22 March 2010

GROUP MEETING

Everyone I talk to is exhausted. For serious. It is as though the whole artistic world needs a nap. I need a nap. Of course, when I am tired I always have a lot of feelings, so I should be very emotive during today’s rehearsals. We are doing fables again – it has been a long time since our last visit with them, and I am looking forward to seeing what they will be in the world. Especially if we are doing all three today. It is like a coming together of a community.

We’re doing Joel and Candace’s fables today and we’ll do Anne’s next time. The plan is this. Two fables and a little conversation and it is for us to find out how it all shifted. There doesn’t have to be much conversation about it. Maybe Joel’s group is curious about how to talk about the work we’ve done. Then we are going to go work. This and next week are the formative moments. Now you guys are in all kinds of problems – in trouble – and this is good that you are, because we still have time to see what is happening with the creative process, and it’s time to adjust and switch and shift and you’ve done a lot of work. What’s happening, what’s not happening, time to see the results of that shift. Think about this week as a formative week that may change and shift your work. Your directors are very eager for that transition into the next phase. At some point, you will have some sort of structure that you can refine and go deeper. The development and location of the work will happen this week. You should see how your focus will shift into working more vertically, finding the way in for your personal investment and having a shape established. All this makes no sense unless it’s backed up by examples and it’s all different in each group. I’m acknowledging that this is a tricky and exciting and interesting moment.

There’s still some poem work being done and I like that a lot. SMYRA – for those interested in over the summer, I’m going to be doing a project about the language of theatre and the poem, let me know. There will be some work done over the summer, a bunch of us are going to be staying here and doing some work. If you are in town and want to do some work, there’ll be an opportunity for you. Poem work especially with Smyra.

JOEL:

Breathing. A heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Too many heartbeats. Sound, the sound of. Pleading. She is quiet. She will never give them the satisfaction.

Okay, this is crazy because. His first fable and second and third – this went far. I actually really like it. I’m very interested and curious. You created a place for a lot of great interest in the listener. I want to see the work that does that.

COMMENTS: I love how something became so innocent and then turned on itself. The silence was blissful and became the hunt, and that is so – ugh, a deer, so peaceful, but can instantly become this terrifying thing. What do you see in this fable that is so present? Sound. A lot of interesting sound. I think because it didn’t – it allowed your imagination to fill in things because it made it more vivid. It is very interactive. It wants you. It’s very dramatic. Aware of action. The sound, through sound, came movement. This piece had a lot more movement. In the quiet, nothing seemed like it was standing still. There are a lot of “oh, shit!” moments. This bad thing, this bad thing – quiet – oh, shit! Tension was there. I like it more now that it’s the bare bones, it’s just how it happened, just the events that make up a war and the violence of it. I loved this because it betrayed you. And I loved how everything was turned on you. Puts this face of an army, all living, beating beings. Cacophony. Transformed from the purest form of life – love. Don’t know what side you’re on anymore. That’s what I got. What I see in it is focus, structure, and clarity. Not oversimplification – there’s a lot to discover in it. The structure is really observable. Now things are falling together. Falling into its place. The work you’ve done is focused – now the shortcut has been established and you have a structure to which things will start belonging. And that is good to hear. I liked it for what it was even as a verbal presentation. Designers would love that.

CANDACE:

Lights on. I’m going to tell you a story. Once upon a time. Thebes was bad and all the people seemed to be sad. A dirty lying whore. Pretty, pretty Pentheus. Mother, Mother May I? ALL FALL DOWN.

COMMENTS: Any reactions? Did The Bacchae people expect this kind of thing? Is it somehow a surprising twist? Did it tell you something about the work you’re doing that you didn’t know? Different from where I saw the whole thing going. The loss of individual choice, the group mentality, that was a lot more present in this telling than what I usually think of. That everybody in Thebes has a choice about who they want to follow, that’s – but – this telling of the fable was significantly different, because everybody is highly susceptible to hypnosis. Outside influence. What was interesting was that the story was about people being seduced, Dionysus as a seductive thing, but it was still very appealing. The group mentality of following and going somewhere. I really like the sitting as children for the reading – it feels really honest and innocent, please come to me as children, and then it was sort of dirty – using the word whore and stuff. I wanted to believe and follow even though I knew it was bad. That power you have over children. Contrast between the promise of the form and the harsh contradiction in it. Innocence disappears very quickly. We’ve been talking about children’s stories, riddles, nursery rhymes, and how they seem innocent but if you actually listen, it’s extremely violent – why Dionysus is and what he calls us to do. That song made me want to get up and be violent and be gruesome, but in a pleasing way – addictive and attractive and better than what I’m doing now. Disney killed the whole roughness of children’s stories. Stuff is muddy and damaging for children as how they used to be. Now we live in a world where things are colorful and safe. The possibility of death and someone watching you, I guess I forgot that as we were doing it, this was just how…the picture of the child behind the fern leaf scared me a lot. Not a leaf – actually cuts. That was scary. We very much focus on choice, the people of Thebes have a choice, and then it’s yea but it’s so easy to make the choice to go to Dionysus – you can’t tell – because it’s like you’re possessed. Like they’re kids – gullible nature. Is there a choice? I’m a little concerned about the choice, it seems like there’s a harsh decision-making. In this country, when we think about choice, Dionysus is more complicated than abortion. Not seeing it through the Christian lens.

