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Introduction to the playscript (the playscript is by Jon Haynes and David Woods) ISBN: 9781783193448

Give Me Your Love (2017) by Ridiculusmus is,to some extent, a response to trials of MDMAassisted psychotherapy for chronic treatmentresistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),and in particular to the prospect of these trialstaking place in the UK in 2017. This article draws parallels between the phenomenologyof medical trials and performance processes.It also examines the notion of an imaginativereciprocity between performers and audienceduring the performance, in a kind of ‘trip’, thatis, the ‘flow’ conjured by the performance event.

Commentary and analysis by Richard Talbot of his edited collection of eight dialogues as part of the Jon Haynes and David Wood's reflections on the company’s creative process. The chapter predominantly focusses on the making andtouring of The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland (2014-). The sections havebeen selected because they highlight inclinations emerging in the company’s recent practice.

This 2014 article presents a context for wider discussions around researcher-participant and 'embedded research', through critical reflection on the production of a series of drawings created during the devising process for Ridiculumus’ Total Football (2012). Through a number of original diagrams, the discussion suggests that crude schema such as these could expand on dance notation practices for use in documenting the devising stages of contemporary performance. Ridiculusmus' production, a narrative of a non-sporty bureaucrat tasked with harnessing the enthusiasm of football fans in the interests of national cohesion, examines the impossibility of thorough incorporation of a national body within the Olympic mo(ve)ment. Based on an existing convention among football commentators for contextualizing and narrating team play, a series of photographs of sketches-in-process discussed here capture the marks of live notation as an urgent activity during devising. As such the reader has access to a snapshot from Ridiculusmus’ rehearsal methods and process. The paper analyses the notation devices employed in the sketches arguing that the approximate qualities of sketched notation, and its failed totality, capture the tone of comedy in this work about masculine hubris. While the sketches attempt to keep pace with the spontaneity of tactics devised by performers, the paper argues that performance systems and dance notation that have paid attention to architecture and spatial arrangement as a score do not generally notate intention or strategy. The paper presents the idea that the sketches document a multiplicity of tactics, and footballing metaphor in process. The notation can be understood both as documentation of movement and a contribution to a theatrical and scenographic discourse that is concerned with more than a simple ‘blocking.’ The paper discusses the origins of ‘self-blocking’ in this production, its relation to a priori analysis of character and to unpredictable elements of game-playing in a piece about football. The paper discusses the way in which Ridiculumus tackle the inherent rigidity of the British class system through a metaphorical critique of the ‘4 4 2’ team formation in football. With its wasteful habit of long ball passes, the formation has proven vulnerable against continental versatility, just as a bureaucratic class that resists meritocracy will not withstand more imaginative social structures elsewhere in the world.

The statement indicates the aim and design of the research project during the creation of the trilogy of plays Dialogue as the Embodiment of Love (2014-2019), by Ridiculusmus. The project examines an interdisciplinary practice-as-research dialogue between clinical therapeutic approaches to three mental health conditions and performance-making.

The summary accounts for my role as a devising collaborator with Ridiculusmus, in relation to this project. The methodology is claimed as practice-as-research and is structured around the development of three plays. Research outputs associated with these plays are listed in this document.1) The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland (2014) – investigated the impact of psychosis in family settings and the efficacy of Open Dialogue in Western Lapland as a set of principles for clinical therapy.2) Give Me Your Love (2016) – investigated PTSD amongst service veterans and clinical trials into the prescription of doses of MDMA (Ecstasy) to accompany talking therapies. 3) Die! Die! Die! Old People Die! (2018) – investigated ‘complicated grief’ and social and psychological factors surrounding the ‘disorder’.

In May 2020, David Woods and Jon Haynes, performers and artistic directors of Ridiculusmus, presented the trilogy ‘Dialogue As The Embodiment of Love’ in the form of a three-day online seminar series, via the online conference platform Teams. It featured a live online ‘directors’ commentary’, of each of the productions in the trilogy, alongside a screening of extracts on Youtube with David Woods in Melbourne and Jon Haynes in London. This is a discussion paper highlighting themes in Day 3 of the seminar seriesOn the final day of the series, Woods and Haynes discussed the content of four out of seven extracts in the above Youtube Playlist, taken from the 82 minute ‘epic’ performance of Die! Die! Die! Old People Die! (DDDOPD), the longest play in the trilogy. The item here is the documentation of the 3 day symposium. This is supporting document contains a summary list of points in the directors’ discussion around each clip. The reader will probably appreciate listening to the accounts of the creative process directly from the directors in the Vimeo seminar recording above. The video clips of the production that I edited are not available on the Vimeo link but have been released as evidence of the Trilogy format.The play is an appropriate focal point for the discussing the outcomes of trilogy as a whole, because it marks a shift in the preoccupations in the previous two works and in my commentary I argue that Ridiculusmus’ dramaturgical approach offers an important element in provoking affective responses as part of the ‘treatment’ of issues associated with death and bereavement. Please note that links to videos of performances are included with permission of Ridiculusmus Theatre Company for the purpose of research.

