Company Here And Now was founded in June 2015 by performers & creators Rockie Stone and Vincent Van Berkel collaborating with sculptor, maker and creator of fantastic things Callan Morgan. A collaboration of identities, experiences and lives, this duo brings to the stage a wealth of experience from some of Australia’s foremost contemporary circus companies.

 Their first work together, ‘Perhaps Hope’ (formerly Perhaps There Is Hope Yet), premiered at Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2015, where it won the ‘Original New Circus’ award. It is framed as a dreaming on climate change and the destabilisation of our planet’s environment and it ‘explores the stark reality of climate change in an eco-apocalyptic circus show’.

After seeing it at the Mullumbimby Circus Festival in 2017 I shot Rockie and Vince a bunch of questions about the show, how it came about and the process making it.

I hope you enjoy this insight from these two talented peeps,

Enjoy,

Hamish

Can you describe ‘Perhaps Hope’ and what it’s about?
Vince – It’s an unconventional circus show which centres itself around the themes of climate change and humanity’s position within it. Two performers inhabit the stage for an hour, interacting with unusual props and sculptures and each other. Stuck in a degrading cycle, they move closer and closer to a precipice we can sense deeply but not yet see.
How did the show come about?
Vince – I saw Rockie’s previous show “Fright Or Flight” in Adelaide Fringe maybe four years ago. I didn’t know Rockie, but we got talking afterwards in The Garden and it was a super interesting conversation about that show and art/circus in general. Fast forward to April 2015, when I was finishing a contract with Casus. Sitting at Wellington airport, I get a message from Rockie saying “Hey, you wanna make a show? it’s about biomimicry.”
The show we ended up making wasn’t about biomimicry, but the seed was planted and we started chatting and training when I was settled in Melbourne again. A few months later we premiered the first version called ‘Perhaps There Is Hope Yet’ at Melbourne Fringe 2015.
Rockie – In 2015 I had been encouraged by the AD of Melbourne Fringe to submit an EOI for a new show since “ Fright or Flight” was no longer available. So to begin this process I had begun collaborating with Callan Morgan on ideas which would include a sculptural element made by him. I was then scouting for an acrobatic performance maker to get creative with, and Vince popped into my field of view and I recalled our interesting conversations in The Garden that evening, which had ended with me waving goodnight and saying with a wink “I think we might work together one day!”. I shot him through some Youtube and Ted Talk links to pique his interest and he promptly came on board.
Had you worked together before? what drew you to working together?
Vince – Never. I loved Fright Or Flight and had performed in many other people’s shows so I was really ready to do my own thing, to make something I wanted to make. Here was the perfect opportunity and it turned out to be a good match.
Rockie – Back in 2014 Vince had written a really interesting blog article which featured ‘Fright Or Flight’ and demonstrated to me that he understood and appreciated the kind of work I like to make. We had had interesting conversations about creating work and I liked that he asked questions. I’d actually never even seen him perform before I worked with him. But it always felt like an interesting and productive creative match.
How long did you spend creating it?
An initial period of 4-5 weeks in 2015, then we spent another month prior to Edinburgh 2016 making some new material and reworking some sections.
How did Callan Morgan become involved and how did that relationship work?

Rockie – Callan and I trained and performed as an acro duo for a number of years. By the time I started to think about making this work, Callan was venturing heavily down an exciting creative path of making large-scale kinetic sculptures. He and I had previously discussed making a work which would involve him, but sculpturally, as opposed to acrobatically. So he was my initial collaborator in the project, with ideas on biomimicry as a response to ecological devastation. So Callan and a sculptural element to the show was always going to be there. Once show ideas begun to be developed with Vince on the acrobatic floor, I returned to Callan and we explored ideas about the kinds of mechanical movement we wanted in the work. We would share youtube videos, Ted-talks, and images enough to know we were on a similar page and excited by similar things for the work, and then I’d let him create his thing: give him the space to make the sculpture. And I love what he made! It has such character! One minute a weird silent oil rig windmill thing with a 8 footbuilt-in ticking clock, and then suddenly a funny slapstick clown guy!  Its one of my favourite parts in the show when I get to watch Vince activate the sculpture at the end and listen to the audience’s delight to see it come alive as this third character in the piece.

