“The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

A quote I came across that made me think of Shortcuts, as we abandon the known the for the unknown.

Frankenstein 12 February

I am in rehearsal late today, because of work. And the weather makes me want nothing but to curl up in my bed with a book and a gallon of hot tea.

Grab Bag:

4 groups of 2. 10 minutes. 2 minutes of which can be talking. Create a wordless scene that incorporates all 5 of the verbs given. Could be very narrative.

I am charmed by these actors. And I like it when they have a good time.

I have been thinking about worlds recently (too many fantasy novels) and I have been thinking about the Romantic world. The environment of natural forces that shape and inspire and pacify and control the inhabitants of the world, at least according to the Romantics. The vast landscapes that terrify and inspire simultaneously. I wonder what thinking about the world in which Frankenstein takes place does to open up a reaction to the piece itself. How does the world of technology (and the article talks about that) open us up to experiencing our lives differently.

There is a lot of running and carrying and leaping and laughing. I am delighted to see that. Joy in their hearts.

Group One:

5 verbs: instruct, surprise, kiss, squeeze, kick.

Matrix moment, giggles, kissing, loving, resting, embrace.

Group Two:

5 verbs: invite, avoid, dance, snatch, catch

Stomping, tapping, beckoning, ignoring, running, leaping, dancing, spinning, evading, playing, snapping, dancing, teasing, watching, comforting.

Group Three:

5 verbs: appear, follow, tug, bow, fix.

Sighing, pausing, shaping, moving, smelling, blessing, communing, breathing, awakening, holding, embracing, teaching, running, leading, joining, mimicking, stretching, stuttering, lifting, perfecting, resisting, collapsing, mourning.

Group Four:

5 verbs: run off, prepare, grip, carry, balance.

Waiting, circling, cranking, twisting, bending, adjusting, starting, scolding, admonishing, soothing, carrying, journeying, collapsing, straightening, molding, waving, stretching, walking.

Everyone choose a color – red, blue, green (not the same color as your partner).

Blue: Victor

Red: Creature

Green: Elizabeth

Go back through your scene and now you are these characters in the exact scene – might change it a little, might not change at all. Think about the relationship of characters in the book and how does that change things. Three minutes. Same action, relationship informs how the action is carried out.

Group One:

Victor and the Creation

Accidental death of a playfellow. How terribly, horribly sad

Group Two:

The Creation and Elizabeth

Group Three:

Victor and Elizabeth

The one thing these groups, thus far, seem to have in common is desperation. I love this sense of urgency – and I love that urgency is what they feel in this room and about this book. This urgent, intimate connection – the need for it, the burning for it…there is so much immediacy and honesty. It feels very real. Very, very real. This group three redo was unbelievably moving.

Group Four:

Elizabeth and Victor

Wow. Wow. Sexist and hilariously fabulous. Love.

Thinking about concentrating on these three characters. Relationships to each other. Idea of having an action that’s repeated, or a series of actions, repeated by different characters – action stays the same but the relationship changes, and how it’s performed changes depending on who’s doing it. Seeing it in different ways. Homework for Sunday – spirit of Valentine’s Day. Cupcakes from Jessica! In the spirit of V-Day, using character, write a love letter to your partner. Victor to Creation, etc. If it’s the Creation, is it before or after he gains knowledge – your choice. It has to be words, but choose a point in the narrative. After her death? Love letters from beyond – printed out, any kind of valentine. I love you…rawwwwwwr. Be creative – in letter form, put it in an envelope.

Shapes in slow motion. Travel your shape. No melting – popping. Line moves as one. When you get to the end, turn (corkscrew – against resistance) and change your shape as you turn and then head back.

Valentine’s Monster Bash on Sunday. Love it.

TITUS 8 February

8 February 2010

I liked so much the beginning of the fable, it had a sound like a heartbeat – war, Titus – when finding the rhythm of the play, it doesn’t really have a spasm, and then it speeds up, and then it sort of explodes. Sounds like a heartbeat.

Issues of gender:
All of a sudden I’m so charged – I never saw this play ever in terms of gender roles – all of sudden it is all I’m thinking of. Lavinia, who in Tamora’s words, has no life, but continues to assert herself – illuminates the boundary of war. Lavinia is both alive and dead, an object and a subject. Problem with Shakespeare’s young ingénue roles – part of me is thinking that Lavinia isn’t shutting down from life, but because at what point can we as humans handle a level of this brutality. I’ve begun to look at Lavinia not as a weak woman, who is so often pushed aside, but because she’s the model jewel of Rome – it doesn’t happen because of her woman, but because she is a human. Disney – beautiful females – Tamora is very beautiful. We’re talking about gender roles in plays and society and male privilege and male hegemony and men as dominant; interesting that Tamora is taking matters into her own hands and ruining that theory that men always make the rules. At what point – Amazonian cultures and indigenous cultures as matriarchal – at what point and in what delineation did it become patriarchal? Used to be an even playing ground and at what point did men begin to oppress women and women allow themselves to be oppressed – patriarchal Rome and matriarchal Goths – it’s not about a woman, it’s about a person, it’s about gender because it’s not – no matter what, even playing ground – Lavinia is an image of purity and innocence that is destroyed – it was played by a boy – more about every person’s capacity to be this base and vile and a desire for vengeance. I think it’s more about commonality. Violence is the great equalizer. Violence enacted upon you. At the same time, Lavinia is violated in a way that no one else is in the show because she’s raped, and that is driven by gender. If a boy were to get sodomized, it would be the same – but in this show, a woman is raped. So within the rules – raped from the perspective of matriarchal society – because of Tamora. I don’t know what that says. Tamora says go rape Lavinia – would I deprive my sons of this great gift. It’s as close as you can get to violence between women.

