Vivienne Franzmann on seeing things from different perspectives: ‘Other people’s realities exist as well as our own’
A simple coffee shop disagreement provided the spark for Anatomy Of Survival, a new dance show that asks us to consider the existence of other people’s realities. Kelly Apter discovers how its creators plan to take us inside our own nervous systems
Despite the old adage, there aren’t really two sides to every story. As anyone foolish enough to scroll beneath a news article or social media post knows all too well, there are many, many more. It’s this central premise, that one event can be viewed multiple ways, which has given rise to Anatomy Of Survival, a thought-provoking, emotive and, dare we say, educational piece of dance theatre.
Co-created by playwright Vivienne Franzmann and choreographer Frauke Requardt, the work was born out of an exchange Franzmann witnessed while queueing for coffee. A misunderstanding between another customer and the barista led to the former having a very public meltdown. A few days later, Franzmann and Requardt started work on an as yet undecided project, and the anecdote was relayed.
‘I told Frauke about the woman having a real go at the person serving her,’ recalls Franzmann, ‘and we both had totally different perspectives on it. Frauke is a somatic psychotherapist as well as a choreographer and was already really interested in the nervous system. Clearly the woman I’d seen was experiencing a dysregulated moment and we both thought this could turn into something.’ Franzmann went away and wrote over 40 possible eyewitness accounts of the coffee shop event (since whittled down to 22), some to be portrayed via dance and movement, some through text. All with the intent of showing just how varied our responses can be.
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‘Often we can’t accept someone else’s viewpoint because we’re so fixed on our own reality,’ says Franzmann, ‘and I think that’s something that isn’t often acknowledged. Everything that’s happened to us, our histories, our traumas, our parents, our family, all of that adds up to how we experience the world. None of us can experience it in the same way, because we’re all completely unique. And that felt like an interesting thing to explore, the idea that other people’s realities exist as well as our own.’
Featuring two dancers, an actor and a drummer, Anatomy Of Survival takes a fascinating deep dive into our nervous systems. To that end, psychotherapist Frank Bock was brought in to teach everyone the neuroscience behind how our brains function during times of stress. Much of which Franzmann used for the opening salvo (a short lesson in the nervous system which she describes as ‘fun, offbeat and interesting’), so we’re ‘preloaded’ with that information before the show moves into the coffee shop debacle.
That such a seemingly innocuous act, walking into a café, should lead to all this seems serendipitous. But as Franzmann notes, whether she knew it or not, her own brain was on the lookout. ‘When you’re a writer, things ping around you all the time,’ she says. ‘If you’re about to start a creative project, then your antenna is up. So you’re always stumbling across things that might work, it’s just a matter of whether it comes to fruition. We were looking for something where text and dance could sit together in a way that wasn’t jarring, and this felt like such an interesting idea to pursue, the ancient system inside of us that we’re all still relying on to help us survive.’
Anatomy Of Survival, Assembly Dance Base, 25–29 August, 7.45pm.