Can you talk on the great the ‘Curved board’ you use in the show.
Vince – The curved board we call a Sabot (pronounced like “marrow” – it’s the French name for Dutch clogs, the root word for sabotage and an 8-foot sailing dinghy).
Three weeks into the initial creation period in 2015, we had eliminated almost every conventional prop from the show because nothing felt right. Sitting upstairs at Circus Oz, I drew an idea on a napkin for a boat-shaped object which could also be used as an acrobatic prop. The next day I went to my parents’ house and built what I thought would be a prototype but is actually the same one you see in the show more than 2 years later.
Did you have a director/outside eye/dramaturg on the project? If so who and how were they involved in the process?
Vince – We had help from a good friend of ours Josh Hoare (Cirkidz) as a provocateur during the second creation period in 2016. Good chats and good conceptual thinking. Also, some great choreographic assistance from another good friend Asher Bowen-Saunders during the same period. However, nobody directed the process but us. Video replay helped, frank and candid conversations with trusted friends helped and I think the feeling in our guts kinda pushed us along more than conscious logic with this piece.
You are addressing climate change. Can you talk on how you approached that and how it influenced the work? 
Vince – It was always a subject which was going to be difficult to tackle without coming across as preaching, pandering, simplified or obvious. We’re not scientists. (Well Rockie is technically, but not a practicing one (BSc Zoology.) If you want the science on climate change, read one of the hundreds of articles published every day across the world. So we decided to approach this on a human level, a personal level.
What is that sense of dread in the pit of your stomach when you think of the scale of the climate change problem? Our humanistic hopefulness coming to blows with this overwhelming helplessness means we often push those thoughts away. It’s kind of like contemplating death in a way, but on a much grander scale. The only difference being, there’s nothing we can do about death BUT we may be able to do something about climate change. So, all these horrible personal emotions mixed in with the larger picture of humanity and its propensity to repeat past mistakes meant that we chose to work with subtle symbolism, repetition, creeping change, tension, the feeling of temperature, clashing and power struggle… It was also our desire for the show to be hopeful because we believe there is Hope.
Rockie – When I begin to make a new work, I often start by asking myself “whats the thing in my life which is dominating my emotions right now?”; “What’s making me cry/scream/angry/laugh?” At the outset, I had begun this show contemplating the concept of biomimicry (look it up, its cool), but this very quickly evolved into considering global ecological devastation wrought by climate change and left me feeling completely overwhelmed and full of grief. The show is essentially our expression of how we stand in the midst of this grief and look for hope.
How do you think Circus as an art form can address global issues?

Vince – In some ways, this is a question that can be asked of any art form. In certain contexts, I see no difference between a handstand or backsault and a dancer’s pirouette. So how does a dance or theatre piece convey a message? In myriad ways. Generally, it’s context and delivery which makes the message. There is a huge challenge for Circus in the next period to solidify itself in methodologies already employed by theatre and dance on a wider scale than just a few companies, and for audience education and funding bodies to give more unconventional shows a platform. I’m not saying everything has to be ‘contemporary’, in fact far from it. For example, Circus Oz has been making super political work for over 35 years, Archaos the same. Acrobat continues to make incredible, interesting, dense and political work which blurs the boundaries between circus, theatre and rich spiritual experience. They all do it in different ways, just as we at Company Here and Now with Perhaps Hope chose a unique route to address a global issue. But there are definitely useful and available tools in other stage-based art forms, of which circus is under-utilising or unaware of. Circus is lucky in that it can be almost anything it wants to be.

Did you receive any funding?

Rockie – No. But many generous people supported us via a crowd-funding platform and helped get us to  Edinburgh Fringe.

How did ‘not being funded’ effect the production/creation?

Vince – It would be nice to have been given some money from someone but we didn’t need it to make the show. On the other hand, the struggles of getting a company off the ground in this artistic and political climate, as well as promoting and touring a show are immense and that is where some financial cushioning would be appreciated.

On that, what are some of the issues in keeping a small company going?

Vince – So many! I’m not a producer and I don’t consider myself to have a producer’s brain, so for me, the main challenges are administrative. I can make a show, design the props and lights, drive all night to get somewhere, be happy in transit for 40 hours, bump in and put on a good performance, but remembering peoples names is a challenge. Keeping my inbox clean is a challenge. So that’s where my conscious work lies.

Rockie – I concur. Similarly, I’d rather being training, making the work, or researching all day, diving down rabbit holes; and collaborating with other artists in design and lights and costumes; and talking tech with venues about rigging and venues; than marketing and promoting and trying to get the gigs for the work. Give me a producer to work with anyway over doing it all myself. I already wear lots of hats. And I loathe being tied to my computer punching out words (just ask Hamish!).

Who came up with the soundtrack and can you talk on the influences and choices you made?
Vince – Laurie Anderson fell into our laps via Rockie, and Laurie appears in the show multiple times. The incredible Arca arrived via my friend Bret Pfister, and Godspeed You Black Emperor is a sometimes favourite of mine. Messiaen’s ‘Quartet For The End Of Time’ is an important historical reference as well as being simply beautiful and etherial.
I did a bunch of sound design and vocal recording for the show. Some stuff was taken off cassettes we found at an op shop and then scrambled and remixed on my computer. Rockie’s mother in law appears in the show with the perfect English accent, as well as climate change poetry performed by celebrities I found on the internet.
Rockie – Originally I had planned to include live music in the show. I had secured the collaboration of jazz pianist Sam Keevers for the work and we had begun talking. But a life circumstance came up for him and he had to duck out of the project. And then yeah, as Vince said, Laurie Anderson re-entered my life, kinda just sauntered into the project and refused to leave. I bought her Anthology album “Talk Normal” and obsessed over it and was astounded at how apt her music and lyrics were for this work. So I decided recorded music was what the project was going to have after all. And then Vince brought all his experience and competency with sound engineering to the fore and mixed in his creative impulses and brought so much more than I could have hoped to the work! I love the soundtrack in this show!
(I also love when we get older audience members approach is afterwards with a glow in their eyes and tell us how much they love Laurie’s “O Superman”)
What are your top 5# tips on creating a show at the scale you did?
Vince:
1. Don’t be precious when you’re creating material
2. Think big, think small, don’t limit yourself to what you intend the outcome to be.
3. It’s easier and quicker to try things than to talk about them all day.
4. Question everything! Everything means something to the audience. Acknowledge that and let it guide your objectivity. It’s also okay to not have all the answers.
5. Don’t take everything too seriously.
Rockie: I just found this that I drafted when I began the project: 

