A Creative Response to 'Manage Your Expectations'

I recently went to a performance of 'Manage Your Expectations', a live-performance work by Eliza Sanders that draws on dance and theatre to unpack the nature of informed consent.

Below is my response to the work.

I am going to start at the beginning. 

As in, the beginning of my response to something I have seen. 

It was Friday. A Friday not the Friday.

As in the one mentioned in a different show.

It was a performance, the thing I saw.

One that indeed took place on a Friday and that I will now give context to.

I was tired and my brain was buzzing, largely because I had been singing, but also because I am a generally anxious sort of person.

That is all by the by and I let that go while sitting in my seat. 

The performer appeared, her name is Eliza.

She doesn’t make that explicit, it’s just something I know because we are actually friends. 

She begins to talk to us, the audience.

Sometimes she talks at us, but mostly to and with us, and she tells us what is about to happen. 

She is about to begin.

As in, begin the show, which has in fact already begun, but it turns out that requires some context. 

The performance will contain some themes, themes that may cause distress.

That is to say may, as in potential, not may as in might. 

For this is our opportunity, as responsible audience members, to manage our expectations of what is to come.

And by manage, I mean consent to experience, rather than tame.

There will be themes of abortion, of colonialism (the land and the mind), of other things I can no longer recall because there are so many themes and I’ve kind of lost track.

There will be nudity. Yes, I remember now.

And discussion of heartbreak. 

There will be ancestors.

And a lover.

There will be a camera and improvised movement.

There will be a camera capturing improvised movement. 

There is an opportunity for me to imagine that, as in what has been described, and to decide if I want to stay and engage or leave and wonder what was.

Eliza acknowledges, my imagination might be poor. And in that case, perhaps I might want to stay, to see how her actual performance measures up.

Or, she continues, my imagination might be incredible and in that case, she won’t be held accountable for not meeting my expectations, imagined or otherwise. 

She may, as in allowed (not as in month), do what she has described.

She may, as in might, do something slightly different.

Does anyone want to leave? Now is the time. 

She won’t be offended. Unless you want her to be, because then she definitely could.

Be offended. 

Or not.

But this is your window: seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. 

No?

We all stay.

And then it begins. 

Mostly as described, as imagined, but more often, better, more fantastical, whimsical, than perhaps I had first considered. 

The body moves. Up and down, side to side. Stretching, reaching, undulating.

Sometimes clothed.

Sometimes unclothed.

Clay folds like flesh. 

Flesh moves like clay, heavy and sticky with sweat.

The ancestors are swept up, dragged into another time, another place.

Everybody's got to live. 

Everybody’s got to die.

But perhaps not today.

Because today, this performance can only end if we choose it to. 

We, the audience, hold that power and it is awesome.

As in incredible and impressive.

Someone, anyone, must penetrate the barrier between worlds, to make contact with the performer. 

That is to say, to embrace them, both as a body and as a vessel of infinite potential. 

To meet that expectation, everything must in fact end. 

And perhaps that moment is now. 

Manage Your Expectations
by Eliza Sanders, a House of Sand Production

Developed with support from QL2 Dance, Belco Arts, Movement Arts Practice, and Wellesley Studios.

Information and tickets visit House of Sand.