Reisz Amos reflects on his recent Hatching Residency, which followed on from – and built on – his time as a MAIA fellow and his residency at Yard.

“The freedom to discover without pressure of presentation
has allowed me to dream dreams I didn’t believe I was allowed to.
Talking Birds has cultivated the birth of a new creative version of myself!”

Reisz ‘Odd Priest’ Amos

I came onto this residency with an open mind and prepared to refine a story I had already been working on or rather, had mocked up in response to another stimuli from a previous fellowship with MAIA.

High expectations of myself were coupled with no real expectations of the residency. Greeted with open arms and warm smiles, introduced to the team and immediately brought into the family ethos of Talking Birds, I was made to feel as though this was home (emphasised with the receiving of a key to my room for the duration).

Space Odyssey, a fitting name for the type of thinking and exploration I had been given the freedom to do. The space to dream and to conjure up new ideas. A place to both remember the why and forget everything else I’ve learned. To… be.

Myself and my co-conspiritor Dayle immediately got to work on setting up a shrine to Abuelo’s as our muse in the room. We designed it based on ideas being thrown around in the so called text and married that with what was actually available at Talking Birds HQ.

We set up our respective work stations and readied ourselves. On your marks, get set… What next?Within the first 5 days I struggled to let go of the things I ‘knew’ to be true up until this point. The conforms of theatrical practices that have actually bound me to a ‘way’ of doing things. This is not the space for that. Infact the exact opposite is true of Talking Birds, for here is a place where we let go of how we are ‘supposed’ to do things.

I had what I believed to be a script and alongside Dayle, my digital collaborator we were so excited to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck. Utilising all of our gifts and abilities to draw together an audio/visual collage in order to create a world for our story of ‘turmoil and stillness’ to live in. We were set… Big mistake!

After a mid process discussion with Janet of TB and Grace from Maia, I was reminded to remove the glass ceiling and stop looking at this from such a linear perspective. Encouraged to broaden the lens on the story. Provocative questions were posed and with each one I felt a new chamber unlock from within. In these new chambers existed new patterns of thought regarding placement, character, texture and tale.

Already having made some beautiful digital art and music with featured artist TiannaLouise (who absolutely smashed her debut attempt at delivering Spanish lyrics over my ambitious stab at 1970’s Cuban folk music), we had more tools than the building required and were dead set on using each and every one.

Words of wisdom pointed us away from this and signposted us to… the drawing board. Coloured pens, pencils, post-it notes, tack pins and cork boards. The old school way (are we even allowed to say brainstorming anymore?).

I was back in my element and now had the option of introducing tools if we needed. Now new people within the piece had a voice, new storylines were revealing themselves and the characters were beginning to show me who they are and that they were fed up of being dictated to.

“There’s no pressure to share this Reisz, we’d much rather you spent the time being happy with the thing!” Words I will never forget and that have ultimately changed my trajectory from here on out. I’ve never been afforded such privilege and nobody has taken the cuffs off me before and told me I’m free in that way.

We spent the rest of the time enjoying the exploration and listening to what our characters wanted to say then recording that using whatever medium we felt best captured the reveals.

So as we un-prepared to share our work and un-packed what we had neatly folded – the irony is that we ended up with more material to share than ever before imagined.

A small and intimate final day breaking of bread lead to rich conversation around potential next steps for a project that everybody involved from creatively to support, now believed had real firm foundation to be brought to life outside of the incubated arena.

Talking Birds as an experience has altered the way I approach my work and has allowed me to be ok with being selfish and ok with imperfection. I well and truly went through my nesting period and am glad to say I am an official graduate. I am now Flock alumni and will continue to fly remembering my hatching experience.