Perhaps There Is Hope yet – a manifesto

– the process must be relaxed, un-stressful

– my adrenal glands must be normal, healthy

– my relationship takes a priority

– my health takes a priority

– i will be time efficient

– i will be organised – I will be an ant, a bee

– i will prioritise on the go, in order to be time efficient

– it will be fun making the work

– rapid and calm, not crazy town adrenal fuelled

…not sure if this was exactly achieved, but these were my goals…

Can you talk on your creative process when you are coming up with ‘routines’ to fit into the show?
Vince – Due to the unconventional nature of the show, we didn’t have one set method for making acts. We mapped out the show and remapped continuously as we made it. Some pieces of the show are acrobatic sequences we choreographed and some are are planned theatrical moments, but most came from pie-in-the-sky ideas of visions or some form of improvisation. On one hand there are moments like the spotlit puppetry scene, which came from lengthy physical improv sessions. On the other hand, Let’s build a boat! Rockie says she wants a glass tower, great!
What do you most enjoy about the show?
Vince – I love the huge gamut of people’s reactions to the work. Natano Fa’anana said the show was like a shot of Sambucca that stayed with him long after the show was finished. A wonderful woman named Helena was all teary after the show in Castlemaine last week. People connect to the show on many different levels. Some relate more to the physicality and imagery than the message. I still get a kick out of hearing the interpretations of it. As a performer, I most love the moment about two thirds of the way through the show where it truly turns dark.
Rockie – Performing it! I love performing this show. I love being on stage anyway, but this show has something special. Its a hefty show to perform, emotionally.  Its an hour of never leaving the stage, and only two of us. Its pretty physical too, especially for Vince’s role. When Casey Douglas filled in for Vince for a tour we had while Vince was healing an injury, Casey commented on the physical demand of the work.  But I do love it. And it is so very rewarding to get to witness audience response directly after the show – they often seem moved and struck and reverent and thoughtful and delighted and overwhelmed all at once. I feel very honoured and privileged to have the opportunity to communicate with people through my art form  – bodies in a room together experiencing live performed art. That is what I most enjoy!
What are your hopes for the future of the show and Company Here and Now? Where to from here?
Vince – Perhaps Hope is only 3 years old so it’s still quite young. It’s had other people perform in it so we know it has a strong identity. I’d love to see it continue to gather momentum and tour more. For the company, I’d love it to continue to make interesting and weird shows and continue to push the art form of circus both locally and abroad.

Rockie – I’d love to keep performing Perhaps Hope. I loved making the work, performing the work and I believe it is an important work. It’s had a hiatus recently while Vince and I have worked on other projects with other companies, but I’d love to see it presented again. Company Here and Now has some things sitting on the back burner, quietly simmering away. When Vince and I created the company we agreed that either one of us could initiate an idea, a project under its banner and use each other in whatever way. We agreed to keep it open so as not to restrict our possibilities. So there will be more that surfaces under this banner in the future. What this space!! 😉

(All Pics by me – Hamish McCormick Carnival Cinema)
Perhaps Hope
Winner – Best Original New Circus Award- Melbourne Fringe 2015
Total Theatre Award (UK) – nomination 2016
Greenroom Award nominations 2015
– Innovation in Contemporary Circus
 – Performer in Contemporary & Experimental Theatre
*****“a wholly mesmerising acrobatic performance” – EdFringe Review
**** “daringly original and unexpectedly moving” – The Times (UK)
**** “enchanting, entrancing and at times breath-holdingly, heart-stoppingly brilliant” – Adelaide Advertise
Rockie Stone profile headshot, Company Here And Now
Rockie Stone is a physical performer and multi-award winning contemporary theatre-maker with a drive to create art with circus bodies. As much at home handstanding on fellow acrobats or balancing on a tower of chairs as she is hanging on ropes and trapezes, she has performed with Circa and Circus Oz, directed for Slipstream Circus and Westside Circus and is co-founder, Creative Producer and Performer/maker in 3 is a Crowd (Fright or Flight) and Company Here and Now