It's a Matter of Care

A need, an urge, a stirring force.

The courageous act of voicing it aloud.

The daunting search for ears that will absorb what your lips, teeth, and tongue articulate. What your muscles, joints, pulse, breath strive to convey. The fear of only finding the pair of ears, but no mental, cognitive, psychic, affective receptors. 

​

The other way round. 

 

To offer your boundless care and attentiveness. To recognize this offering as an act of accountability, solicitude, devotion. To question your self-imposed limits and restrictions. To allow this encounter to become a spiritual expansion.  

​

“Listening to someone is one of the greatest things you can do for them” whispered the 109th page of James Norbury’s latest book Big Panda and Tiny Dragon. And these words captured my gaze in a random bookstore I stumbled upon the other day. And it was one of those rare moments when something you hear, see, or read suddenly becomes a mirror, reflecting the kind of professional you strive to be. 

 

I visited a theatre company, a few days later, to offer my dramaturgical advice on their upcoming production. ‘How does it feel?’ the performer asked. In that moment I chose silence. ‘How do you feel about it?’ I asked in return. I let her speak out. Voice aloud her thoughts, ideas, concerns, anything she wanted to share. I needed to follow her path, become part of her trajectory, understand her approach to her art-making process, her identity. Only then could I offer my advice, after giving her the time and space, the energy and devotion, to primarily understand and then unfold her own narrative.

 

Continuing in life with this realization, aspiration, and drive fuels me with respect towards anyone who wants to be listened to, anyone who asks for help, anything that reaches my sensors. It is the acknowledgement that my body is semi-transparent, and its porosity is non-negotiable. It is there. And it calls for recognition. 

 

Continuing with this realization in the dramaturgical practice primarily positions me as a listener, receiver, and carer, and secondarily as an advisor, collaborator, and dramaturg. It reminds me that the malleability of my becoming is an intrinsic element of my existence. It makes me cherish the transience of my encounter with a maker, and celebrate the traces this encounter leaves within me. It drives me to let these traces be, act upon me, transmute into something else - something I have no control over. And finally, it helps me to weave together the various threads that come my way, and to keep on weaving while all I can be sure about is what has already been woven.