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN. Decent movie. Woman who had been tortured and raped for a long time and all of a sudden she is living in this house somewhere (on a cliff?) and someone’s car breaks down and she is convinced that he was her torturer and she has to figure out how to get back at him and she is trying to figure out how she can rape him because she wants to enact the same torture. How do I rape you? Broomstick, etc. Something that is really fascinating and horrifying and it’s a really interesting question – it has to be gender-based because men rape. And not that women don’t molest, but there’s an inherent difference. But if you were to try to think about this as a commonality, you have to show that there’s no difference in this violent, visceral part of you. This bond between women should be considered more sacred, but there is nothing sacred. When Lavinia appeals to Tamora, it feels like so much more of a betrayal because they should have a moment of recognition. There is no difference between the animalistic brutality of gender roles, but our demonstration of sacrifice indicated something different. The hunt was so important to the men. It may look nicer when it’s females. Epiphany – roofing. Had a nail gun with all this power and pressure piercing the wood and wasn’t even thinking about anything. He said to do it and I went and did it – I knew exactly what to do, I didn’t question – you’re piercing the wood and pinning it down – not that visceral, but it was a little…I took a break just to prove that I wasn’t.

Dexter: really interesting – the caliber of ritual is really interesting in that show, it’s a heightened ritual, piece-by-piece, violating the ritual deserves mention, when the ritual isn’t followed, the world goes into chaos, watch the show if you have not – even if just for this project. The entire show talks about how he doesn’t have feelings, and he shows over and over that he does – how close can I get to what I do and then have to back away? Interesting and appropriate for this project. When they’re raping Lavinia and cutting her hands and her tongue – could it be like they’re teasing her? Sex is violence accepted. Maybe when they’re raping her and hewing her limbs, are they sexually teasing her – is that foreplay? Or not? At what point do they do these things – what is the order? It changes the meaning. What is the order – would she want her tongue and hands depending on what they do to her? We should explore it – later. No rape improves yet. We have to enact something to represent that. Markus explains and fetishizes it, but I think we have to do something and show something. That is the thing that we come back to the most – the event that we hit and talk about the most. It’s the most important thing to us right now – this audience in this time.

Circle clapping – one thing we will continue to develop is this tribal, circle feel – how do we communicate as a circle. Communication – memory – what is the next step in the ritual – how does the rhythm work – the power of the clapping together. The way it sounds is sort of extraordinary. Echoes and moves and feels. Last two positions are so difficult because you count and don’t feel it in your bodies in the same way. Might be so interesting to do with closed eyes – can you feel the rhythm in your body and the group?

First exercise today is: two groups – find the cyclical nature of pleading, sacrifice, swearing revenge, plead-sacrifice-swear. Circle of revenge is the same as the circle of revolution. Happens throughout the show. We are not necessarily looking for characters in the show. “The game begins.” Give some time – work out what the plead/sacrifice/swear revenge game is. That’s all we’re doing now – it doesn’t have to be a game like Red Rover, but what I mean by game – what does Kris mean – that is what we’re figuring out – a game the way that clapping is a game. What I mean by game is that it has to be ritualized. Has to have that quality about it. What is the back-and-forth ritual? You’re in teams. Ultimately within the context – Tamora says don’t kill my son, sacrifice the son, Tamora swears revenge; Titus pleads, sacrifice, Titus swears revenge. Playing around. Start a dialogue – ten minutes. Don’t be afraid to make a circle.

Repeating the same motion, touching out and switching places. I immediately go back to the last rehearsal and the pile of bodies – perhaps we stay – and everyone dies until there is only one person left. AH – they are going there. Maybe. Put it in your bodies – like it. Constant moving – yes. In two circles. Sacrifice and revenge as different motions – what is the difference between swearing and revenging – the words versus the action. The end of the cycle? Can you? Interesting for it to reverse, yea? Like come back up out of the pile. I am intrigued. A sort of universal clear notion of what pleading looks like – an archetypal call-back, perhaps? Is revenge the start of the cycle? Or is ritual the start of the cycle? What is the origination of the game – let it begin, but is it game for game’s sake? Is it within us always already. Two gears constantly in motion – this is kind of brills. Let’s make a gear – let’s make a deal. Everything makes me think of Titus in this moment. Now someone just grabs someone for revenge. The game doesn’t start – what’s the action that makes the pleading happen – it’s when the two sides collide. What needs to signify the start – collision of gears. What if it were clapping? Smacking into each other. The dead stay dead.
Move mechanically – robot lawyer – every time someone dies make a step forward. Every time someone dies – get in a line. A line ready to meet and attack and fall. I don’t know if I get the difference in having a half a gear and a line. Military kind of thing. Becomes a line when they meet. Gears losing parts. Everyone steps together. So interesting. Small team begins. So the small team is the first fighter. This is sort of a return to the original fable and the pile of bodies – it is harder to do because there are so many bodies in the way.

Take it and explore it a little bit more. Starting positions. Inner and outer circles – small inside of large. A tight inner circle – does it tell a story of violence inside of violence. They seem to be playing this as a game. I wonder if the clapping would help. A sense of rhythm and step. Because that makes it more ritual.
What starts the cycle? Point, fist, threaten – how do you select the start? Entire outer circle pleads other than the person being sacrificed. Stop point drop sacrifice. Pointing the whole time instead. Now we need a new sacrifice. Gently laying her down. Kill kill kill is battle – in this there has to be a time between. Outer circle springs up and then everyone in outer circle points to the inner circle – it’s a team effort. I feel like the team effort is super important – because it makes it less about individuals and more about the act.

Moving the death away, outside of the bounds – also super interesting – where do the bodies go – need they be present, or do we feel the presence of their absence (as it were – pomo mess). I like the bodies as an obstacle. Seeing the wake and the mindless sacrifice even though the evidence of destruction piles up all around you.
Codifying with a game – games take a long time to develop. Militaristic in nature. Interesting. Because it goes sort of opposed to where we were starting, but not. I mean, this is sort of how they began. Gets really awkward at this point towards the end. Something here that we will not find on this day.

Back to first day on our feet. Fifteen minutes to build the show again – talk through the events of the show. Start in a circle and utilize this room.
Continue with this first go-through. Rules: start in a circle. Cast. Every living character claps in rhythm together. 3 points where all 9 are making physical contact with each other – separate times. Don’t have to hit every point. Have to be two moments with five seconds of stillness – not at beginning or the end.

I depart unhappily for my production meeting. Boo.

