Yvonne’s Experience (Participant) [she/her]

1) what is truth? what is a personal truth? what is my own story? am i ready to let the world know of the horrid unspeakable things that have happened to me? although i have been down that familiar darkness, do i really want others to see and experience it?

a lot of bad has happened to me. but a lot of good too has happened—a lot of love. if i choose to focus on the good, am i trivialising the bad? and really, who am i without my trauma? 

2) caring. is my job y'know. i am a professional carer. which makes me question: what is care? is mutual acknowledgement enough? is consent really needed? the rule is: no words, no physical contact. i found myself still trying to communicate with actions and movements instead.

i remember this woman—a gardener who was mute, signing to a friend. not proper ASL, she was uneducated. and i realised i understood her. how did i understand a language i had not learnt? maybe that desire for connection, exchange, encounter is more than enough.

what is the most basic language of care? if i had to strip everything down, then presence is most essential. two people making themselves available to each other, lending their attention to the needs of the other, affirming both their individuality and unity at the same time.

3) play is a sacred space. it is a dance between the masculine and the feminine, between structure and spontaneity. step on the cross, leap in the middle. commit to muscle memory. but maintain an open disposition to variations. only then can the freedom of play emerge.

4) what i own vs what i want:

even though what i want is created in my imagination, by acting/performing what i want again and again, i lay down the neural networks to become a person who has the capacity to receive that which i want. i own nothing except myself. and perhaps it may never be realised in my history. but i own my very real desires. and through these movements, i own me, anew.

came in for self-work, going out as an actor. not acting with all the negative connotations of being fake or false. not as a theatre professional either. but as a person, who does every single action with intentionality and truth.