An Extract from FORGE

Hi folks. I was due to present a work in progress version of FORGE in March 2020.
Thanks to everyone who was hoping to come. Here’s an extract of text from the work.

In the original version of this show, there is a welder with me. She’s just in there. Working. Mask, gloves, apron, boots, MIG welder machine – it’s an R-Tech 180 Portable Inverter Welder, 240 v.  In the interests of safety, yours, this building’s, the future of your eyes, tonight it’s a replica. Tonight it’s an atomic 3000 strobe and unique 2.1 hazer. So, exactly like the original with a few key changes…

The original welder, the person, is called Megan. She lives in Austin, Texas.

  Oh my good look at her arms. Look at them.

The first thing I notice when I see her is her smashed front tooth and she’s heavy. Hefty. She wears caps. She wears shorts. She wears long socks and floral print shirts. She has a proper jaw line and proper thighs and a truck. And a dog that turns out not to be hers but is a proper, hefty dog shaped dog.

 When she says she learnt to weld from her aunt and her dad and her brothers and I say oh so you came from a family of welders she tips her head to one side on her proper neck and she rolling looks at me from under the peak and she says ‘from a family of welders, what are you, a fucking poet? From a family of poor people who needed to know how to fix their own shit.’

She takes up all the space her body takes up. 
She tells me the most important thing is to be capable.
Capable shoulder breadth. 
Capable hand span.
Capable maximum lift.

 It is physical, it is breathing and moving, it is focused.

 When you do it right it sounds like bacon frying she says.

 That’s how you know they didn’t do the research properly for Flashdance. The welding sounded all wrong. Jennifer Beals’ technique is actually not bad, she learnt to weld for the part. And she does look very hot in the outfit.

Anyway, welding, she says, It’s taking two things and making them one thing over and over. It’s a few seconds again and again. The stitching of short numbers of seconds until a new structure emerges and you aren’t focused on the stitching anymore, but the whole.