Feels Like....(the body project)

This season at Available Light we dove deep into collaborative compositional new work, starting in the rehearsal room, rather than in the pages of a script. We started with questions, images, movement, music. We started on our feet. We started with physical exploration. While this has been a favorite way of working for AVLT for some time, we fully embraced this passion, season-wide, whether it was exploring the physicality of the characters and the space for two weeks before beginning to delve into the text of our scripted plays, like "The Grown-Up," or creating a brand new work, like "Daedalus." "Feels Like (the body project)" is the culmination of a season of physical investigation and creation. Everyone involved was a creative artist and brought life to this piece, long before we made our way into the theatre. We were so fortunate to have the time, space, and talent to dedicate to this project.

The seed for "Feels Like (the body project)" started many years ago as company members and audiences delighted in recounting some of their favorite moments from AVLT productions. So often those moments involved movement and dance. Ah-ha. When we set forth on this six-month project, we knew two things: we could collaboratively create a new piece about the body and we would be okay not knowing how it would take shape.

We started with researching what intrigued us about the body. Aware that so often the only way we are aware of our bodily goings on is when something isn't right, when something is in pain, discomfort became an in-road for us and we were fascinated by the way words fail us when trying to describe pain in our bodies. While we all have bodies, our experiences are so different, subjective, and often isolating. Explaining a pain to your doctor suddenly becomes a very unifying, creative event. Is it gnawing or piercing? Does it feel like butterflies in my stomach or a lead weight? However, we did not simply want to dwell in pain.

The inability to articulate feelings that nearly everyone encounters was very reach territory for us to explore. How do different people talk about the way they experience joy, love, surprise, dread, etc., in their body? Interviews became a key tool in our research and we were fascinated by the responses. Our creation became focused on the ways we try to communicate the inner workings of our bodies. Often words fail and the communication, the understanding, is on the physical level. As you watch, trust that your experience is exactly right. What you take away is what you are supposed to, there is not a secret meaning to "get, " no "right" way to interpret. Much like your body, your individual experience tonight is enough. And when you leave we hope you'll notice and enjoy the very individual experience of having a body: the good, the bad, the extraordinary, and the mundane.
- Eleni Papaleonardos, director (2016)

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A collaboratively-created theatrical collage about the bewildering experience of having a body and the difficulty of communicating what that's like.

For the six months of its creation, among ourselves, we called it "Body Movin" or "Dance Dance Revolution" or just "The Body Play." Directed by Eleni Papaleonardos and recognizing that we easily disconnect from our bodies in the digital age, we've explored what it means to have a body, how to find joy in inhabiting our bodies, and the many ways we've forgotten about how our bodies relate to the world.

Underground Review