Off to Another Adventure

This is a continuation of "Going with the Flow" — part of an ongoing series about finding my way as an artist.

When I first came to Hamburg, I was still very invested in the Lecoq approach, and at the time I would have loved to meet people with the same background. Funnily enough, I just met a Chilean artist with a Lecoq background too, at a theatre workshop here in Lagos — someone equally keen on meeting others who'd done the same training.

Here's the thing: some people invest themselves in one approach and commit their whole lives to it.

That's a beautiful thing — but it's not me. I love diving deeper into an approach like Lecoq, giving it everything I have for a while, and then gently veering off again, taking some core principles with me — creating from instinct, responding to an impulse, in this case. This is how I've built my toolbox over the years: my own Anja thing, I guess.

The disadvantage is, you never quite belong to a specific group. By the time they find you, or you find them, you're already off to another adventure.

My next adventure happened to be Corinna — not only a director at the renowned Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, but someone who also felt the urge to experiment more. She had a call-out for actors interested in rehearsing with the Six Viewpoints, using the Enneagram to create characters (look it up if you don't know what it is).

So, of course, I was in, and I loved it. The approach was right up my street — improvising on space, shape, time, story, emotion, movement.

It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately, we never brought it to a stage where we could perform it. Corinna didn't feel quite confident enough with it. Still, it spurred my love and curiosity for this particular approach — born in dance, adopted by theatre too. Once more, a crossover, the kind you so often find in the physical theatre space.