Tea Break Rooms – Virtual Spaces

-By Emma Jayne Park

I don’t know about you, but I’m not great at knowing what kind of conversations I like to have.  I’m a Movement Director, a dancer if you really strip it back – words are not my weapon. 

But space? Now space is something that makes sense to me!!!

I can tell you where I want to be and why it makes me feel great.

Send me to Stage Door with the smokers any day because the chat is always sharp and observational.  Everyone has something to do so there’s no pressure to say something and most folks are standing up so I can stretch my fidgety legs without arousing suspicion.

Or, send me to the workshop where the chat is minimal but the smell of wood makes me feel at home and chances are there could be a dog visiting to sweeten the deal!

Give me fifteen minutes in a rehearsal room goofing around with instruments in the rehearsal room and clambering on pieces of mocked up set I haven’t figured out but excite me – I’m sure to make a playful friend there!

Or, take me back to the ‘Badgers Set’ with Tarek Merchant at Edinburgh’s Lyceum where we hid, ate great biscuits and laughed each other through our nerves as colleagues and friends.

Maybe let me hug the radiator behind the DSM’s chair as we share a quiet laugh together and bond over a love of excellent stationery.

The memory of space leaves me longing to be in a theatre again as I know that it is these spaces that create the conversations that make me feel at home.

And that is why for our FMTW Tea Break, we are inviting you to think about spaces:  The spaces you love; the spaces you may miss; the spaces you may wish to recreate.  We will recreate these spaces virtually. You are welcome to move around them to find the kinds of conversations that could give you a moment of connection with the folks who you would normally find in the same spaces that bring you comfort or joy.

We are constantly moving through strange times right now and hope that it may help to do this together – one cup of tea at a time!