Growing Pains (deeply personal, for your eyes only)

Dear Reader,

I apologize if this is not what you expected.

I didn't want to do a solo show. I never expected I'd have to perform. I am a professionally trained playwright and dramaturge, who looked to further her practice towards theatre directing and devising. My journey as a student on this course took many unexpected turns. It was difficult, challenging, and exhausting, albeit rewarding. I felt myself further from my comfort zone than I'd ever been before throughout the year. I understand that was the point of the whole experience. Discomfort was something I expected. But it is hard to keep yourself lucid and rational when in immediate stress.

It was predictable, but, it was still painful to admit: during the second term, I was extremely unsure if the decision to put my life and career on hold for a year to go through such a programme was worth it. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was. Was it that I am not very good at collaborative devising? My experience prior to the course says otherwise. Was it something in the air? The stars’ alignment? It will take a while for me to fully understand what exactly went down during my time in London.

At some point during the dreaded practices module, I became tired. I was ready to be a part of any other sustained independent project, ready to take a passive role, to observe and do what I’m told, if my feedback or input was unnecessary, whatever, I just didn’t want to do this thing alone. In the end – no one wanted to work with me. By the time we were back from spring break, everyone was grouped up, or certain they were doing a solo project. I asked to be a partner to someone, or a part of a group, so I ended up in a very tricky position – I was rejected several times.

By the course’s end, this turned out to be a good thing, because I am content with what I devised. I expanded my practice. I grew up. But it hurt. And it hurt bad. But all growing up is followed with growing pains. That’s just how it is.

Hands need to keep busy

I did most of the devising alone. While others were rehearsing, I was hiding away in the small room up on Child’s Hill, completely engulfed in Dunja's story, and trying to be creative about it. While others were collaborating, worrying, hurting, thinking with their peers, I was closed off thinking, worrying, hurting alone. But this aloneness makes sense now, when I observe the story again and see how the loneliness of my protagonist I could only truly embody while being lonely myself. The shows outcome is the anullment of the loneliness, both mine and Dunja's. This is how it was meant to be...

The world right now is not a very welcoming place. Not the UK. Not the planet. Here I am making art in times of a boradcasted, live-streamed genocide. The wounds never get to truly heal. Mother is crying again. I write poems in between passages of the show script. And I make them disappear again. One click of a delete button. There is healing in that simple act.

I had struggle sleeping, taking care of myself, I was overeating, voiding myself of all the progress I’d made into achieving a healthier body. I knew everyone I loved was facing the same pain. We’d share, In talks. I used to feel my hands were tied but there they were, every day making something. Writing. Reading. Embodying up to that point foreign concepts such as the responsible hearer, the feminist ear. The only realization that helped me come to terms with the oxymoron: I am in a state of comfortable discomfort. I still have agency. I can still try and do my part. However small it is. I am grateful.

An incredibly sensitive instrument; A desperately lonely planet

I was uncovering my own archive of memories, losses, trying to find the reason why am I so sensitive. Not weak. But sensitive. In the end, I am immensely grateful about it. I came back to my favourite quote from a favourite videogame.

• I ‘m glad to be me – an incredibly sensitive instrument.

Thankfully, I had plenty of support from family and friends back home, and a few of my peers were there occasionally to vent to, like I was there for them. I felt I could turn to the tutors should things take a turn for the worse.

Most of the time, I was crying in my bed. I used to laugh at myself during times like these. But this whole experience, the show, the course, the scholarship… A year away… It finally allowed me to have enough distance from the me that self-soothes with self-deprecating humour. The me that laughs in the eyes of my own sensitivity. I learned to embrace and love the parts of me that occasionally get stuck on a sort of a lonely planet.

My vulnerability is a gift. My moments of isolation are self-inflicted. I need them for perspective. I need them for when only I am as isolated as I was am I truly free from the one Emina that tries to forcibly make jokes to hide and shield the parts where my bones are sticking out and I am bleeding.

I am finally free to accept this part of me. This part of the journey was probably the most rewarding for me personally, as an artist.

This happened thanks to all the soliloquys I’d written in the script, and then later removed. I needed to turn those insecurities into palpable objects, as sticky with affect as they get, bordering the egotistical. In ridding the show of them, I became truly free. And this is something I would recommend any artist do.

I might be a bit of a late bloomer, but I am happy I had the opportunity to reach this stage.

I'm at the end of a very narrow tunnel

I guess it might be superfluous to say how each process is unique. The methodology for devising is there. I need to find adequate neologisms in Bosnian to stand for “taskifying” archives. But it is there now. The show is in talks to transition and have a Bosnian premiere. Dunja’s story was shared. It is as happy and as one could get.

And I feel like I reached the end of a narrow tunnel. I exited it and am allowing myself the time to breathe before I dive in again.

Dunja regularly writes me good morning messages. The ones people of a certain age love the most, it seems. Something like this:

I find it brilliant.

And it was all worth it.

Don't be a stranger!

Love, Emki