Group Meeting 8 February

Day Four:

We are already in week six. I keep being astonished by this information, for some reason. The semester has seemed both endless and extraordinarily short. Students have mostly stopped coming to class early: it is 2:22 and I am the only person in the room. I have been thinking about change (sort of in the back of my mind, I suppose) and stasis ever since our last meeting. I suppose it is sort of characteristic of all theatre, and yet something I seem to have only just discovered, that most (every) play/s is about a change. Something happens that changes the world. This is, of course, why theatre is life compressed – it is rare for our lives to change completely over the course of a few hours. This indeed happens: a marriage, a death, a birth, an illness…but our days tend to run together, do they not, each one sort of looking like the last and the one to come. And so that is the challenge Grotowski makes to us: he asks that we truly live in each of our moments, that we experience the world as it is and not as a series of events that run together. And so by interacting with these texts, we are truly present in life, for at least a little while. And those lessons ought to translate to our “real” lives, as well. The challenge, then, at least for me, is learning from these artists – allowing their insistence on living and life to inspire my own. Rather than worrying about the future (though how might one avoid that, when it is so unknown), I ought to think about only this moment – right? But I am not entirely sure how to do that, in a life so totally mediated and complicated and constantly full of minute problems (and problems of minutes? Christ, I feel so pomo in this moment).

I have things to do again with you today before you go and work. I also have important things to say to you – now becoming more important. We also need to be checking in and seeing where we are. Today we have guests. This may be prompting you to be thinking about how far into the process we are – costume designers designing costumes for a place you don’t yet have. Emma, Dorothy, and Julia and Colleen are here to introduce themselves. 2^nd year graduate students here to observe and this process is different and organic and ever-changing. They will come in from time to time to observe the work and have an idea about what direction it’s taking – different from mainstage, etc. You are all developing your own version so it’s much different – it’s a nice organic thing for the students here to work with this type of theatrical experience.

EMMA: designed Godot and assisting on Hamlet; don’t know much about class or what is required, but I guess that’s why we’re here.

DOT: designed TVH, don’t know what’s going on.

JULIA: designing RENT, and I echo what they say, waiting to learn what’s going to happen.

KS: You should email me your names and info, you can be added to Blackboard, we are accumulating material as we go – articles, blurbs, blog – a place where our thoughts are happening. It’s a working situation. We also don’t know what’s going on – part of the process, we are subjecting ourselves to this, attacking and replying to the texts in each performance. Through our experience, we are integrating the world. We assume there is no theatre – we have to build it from scratch in order for it to be truthful and have meaning. Be part of a company of people who are creating the set of performances. Didn’t see last year – you will see it this year.

E-mail exchange about responses. This is not a play analysis class – what you write is a place in which writing itself becomes the site of your initial discovery – becomes your way in, a window into the work itself. Don’t write as a director – you have those people who will be looking in that way. What you are trying to do is find a way that in your writing, you are personal and thinking about how the writing is serving you. Discover a genre of writing that is helpful for you. Journal didn’t produce what I wanted – your writing, even minimal, is short and creative and something that is going to help you open up your acting process. Emails from me were trying to engage with you on some level. Quotes: sometimes it is one sentence, I found them to be a place where your work can potentially start, and we will do it in a performative way. This is going to be a very staccato and weird compilation.

Frankenstein:
One minute the waves can be crashing on me, hurting me, to the point where all I want to do is escape, but the next minute they recede, and I find peace and happiness. He mentions that he as a disabled man has the ability and flexibility now to teeter on both edges. Which is so true of myself and for so many people including Victor and also his creation. Notice, I will not call him creature or monster anymore because that is not what he is. He is a postmodern text, he is a body, he is pieces of life stitched together but he is NOT a monster. I read that postmodernism is the attempt at describing a state of being and a condition. The body as a postmodern text? A description of my condition, of the creations condition, of a disabled persons’ condition and state of being. (…) I will take my experiences of “disability” and the word disability and put them into this story and the telling of this story.

I loved (and I don't mean loved as in made me giddy and happy, but I found it to be beautiful and moving) the way the author talked about his experience at the pool in Florida (incidentally not far at all from where I've lived my entire life). It made me cry.

I have hormones I gather fat

I HAVE FAT

I have a tummy and breasts and thick muscular thighs that burst with energy out of the two-dimensional plane I see in the mirror they

BURST

I see something thick and strong and supple

The body that SHOULD be

I see something that contains so much passion I see a body that holds desire

I HAVE DESIRE

damn it I feel

I feel everything in this body in the mirror under this Victor’s mask

This is the vessel of my experience and I won’t exchange or change it

I WANT TO FEEL

I WON’T EXCHANGE MYSELF

I want to be free I want to be my body naked and full with everything soft and rounded and forceful and unbound

My body is nature’s monster which is super-hu-MAN

POWERFUL

Victor, can the ligaments in your hips be activated by hormones to loosen and cause your pelvis to expand to allow a human baby to pass through? Does your body do that? Does your body enact that miracle?

MINE DOES.

And my body

This lovely full monster

wants to be free to roam and find other bodies like it

it wants to run

and be nourished

and make love

like the “monster” it is

I long for the freedom of an ee cummings poem

“Muscles better and nerves more”

I want to free other bodies too

Theirs and mine

Look in the mirror and tell Victor

FUCK OFF

I focus on the swells of my tummy and hips

“I like your body. I like its hows. I like to feel the spine of your body and its bones and the trembling firm-smooth-ness which I will again and again and again

kiss” – Quote from e.e. cummings poem “I like my body when it is with your”

This country that’s so focused on such idiotic pursuit of normalcy. This world that’s so focused on such idiotic pursuit of normalcy. It’s 2010 and the only difference now is that Frankenstein’s monster might have the chance to become a celebrity. Like Mossman said in an article written 9 years ago.

12. He’d still be a freak.

13. People would still reject him. The masses do not want their comfortable patriarchal and homophobic society disrupted. Creature comforts. A pun wrapped inside an oxymoron, as it were. Clever wordplay and literature. Mary Shelley. It all boils down to masking the evil and insanity within everyone.

14. Maybe it’s because I’m only 19. Maybe it’s because my difference, my ‘disability,’ is a cerebral one that isn’t immediately noticeable. Like the kids my mom taught. Maybe that’s why this article makes me feel so wretched to call myself a human being. Postmodernism be damned. The world is still an awful place and I feel like shit because I can’t change it.

We all have our own disabilities, weight, height, learning disability etc., but now we have to be inspired by a disability that can spur murder. How can I possibly attempt to “validate the experience of people with disabilities and counter stereotypical (mis)representation” in performance truthfully?

