My mom always tells me that I should only do comedies and children’s plays, to guard my heart. But I know if I guard my heart, I’m only depriving myself of understanding. Am I walking away from Shortcuts fully self-aware and ready to change the world? Hell no. Fuuuuck no. But every little piece, every baby step forward, and especially every large leap back with my hands over my eyes … it all means something: that I am LEARNING. (…)I felt upset at times because during rehearsal, I would take direction without a second thought. If I was doing something of my own devising, I would welcome the notes, the tweaking, the thoughts. Because she’s the director. And I respect her. Would the scene be of my own devising, still? Yes. Because I responded to her direction. I reached deeper, or towards something I hadn’t considered. I found connections.
One other part of the rehearsal process I was displeased by was the lack of freedom in scenes. We got slips of paper and we were told to create a scene as our characters. However, on the slip of paper were guidelines such as adding one entrance, one meeting, four surprises, ten interruptions, four lines, etc. I felt almost no freedom with these exercises. Many things were taken and born out of them, but not in a way that I was happy with. It didn’t serve anything because I worried about what I needed to incorporate into the scene and what I was missing more than what I wanted to portray.
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So, after yesterday's dress rehearsal, I feel differently about the work. It went really well, to my surprise. I think the most important thing I have learned from our work is really more of a question. When do you trust the limitations and the structure that your director gives you? I know a few of us, including myself, we unsure about the conceptualization and strict structure, about the very particular notes, that were mostly backed by whether choices and ideas looked good or bad. But it turns out that all those directions were right and served the show. But is that the point? I think the decisions should suit everyone. I think. I don't know. I can't tell whether the work is good because of the strict director that emerged in the last month of our work, or because of the original connections with the texts and characters that developed from the start. Perhaps it is both. But I guess that question is irrelevant if one completely trusts their instincts as well as their casts and their directors. Trust trust trust.
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One thing I appreciate about this process is the willingness to take risks. We took many risks but I think they could have gone further, for me personally. I have not (yet) reached that point of “ok I’m done playing, discovering, rehearsing with the text; I’m ready to present it to the audience”. I’m still waiting for that moment when I’m done working, but I’m not. I could actually spend one more month with this. Maybe it’s because I’m censoring myself during rehearsal. I feel like sometimes I don’t follow all my impulses and that realization gives me motivation. Of course I know my limits as an actor and a human and I know when I’m pushing myself too far. Before I forget, I LOVE how improv helped us so much in this process. Almost 60% of what we’ve created came out of an improv exploration. Whenever I’ve done improv it’s for comedy shows but who knew it would come in hand when it comes to working with a script?
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Though movement is important within our project, we also find solace in stillness. But this stillness has to be an active stillness, never allowing the focus to whither, continuing to be in the moment even if you are not the center of the action.
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My cast mates never failed to surprise me in rehearsals. All at the same time, they would be willing to try everything and yet they would stubbornly refuse to try anything. There wasn’t any hesitation to express frustration, confusion, or lack of understanding (three things that I rarely admit). In one of our first outside of class rehearsals, we had to do a scene with a partner that was based on five verbs. I am definitely a planner. I like knowing the beginning and the end. My partner for this scene, is definitely more versed in improvisation and Grotowski, and he seems much more comfortable with the idea of just doing something than I am. We didn’t talk about what we were going to do, and instead, we just started moving. At times, I did not understand what he wanted me to do. I had trouble, and I still have trouble, going with the flow. I like having a plan. Maybe not step by step, but for me, having a goal, having something to work towards is important. I cannot comprehend just doing something and somehow making it mean something. Maybe it does not have to mean anything? For me, at whatever stage I am in, I need that thing to work towards.
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The thing I enjoy most about this project is the fact that it is not concrete. There is no set way things have to be. If we want to change the order of things we can. We still have the freedom to add things. All the work we have done has given us a wealth of material that we could always draw from.
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There was so much emphasis placed on aesthetic it was maddening! From the beginning there was great emphasis placed on the storyline and having to follow it. My understanding of this class was that we drew from what we found when we looked at this piece, when we looked into the mirror of the play and found certain personal reflections and explored that. (…) [To] so many things I did [the director] somehow tried to add dance-like movement. (…) I do not see what would have been wrong with doing four scenes of the same thing if this is what caught our interest.
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As I begin to reflect on the work my group and I have done (…), I can’t help but return to the week where it all began. While I was reviewing our blog page, I noticed something that Liz had posted from our very first meeting. She observed, “It is exciting to see young people who love each other and want to do really great work. Not work that everyone will understand or appreciate, but work for the sake of work.” I find it extremely fascinating that Liz wrote this at the beginning of the process as I feel as though it resonates even more strongly now. When the class began, none of us knew what to expect- we didn’t know where the text would lead us, how the group dynamic would work, or where we would draw our inspirations from. A lot of us were familiar with each other and how we work, which always helps at the beginning of the process, and yet we never could have predicted the work that was to develop in a mere three months. We do theatre because we have to do theatre, because we need to do theatre and somehow we can still find fulfillment even when delving into the unknown.
