I think this refers best to our Ignition and the Residency models of creating work. What we call a residency is an intense period of rehearsal (four or five days) with a group of performers, that begins with little more than a theme and ends with a show. The approach was also used on our digital production Touch.

To summarise, most projects begin with a simple idea and the key to their success is how they open new ideas. We often talk about that central idea as being the kernel, remaining at the centre of the work but sometimes the initial provocation can be left behind. It is all about how you allow things to develop.

If you have an idea, first assess whether it can open and grow. A residency might see the creative team using a large sheet of paper and writing the theme in the centre and working out from there. For example, if the theme was ‘birthdays’ then very quickly we might be talking about wish lists, excitement, disappointment, best present, worst present, being forgotten about, blowing out candles, excitement about getting older, anxiety about getting older, looking forward to future birth days, birth itself, death, generic messages in cards, cards that were not signed by both parents, loneliness, existential angst, the positives and negatives of being the focus of attention, people who work with and experience lots of births, etc.

You can see how a simple idea can spawn other ideas that each bring a diversity of tone and experience. Potential stories open very quickly. Imagery is strong but potentially complex. Within a residency, the key is not to put the whole list in one scene or story but allow the different aspects inspired by the central theme to crash against each other, to cleanse the palette and allow us to present new scenes from different perspectives.

Purely as an example, we might see a single person in front of a candle lit cake. As they look at the flame they are illuminated beautifully and prepare to blow out the candle. The audience is pulled into the expectation of the moment. Our focus is minute and expects a burst of breath to distort the flame until it is extinguished, and we are plunged into darkness.

Within this darkness we hear recorded voices. This could be parents arguing about who was supposed to get the present and who must sign the card on behalf of the other because they ‘cannot be bothered’. Or it could be the voices of imminent parents, as their child is about to be born.

We might then burst from this darkness with all the energy of a raging party, or it could be someone running as fast as they can because they are late or are being chased. They might be late for a birthday, or it might be unrelated. We might not know who they are yet, but it suggests an element of intrigue.

These are arbitrary examples of how a quick list of connections to a central theme can open out possibilities for stories that can have emotional depth and can explore the past, present and future.

These examples are theatrical scenarios but there is also the opportunity to explore physical/choreographic scenarios. Merely writing down ‘the World’s most extreme pass the parcel game’ can throw up highly dynamic images and ideas. Or maybe the stepping up onto a chair, preparing a piñata to a fixed point in a ceiling. We might explore the physicality of the game, but it is the action of stepping onto the chair that strikes me. We can see this action repeated year after year. It becomes a motif. The child might stand beneath that point and then, over time, replicate the same action for their own children. Then grandchildren, but there also is the day that no more children come to the house and the action is only replicated as a frail old person takes out the faulty, flickering bulb from the overhead light and the light is extinguished. This could even be the beginning of the show as the physicality of the action provokes memories of the past, of their children’s parties and then of their own childhood. There are also very dark and disturbing connotations to seeing a character step onto a chair.

You can see how a subject like birthdays can quickly spin off into multiple complex areas. All of this might be charted on the large piece of paper we set on the ground with the single word in the middle.

The important thing to remember is that we did not need to write full scenes or even any sense of linear narrative connection on the paper. It was just associations with the word ‘birthdays.’

This process embraces the blank page. The theme stops it being blank, but the lack of linear narrative restrictions invites suggestions and encourages braver ideas, until that page is full of possibilities. Within that, some connections will emerge, but there is not an obligation to use every idea.