The truth is, I can say to a group of people 'the past is haunting me; the secrets fill up my chest like lead balloons and I wonder if my ribs will splinter from the pressure,' and every person will think they know how I feel. Everyone has these secrets. We are all crippled inside of us.

I used to cloister myself away from people, much like Frankenstein's creation. For years, while I had healthy friendships with beautiful, wonderful people, I would still spend the majority of my time by myself, safely tucked away from the possibility of hurt in the outside world.

Some days I want to scream "Why can't I be what I am? Why do I have to justify who I am? Why do I have to FIGHT to be what I am?!" EVERYONE is a capable of being a monster if you give them no other option.

The Bacchae:
I feel more confused now that ever. I have so many questions, and yet no real answer. How can I use all of this during rehearsal and on stage? (…) None-the-less our work can be like a religious ritual experience.

humanity has a titanic nature in them, that their souls are trapped in their body. Often I have felt restless in my own skin, a strong desire to turn wild and wreck things, to dance recklessly. This is the Dionysian substance within us all. And it’s not hard to see the suppressed and straight-laced populace of Thebes as alien. We are willing to join the Bacchae up in the mountain.

This is a terrible act. The ripping to shreds of a human being by his own mother, but it was this act of profanation that was needed for the rightful god to take his place. Cadmos made Thebes reborn from the Earth and now with the death of Pentheus, Thebes is thrice born.

I go crazy, I run out of my house and go somewhere new, I turn into a bacchant, something in me gets torn apart, I feast on the remains, something in me is exiled or reconciled, and I return to myself with this new knowledge of myself. That is The Bacchae and it happens in everyone, especially me, and I love that, but I hate I have to “become” something to learn that. I am who I am!!!!

I think Dionysus is a sick fuck. He murders Pentheus indirectly with a smile on his face and basically tells all of the Thebans that he told them so. I love him, but he is more disturbing to me now than he was before.

Pentheus is a stranger to his mother. She sees him as a lion and nothing he can do will convince her otherwise. I’ve gone home before and my parents have expected me to be the same girl I was when I left them 3 ½ years ago…I’m not.

Dionysus Pentheus

I am god I am man

I am myth I am King

I am lion, bull, snake I am power, leader, head

I am son I am grandson

I am forgotten I am worshipped

I am returning I am confronted

I am man-woman I am intrigued

I am masked I am transformed

I am Stranger I am led

I am disturber I am hunted

I am guide I am prey

I am leader I am Stranger

I am controller, manipulator, freed I am captured, torn, scattered

I am fox I am lion

I am reborn I am rebuilt

I am alive I am son

I am indestructible I am sacrificed

I am eternal I am corpse

Kott talks about the parallels between Pentheus and Dionysus. He goes on for pages about the multiple parallels in the play. This is great, but what do I do with this?! What does this mean if they are paralleled?

Titus Andronicus:
I do not know what draws me to actively be a witness to violence. Something draws me in. I have to watch. (…) I see that I could easily be killed by anyone. Death is never far away.

I think Titus needs to live somewhere in-between.

Truthfully, more often than not, I’m the one who incites an attack before I’ve time to process the consequences of my actions.

When we see one or two killings in a play or a film, it’s a tragic moment. Macbeth.

Romeo & Juliet. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Amadeus. We get it. They’re tragic. But why? Why do we not feel this same sort of tear-jerking reaction when we see Kill Bill or Titus Andronicus? Because. They. Are. Supposed. To. Be. Funny. ....Period.

Pain is so completely intimate to each of us, and yet is a completely universal feeling that we all share.

Maybe you adapt. Maybe life gets easier. Hell you might even be able to do the tasks you could before just in a different way. But longing for what you had before is a heavy burden. For a piece of you died the day you were disfigured.

Titus is fucking hurting and instead of sitting down and writing a poem about it he’s taking action, that’s the only way he knows how to cope. An eye for an eye.

[These children are so brilliantly talented. Their writing moves and inspires me. How unbelievably open and honest they are.] See how personal it becomes, concrete, personal, example of where I come from, there is an engagement that is possible to keep coming.

You see where I’m getting – no comments, you hear what I’m interested in. These quotations respond inside of you as a performer. “It’s not how you read these texts, it’s about how this text reads you. That’s how you respond.” These three projects are in a way similarly violent and disturbing. In a way, somehow, we picked these very cruel pieces of theatre to work with: it’s significant on so many levels. One level which is the most significant is that you are already working with what Artaud was trying to conceive as a new way of theatre: theatre of cruelty. Cruelty and theatre go together; Artaud picks it up and says we should not forget it. The way cruelty and violence speak to us in theatre. Quotes from Artaud. Out of Artaud, I pulled out the essential – shows the work on the same way. Listen, this is also on Blackboard, the fragment you are receiving right now is going to be the basis of your response for next time. This time it is not an email essay form, it’s going to be a poem – must start from the word “I.” You will respond again as a double take – hear it here, read the quotes, respond to your work in your play, as a performer in your play searching for the site of your work in yourself. Showing places where it works for you. Mostly from Theatre and Its Double.

Quotes from Artaud:

We have lost a certain idea of theatre. (…) [T]he elite have turned away from it, (…) [and] the masses go to the cinema, music-hall and circus to find violent gratification whose intention does not disappoint them.

Our sensibility has reached the point where we surely need Theatre that wakes up heart and nerves.

The damage wrought by psychological theatre has rendered us unaccustomed to the direct, violent action theatre must have.

(…)

Everything that acts is cruelty. Theatre must rebuild itself on a concept of this drastic action pushed to the limit.

Infused with the idea that the masses think with their senses first and foremost and that it is ridiculous to appeal primarily to our understanding as we do in everyday psychological theatre, the Theatre of Cruelty proposes to resort to mass theatre, thereby rediscovering a little of the poetry in the ferment of great, agitated crowds hurled against one another, sensations only too rare nowadays, when masses of holiday crowds throng the streets.

If theatre wants to find itself needed once more, it must present everything in love, crime, war and madness.

(…)

One cannot separate body and mind, nor the senses from the intellect, particularly in the field where the unendingly repeated jading of our organs calls for sudden shocks to revive our understanding.

