I didn’t bring any objects to our first rehearsal. (Tal)

I didn’t bring any objects to our first rehearsal.

Gloria and Chandni did. They both brought three objects and three pieces of text that they felt could represent a part of them or a part of their past and memories in some way.

Their director asked them to do this. Their director was me.

I didn’t know what would happen, the only thing I had in my mind was that a long time ago I was asked to bring to a group meeting something that symbolises spring. I brought a chocolate bar, the only thing I could find at home before leaving. When my turn came I said that spring, like chocolate, is very sweet and, like chocolate, it’s gone very very quickly. Everyone laughed and then we had some chocolate. Thanks to that laughter I remembered that task, and thanks to that laughter I had the chance to get to know real objects, treasures, from Gloria and Chandni’s lives.

A clock shaped in Dali’s famous painting, a diary (ooooohhhh… diary!!!), some letters, a tape cassette, a sketched drawing of a cupboard, a miniature, and more.

Not only did I not know which items they would bring but I also didn’t know what I would ask them to do with it later.

For the next three rehearsals they told stories- real and fake, improvised around all these items and fell in love with each other’s objects. Objects which, at times, provoked memories in them as strong as the memories their own items came with.

We’ve come a long long way since and are now in the very final stages of two one-woman shows, two stories, two realities.

After building puppets and snipping up Pyjamas, it’s hard to think that once these stories, these two worlds, didn’t even exist.