MACA WORKSHOP
DOCUMENTING RACHEL RIMMER’S “AN ENCOUNTER WITH A STRANGER”

The section of the piece I would like to focus on will be called, in short, “HELLO DAD?”

Rachel Rimmer took us along the small nature preserve in Crewe on what was turning into a showery day. As the spits gathered on the fringe of the hood, that hid my face from the ducks attempting to prove their tiny little manhood, I remained warm physically. There is something about a hood; especially on a large coat you feel your grandmother would wear, hence the purpose of its purchase, that makes you feel you’re not as present in what it beyond the fluff around you. Like you have your own little soundscape, bubbling your face from actually acknowledging fully, what you’re seeing and hearing. She asks us one at a time to follow her. She takes me, just out of earshot of the others. I don’t think my hood will assist me now, it’s just me, Rimmer, and a little pink, I think, phone.
“DAD” love that accent. “UMN, THIS IS HANNAH, DO YOU FANCY A LITTLE CHAT?” she passes the phone to me, I take it, amused at the gesture in the passing of a dad, and put it to my ear. “OK HANNAH, JUST WONDER DOWN THERE AND STOP IF YOU FEEL CONFORTABLE, OR….” She goes on… I put one foot in the direction of my wander and other seems to follow.
“HELLO?”
“HELLO”
“HAS RACHEL LET YOU KNOW SHE’D CALL?”
“NO, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO SAY?”
“UMN, NOT REALLY” I stop walking. I can see the side of a disgusting building, disgusting as in grey and made of plastic not craft or skill. There is a fence in front of me I think it is barbed wire. And trees to enclose the clearing that is fenced off before me.
“OK THEN, WHAT CAN YOU SEE?”
“SOME RED BERRIES. AND THE RAIN IS CUTTING ACROSS THE CLEARING DIAGONALLY. FROM MY RIGHT UP HIGHT TO MY LEFT.”
“WHAT PLANT IS IT DO YOU KNOW?”
“NO I DON’T SORY,UMN, I THINK IM GOING TO GO BACK NOW”
“OK THEN, WELL HOW DO YOU KNOW RACHEL? ARE YOU ON THE SAME COURSE?”
“YES WE ARE NOW, WEVE WORKED TOGETHER BEFORE, AND NOW WE HAVE MORE TIME WHICH IS NICE.” I begin to walk back to Rachel. The time seemed right to.
“YES THAT IS, ARE YOU ENJOYING THE COURSE?”
“YEAH, ITS INTERESTING, LOTS TO THINK ABOUT AND YOU ARE ALLOWED TO ASK QUESTIONS”
“THAT’S GOOD, WELL THEN, WHERE ARE YOU NOW?”
“IM GOING TO GIVE YOU BACK TO RACHEL, THANKS FOR THE CHAT. HAVE A GOOD DAY”
“NICE TO MEET YOU”
“AND YOU”
“HELLO DAD? OK THANKS HANNAH IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEND ANOTHER ONE DOWN…”
I walk back to the others. Feeling that something has changed.
What?
What?
I think over while the others proclaim I have a face like i've just been to see Santa Claus. And I think, yes, that’s right. I’ve just met with someone I know to be a stranger, we have never stood face to face, we have never exchanged a handshake, or chatted about how we were acquainted, but I knew him. Somehow I knew this man.

We had, neither of us, any idea how the other might look, or smell. But we were connected. So very connected. What was this connection? I felt like I had known this man, well, this voice, a little, after I passed the phone back to Rimmer. We, Rimmer’s dad and I we tied with our unknowing, making us not so strange to one another but the piece we were enclosed within. We shared the experience, depending on the other for some kind of reassurance that what we were doing was in fact, what we were supposed to be doing. The chat itself, about the chat that was intended to happen, was in itself, a conversation that created direct correlations between the voice in the little pink phone, with my own voice that circled around my fluff rimmed hood. We, “DAD” and I, were united by the lack of our connection, giving us a connection in itself. We were not strangers meeting anymore. We were explorers, playing within the mindfield of the text we were BOTH part of.

Having passed the phone to another I realised something about the man had stirred me greatly. I asked myself if it were the tone that made me feel relaxed, that I was in fact, doing what I should be. The gruff of the voice that said oak to me.
Years of warmth.
There was support there also for the task his daughter was playing with.
Respect for it also.
No ridicule.
The inflection of his voice made clear that there was understanding for the sanctity of the ‘unknowing’ within the task.
Its ok, its ok its ok. Its ok.

Who now then, was the stranger of the piece? Was it I? When I knew this voice, what it represented and how it spoke how could he be a stranger to me? The relationship of Rimmer and “DAD” meant that they were, after all related. With this in mind, I questioned that it was not my meeting of a stranger, but the strangers meeting of me. The stranger of the piece was me. At this point anyway.

As more visitors experienced the little pink phone and the “DAD” voice, “DAD” must have become more and more accustomed to the task at hand. I should, imagine, that the conversation was more subject based with the other students, as both parties had some idea of what was to come. I feel, an experience, such as I had with the “DAD” was completely improvised, perfect, caught in the moments purest form, and paralleled from both parties. As true improvisation, in any form, if I may be as bold as to claim, should be.

The section “HELLO DAD?” of Rimmer’s “an encounter with a stranger”, for me presented itself with many layers. The one I feel I have most identified with here is the journey of a thought within a piece and how it can change its own direction throughout the piece.
How the “stranger” within the piece changed from the piece itself at the beginning. Then the meeting of two strangers “DAD” and I, as we tentatively set sale amongst the piece. The area where the stranger was me outside the relationship of Rimmer and “DAD”, then to the other guests encountering themselves as strangers within the piece as “DAD” became the piece itself and then finally, and this has just come to be as I write this, Rimmer asked “was that ok?” as she took the phone from my slightly colder phone hand, suggesting that for the entirety of the piece she was unknown, on the outside, she, the maker, had not experienced this multi layering as I had. Which leads me also to ask if any of the guests had experienced the piece as I had? And then I question if each encounter was the stranger itself. As the piece accumulated it lost its “strangerness”, however it did accumulate into something new each time, making each of the past participants strangers to the new growing of the piece.

I question on and on….

The piece, and section called “HELLO DAD?” for me, was one of those moments that take you off guard, it spoke through the other moments in Rimmer's “an encounter with a stranger”. Whether for its simplicity in its making, or its complexity in it’s diagnosing, it still, I am very happy to say, is circling around my fluffy hood. I would like to quote here the film AMERICAN BEAUTY. And especially the “bag scene” in which he captures something that, for him, reaffirms his faith in the beauty capturing. This piece, for me, allowed me to encounter a something that reaffirmed my faith in encountering something, and for this, I would personally like to thank Rimmer. Cheers.