Guest Blog: Alex Judd On THE NATURE OF FORGETTING

The Nature of Forgetting has returned to Shoreditch Town Hall, where the show premiered back in January 2017 as part of the London International Mime Festival. It's really interesting to compare how the circumstances and mood of the company differ now, as we bring the show back to where it all began.

At the premiere, there was a nervous anticipation about sharing our brand new creation with three capacity audiences at such a prestigious festival. We really had no idea how it would be received.

For those early performances, we started on stage as the audience entered; I vividly remember having to wait an unfeasibly long amount of time as the audience took their seats and then fell silent, falsely anticipating that the show was about to begin. The tension was palpable.

Fifteen months later, and I think it's safe to say there are a few less nerves in the company! After a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe last August (where the show featured in the British Council Showcase), we have since toured to South America and will head off on a UK tour straight after the London run. The show seems to resonate with audiences, partly because the subject matter is sadly so familiar to so many people.

The Nature of Forgetting is a physical theatre piece with live music, about what is left when memory is gone. The story centres around Tom, a 55 year-old father with early-onset dementia. The show explores what happens in the brain when we forget and deals with Tom's inability to recollect his own life, but in a way that is a celebration of what it means to be human.

As the composer of the music in a piece with no substantial lines of dialogue, one challenge I faced was how to sonically portray the effect of memory loss, but ultimately make the music uplifting enough in order to support the life-affirming journeys of the characters.

Given the inextricable link between music and memory, composing the soundtrack to this show was also an emotional but rewarding journey for me. One image that will always stick in my mind from the R&D process was seeing the face of an elderly man in the later stages of dementia suddenly erupt with joy and laughter, as a set of headphones were placed on his head and his favourite songs from more than 50 years ago played to him (this was from a documentary about a music charity campaigning for the use of music therapy in care homes).

We have all experienced the power of music in moving a listener and triggering vivid memories. Sometimes this feeling can be overwhelming, and to attempt to portray this on stage was an exciting challenge.

There is therefore a lot of music in the show; that was a prerequisite from the very beginning! I perform the music live with a percussionist, which allows us to react and adapt in real time to the other performers. Like Tom's memories, the musical motifs are constructed piece by piece, but then also fragment and distort to match Tom's frustration.

Aesthetics are also important; there are a lot of instruments on stage, but they are offset from the area where the memories are formed and deconstructed. Our collaboration with Dr Kate Jeffery (a professor of neuroscience at UCL) was crucial in helping us accurately portray onstage what actually happens in the brain.

Little did we know the journey this show would take us on when we started making it, back in September 2015. The anticipation is building as our seven-week tour approaches, and this time, I'm happy to report that we will not be starting pre-set on stage as the audience enters...

The Nature of Forgetting at Shoreditch Town Hall until 28 April

Photo credit: Danilo Moroni

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