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A big beef I had was after reading "On the Genesis of Apocalypsis" and trying to recognize where the work needed to go. I passive-aggressively clashed with my director at the next rehearsal because I asked her what end some of the Viewpoints exercises we were doing were trying to reach. It was the first time anyone in our rehearsal process had voiced any sort of objection to anything. And it made me feel extremely uncomfortable. So I kept all my doubts inside for a while and they ate at me. We would keep rooting our work in the text to try and express what had basically already been expressed by the author in a ‘new’ and ‘interesting’ way. When scenework would start to move away from the text and more into the situation at hand, the actors would be stopped or redirected mid-scene to try and express ‘what that character would do’ or what happened next in the story. Which isn’t bad, per se, it just wasn’t what I was interested in. After a while I stopped grinding against the way the work was going, though, and noticed that good stuff was still happening. But I poured myself into this project for months, trying to find something, trying to do the work I had been reading about. Most of the things I found interesting were cut in favor of character relationships and clever staging techniques. A few things were questioned, a few things were confronted, but for the most part I didn’t feel like we were actually accomplishing anything in terms of Grotowski’s theories.
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Personally, I think the problem grew like a tumor from the way in which we sought to enter the work in the first place. The first month of our work was devoted to reading the text, interpreting the text, thinking about the text, practicing the text, molding the text, text, text, text. We were too attached to the text to let our own creations grow. We shunted off exploration in favor of a map drawn by the text to which we were assigned. It began to feel forced. To put it simply, I felt as though we were recreating the text instead of responding to it. (…) I also think, even up to now, we are working towards a production as opposed to exploring an evolving process. We are finely tuning and shaping these scenes, which is a vital step, but the impetus to do so comes not from a will to drive deeper into the work but from a fear that our work is not ready to be seen. Personally, I will continue to improvise and explore, even during the show dates, and treat the five nights as rehearsals that we happened to let the public into as opposed to a polished, stagnant show.
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I have discovered that talking too much doesn't help. There were times where we would just sit and talk, and it would lead to nothing. We would try to plan out a scene by sitting and discussing it. What worked for us was getting on our feet, improvising. Just trying things and then talking about them. I also think it is important to protect this work from becoming just another Mainstage FSU production. The focus of this class I feel needs to remain on the collaboration between the director and the performers. I really appreciate the contributions of our design and management team for this show, they were great about coming in and supporting our work and really becoming a part of our process and collaboration. But I also see the danger in further involvement of designers and management students in the future.
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We began to work outside and to our benefit our individual performances became free and imprisoned at the same time. For some this transition was difficult and for others, nothing but good came of it. More and more scenes started to develop, and they developed organically, without preconception. These later scenes that we have created prove to be our most captivating and rich work, because it comes from a place of repression and frustration rooted directly from the process itself. The work is continually growing into something more unexpected and interesting than any of us could have expected. The work is nowhere near completion, but I am comfortable saying that we have unique and beautiful moments throughout the body of performance that we have created together.
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Each person individually was given a chance to show work, even if it was not put in the final project. No one was ever discouraged from bringing in a piece, a monologue, or research. We, as the group, found a way to use it, and more often than not, we did. One day, the director gave us twenty minutes to write a song. No rules, no concepts, just write it. It was absolutely terrifying, but it served as a new outlet for creativity that was not a monologue or a scene. We were able to build a vocabulary of gestures and movement which we do use in the final project. Our cast developed such a strong bond that no gesture, piece, or idea was too weird or too unusual to use. We did, and still do, appreciate every idea that came out of our rehearsals. We also have a group emotion most of the time. If one person is feeling overwhelmed or upset, then we all are. We use it in our work.
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To me, this was what the process was about, improvising scenes finding personal connections and then showing them to the director. This is the first time we actually created scenes. Once the director saw them she started to direct us and had us try new and different things in a collaborative manner, but suddenly in one rehearsal she came in and put text on top of the scene, telling us to say this line here and that line there, things we didn’t come up with and personally were not connected.
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In Apocalypse Grotowski says “in everyone the secrets of creation are different.” (…) You have to come together with other artists that all share the same level of respect and creative hunger. You must all have the same ethic, and compatible views on how to work. You must also be willing to be vulnerable with one another. You have to trust and feel safe. You have to all not be afraid of disagreements and throwing things away. You have to allow for explorations in areas that you may not want to venture, but you go blindly, because you believe in one another. It is a rare and precious balance when a process “frees the fullness in the artist, the creative fullness in the director.” Our work does not possess that balance, but I don’t think that is something to be ashamed of. I think it is very difficult to be a part of that. And when you go about starting a project such as this, you cannot do it through casting and auditions the same as you would do for commercial theatre. It just doesn’t make sense. The finding of your collaborators should follow Grotowski’s explanation: What do we look for in the actor? Without a doubt—himself. If we don’t look for him, we cannot help him. If he doesn’t interest us, if he isn’t someone essential to us, we cannot help him. You have to be working with people who, when you see them and their ideas and desires, you are inspired by them and want to aid in helping them succeed. And when you look at the text that you are delving into, you must only see what elements inspire you, and agree to follow them to whatever place they take you, however palatable or unsightly or confusing.