(…)

Like the plague, theatre is a crisis resolved either by death or cure. (…)As beneficial as the plague, [theatre] impel[s] us to see ourselves as we are, making the masks fall and divulging our world’s lies, aimlessness, meanness, and even to-facedness.

(…)

Theatre is first ritualistic and magical.

(…)

I will devote myself from now on

exclusively to the theatre of blood

a theatre which at each performance will stir

something

in the body

of the performer as well as the spectator of the play.

Theatre of senses – theatre of shocked senses, magic, ritual, perception as a whole being, not just through your brain, but through your entire body and your whole being as a human being. We are here at an institution of higher learning training our brains, but we remember other parts of our bodies – we are restoring the body to the world and acknowledging it as a particular way of doing, knowing through sensing and being and living. I try to take you away from taking the play apart – trying to take you into the world in which the blood is in your veins. You hear the song within you that vibrates you in some way – you have an impulse to dance or move or scream, and that is where theatre of cruelty is coming in to tell us that we need to restart.

What he’s saying is that in order for people to have a visceral reaction to a play it is through violence? Not really – it is that theatre is a violent awakening. Organs are cheaters – they cheat you from having an experience directly. They separate you from experience yourself. Take in love not with your heart, but with your “I.” I don’t make love with my organ, I make love with my whole self. That is already cruel right there. It is a metaphor for an awakening into a full being. In theatre, yes, restoring and replaying death is one thing that theatre has done. You look at the death from the point of view of the one who is not dying. We have one shot. In that way, it’s violent. But it can be violent in just the request, invitation, into a work that’s full, dare to work as a full human being – it takes you out of hiding and asks you to expose yourself in some way. What happens when the plague comes in, everyone is hit equally – nature has no mercy, that’s democracy – in a way, it’s reordering the world in a very cruel way and restores the idea of death in a real way, and theatre could do the same. Attacking your body – theatre being an impulse, your mind can’t tell your body what to do or feel, theatre as plague controls your spectator and your actor. It’s really important to say that. Disturbed and brilliant – Artaud. Some people just have to be disturbed in order to say what you would never say. I invite you to read more Artaud.

One more thing before we split – Joel is going to give us a next take on his fable, so we don’t have too much time – just Joel this week.

JOEL: I must fight on. I must protect. Titus. Titus. Titus. I do not protest. Blinding pain. I am gone. Titus butchers. Lavinia hewed. Lavinia is addicted to life. Lavinia continues to die. She finds comfort in my darkness. [How brutal and wonderful and…]

Focused on Lavinia and Tamora’s son. I like how it focused on two characters that a lot of times get drowned out by everything else, especially how aggressive Tamora is, it sort of puts out that first sacrifice, and then Lavinia is sort of like a prop more or less, and this focuses and put it on a new perspective, seeing their lives in a different way that the play doesn’t offer. I really like “Lavinia is addicted to life” coming from someone already dead, and then she dies and he comforts her with his darkness. I responded to that – when we are alive, we are addicted to living, never thought about that – perspective of dead person. Even though she’s hewed, she finds comfort in the shared experience of sacrifice. That was really neat. I really liked the line “I will not be spared” because goes back to earlier, natural course, doesn’t matter who you are, if shit goes down, doesn’t matter who you are, if you have to die for something, you are going to - doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re supposed to do. I loved the detachment of the acceptance of the role. I also really loved that with the detachment, death is the release from the unwarranted brutality and violence of life. Rape and sex can be the same physically, but the difference is emotionally, thought about giving birth – what a violent action that is, from violence we are born. Sex is violence accepted, it is the fine line, same act mimicked, but it could be worse than some rapes physically, but sex is violence is accepted- to have sex you have both accepted it. For me, I liked it more than the other fables, stream-of-consciousness, flashes of a life, that was really cool, bare bones, that’s what it meant to me. I also like the focus on the children of the adults who are choosing to be violent against each other, helpless in this action, suffering for their parents’ wrongdoing. The notion of Aaron’s son in the end then suffering. I liked “Titus. Titus. Titus.” I don’t know why I liked it, but I did. You feel through it your own emotion through the play. Like you were in a coliseum, painted such a picture – so cool to hear a ton of people chant a name. It’s from the inside of an experience, not from the outside. Not logic on the act, but showing the act, very interesting. Keep working as we go.

General warning: think of anything you do as, not an exercise – it is not an exercise for its own sake; rather it is already aiming as a way to connect the work to itself. Something already building your world of performance tools. Even simple things like standing together and clapping around, which might be an exercise in coordination, could be used already by you, in you in the work itself. What does it tell you about rhythms and the way the room moves and how you can use it in your work? This week, I hope, brings you to embody something from you more. Put you away from your thinking and into your whole person’s active knowing and doing and finding out and being curious.

by Smyra

From Kris: "Let me know your thoughts, in their uncombed version, following our last conversation. We were trying to make connections between the notions of birth/rebirth of an artistic phenomenon, prescription/restriction and freedom, the site of meeting others in the sense of a meaning-making process, scandal, expectations, knowledge, way of seeing history of art from the place of a new work."

This is my response:

I think most of our conversation sprung from the idea of an eternal beauty. Is beauty objective? My first answer was no, but later we decided that if beauty can't be in any way objectively defined, then what is the point? If everything is subjective, then nothing has meaning and we didn't really like that idea. Of course, I think we only don't like that idea because it undermines all of our work. That doesn't really have any bearing on whether or not it's true.

So despite the fact that we cannot define beauty, I know when I find something beautiful. We know this phenomenon to be real. Is this feeling something conditioned in me by my upbringing? This lends itself to the idea that prescriptive restrictions on art are what give it meaning. The French Academy felt that a certain type of theater was ideal--for them, at that time. It had meaning for them. A play that I find beautiful--let's take Sarah Kane's Crave--would have certainly been considered meaningless, and so unfit for the stage by the French Academy. Is a piece of art's beauty related to it's meaning? And, in that case, beauty is subject to time and space. Maybe beauty is not subjective per se, but infinite: defined different in every single moment in time.

