Our first night at the Coliseum

JAMES WRIGHT, Community Ensemble Participant

My feelings were bandaged on account of the frostbite. I’d been working on a case since 6am and I was beat; it turned out that the real culprit was simply a case of poor documentation standards and a penchant for acting in a pretentious and overtly supercilious manner – not even the best PI in the business could have sold that motive, and my client wasn’t the munificent type.

I got a call at 5pm, “The Coliseum – 6pm”. I’d already been awake for twelve hours and my previous client couldn’t chew the truth, so I figured what the hey. I trudged there through the inane chatter of suits and insipid faces, passed bronze lions and a gallery of our nation, mournful war lamentations and the face of our government that pushed time forwards; it was a two and a half mile walk, I had not anticipated this.

When I reached the rendezvous point I couldn’t get in. There was a transparent door the size of me with a button from the future embossed onto a not getting any younger wall; I wasn’t getting any younger either, so I had a few smokes to pass the time. The gatekeeper eventually let me in.

Reverse Cell Division

JAMES WRIGHT, Community Ensemble Participant

The umbrella cell cycle presented within the Operatic eukaryote provides fascinating examples of inverse mitosis, or reverse cell division; this is literally a case of zygotes amalgamating into larger organisms, with previously fertilised unicellular gametes ‘clapping’ in order to gain a form of genetic acceptance so that they can then become part of a greater life form.

I couldn’t comprehend what was happening at first, but then I realised that by performing these actions – and similar ones – the primarily individualist cells, with different ambitions and motives, were now becoming a more responsive and cohesive unit (see Alison’s post!); I must admit that this eluded me after the first session. Only after careful examination and empirical studies did I ascertain what was happening, and in all honesty I find what we are achieving through these exercises and rehearsals exhilaratingly fun and astonishing.

Practicing was a weird one for me – I felt like I was a pre-programmed robot, but had been granted sentience. This cerebral ambiguity was very interesting in itself, and I’m sure that with further psychoanalysis we could be told a lot about ourselves:

“Ah, so you decided to place the book there? Very interesting.”

“I see – so when you saw the other person coming towards you, you deliberately avoided them?”

“Is it important to you that I think that you think that your role is important to you?”

I often think about my community counterparts and imagine if their brains are as injected with as much wonder regarding this whole instance as mine – I’d say ‘yes’. I think that we’re all really enjoying the experience and are overly grateful for it. We tend to clap a lot.

I’m not going to continue with the cell division analogy/metaphor, I think it got a bit tired.

Oh, and everyone’s really friendly.