Hidden Spire Collective | Our Freedom: Then and Now

Phase 2, session 2, 29 September 2025

Isabel Taylor

What is your status within the society you are part of? Do you earn that status or do you receive it as an unearned gift? Can someone steal it from you or compel you to abandon it How does your sense of your own status shape how you physically move, how you wordlessly interact with other people, how you hold onto your agency and power?

In today’s workshop with Lizzy we began by revisiting and extending last week’s ‘grid’ exercise. White lines are placed on the black studio floor in a geometric formation of straight lines. Actors are sent onto the grid to move around it wordlessly. They are able to move backwards and forwards at whatever speed they wish to, but they are not allowed to physically leave the lines. If they meet another actor they must wordlessly negotiate how to continue their journey. This week the Hidden Spire actors were all given a character to perform with a brief summary of what their status in the society of the grid was; for example, ‘high status, charismatic, secretly insecure’. Our status was unknown to the other participants and could only be demonstrated through our behaviour. There were also objects placed on the grid such as hats, scarves, food containers, water bottles, books and chairs. How we interacted with these objects, which ones we tried to take and (crucially) how we tried to take them became a big part of the exercise. Does a ‘high status’ individual physically snatch multiple objects or try to intimidate or manipulate others into giving them up without force? What happens when two people want the same object? Is it more powerful on the grid to stay still and hoard objects or to keep moving fast? There were fascinating moments when Gill, as a very low status character, was creeping slowly along the white lines with her face almost completely obscured by a black shawl, completely alienated from the physical snatching and intimidation going on between other participants. And yet when she was noticed she was an easy target, with even her black shawl being snatched away or whatever objects she held being substituted for other ones against her will, emphasising how powerless she was and how her only power came in not being noticed. The more snatching there was the more any actor trying to work together with others or organise the group began to fail, and the more their status was diminished on the grid. Anisa’s strategy was to gather as many objects as possible and to sit on a chair on the grid covering them with her body. She wasn’t moving but she was far less vulnerable to being robbed or forced to move. The only strategy that worked was when I sat opposite and started mirroring her, physically unsettling her and causing her to shy away. There was an eerie moment when I realised that Gill had been secretly hiding behind my chair and clutching onto it I had been doing this. As a high status character I had freedom to throw my weight around on the grid, but a low status character only had the freedom to take respite in the shadow.

In the second half of the session we began work building scenes based on the various settings we had come up with during Phase 1. Again, we worked on how power and disempowerment plays out between people using improvisation games. One exercise involved a party with three guests and a host. The host was sent out of the studio whilst the guests were each assigned a secret objective to play out – for example, eating all the buffet food, complaining about everything. The host then had to guess what the objective of their guests really was. This game spawned plenty of surreal, humorous and even slightly disturbing interactions. Simon’s disbelief and growing laughing unease as his guest interrogated him about his relationship and other guests pressured him to buy their portrait was very memorable in what it said about gender interactions (a man made to feel threatened by a woman) and also the shifts in power when a group tries to intimidate one person into taking an action against their will. However, the most compelling interaction to watch was Claire who had been given the objective of simply dancing. Her full use of the space, the seriousness in her face and the concentrated lack of self consciousness as she danced alone was both joyful to watch and very powerful. She was by far the most powerful person in her group dynamic but she had achieved this not through intimidation, manipulation or domination but through a self expression which made it impossible to stop watching her. She seemed both ego-less (no urge to

make us think any particular thing of her, not status grab) and also absolutely expressive of herself. A buried part of all adults suddenly and briefly given freedom, perhaps.

Next, we got into pairs and interviewed each other about the best and worst parties we had ever attended. I enjoyed hearing about a Kurdish-Portuguese wedding Dilman had attended in 2004 (dancing, singing, wine and lamb biryani in Coventry) and was very impressed to learn that he has never been to a bad party! We got into small groups and played out different party scenes starting from one still image (a head hanging over a toilet in a party bathroom, smokers on a balcony, an awkwardly dancing group of strangers). We explored the power dynamics within the party groups within our improvisations but there was also an outside force. When a bell rang we had to suddenly do an agreed thing in unison – for example, blowing a raspberry. An outsider then moved between the scenes and tried to guess what the simultaneous action was. This proved fascinatingly difficult to accommodate. Doing an action in unison feels pleasurable precisely because there is a sudden loss of ego and self and decision making. You just do it. And yet our scenes had been about people pulling apart. Since almost every human being in a society has both the urge to meld collectively with other people and the urge to be harshly competitive, strategic and manipulative (and often experiences both these urges simultaneously) could we act naturalistically, or were the scenes most compelling when surreal? Great moments included Mark holding Laura’s ponytail back over the toilet whilst they both sang, and Search and BB flailing around in separate scenes with the increasingly dramatic urge to remove a wedgie. The scenes with the least words worked best, in my opinion.

There can be an urge to over-illustrate with words when you don’t have confidence in what you’re doing. I found that all the exercises in this week’s rehearsal demonstrated that the human body says it all, and often expresses conflict, change and subtlety far more compellingly than words do. I won’t forget Gill’s shrouded creeping or Claire’s silent, selfless dance