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At a certain point we got past Shakespeare. Joel gave us an assignment to bring in some text, either in a monologue or scene, that we felt expressed what Shakespeare couldn’t. This work was amazing. I remember the day when we presented all of our selections for each other in 106, and I was just dumbfounded. This was probably the most rewarding part of the whole project. The actors were completely free from any direction and any limits really to explore the story in Titus. The texts ranged from other Shakespeare, to poetry, modern work, cinema, and those written by the actors themselves. Not only were we finally exploring the aspects of the story that we found to be the most intriguing and richest, but with fantastic results.
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I imagine the director was pretty frustrated with me at points. I was very stubborn through the whole process. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t doing anything that didn’t feel right, only because I knew that anybody watching would clearly detect that I was less genuine, and I wanted to try to avoid that at all costs. Maybe self-conscious to worry about the audience, maybe a little selfish to worry about my own hide.
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Over the course of the weeks and months that went by, the director seemed to have been rejuvenated in this process. As his actors, we could actually see the chains of the script falling off him and the excitement that he started bringing to rehearsals, which motivated all of us. Suddenly, there was no script.
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It was later pointed out to me that this movement did not have to be necessarily “pretty” nor structured. Instead, the intentions behind the movement were far more important than producing a “pretty” show. I feel as though this was the point where everything was unlocked for me. I felt freed and alive, which was what I had been searching for the whole time, and I finally accepted it. Who knew that I would find it by accident? It was then easy to transfer this new feeling into the rest of the work we had created.
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Many of the problems I believe in this process have been the aspect of time. Everybody involved on this project has always been dedicated to creating something together. However, time has always been against us. It took time to learn how to work together. To find out what everybody wanted, and especially what the director wanted. Learning how to work together was the majority of the battle.
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From that moment on we also began to not only draw huge chunks of our show from other sources, but more importantly from ourselves. Several of the other actors who were apart of this process proved to be incredibly talented and creative individuals who brought to the table some amazing work. As we worked with all of these different sources the show really began to fall into place, but continued to shift and change completely with each rehearsal. That had to be one of the more exciting things about this process, just to walk into rehearsal and have no idea what would happen and what would change.
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For a period we got really focused on form. The second we had something, the ensemble sort of was trapped into clinging onto it until there was literally nothing left of it. It was, as Grotowski says, ‘dead’. This was the worst LITERALLY. I was so grumpy. And I hate that I was. It wasn’t professional or admirable but I just got trapped in this place of frustration. I don’t want to run choreography. I don’t want to practice something that looks ‘cool’ for the sake of its cool-looking-ness.
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One of the lessons I learned from our first run-through assignment is that when you take away safety nets such as text and a set, finding a common rhythm with the other actors is crucial. In that first run through alone I found key ideas and themes that have stuck with me throughout this entire process.
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Something I think that we have succeeded in is the discovery of self. (…)“Show me your man, and I will show you my God.” This quote from Grotowski is something that has really stuck with me, and I believe that during this process, we have had moments of “showing our man.” Which is amazing. The tragedy of it is, I don’t know if the moments were recognized as beauty when they happened. They should have been. Which makes me wonder if anyone was paying attention.
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I feel that I could have contributed more to the process. Was it my insecurity? Was it my fear to just explore as much as I could? Was it that I didn’t just stand up and express myself? I don’t know. But I do feel that there is some of me in the pieces. I know I especially started to pitch in on ideas towards the end. I know that my individual exploring in the scenes and what feels right contributes to the piece as a whole. My little work contributes to the big work. But I feel like my voice was not expressed fully, mostly because I didn’t share it as much as I should have. But this is always the case with me. Fear holds me back. Fear of what? I do not know. I wish I could have explored more of what I could do and offer myself more of a challenge than I did.
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The fact is, this isn’t so much about Titus anymore as it is about the adventure that got us to this point. What comes out in every rehearsal is the exhaustion and the joy and the pain and a physical expression of the chaos and love and anger and resentment. What it is now is not the thing it began as; what I am now is not what I was in January.
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What am I as a person?
I find it hard to continue my previous interactions and relationships in the same way after I return to or even attempt to return to this place. I have found it is only possible when I really sit alone and focus....really force myself to remember and allow myself to know that this part, this place, this stranger is the only thing that I know with all of my being to be real. It is isolating, it is lonely, but it is a new religion. We are all alone.
This idea was absolutely crippling to me at first. Everything I “know” it seems I do not...or at least in as strong a way as this. I only know that I am alone, and that inside of me and every other human being exists commonalities which are a far cry from the ones I had expected, hoped, and “knew” before. Each of us is nothing if not a capacity to be and find anything...any level of darkness, lightness, emotion, loss, forgotten-ness, fullness, love, religiousness...anything which has existed in the human existence, even if I have not accessed or experienced these personally...its potential is inside of every person. No person can ever really know another. We are alone. We are isolated. We are compilations of previous experiences and ideas of composure.
I am alone.
