.
• Seeing things is more exciting than just being told about them, touching things is better still.
• Everyone wants to be careful and gentle with someone smaller than themselves.
• Sudden disappearances of people you care about is upsetting, saying goodbye and giving reason to an ending is important.
• When families sit, react and check in with each other everyone has more fun.

Our next show Roost has no suggested age on it. It happens at 8:30pm so that may influence some attendees, but all are welcome, please tell anyone too young to be reading this. You can expect music to create atmosphere, to see the sky, touch the set and be encouraged to make yourself comfortable. It will hopefully be clear quite early on that it’s OK to laugh!

The Romans didn’t subscribe to the modern idea that a person who has clever ideas IS a genius, they believed that they HAD a genius.  A genius was an external, magical being who popped round and lent people ideas on a good day or might have been absent or lent rubbish ideas on a bad day. I like the thought of these crazy little sprites, they suggest a distance between people and their ideas which feels familiar to me.  They remind me a little of how I feel when we’re making a new play, when the best ideas just suddenly appear, while the worst ones are over-thought and feel like they’ve been forced out of our brains.

To explain how I think about Gomito’s process of creativity let me introduce you to my favourite object from the British Museum (bear with me on this…)

Isn’t she a beauty? She’s from the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I don’t really want to go into the history of her or what she is meant to represent, what I love about her is the way that she’s been made. Or rather than MADE I should really say FOUND.

There are no joins or joints to her, this lovely lady is made of one piece of wood.  Now I don’t know how much experience you have of making small wooden people, but let me tell you, this is not the easiest way to work. Look at the tiny spaces under her arms, what a fiddle to carve, it would be so much simpler to make the limbs separately and attach them at the end. It would also reduce the chance of messing up the whole thing with one slip of a tool. And of course making her in parts you could get a production line going. Draw out a blue print and you could have one person making a load of legs, another making a load of arms, another on torsos and someone boshing them all together at the end. Jobs a goodun, let’s sell one million in the British Museum gift shop.

This, of course, was not what the original artist thought to do, and not just because this figure pre-dates the British Museum gift shop. There would have been no blueprint drawing, no sitting down and thinking ‘What ideas do I have for a statue? What would I like to make? What should it look like? How big should its eyes be?’ With no preconceptions about what was being made, this artist just went looking for a promising tree. A tree which already had this figure within it, waiting for someone skilled to dig it out.

He chiselled and carved and polished and buffed and worried ‘should I dig deeper? Have I already gone too far? Is this right? Is it finished?’ And under his hands this lady appeared. She’s so beautiful I have no doubt that he got it right, he didn’t go too far and chop her nose off, he didn’t leave any unnecessary extra wood that looks out of place, he found her just as she was always meant to be.

I love this way of viewing artworks, or ideas, or plays in our case; that they are not CREATED but DISCOVERED. They are not manufactured and pieced together; rather they are dug out, polished and revealed. That they don’t belong to or come from anyone rather that they all already exist, we just need to choose to look for them and try not to mess them up with our clumsy human hands.

Of course I don’t literally believe that a tree contains a statue or that our next play is buried underground or something, I’m sure there’s a deeply interesting, very scientific explanation of creativity involving psychology and sociology and political climates and bla bla bla…oh who am I kidding…I DO BELIEVE IT I FLIPPING DO.  I WANT THE MAGIC OF CREATIVITY TO BE EXPLAINED BY MAGICAL STORIES, IT MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS ANYTHING ELSE. So yes, our new play is buried underground, in a field in Suffolk, and I’m very excited, because we’ve already started digging it up and I can see its head poking out. It’s called ‘Roost’ and from what I can see so far it’s a funny one. In the next few months we’ll be gathering a skilled excavation team and carefully scratching round its edges, trying not to break bits off and buffing it up to a shine. I’ll let you know how it’s going and in September in Cambridge and Greenwich we’ll invite you to come and see if we’ve found it and revealed it exactly as it is meant to be.

Now that I’ve robbed you of your imaginary congratulations I feel I should be completely honest and admit that I did cheat, I have written a couple of other blogs, they just didn’t seem quite right to open with. Realistically I probably only properly procrastinated for a month. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, and you at the back what can I say? I apologise, but every story needs a setup, an introduction to the world we’re dealing with and so it felt appropriate to wait for a meaty topic to surface.

And surface it did this week as Gomito attempted to write a new mission statement.

Wait! Don’t be disheartened by these rankly corporate words which seem a bit unnecessary for a group of people who spend considerable amounts of time making puppets out of toilet rolls, it turns out that they are in fact a cunning disguise for (among other questions) the most exciting, gigantic, brain-melting discussion you can start us on.

WHY DO YOU MAKE THEATRE?

Oh yes. The big one.

Because we love to watch it. Because it’s live and unpredictable and unrepeatable. Because it’s covered in human fingerprints. Because it sneaks up on your emotions, from an angle you didn’t see coming.  Because it can bring people together to enjoy themselves. Because it lets you escape the humdrum.  Because it uses the collective power of many brains. Because it is the sum of all arts, the tickler of all senses. Because it doesn’t feed anyone or keep them warm, but it steadfastly exists.  Because it’s impractical and its usefulness is immeasurable. Because it vanishes as quickly as it appeared. Because is possibilities are endless. Because it’s difficult to make. Because we are curious about things that only theatre will tell us. Because someone once told us we couldn’t. Because it makes people happy. Because of the collective breath an audience emits at the end of a show. Because it staves off the robotic, the systematic, the mass-manufactured. Because it’s exciting. Because it has no rules. Because it’s open to interpretation. Because we want to be better at it with every try. Because it can never be finished. Because it’s important.

And on and on it goes, a mess of ideas, the perfect introduction. Welcome to Gomito, we’ll talk more on these things in due course.

For now my second admission; this is in no way a mission statement, a mission statement is specific and clear like these charming corporate delights:

PEPSI – “Beat Coke”

HONDA – “We will crush, squash, and slaughter Yamaha”

NIKE – “Crush Reebok”

I’ll spare you the details of how I’ll distil our brain-splurges down to a suitably Gomito version of one of those, but rest assured I’m working on it, in conjunction with a new world record attempt, just 195 days of pondering to beat…aw come on imaginary crowd, no need to boo. Hey you at the back, no heckling! I’m writing it! Alright I’m writing it now! Stupid imagination. Shuuudup.