I asked you if you thought that a piece of art should always say something new. You said that everything has already been said. But this is not physically possible. Everything we do/create draws upon the whole of human history and then adds to it. Even in the act of repeating something that has been said, you are saying something new. You are adding to the number of people who have said it. At one time is was a new idea to say that the Earth is round. When one man said it, it was a new idea. When a hundred people said it, it changed the idea. It made it more credible. With each additional person who said it, the impact of the individual upon the idea became less and less (the idea being more widely accepted, a part of reality). Now the effect of someone saying that the Earth is round is imperceptible--It has nearly no meaning, but it is there. It never completely stops.

So, I think it's not a matter of doing something "new" but something significant. Something that has meaning here and now, even if it has been done a hundred times before. The work will always, inherently, be new. However as we repeat forms and matter in trends, they have less and less impact. But we see forms come and go, affecting their impact. Music, for example. Lets say a certain style of music develops as a response to social condition. At it's conception it has an effect on the social condition. As time passes, eventually the form loses it's effectiveness or the conditions change. A new form is needed. However, many years later this old form may be recalled for a new cause. While the form is not "new," it's history gives it a richer meaning and can make it even more effective.

As for the idea of scandal, I think this has to do with the part of us that resists change. It's no surprise that human beings search for stability, for some eternal truth we can count on (look at us, trying to pin down beauty!) to help us make sense of our existence. Therefore, once something has been established as true (or appropriate or good or right) there is a tendency to cling to that idea. The more widely accepted it is, the more stable it is: the more comfortable we get in our belief that we understand the world. We start calling our beliefs rules. we write books about the rules so that other people can learn the rules and live by them.

I, as an artist, need to resist. I need to create work that questions these most ingrained rules, the ones that are the hardest to budge. I need to scare people into questioning for themselves if what they've been taught is still true. Therein lies the scandal. By posing these questions, you undermine the audience's beliefs: that by which they judge the significance their own existence. No one wants to do that. It's terrifying!

THE BACCHAE 1 February

The Bacchae
1 February 2010

Structure of Thebes – the idea of Thebes gesture and D coming into Thebes, review gestures, and then we should probably start thinking about movements for Maenads and then back to back idea and Dionysus being two-sided – [god to man to death to live to resurrection to destruction] – points of connection with text.

Image on Puscifier website – poem is song lyrics manipulated to our purpose – image of a devil-horned creature that is definitely feminine and has a king who is begging…it’s on the blog.
They took to the trees, they took to the skies – [Pentheus takes to the trees to watch and that serves as such a moment of transition – reaching to the sky like a god and that returns him to death – again, this notion of cycles – I think it’s so fascinating that these pieces are all about cycles, the relationships of opposites as not so much oppositional but simultaneous.]

Themes – hot shot who’s hip to the lies (D), like rhythm and seduction, “it’s all fire and brimstone outside – I got a new pistol” – having fun during the apocalypse. Yea, it’s shit right now, but let’s go outside. Downbeat as chanting – tribal, earthy, heavy – down, low-level movement. Post-apocalyptic movies giving a new civilization – not purer, necessarily, the society that forms from necessity of destruction. We must destroy in order for rebirth. You have to kill and eat Dionysus and he’s reborn from that – very cyclical. And Pentheus became the representation of Dionysus in this one. Split to pieces when they didn’t believe – when they find the pieces, everyone believes in him. Gods being torn apart and put back together – Osiris in Egypt. This play makes Dionysus use ritual as a way to murder – it’s a symbolic ritual of what should happen if he’s trying to set the cosmos at ease – but he doesn’t. He kills someone. Justifying violence in order to have a positive. Create act of violence for a positive reason – in Titus, motivations we can’t even fathom because looking through own morals. Do we have to go through thinking that there’s a positive result through D killing P, or is it just an act of rage? We don’t necessarily have to fulfill either. Madness as a part of ritual. Is madness madness if it is a thing that everyone is doing and does that make it a ritual? Why is madness such a negative thing -0 we have madness and frenzy as a bad thing. Points us to proposing questions we wouldn’t usually ask – why bad to be D or P? Questions that come up will inform those choices. When it blows your mind – when you don’t know what it’s about – a good rule of thumb is to remember what you thought, what you think, and what it will become? Always remember what informs the next domino.
Mama Sed – Puscifier
Change is come. [revealing that the only stability is instability.] Idea of awakening, return to ritual, an idea. Quarter-tones. Take it like a man. [Or is it “changes come.” And what does that mean? What is change? What is stability? And idea that a ritual ever ends, rather than that it is continually in action, every moment of life is just a new part of a ritual that is trying to create a fixed space that is ultimately inaccessible – that we can only ever truly locate ourselves in creation rather than in a fixed space – so D is never a god not a man, but is always a god-man-dead-live – and aren’t we, as well? When am I a child? A student? An adult? A lover? Is that not always within me, always already happening all at once – the madness isn’t so much madness, perhaps, but multiplicity. It is the energy of all the potentialities of constant change happening in our bodies – madness is the time when we welcome the disorder of what is real – which is unfixedness.]

Rebirth of the city and its social implications. The rebirth, technically, may not be a positive – it may result in a negative. It’s a cycle too, so it will get to this point again. Another wound, scab, heal – Incubus – New Skin. Cannibalism as demonisation of other people – exploiting them as freak shows. Embrace/exploit – simultaneity? Mother giving birth to son and killing a son – it’s the perfect circle, the ultimate perfect circle. As a form of incest. Cycle of governmental destruction – the way we construct rules to prevent the cycle from having to take place. We change things over so we don’t have to have violent revolution. Our own mini-contained version of Dionysus having Agave kill Pentheus. Kitty. Prodigy.

Divine intervention and religion and similarities and the idea of man passing on that divine intervention. Christ – written by man and divine intervention through man. D comes to Thebes so people will believe. Idea of giving the audience the choice – certain people are chosen to speak for Dionysus and the audience can be left to figure out if they believe. To be possessed is to be possessed by a god. Male prophets and believers have to die for their god. God speaking through the priest. Transubstantiation. Similar on the lines of Dionysus having two sides – D speaking through whatever form he needs to be speaking through – man, woman, animal, tree, possession as a form of entrapment and imprisonment. You are not you when you are possessed – you are imprisoned in your body. To be a Maenad is to be so surrendered to D that he can use your body and you are infinitely a vessel. Agave and Atone are not vessels by choice. The physical acts as uniform – being able to dance is being possessed as well. Walking into a constant dance – a pattern – not human walk. C digs that :)

Creating a physical pattern to support our mental, liberal ideas. How the hell do we do that? C likes to start with physicalization – we have power over what we say and less power over body.

