LGI/

“Conversation Piece was born from a three-week exploration with three dancers and three actors.

I had set a task for myself: I wanted the subject for the work to emerge from the meeting of language and movement and from the interaction between the people involved in making the work. I wanted it to grow from the situation itself.

I have devised most of my recent works in the rehearsal room, drawing inspiration and direction from this daily process with the performers, but Conversation Piece took it one step further as there was no predetermined script or theme to begin with this time.

This grew out of a desire to examine the unique modes of communication delivered by these very different performing art forms, but also to shift into a territory where they both transcend these boundaries to create a form of theatre that can bring language and physicality into closer proximity.

There was obviously a need for words, but where would they come from? Who’s words were they? Scripting them seemed to give them too much weight when the substance of the work was a meeting of people and forms. So, the eight-minute conversation evolved, which became the transient script for one day.

There is no brief or pre-determined content for this conversation. The dancers just walk on stage and say whatever occurs to them in that moment. It is completely different every night. This conversation at the beginning of the show then forms most of the material for the rest of the piece.

It is not so much the content of the conversation that is important, although I love the range of subjects that has emerged from these talks. We have been rehearsing this show for five weeks and the topics covered have been exhaustive: everything from pashminas to porn, from Masterchef to socialism.

We have come as close as we can to a raw unmediated chat that might spring up anywhere, in a foyer, a café or on the train. It is the repetition of these words and their shifting tone, rhythm, expression and location that uncovers the nuances, failings and complications of social intercourse.

The conversation is recorded and repeated verbatim with earphones and has all the tics, stutters and pauses of everyday speech. The throwaway nature of this flawed, rambling conversation is important as a starting point to examine the complexity of contemporary communication; its rhythms, speed, awkwardness and subtexts. And how it can distance us from each other as well as draw us together.

iPhones are a pivotal part of this work, both for its delivery and its content. They are the instruments of our mass produced interactions and provide a lo-tech, hand held, DIY technology for the running of the production.

No-one speaks directly after the initial conversation. The text is always mediated by these ubiquitous devices which are communication, comfort, information, music, light and so much more to many of us.

Life has changed and the focus on these small squares of plastic reduces and enlarges the world. They both connect us and isolate us.”

Lucy Guerin (2012)

Winner of the 2013 Green Room Award for Concept & Realisation in Dance

View a range of archival material related to this work in the LGI Digital Collection on the Theatre and Dance Platform at the University of Melbourne.

In 2011, Lucy Guerin was invited to do a three-week development with Belvoir St Theatre. The result was Conversation Piece, a co-production with Belvoir which brings together dancers and actors in a unique exploration of the two performing art disciplines.

The original idea for the work emerged organically in the rehearsal room through the process of exploring human communication through both dance and dialogue. Lucy describes this unstructured development process as both daunting and exciting, allowing the freedom to explore her interest in how dance as a form of expression compares to linguistic communication.

Three dancers meet on a brightly lit stage containing just three rows of orange plastic chairs and begin the show with an eight-minute conversation, which is completely unscripted and spontaneous, meandering from topic to topic. Each performance of the work is therefore entirely different and original, forming the basis of the performance that follows.

Conversation Piece explores the seemingly trivial nature of everyday social interactions, as well as the hidden meanings and underlying subtleties and complexities of the simplest of conversations.

iPhones are an important feature of the production, representing the impact of technology on social interaction and relationships, and its ability to both isolate and connect us. Various conversations and dance sequences are recorded, played back, copied, re-enacted and critiqued. iPhone apps are also used by the performers to generate some of the music that is woven into the soundscape, with the phones plugged in and out of connectors that drop down from the ceiling.

Critic Darryn King says: “Choreographer Lucy Guerin and her performers have sought to capture nothing less than the myriad challenges of living with our fellow human beings: a preoccupation it shares with all the greatest theatre. They pull it off with grace, wit and flair.” (Time Out Sydney, first published 2011)

Conversation Piece was first performed at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney in 2012, followed by performances as part of the Dance Massive festival in 2013. Appropriate casting was crucially important, and the performers embraced the challenges of a piece so dependent on improvisation.

For Lucy Guerin, being unable to control what happened on the stage each night was both a challenge and a great pleasure: “I never tire of watching this work – not only is the conversation and therefore the content different each night, there are strange links created between the text and movement that will never happen again.” (Lucy Guerin for Massive Chats for Dance Massive, 2013).