so you want to know how the collaboration is going? what’s it like to be thrown in a hot pit with very particular artists,  from all over the world and, with extraordinary support, unlike any other festival as far i know, not that that’s saying much, in the form of a fully funded period of intensively structured and resourced and painstakingly  researched material and access to people and places; which must have taken months and months of careful planning and creative energy and love into making? (thank you paula and heeten. it was a truly beautiful time and truly a privilege), and contracted to , in a  relatively short space of time, find a way to work together and make something that can really engage with transformation in cape town? With easily the biggest budget i have ever been even partly responsible for? … well at the moment the state of our collaboration is, frankly, none of your business, but after we finish, oh boy am i gonna have a lot to say. and the first thing will be in praise of the extraordinary curator of the fest who’s brainchild this wondrously difficult and ego-strippingly, crippling, creative opportunity has been. I think Brett Bailey is the best thing to happen to south african theatre in the last four hundred years. That is apart from…  wait, there’s quite a few geniuses out there. but hey, brett is a very particular genius.  Anyway, in the structure of our task, he challenges us to not just represent transformation in south africa, but in the act of making something… ritual or art or thingy… which must not just represent nor display the phenomenon, but must actuallyengage in the required negotiation and conflict resolution required to make collaborative public art which has a hope of transforming anything. because the basic truth about collaboration is you have to let go of your familar way of working. And then invent, with three other people, a new way of working. Fiendishly difficult. especially when you are about to turn… no wait, it happened a few minutes ago, … to turn fifty six. I have been telling people I am about to turn fifty seven. but Janet pointed out that, wait a minute you’re only fifty six, dude let’s not get above yourself…  I think I can remember doing this a few years ago. When I was about sixteen.

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