ACTION.
Reviewing gestures: predator, ring, push/punch, punch, glide, slash/press, press and punch, many that I couldn’t catch.
[All of these projects keep reminding me of multiplicity – but not in a heady way necessarily, not in the way that I understand myself as multiply possible, but in a way that I feel, in my body, parts of me that are multiple – coexistent/created/written parts of myself that are afraid to exist as a simultaneity – there is not a room in a world of order for multiples.]

Start compiling our text and the holes we have to fill and basic plot structure. Until we decide to destroy it all.
Exploring and recalling movements.
[There is a lot of joy and community already in this group – they seem to be incredibly invested in one another, in the sense that we do this for joy. Playing with pace, playing with their bodies, playing with ideas – throughout all of it there is serious work but there is also a delight in being together. In all of these movements I see restrained violence – as though from out of every one of them, the whole group could break out with a fury uncontrollable. Perhaps that is my own perception only because of the conversation about the play and my own reading of continual “self”-destruction. They are telling stories with their bodies, and their bodies are unafraid and jubilant and terrifying. Even the movements that are delicate (the ring) look to me like a lover reaching into attack. And they are so very brave – this work (Viewpoints) requires, like Grotowski’s trainings, such a setting free – reaching in – experiencing the self. You must be willing to experience your body – to make noises you make only in rage, in intimacy, at the height of passion and fear and vulnerability. And, if I may have a moment to be far too heady for this project, Candace’s choices reveal the performativity of everything – work, change, stillness, self. Perhaps it is in all of Viewpoints work – perhaps it is this environment, or this group – but there is a freedom to madness. Not to perform madness, but to experience it – to let madness and lack of restraint fill you viscerally – and how viscerality is something that can be experienced so differently. How do we remember things in our bodies – Grotowski at work. Oh! They are Thebans. How interesting. How interesting that the order of Thebes can become disorder in my brain…]
Someone who came to Thebes as a stranger and started to adopt the ways of the city quickly, thought he had mastered them, but the city ended up eating him. Someone enters and they get consumed. Work was planting – fighter jets invade – find a way into the ground and the ground would not take me. (Back to the earth for protection.) Job was guarding and everything around was an intruder – trying to push everything out – the ending sequence, I pictured someone breaking the gates or the barriers and it was the one person I couldn’t push out and at the end I gave up (maintaining the walls and then a sense of giving up). Idea of gender – caregiver, really into the ground – planting, plowing, connected with the ground and what was coming from above was just “the end” and maybe death also – some sort of end to the life that was going on – broad (producing but knew that it was fruitless). Image towards the end was water and turned and felt like I was praying for the water to stop – an enormous amount of water and I was being engulfed by it (I want this but I don’t want it so passive-aggressive with dealing with it – want a change and then trying to prevent it). Mulch – a different terrain than I was used to – somewhere new – but it was an illusion, or I thought it would be better than it was – the work was terrible –working because I had to and I couldn’t even think about it before someone beats you – the blue bright sky – turned black like something was coming – only thing I could do was go back to my work and I didn’t know how to handle it (thinking something positive and it turns out to be negative – illusion of freedom when it turns into our own prison). Came in as a Dionysian stranger – sat there and associated activities with a movement – walking tall, production, like railroad spikes, time was always on my mind, resistant at first because I don’t agree with it because it’s a mechanistic beast and you don’t even know why you’re doing it, you do it because you’re told to do it – coming with the perspective of not wanting to produce, I rejected the idea of producing – image of outlet, this place is broken, I’m going to try to come and switch the idea around – put myself into the shoes of the ideal, did the production for a certain amount of time – looked back to a still-broken outlet – really pessimistic – the philosophy of production is garbage – I moved – sealed the idea that I am right – I’m going to do what I have to do to preserve my way of life – definitely D – changing and trying new philosophy (questioning the need to fit in for the sake of change – production is not happening for a positive change). Production is for a select few people, and other people don’t get the benefit of that – the end result is militaristic. Life is something different than material possessions – production is wasting our lives if we keep our heads down and don’t recognize the sky. Certain people are content with doing what they’re told and things not changing – there are radicals who recognize it as an intolerable situation. Dionysus is a guy that’s not starting the new idea (a certain number of people want it) but it takes him as the key to unlock the door. Needs a leader. Going to change – thinking about the people in the city. Two different things at stake – two different implementations. Everyone in the city has to deal with the change – “game’s over.” Play marks a definitive shift. Negative symbolic act…D vs. P is separate from the effects on society. We have two sides and then the people of Thebes – [who are affected by the gods and politicians]. In any social structure, there is always the rebel, the follower, etc. How do we distract ourselves when the dream is not a dream? [We have just lived through some of this – with Obama. I think.] Start with black and white, then we add the layers – hold onto fundamentals and then add the layers. We must know where we came from to know how we got to where we are now. Cadmus as Pentheus’ controller. Repetition as punishment. Every time I got to the end of the push I pictured myself getting whipped on the back.

I found it interesting that the change to the moves happened somewhat seamlessly but each time I was doing a move, even though we weren’t physically bound – I felt that tension the whole time – once I got to that place, I was really in pain, I felt like I was still bound. Felt like I had to go back to where I was bound up. There’s something extremely fascist about this exercise – everybody wants to not do this shit, but you can’t not do it or you will get your genitals whipped.
Characters/non-characters you started to come up with, it’s all informative – you started bound and had to return to a point of pain to remember and continue to produce. Idea of holding my head – neck wasn’t holding my head anymore, my arm was. We adapt and mold in order to transition, you take a move into your body and produce whatever you can with it.

