Liz Peterson and Express Yourself at SummerWorks 2011
Liz Peterson speaks about Express Yourself playing at Hub 14 as part of this years SummerWorks Festiva l. LR: What was the creative process like for Express Yourself — can you describe a bit how this work came to be? LP: Well, it began really as an exploration of the process itself. Sean O’Neill (my collaborator and director of the show) approached me with this idea to create a show that was about “gestures of communication”. We decided to develop a play without a script that was about performance. So we started with a couple of ideas, some shared influences, such as Pina Bausch, Marina Abramovic and we began to rehearse, without knowing what it was going to be. Although there were a couple of elements that Sean knew had to be in the show, specific songs or stories or images, we didn’t have a structure. We worked like that for about 6 months, and then we decided that we had something that we were ready to show, but first we invited a couple of people to rehearsals, Ame Henderson bei...