Written by Kieran Burgess - www.kpburgess.com
You can react in any way you feel will help, use full vocal range and full range of movement and muscular tension - but no words.
Solo activity: close your eyes for whole task. Think of a strong emotion you have felt towards another person or object. Visualise that person/thing in front of you.
Imagine that strong emotion is a single Plague virus cell, and is growing inside your head. It grows and grows, so that you can feel it start to push your skull from the inside. The virus expands against your skull and begins to take on a life form of its own - you feel your brain matter being eaten, sucked, by this virus-creature - an intense headache. You feel it pushing against the back of your eyes. The pressure on your eyeballs is huge - they may pop out. Your eyes are glued shut but you want to rip the virus-creature out of your eye sockets. You react to this growing feeling inside you. It is now trying to find space to grow into: pushing into your nasal cavities, your throat. Does it force impulsive noises, like vomit does when it courses out of you against your will? How does the virus move? What noises does it make? As it fills your arms, your fingers, your fingernails - how does it move them? How does what remaining consciousness you have left feel about this virus-creature taking over your movement and throat? Your tongue is swollen with Plague and cannot articulate - how can you express your own conscious reaction to this primal creature inside of you? Is there a word you want to scream, but can’t quite get out? Nothing you can do or say is getting across your message to others. You cannot even express your pain? How do you use your tongue? Your vocal chords (glottis)? Your teeth? Your breath? Your lips - in order to get out your expression? Try playing with all of these one at a time, and then together. The feeling continues to grow, and pushes through your lungs, exploding against your ribcage. You feel pressure in your chest - the agony of the Plague inside trying to find room. You want to rip off your own skin, to claw at your nipples with your sharp nails, to release the pressure. There is very little room for breath, but you can still breathe - how? Show the laboured breath. The creature pushes through your stomach, and intestines, pushing up against your belly button, which pops out with the pressure against it. You try to vomit aggressively to force out the creature from your belly. Your colon is filled with the virus-creature, you are in agony as you try to defecate it out through your anus. You want to pull your faeces out in the hope that you will pull the creature out with it. You feel the Plague-creature gnawing inside your genitals, your uterus. It fills every piece of tissue and you want to tear your penis off your body to release the pressure. You feel the creature inside your vagina, and you want to rip it out, covered in menstrual blood and hurl it at the wall. Your bladder is consumed by the creature, and urine bursts through your body - you can hear it sloshing around as the emotion overwhelms every part of you. You want to urinate forcefully, to expel the creature with such force you must scream as you do, but your intense agony is sealed inside you, as though you were glued together on the outside, as your insides rot into liquid. Finally, in agony, you begin to lose consciousness. With each dimming of your vision, the pain grows stronger and you expire on this spot, on this day, face contorted in the agony you suffered until the last cell cried inside you.