Group Meeting 1 March

Today is Monday. It’s time for work. And now you can focus on this. We have to intensify this because our deadline is also coming and we would like to go more into the mode of rehearsal preparation. Sending you off right away to your work because I’ve seen that it is important for us before the break to work as much as possible so we return to something we still have. I wanted to say to all of you that it’s very interesting for me to go through this poem process – it means differently for all of you and some of you are kind of done with it and some of you maybe are starting. I would ask your permission to see the poem-writing in what we do – will you release it as publishable? I’m working on a publication and this exercise is meaningful and might be publishable – I will approach you individually to have your work released to the world.

Any thing you would like to say or ask? Anybody has a burning question?

You guys should be feeling at this point all over the place. I feel that this is also why you were reading the texts you were reading, to go through somebody’s process and see that it is a very - the highlands and lowlands – a risky terrain that has ups and downs and that’s the nature of it. It’s not just one happy, joyful, preschool type of play. It’s more of a serious business. It’s your life also involved, you’re investing your youth and losing your sleep, I hope. I think it’s okay to be where you are – it’s good to have outsiders. You think you don’t have anything but you have really interesting things developing.

Last year we got caught up and felt – the less you think about other groups, the more it helps you think about your own project. Don’t get caught up in other people’s work. Quite a few of you are going through the process again – don’t compare – it’s an absolutely different situation. Don’t create any appearance of competition – it makes no sense. Just take it in – you guys are doing fine and you’re going to be okay as long as the process is asking about itself and keeps being about a discovery. Keep it an open question, artistically, and particularly an open question for you as a performer – and I do care about that performer level a whole lot as a research question. No matter what happens, it’s going to be an important experience.

Smyra is shifting her process to actors and their discoveries and struggles – please be open to sharing with me, that’s all part of my research. It all helps me and so please be in touch. It helps Kris and it helps him develop his research. It maybe even is actually going to shape the way the class works next time.

Next year we are going to shift things and the class is going to turn into something called “New Directions” and there is going to be a Shakespeare Shortcuts class, the following year, dedicated to Shakespeare and Fred’s class. I will still be working on all other texts and Fred will be doing the Shortcuts event. New Directions will be offered next year for MFA students in their second year. And we will do a similar thing exploring different texts, with a similar approach.