Not Nothing
Daisy belatedly reflects on 2020, our Not Nothing year.
What with one thing and another (lockdown #3, homeschooling, Cultural Recovery Fund applications) there hasn’t been much time for the reflections, and thank you’s and self congratulations that are customary when one year ends and a new one begins. And now January is already over, we’re well into February and that moment has passed. I’ve just realised that it’s over a year since I last sat in an auditorium for a live performance and I feel sad and angry instead of grateful and reflective.
But anyway…
As a Christmas present I bought the team (which is, in fact, just 4 of us) a set of pencils and on the pencils are printed words.
These words are the threads – the jokes, the points of connection and frustration, the thrills, the promises and the disappointments – that we wove together over a strange and impossible year. Some of the pencils mark the things we didn’t do: we couldn’t meet in person very much but, like clockwork, we gathered on Zoom every Monday at 12.30 to check-in, to tease and cajole and occasionally to rage and shout and cry. Despite our cautious optimism we didn’t get to present any shows and the disappointment of lockdowns and cancelled plans was painful and debilitating. But mostly they mark the things we did do: we were generous with our time and our care for the people we were able to work with; we were resilient and kept on trying despite the set backs; we took time to think and understand more clearly what our response should be to the events of 2020; we made a film that lots of people said nice things about and more than 6.5K people saw; we carried on making a show that we really believe in and that we hope will find its way onto a stage in the not too distant future; we ate pizza and drank beer at sunset after a precious ‘IRL’ team meeting; we hosted strange socially distanced rehearsals and workshops and loved the feeling of being ‘back in the room’ again; and we acknowledged, almost every day, how lucky we were to be able to carry on working while friends and colleagues reeled with the collapse of our sector.
So this is ‘2020, the inside story’ captured on a set of pencils (pastel coloured because I think they’re meant to be made as wedding favours).
Ben tells a story about how one weekend he became frustrated by his children who he couldn’t get out of the house. ‘You can’t lie around here doing nothing all day!’ he yelled. An hour or so later, having failed to get them to move, he came back to find a small, perfect, beautiful, hand felted rabbit on the kitchen table. Underneath it was a card with just two words written on it in an indignant teenage scrawl. ‘NOT NOTHING’ it read.
As it turns out Not Nothing is a very useful expression and we use it all the time now. It should really be written on the case that holds the pencils. I think it expresses something about the way Lost Dog works – hopeful but realistic, truthful and spare, grateful, aspirational and determined. In the end 2020 wasn’t much but it was ‘Not Nothing’.
So this Blog is dedicated to everyone who helped us through 2020 and made it ‘Not Nothing’.
They are:
Solène Weinachter
Kip Johnson
Dave Sherman
Eddie Nixon
Christina Elliott
Julia Carruthers
Claire Smith
Ralph Lister
Raquel Meseguer
Tanya Stephenson
Theo Inart
Phil Hulford
Valentina Formenti
Nina Morgane
Chris Akril
Anna Finkel
Mike & Caroline Howes
Claire Verlet
Kris Nelson
Ellie Douglas-Allan
Bob Lockyer
Hilary Lane
Emily Gray
Laura Arends
Alvin Ittoo
Alison De Zoete
David Lewis
Emily Gorrod-Smith
Emily Thommes
Rachel Bunce
Rita Chowdhury
Jorge Crecis
Melanie Precious
Gavin Stride
Laura Woodward
Fiona Baxter
Debs Butler
Leila Jones
Nikki Rummer
Wendy Martin
Tilly Lee-Kronnick
And everyone else who responded kindly to emails, said nice things on social media or gave us a reason to smile.