I don't want to tell you what it is, or what it will be like. I don't want to explain, because that might ruin everything. Once I put it into words, it will slip from my grasp – I know that; I have tried before.  I will say: theatre, performance, art, story, moving, beautiful, and on their way from me to you each word will twist and crumble and break apart. So why come? Why risk your time and energy and hard-earned cash? I can only say: trust me, please. I can only say: you'll love it, it might change your life. They are not the right words.

Stand here

             on the edge

Close your eyes
            
             tight

Fall

             whole-heartedly

Scene: A run-down high street in a medium-sized, UK town: charity shops and discount stories, a recently opened cafe, and another recently closed. The sun is shining. Our attention is focused on an open door with a hand-painted sign above, which reads: Art Space, Everyone Welcome. There is a fence across the doorway, low enough to step over. The space inside is too dark to make out. A man in his 60s approaches. He walks slowly, using a stick, his shoulders a little hunched. A woman in her 20s appears in the doorway.

Woman: Welcome!

Q: What have you been trusted with?

A: The Life of the Borough.

Take these pieces of glass: cut-offs; waste; slivers of blue and yellow and green and red. Place them any which way you choose. It is the fire that will bring them together, make sense out of the fragments, create something whole and unexpected.
 

I am looking for scaffolding; the kind that can keep a person safe. It doesn’t matter what it’s made out of – love, laughter, language – I just need to know it can hold me. I am going somewhere I’ve never been before, and I'm worried I won’t be able to keep myself together without it. It’s only temporary; the scaffolding's just something I need to get started, until I know that the thing I’m building is strong enough to stand alone.
 

Before this, it was a clothes shop – too quickly abandoned – a blank white space on a corner everyone could see.

For a moment, it is new again, despite the polystyrene ceiling tiles and foot-worn floorboards; the name still there in the scraped-off vinyl half-way up the stairs.

Where the party-wear hung in glittering rows, sits a table, stacked with new canvases – a clock; an arm; a half caught memory.

Where the jumpers lay in their refolded piles, there’s a box of ferns, waiting to start a conversation about time.

You have been here before, with your money and your promises.

            this is different; we are different

Which is what you always say.

            we want to do things right

So tell me what happens when the money runs out, when you get up and leave?

            we'll make a plan, together

But the best laid plans...

            can we think about now?