Improvising?

I woke up this morning and thought what the hell did I do last night? Don't worry I remember it all clearly, I wasn't very drunk or anything ... I was improvising! Something I'm not very used to. I've previously blogged about doing improvised workshops with the band 4thirtythree. But last night wasn't a workshop; it was a gig. People came to the Red Roaster and paid to watch and listen to us improvise.

Luckily the band 4thirtythree improvise all the time so they are used to it and they held the night together beautifully. And somewhere between the music there were words. Some of them fitted some of them didn't. I'm surprised how we managed to make the performance flow without any particular plan. Well some of us poets had brought material (either on paper or in our heads) so it wasn't totally improvised, but we did some collaborate pieces that were happening there and then and won't ever happen again.

Talking to a guy in the audience he said that he enjoyed some bits and found other bits painful. He thought our collaborate pieces worked best, when we only spoke for about 30 seconds each and then moved on to another person, creating a stream of words. Quite a fair comment I think.

I'm mostly happy what I did/said, but I also felt that I missed the "freshness" from the workshop where I felt more free as I had not brought any material at all. I'm still questioning what the hell I was doing last night, but I feel happy for the experience. A big thank you to Tom Cunliffe for putting it all together!

It has been great working with all those talented people: 4thirtythree, Annie, Yaz, Bernie, Alison and Tom.