TITUS 29 March 2010

Ashley’s birthday! It is so moving how much these actors love each other. I’m so delighted that this celebration comes from them and feels like they are really enjoying it. They are so charming.

SCHEDULE/TO DO LIST:
See Nicole’s poem
Work a bunch of poems and songs
Nick’s thing
Chelsea’s lyrics for her song
Zac’s poem and song
Jen and Chelsea – different music to Chelsea’s lyrics

Nicole’s poem first, then Keith’s poem, then Ross’s song

NICOLE
Close your eyes and breathe. What have I done? What.Have.I. Done. Father brother brother brother father. Why have you forsaken me? Oh. Oh. Sharpness of knives. Knives knives knives. Pain. Sensation is gone. Feelings feelings goodbye. This is heartbreaking in its simplicity. Taste taste taste. I taste silver. I taste sharpness. Knives. Silver. Blood. Oh, god, sad. Sad sad sad.

Jen/Chelsea/Ashley – time with Ashley’s poem. Work through that. Stage directions? I’m inspirational - my performance piece from Race/Gender. Deconstructing a strip tease. Tamora tempting Titus as a strip tease and that makes her go crazy. She is a woman and beautiful and discovering that.

Start working with Keith’s poem – Nicole will write a song with an original melody. Every single song was successful and positive that yours will be as well.

Liz – spend some time with your song. Nick – take a couple of minutes and use Zac and Ross for what you’ve been thinking about.

Keith’s Poem
He is not fit to rule our glorious state. To keep her from that love would be unjust. In justice name I here do take what’s mine – I am Bassianus. Deny me not.

Why this moment? Wondering what Bassianus’ journey is in that opening scene. HE doesn’t say anything while this is happening. What does he want to do before then? It’s mostly directed at Titus and Saturninus. See where he is talking to each.

It’s so interesting that he says “I take what’s mine” as though she really is just a possession. And as though she is some sort of due. They don’t like I am Bassianus – I am sort of into it, but that is maybe a personal thing. I feel like there is this sort of calling into of each of their names – they are the only names in the poem – as though their love grants them names. That might just be me having a lot of feelings.

Nick’s Work
We’re trying to think of ways to kill Demetrius and Chiron. People ripping apart white shirts to expose red badass shirts to be blood? Maybe.

An end for the Revenge/Rape/Murder scene to get out of it into the dinner. As soon as Tamora leaves that Titus circles around D&C…presenting D&C as potential suitors. Then a war chant. Then kill them. Paper blood? Them curled up in a ball. Merge killing and baking?

I’m not sure I understand this – I feel like maybe there is something they can build as a group? I wonder if this death needs to be exorcised by the whole group. Maybe it is just me – I feel like if they are all going to make Lavinia’s noises, they might all want to take her vengeance…

Nicole’s Song
A girl caught in a time of hate. A man fought. A girl broken. A man tortured. Two hearts destroyed. In the name of Revenge.
That was amazing. You wrote it in the same amount of time it took us to cut and eat cake. Now it’s done and you can accept that it’s good.

Ashley’s Song
Yup, still amazing. I love all the noise at the beginning – the round sound. It’s really not that bad to die. Oh. Oh. Oh.

What are we focusing on? What do we want to be focusing on? I’m not as interested in Aaron and the nurse and stuff. The baby’s done. What have we been focusing on?
Rape
Lavinia
Insanity and the struggle
Losing the target of what you’re aiming for
Sides
Battles
A confusion of lust and violence
Previous action – what was it like before

What is the next subject that we want to explore/continue to explore – in and around the text. Most of this is focused within Act I into Act II. Want to explore the dinner scene. The build-up? Revenge, Rape, Murder, Dinner. The fly scene? What is it to kill somebody? The idea of the dinner scene and the movie Hook. Imagining the food and it drives their hunger. Thinking about ideas from that. Morbid fascination. And the Thyestes monologue.

Although we’re kind of putting the pieces together, we need to think of them as individual units so we can move them about. What I like about pieces touching each other is finding builds. Just don’t get attached.

There are too many of Shakespeare’s words at the beginning. It’s like we’re beyond the point of Shakespeare.

Even the other Shakespeare is more interesting – because it’s broken. Textual collage. And because it is theirs. You have to rape Lavinia with the rape speech. Some of these lines just pop. What if we bring in the pieces we’ve created and what we’ve created here – if we could look at everything. So that we see everything and look at it all and see what is the central theme. Don’t want to start structuring – just want to make sure we are cultivating what we want to cultivate. Not a running order as much as a look-through.

What pieces have we done:
All songs
All poem
Scenes/monologues from outside
Monologues from Titus
Aaron’s movement
Chair work between Zac and Chelsea
The fable in ten minutes
Lavinia
Everything from Williams – war, staircase, Alarbus, ghosts in windows, etc.

Let’s not let all that stuff go to waste. SO many poems that could be used. So many poems that fit into the context of other poems. Ashley’s poem and Chelsea’s poem – almost a possession of Tamora’s body. Using the elements of Chelsea’s poem in the same way – a losing control – I think they can work together. Nicole and Keith’s poems can work together. Close your eyes and breathe – you can’t in this play. If they did! Maybe Lavinia is the only one who is. When Bassianus does it, he dies. The fault of these people is that they are so motivated. They get stuff done. It’s beyond motivation – there’s no choice. Extremes of force.

I get a visual of New York moving at super fast speed – close-up on an old couple moving slowly, you know they won’t survive because they’re moving too slow. Koyaaniqatsi – put it on the blog. Images and a Philip Glass score. Took the BBC series Planet Earth and only juxtaposed beautiful and disturbing.

Philip Glass Koyannisqatsi.

Printed out texts that we love. Also for Alex’s sanity. So we can solidify. Starting out of order and moving towards order? Joel is skeptical. Removing of the hand? A little interest. Most of it because of the hands exploration. Maybe hands and tongues? Or a verbal exploration of tongues and a physical exploration of hands.

Talking about how we’d like to explore your fables! Ten minutes to build rape/revenge/murder through the dinner scene.

Passing the gesture of revenge. Revenge is starting to look like love and lust. And then it becomes violent again. It is sort of like Zac’s poem – don’t be afraid of the power of love, be afraid of the power of hate – as though they are the same coin and one does not know where they end. There must be love in the death and hate in the love. And the noises are the same – the noises of orgasm are the noises of struggle, they are built in the same place in the body – pain and pleasure as a site for both. Ohhhh I love love love this. This has somewhere to go. I love the laughing. I love Jen’s baby sucking. I love Lavinias spitting up blood. This is a place for Jen’s poem, too. Perhaps.

Ooooh, this was good. I liiiiiiiike it. I like it a lot.

Less time in the circle – once and change and take it out. Remember to stay in the same scene outside of the circle.

I am still so fascinated by the panting – and especially when they are down in that circle, you can’t tell if it is an orgy of feast or flesh or both. I am not into this combo-puppet-Lavinia. I do like Lavinia accosting her attackers. And the Tamoras protecting Rape and Murder. I like them, too. Ashley screaming “DEMETRIUS” was unbelievable. I do not like Nick’s monologue in this moment in the world. I love this pile of bodies. And dead Titus reaching up for his daughters. Wow. Some really really neat things in here.

Moving into pairs and then moving together. It was almost becoming all of them together. They almost found it three times. Almost a gigantic ten person dance. Something to explore. Tango is a fight dance. Sexuality and violence. Tearing apart of your own flesh section astounding. Ross and Jen sex. And then the face-off.

Oh, production meeting.