As Paul and I were undertaking a collaborative commission, there was a different relationship- it was not just one artist and the commissioner, but two artists instead. As Paul and I have collaborated several times before in various ways, we both understood and appreciated each others artistic similarities, strengths and differences. For example, the bulk of the scenography, direction during rehearsals and the projection design were something Paul had taken as part of his collaborative contribution, where as mine was costume, lighting design and sourcing of other materials and props.

We were both responsible for undertaking the commission, and taking on board what David Richmond, our commissioner had wanted, this was discussed during several conversations, meetings, and observed rehearsals, where questions would be asked and we would find the answers out, by doing, making and researching. By queering and by cripping, and by writing and re-writing. It was our collective job to discover the distances between Paul and David, and Horst and Max, York in 2018, Dachau during and after the Night of The Long Knives, and 1979 when Martin Sherman wrote Bent.  To queer and disable them, and to bring them back together.

Allan Kaprow writes in Assemblages, Environments and Happenings:
‘The performance of a Happening should take place over several widely spaced, sometimes moving and changing, locales. A single performance space tends towards the static, and more significantly, resembles traditional theatre practice. It is also like painting, for safety’s sake, only in the centre of a canvas. Later on, when we are used to a fluid space as painting has been for almost a century, we can return to concentrated areas, because then they will not be considered exclusive. It is presently advantageous to experiment by gradually widening the instances between the events within a Happening. First along several points on a heavily trafficked avenue; then in several rooms and floors of an apartment house where some of the activities are out of touch with each other; then on more than one street; then in different but proximate cities; finally all around the globe’ Kaprow, 1995, 236.

Although the distances placed within the project were indeed, global, as well as the Holocaust and the production of Bent being decades ago, those same differences were placed, albeit metaphorically, into the creation of the autobiographical sections, distances were placed against myself and the names I was called (hence the dirt), the story of my coming to terms with being gay, the distance between myself, the writing and the character of Horst, as well as a distance between myself and those held prisoner in Dachau. There was also a distance between my material and Pauls; he wrote and performed his as a very personal story, which yes, had distance, but was still very close to himself, his education, being part of ‘the geeks, freaks and the gays’ circle of friendship.

Kaprow continues;
‘ On the one hand, this will increase the tension between the parts, as a poet might by stretching the rhyme from two lines to ten. On the other, it permits the parts to exist more on their own, without the necessity of intensive coordination. Relationships cannot help being made and perceived in any human action, and here they may be of a new kind if tried-and-tested methods are given up. Even greater flexibility can be gotten by moving the locale itself.’ Kaprow,1995, 237.

As we performed in Arts Workshop at York St John University rather than Dachau, we recreated and created a work, a happening in a completely different space to the original happening, the stimulus. We stretched the material by doing this, but also by queering and cripping the material, it made it more tense, whenever there was a bout of silence, the room felt tense, the audience on edge.  We stretched the material, evolving and developing ourselves as artists, performers, actors, writers, researchers and students.

‘The images in each situation can be quite disparate: a kitchen in Hoboken, a pissoir in Paris, a taxi garage in Leopoldville, and a bed in some small town in Turkey. Isolated points of contact may be maintained by telephone and letters, by a meeting on a highway, or by watching a certain television program at an appointed hour. Other parts of the work need only be related by theme, as when all locales perform an identical action which is disjointed in timing and space.’ Kaprow,1995, 237

Kaprow’s above point mentions that there needs to be a small connection, such as a common theme that can bring something together, or a minuscule action such as sending a letter. As artists, Paul and I are connected by Queer and Crip, which share common ground both as artistic practice, but as tools for composition of both new and existing material, as a way of making and thinking. We are both connected by themes of difference, sexuality, body, disability. Working on a commission together to create an existing ‘happening’, refined my artistic processes and thinking, as we were both able to approach the materials given in very similar but incredibly different ways.

Kaprow, A., cited in Sandford, M. Happenings and Other Acts, 1995. Routledge. pp236- 237