That’s why the play works – because of the lack of clarity we have about what’s chosen. Is there a choice, there isn’t one, maybe, hwo knows, but what’s in front of you is complicated. There is a complication in the reception of it, we don’t know what it is. In any case it is fascinating – are you killing the lion, what does it mean? Are you killing a being or releasing your own potential as a hunter/survivor, and the act of killing is already so not part of any sort of moral dilemma but it brings you closer to the animal sense of yourself – you exist through the multiple crime of killing other entities. Something about a hamburger. Sexual interest and desire in killing. All these things are raw and complicated and they don’t get any easier. It leaves you full of “what just happened?” It vocalizes something in you that is unresolved, dark, crazy, unhealthy. You have a choice not to face what you are. I’m just a morally clean person…but I think you will fail. If you think you are that person, you are going to basically betray that image. For so long we’ve been trying to find the answer, but maybe there is no morally correct side. It moves something in us that is there that we bury down inside. There is always something in us that is not sure. There is no right or wrong, yes or no. I hate it when something is presented to me as bad or good – the choice is not to be either bad or good, but. Poem exploring act of killing that is also felt as a sexual charge – act seen from a perspective that is beautifully complicated and would be – I wish that we had the time to work with these poems, but we don’t have that time for this right now. I emailed your poem to Candace. The idea of raw and dirty – dirty = complicated, not clean-cut, complicated psychologically without any censorship. That’s The Bacchae right there. The unexplored dirty insides that we have. There’s no end. About the form – I think it is interesting that Candace wanted to talk through images, while there is this song that is seducing and contemporary – it has guts; you need that work to have it being your song. I like the song. There is some fascination in the feeling that the song represents. What I really like also, there were moments of juxtaposition with the word and what the word means to somebody. There was a negation of the image – juxtaposition and contradiction happening in what you’re doing. Saying something and doing something else, it’s in the spirit of the play – shows something and talks about it in a different way.

Agave has two narratives when she has the head in her hand – she has one narrative and then there is another one. Most gruesome recognition in the whole of Greek theatre. Two ways of speaking about one head hanging by its hair and Agave holding that hair. Gruesome image of mother/son and what’s left of him, the feeling that I just complicated because it is not a killing. There is a whole complication that happens in the one image. The word fights for meaning while the meaning is in the image and is not a clear representation. I kind of stifled this thought and I’m just gonna say it – yes. I feel like it’s the words that pop up, juxtaposition, duality, contradiction. Why are lullabyes made – they have a different kind of resonance with who they’re intended for. All this heavy distortion, the screen in front of what you’re being shown, so you’re a different part of why it’s happening. Yesterday’s work really clung to me that was so many different things, it’s the desire to just do those things. Maybe it’s just because D feels like you need to kill, but it’s not explainable, all the acts are completely unexplainable, these people needed a change, but there’s just this passion, this need to be awakened and the act of killing is an exploration of feeling alive. And maybe you have a justification first, but it’s about not knowing what you’re doing but it’s the people of Thebes who get into your system – this is life for me and I’m okay with doing this over because it’s life to me, and it’s weird. And there’s this frustration, what side makes sense, and really like the ending is there is no end – we’ll never know what makes this happen. In fact, you can think about this is as the postmodern condition, we are returning in that feeling of being today in the world, where the world is so confusing to everybody, there’s no organization, it’s archaic, this world we have. It’s a return of the feeling the Greeks had when they tried to put primary order onto a world that is all chaos. The world was disappearing and the philosophers tried to grasp it, all this anxiety over failure was given to the theatre – unresolved and puzzling, crying when you see Oedipus leave Thebes, but you are still puzzled by it. How does this fit into your sense of order? Being postmodern is like being close to the Greeks. There is no center. NO right and wrong.

This was good. Very interesting. We need to work. See you guys in rehearsals.