RESEARCH BEFORE FORM — “DO YOUR HOMEWORK”

Generator: Lloyd Newson’s Open Lecture.

Lloyd insists that if you are making a piece, you need to do the research: “DO YOUR HOMEWORK.” For Enter Achilles, this included personal experience, male friendship, social statistics, pub culture, photography, field observation, political demonstrations, real people, and body language.

The artistic process becomes: irritation/question → research → observation → people → environment → object → movement study → physical metaphor → composition. It is not abstract idea → aesthetic movement → intellectual program note.

This is not anti-theory. Lloyd rejects theory without corresponding artistic evidence: the program note may claim an idea, but the performance must support it. His ideal is that what is written on the tin should be inside the tin.