Jenifer Toksvig

Arcola Theatre, London E8

020 7503 1646

Friday Aug 28th with composer Steve Edis

Saturday Aug 29th with composer Harvey Brough

featuring some very fine actors including:
Nigel Richards, Matthew Woodyat and Emma Manton

The Fountain of Love (above) was painted by Jean-Honore Fragonard. It contains a classic example of a pentimento: the ghost of a previous choice made by the artist over which he then painted when he changed his mind during the creative process. With age, the covering paint thins to a transparency that allows his first thought to show through.

The word derives from the Italian pentirsi, meaning 'to repent'.

In this particular painting, a man and a woman race eagerly towards the Fountain of Love. Fragonard's first thought was to have the man glancing back at the woman. During the creative process, he changed his mind and re-painted the man's face turned towards the fountain, like that of his lover.

This pentimento shows the ghost of the previous face, and allows the audience to view both the creative process and the finished work of art simultaneously. We would like to create such a simultaneous experience on stage, using this painting and these people as our source material. (On our second evening, we'll be using another painting that contains a pentimento.)

A writer and a composer will work with three actors, who will eventually play Fragonard and the two characters in his painting. As he imagines them, as he creates the painting and we see him go through the process of changing his mind, we will go through the writing process and create a short piece of musical theatre from scratch, in front of the audience. Live.

This is not work devised by the actors. This is the writing process, and it's the initial handing over of new material to actors, and it's the first showing of new work to an audience, all happening somewhat simultaneously.

The audience will probably be asked to participate in some way, even if that's just to put the kettle on. Because we want you to feel like you're in a living room, watching us work as we do every day. (If my mother calls, you can answer the phone for me and tell her that I'm a bit busy.)

And eventually, after our own creative choices in which we change our minds, we'll all have a finished product: a piece of music theatre, maybe twenty minutes long, maybe ten, but maybe only one minute long. However long it lasts, we won't be able to watch it without remembering the work that went into it. We will see the depth of all those layers of process, and the whole evening will literally have been The Work of Art.