Good idea about what Thebes is – somewhere between Nazi Germany and America. In shaping these ideas, we should come up with taking all of these moves and apply some sort of structure/pattern to the way we establish Thebes and how we show these qualities – a storyline for first image. Recall what things you did like – visually – and maybe we can play with slave songs. Sound – sounded like a machine – starting to hum along and sing along with other people. If we’re going to make it work, we might as well find some cohesiveness. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you should be able to express yourself. As long as you’re doing your shit, you’re not going to get whipped in the nuts. There was a point when we all did Brandon’s punch at the exact same time and way and we were all facing each other. As ensemble, you will start to come into unison. Helps for Thebes and Maenads and other groups. Idea of boundaries – in a confined space. Adapt movement in space so you have constant awareness of each other. Also for contact improv. Giving and receiving information and how can you manipulate the people about you. Maenads as constantly connected to one person, so take whatever you got from today, remember and recall it, make sure you recall your pattern, sound, journey, and then journal, make associations, what am I doing when I do this, what do they mean to you – not just movement for the sake of movement.
Sunday from 12-2 in the kitchen. Bring ideas for constant connections with text of Dionysus. Come up with the essence of Dionysus from a couple of lines of text. Think about how you would move back to back. You do not always have to be back-to-back. And there can be moves and transitions.

TITUS 29 January

Titus Andronicus

29 January 2010

20 minutes to create a 20 minute wordless version of Titus Andronicus. Figure out the cast. There are no major rules about playing the same character, characters have to be represented. A general shape and an emotional arc. A lofty assignment, a big one, but only thing we’re doing. Major piece of advice – talk less than you do. Try to keep it as quiet as possible and work towards finding interactions. Try to do more than say. Don’t be as concerned with the product length – more than six minutes and less than 45. I don’t want this to be, this is not an assignment based on how long the product clocks in. Take the time to tell the story that you as a group feel is the center of this piece. [They look terrified.] Create the story of the show without words. No words in the scene. No director. Do it as a group. Communicate through movement. Don’t have to hit every plot point. There are sounds.

Do we want to cast it? Should we just move? No characters. Double cast? Working through the chronology. Killing the sons.

They work through the chronology first. Killing, refuses crown, promises Lavinia to Saturninus, hell no, brothers, Titus kills them (Titus kills a lot of people), Tamora lies and makes peace, Aaron, boys talk about raping Lavinia, hunt outside, Tamora and Aaron have something, Aaron and gold, (using the tree is decided…), sons come in, etc. fall into a pit, and on and on. [This seems very…theatrical and less instinctive. I am tempted to give them a direction to stop figuring out the plot and start finding it with their bodies, but that does not seem like wisdom.] So many characters in this play…how can we hope to tell all of their stories? And do we need to? [Not doing the clown…interesting.] They seem to be forgetting that it is the emotional arc and story at center.

Abstract? Physical? [This is really specific. There is a lot of thinking. This is less in their bodies.] Separate spaces – because it really is the story of two families, kind of. Tug of war of Lavinia. Eschewing chronology. [I think this is going to be hard for them, I am intrigued by what it will look like. There is not a lot of Titus action. Which is really interesting. They seem much more interested in the other ideas and activities of the story. This representation of the rape is sort of devastating, actually.] Joel gives them ten. Every time someone dies, screaming. Read each other when to stop – recognizing the community. Funny jokes about rock paper scissors…bizarre.

[Bring Lavinia back in. Interesting.] Circle for the whole time. [I like this idea of a pile of dead bodies – if the violence and the consequences are what is important, this could be something to take out for performance. Is it because of a lust for power? Why does Titus kill Tamora’s son? Is that what begins it? What is the beginning of this story…I think that is what’s missing in the emotional arc of this story.] This is so Kris Salata right now (quote – hahahahaha. I love it). Banquet time! Eat the dead bodies. Stand on top of us. Pull the crown out of the center of the pile of bodies. Running it until Joel returns.

[Interesting. This is kind of interesting. I am intrigued.]

RUN.

Still too much talking. But now in the run the vocalization is good. I am not entiorely sure the story is that clear. But the beginning is cool. And you can definitely tell when people are dead. This rape was short and kind of tragic. The pile of deadbodies is starting. We are lost in the story now, maybe? I love the Tamora drama. The revenging is unclear. The yelling is good, though. I wish they would keep the yelling up. More and more and more of it. The last little vignette is super cool, too. The pile of bodies and one person with the crown. A couple of really nice moments, I think.

What conscious decisions were made – just chronology. Complicated plot. Circle, tribal quality interest Joel – I like that. Carnage at center. Lavinia is the emotional arc. Interesting. What are your first instincts? It moves so quickly. A list of horrible things. Just proved how animalistic and barbaric it can be. Really responding to circles. Cannibals. Ripping at each other. A continual hunt. Feel like a vulture. Pieces of whatever we can find. Sharks circling prey. Every scene deserves a blood-curdling scream. Notes. Tribal rites, rite of passage, moves from ceremonial sacrifice. Reading of the Titus Body Count. Trying to find the words for each one – sacrifice, kill, murder, what are the different kinds of death? Order devolving into chaos. Titus kills a lot of people. Like a third of them. Does the audience sympathize with Titus? DO we sympathize with Titus? I totally sympathize with Tamora. Tamora? Mother’s instinct. Interesting. Gives fair warning. Honesty. People are always telling the truth.

Is Tamora justified? She takes such relish in it. Rape scene – woman appealing to a woman. When is Titus ever the victim? Because of what Rome has turned into. Institutional acts. Lavinia is totes a victim. Bassianus and Lavinia – the story before this is a romantic comedy with the two of them. Multiple killings that Lavinia goes through. The corpse pile pulling people in – energy that brings the dead together and in. Sacrifices and stuff – creating energy. Physicalizing the body count. Death inviting more death. More and more and more bodies. Sometimes people enact violence because they don’t know another way of expressing themselves. One hand sticking out of the pile with the crown. Edward and Horatio and Lucius all get together and say “what the hell happened to us – I had a weird fucking weekend.” You can make it a comedy so easily.

What parts stuck out to Joel: the opening with the circle and the fight, rock paper scissors, eating out of the corpse pile, rhythm – banging and yelling, everyone was always moving and involved, reacting, chaos at the beginning – interesting that we are at war, come back into war, and continually keeps exploding. What are the moments of pause?

Ross winds up being both Tamora and Titus’s sons – a son is still a son. Interesting. Some people were multiple – some stayed. Lavinia, Titus, Tamora,

Will return to the activity multiple times. Create a sacrifice, etc. Seeing the story to find balance.