Songs of Innocence and Experience (WestK)

Directors' Note

We started work on Songs of Innocence and Experience about two years ago, when The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) School of Drama invited us to direct a performance with their students. They put a lot of trust in us and gave us the freedom to work on a devised piece, developing the show based on various stimuli rather than a script. 

As a starting point, we proposed Paradise Lost, while other works such as Catcher in the Rye, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Tristram Shandy served as references for the style of personal stories. , and Bo Burnham’s recent Inside was a reference for original songwriting. Paradise Lost became the main focus, and further research added more influence from Milton’s life and other works.

The first presentation of the work in the Studio Theatre at HKAPA took place in June 2022. It combined incorporated many of the elements of this version of the performance: music, live camera work, Blake’s images, Milton, Paradise Lost, and actors’ personal stories and discussions. However, the show is inherently tied to the performers’ journeys from Innocence to Experience, and so they have already moved on: it would be dishonest now to perform the same text, even though it was true at the time. 

The sections of Paradise Lost have been rewritten to reflect a more mature connection with the text. The personal stories have mostly been completely changed, in both form and content. The approach to how we re-perform discussions from the rehearsal process is completely different, inspired to some extent by the Wooster Group’s use of video. We have an extra additional three musicians, kindly supported by the internship programme of HKAPA. Songs have been rewritten, replaced and rearranged. 

In the devising process, everyone on the team has authorial involvement, and a sense of ownership of the content. Different people write or propose ideas for scenes or songs based on different various stimuli, test approaches in rehearsal, experiment, write and rewrite. We create a large number of different fragments like this, and constantly rearrange their structure based on themes, arcs and interesting juxtapositions. Much of the material is discarded as we narrow down on what is necessary, and new fragments are added in order to create meaning, or join disconnected ideas. The process is much more like editing a documentary than writing a script. 

The idea of “’editing”’ is present not just a an organising principle of the performance, but as a scenographic device. The use of cameras and cuts between them explicitly borrows the language of Eisenstein’s montage. The performance creates meaning in the joining of different fragments, both in time, and in space. Perhaps this reflects the “multiplicity and contrariety of the world in which we live.,” but However, someone already said that about Josef Svoboda’s projections in the 60’s1960s, so hopefully we’re not too far behind.

It’s important to us that all the elements of theatre are live and present in the space (back to Svoboda, who complained of too many prerecorded elements “‘enslaving”’ the performer, losing “that which is beautiful about theatre.”) The music is a combination of both original pieces written by the team, and references that the audience may recognise.  It can be serve as a vehicle for a story, an intertextual reference to shared culture or experiences, or a Greek chorus obliquely commenting on the action.

The interplay between the epic and the everyday is an essential element when working from a text like Paradise Lost, humanising gods and elevating the mundane. Ultimately, we want to tell our own stories:  – stories that only we can tell, which reflect the place and times we are living through. The epic is a vehicle, rather than a museum piece, and so the author has to die and let us get on with it. This is a generation living through significant historical events; the art we make should reflect our time.

It has been an incredible opportunity to be able to work on improving a performance over such an extended period. Without it, we would never have been possible to achieve such a degree of openness and trust in this ensemble. We are grateful to West Kowloon Cultural District for supporting us to in reworking the show in this way, and giving us the trusting us to bring it to Freespace.

We are delighted to have met these graduates and students from HKAPA School of Drama during a low time for the whole performing arts industry. Your sincerity, courage, talent, determination and the hope for the future are always touching. Thank you for not giving up when you are feel lost, and for persisting in finding the value of yourself, and of the performance, after you wipe away your tears. Thank you for your trust in us. The world might not become better in an instant, but we hope that over the creative journey of Songs of Innocence and Experience, we have been able to find the strength and the drive to carry on.