WilL Dickie, theatre maker and practitioner of all kinds of experimental movement, took some time in between performing his acclaimed solo show White Sun at The Blue Room Theatre’s Summer Nights and his upcoming workshop “Basking in a Groove” at WAAPA to chat with writer Maya-Rose Chauhan about both.
Dickie currently calls Liverpool in the UK home and was inspired by that place to create White Sun, a show that expresses where personal ancestry and colonisation intersect through movement and word, thereby interrogating the implications of his own privilege in a riveting way. Dickie fills us in on some of the processes behind his work and his upcoming workshop where he’ll be sharing his movement methods with anyone eager to learn and play!
Your performance White Sun has brought you here to Boorloo/Perth for Summer Nights. But you’ve been here before! What keeps you coming back?
I first came through a connection I have at WAAPA. So my first experience of Perth was through the Bachelor of Performing Arts course there, and I met a lot of students who are learning about performance making and making their first works. I’ve been able to connect and meet really interesting people who are interested in the crossover between performer training and dance and, and live art which is where I sit.
What kind of physical training goes into preparing for a show like White Sun which involves a lot of extended physicality?
There’s lots of Asian meditative and martial and performance arts, many of them contemporary that I practice. And there’s a community of artists and makers and teachers who pursue those and keep them up and around them I make the show.
I make up my own physical practice that allows the show to come into life, like little exercises for myself that feel appropriate to the kinds of movements and ways of speaking that I want to do in the show. So, yeah, there’s a lot of physical work that goes into it, and I have to kind of rely on that to show me things that I couldn’t figure out in my head.
When did you become aware that slavery and colonisation was a part of your history as a person, and what prompted you to create art out of it?
Buying a flat in Liverpool was a really big moment in my life, and my partner’s life. My partner has African heritage, and as I’ve got to know her and her family history, it’s becoming a growing area of understanding in my British White mind. Moving to Liverpool, and buying a flat there, with this inheritance that I talk about in the show, and thinking… I am a privileged man to be able to own my own home at a time like this.
I started thinking about my school, and where I was educated, and then where does this money in my family come from, like I say in the show. I started to look at that, and my family has links to the cotton trade, and it’s unclear exactly what those links are; but anyway, that’s there, and cotton was, you know, this incredible product. At the same time, I’m thinking about addiction, and compulsive behaviour, and I’ve done a lot of personal work on myself. I did a podcast with this woman called Judy Ride, she’s a psychologist and she wrote a really informative book for me called White Privilege Unmasked: How to be Part of the Solution. She compares the actions of British colonial power and she correlates that with the behaviours of an addict. All of those things – colonisation, privilege and addiction – are weaving in and out of each other and making me who I am, so that’s where the need to go further with those themes was born.
What’s the reception been for White Sun in Perth?
What I’ve noticed in the people that came was like, we had a really broad range of ages. There are a lot of students who are interested in my practice.
But there were also a significant number of older audience members, who wouldn’t necessarily come to an experimental performance event in the UK. But I felt that they got it, and I felt that they were into it, even though I’m playing with form a lot.
Let’s talk about your workshop that’s coming! When is it? Where is it? What kind of movement practices will you be exploring?
The name of the workshop is Basking in a Groove, it’s this weekend coming, 15th and 16th February at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and we’re going to have six hours each day with a lunch break, so that’s a good chunk of time! We’re looking at Feldenkrais & the Suzuki Method, improvisations inspired by Butoh dance. It is for anyone. If you’re interested in developing a physical movement practice this is for you!
WilL Dickie’s work explores so much, from physical processes to understanding history and how the personal and political are connected. If you’re interested in checking out his workshop you can access the flyer in his linktree here or see the image below.
MAYA-ROSE CHAUHAN
