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.