The Timeline includes hyperlinks to the documents, indicating key stages in Talbot’s contribution to devising, touring in performance, facilitating residencies, and curating public engagement in the process of creating the trilogy of plays Dialogue as the Embodiment of Love (2014-2019), by Ridiculusmus. The project examines an interdisciplinary practice-as-research dialogue between clinical therapeutic approaches to three mental health conditions and performance-making. The conditions are psychosis, PTSD, and ‘complicated grief’, defined in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual DSM-5 (2013) as ‘disorders’; and the process of creating, performing and disseminating a performance response to each condition is analysed through a discussion of each play in turn.

Conference Paper for Theatre and Performance Research Association Performance and the Body Working Group, Worcester, September 2015. On performance practice and research, on interactions between mental health research and the performance practices of Ridiculusmus. Drawing on my experienceas a performer with Ridiculusmus in rehearsal for the company’s 2015 production The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland. The paper analyses practices developed in dialogue with clinical-therapeutic approaches by Jaakko Sekkula during devising in Sydney Australia and Finland, and onto UK touring including the Edinburgh Festival.Links to the audio visual resources cited in the paper are pasted here for convenience:Page 2 Images: Rehearsal notesTalbot. (2020) Google Photo Album. Page 2 Salford Rehearsal ClipZarniko, K (Richard Talbot). Youtube. 2013. Ridiculusmus Residency 2.1 Accessed 14 December 2020at 11:17mins David refers to piecing together.at 12.11 mins John refers to real lifePage 4 and 5 Characters in Treatment Ridiculusmus. Vimeo Site. 2014. Treatment meeting at Hameenlinna., at 28:29 [Accessed 14 December 2020]also referred to in the paper's footnotesPage 8 The PlayscriptSee Woods and Haynes. 2015 The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland. London: Oberon (also referred to in the paper's footnotes)Page 10 extract from Opening SceneThe opening featuring the chorus (later cut) is in the published play (2015) CHORUS:We are a polyphony of voices.We are who we are becauseWe listen to all voices in the groupAnd adhere to basic principles. Tolerance of uncertainty is one.PauseA new approach to psychiatric care’s emergedIn which the basic elements of dialogue Can lead to healing or,If you don’t like that word,To positive change.What we want to do isOpen up the boundaries And integrate family perspectives Into psychotherapy.Page 10 Image: the scrambled script:Talbot. (2020) Google Photo Album.

SNP arrays are enabling tools for high-resolution studies of the genetic basis of complex traits in farmed and wild animals. Oysters are of critical importance in many regions from both an ecological and economic perspective, and oyster aquaculture forms a key component of global food security. The aim of our study was to design a combined-species, medium density SNP array for Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) and European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis), and to test the performance of this array on farmed and wild populations from multiple locations, with a focus on European populations. SNP discovery was carried out by whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of pooled genomic DNA samples from eight C. gigas populations, and restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RAD-Seq) of 11 geographically diverse O. edulis populations. Nearly 12 million candidate SNPs were discovered and filtered based on several criteria, including preference for SNPs segregating in multiple populations and SNPs with monomorphic flanking regions. An Affymetrix Axiom Custom Array was created and tested on a diverse set of samples (n = 219) showing ~27 K high quality SNPs for C. gigas and ~11 K high quality SNPs for O. edulis segregating in these populations. A high proportion of SNPs were segregating in each of the populations, and the array was used to detect population structure and levels of linkage disequilibrium (LD). Further testing of the array on three C. gigas nuclear families (n = 165) revealed that the array can be used to clearly distinguish between both families based on identity-by-state (IBS) clustering parental assignment software. This medium density, combinedspecies array will be publicly available through Affymetrix, and will be applied for genome-wide association and evolutionary genetic studies, and for genomic selection in oyster breeding programs.