Updates

The blog is finally updated. I am terribly sorry. Consider it an entrance back into Shortcuts after the break.

Can't wait to see you all tomorrow.

-L.

TITUS 22 February

A little yoga to begin. And lights out, but of course.

We’re going to start opening every rehearsal with a little yoga led by Nicole and Jen. Don’t overstretch.

All of this is good advice. I love watching the actors do the yoga. The environment in the room is so peaceful, it makes me feel like I should type as quietly as possible. As the car horn intrudes – no peace, perhaps – even in the rehearsal room. Can we ever escape the world? And that is indeed exactly what we endeavor to do here – be entirely present, despite the car horns, and the rain, and the tight jeans, and the overdue library books. All of that fades away to leave us bare and naked in front of the world.

Been a long week for many of you people. A lot of people working on shows. Confession time re: lines. Hilarious. This week you get a pass – your level of memorization needs to start happening and you have to have it done.

Nice even circle. A round of clapping to start. [I wonder if this exercise started with like a minute of closed eyes, in through the nose, out through the mouth, to get them in a rhythm – if that would be easier.]

A difficult activity, but things in Titus we can explore with this energy. Gesture improvs! Continue with scene to get a little bit of product. Kept getting closer last week, so this week we will do it again!

Lane work – Viewpoints exercise. Lane work – R&J simple intro – walk towards scene partner – moment of connection, moment of separation, keep going. Come together, connect, and separate. Three will go and then two will go – men and women divided. At very beginning, no physical contact. We will build up. Starting not as characters.

Name of the exercise. I wonder, too, if there is a way to have this exercise really be about meeting without lies. Bringing the bare, naked, honest truth of ourselves to a meeting with another person.

In the course of walking, you have to fall in love, and then you have to leave each other. Now allowed to make physical contact.

Ashley just reached for Dayne’s neck and he held her hip – it was almost like a dance, like the beginning of a waltz – for some reason I immediately thought of Tamora and Titus beginning a sort of waltz of death. And this rushing hysteria between Jen and Keith is also beautiful – it feels like Lavinia…with herself. With her own sense of her humanity – like Lavinia saying goodbye to her innocence – holding on rather desperately. All of them seem to have this instinct to hold on. This moment when they are holding each other and swaying. It should have looked like a middle school dance, and it did not. It looked like ten people wanting to hold each other together and forever. Rather extraordinarily beautiful. It also seems to have anchored in this sort of interesting way – time keeps moving out from a sort of center point. Interesting – any connection except a hug. Smell – beautiful. There is such a depth of difference in these connections – differences in maturity, in body comfort, in experience – I feel as though these young men and women are very alive in themselves. Very honest, and open.

Men = Bassianus. Women = Lavinia. In the hunt before everything else has happened.

Nick takes his hat off. No armor allowed. Dancing, reaching, smelling, holding…these connections are all about more than just one touch. For some there is so much innocence and possibility – Zac and Liz really seem to have captured what the connection might be – Lavinia is, in fact, not a sexual, sexified creature. She is young and innocent and lusting and afraid, even with someone she knows and respects. And Zac wants to possess her and kiss her and claim her. And the tension that they have is extraordinary. Where Keith and Jen feel, to me, like Tamora and Titus. Imagine them together – what a force of nature, of reckoning they would have been. What if Tamora had married Titus, had been his prize on the battlefield – if she had slaked his lust with her body there in the midst of blood and swords and wounded men – how might they have conquered the world?

How was the lane work? That was intense – I thought it was gonna be a warm up. I’ve always stuck to the idea that we start with some circle game, tell the story, whatever activity – there’s something interesting about starting with those moments of affection and that’s where we start from – from strong connection. That’s so critical because how many plays do you see what you think of are acts of action and it’s so important for them to have the time to establish that affection – and then the tragedy doesn’t mean anything. It’s amazing how quickly you can establish that. Having just a simple moment of connection before can change everything. I wonder, then, if we do that lane work maybe just to BEGIN the show. Experience before you speak so you are reacting to your environment. Acknowledge your space. I love this as a lesson.

Back on our feet. Something new into the Tamora-Aaron birth section. Find yourself an interesting and dynamic place in the world. We’re going to repeat a scenario from last week – women are Tamora, men are Aaron, after the birth, connect with each other. The baby is present. Start with a Tamora going to an Aaron.

Chelsea has this extraordinary moment of utter revulsion for this child. And then Liz won’t even take it. All of the women, though, first have this connection with the child. So interesting. And all of their eyes follow it. In fact, everyone in the room’s eyes follow the child. Jen takes the baby as though it carries the weight of the world. And Ross TAKES the baby. HE claims the baby. Oh, how beautiful. He forces it on Nicole. This just got really real. Ross has hate in his heart as he walks away from Jen on the ground – it’s so unbelievable how many facets of this interaction they are experiencing. Joy, hate, sorrow, fear, revulsion, desperation, mourning, sacrifice. Liz throws the baby – oh, good lord, my heart just jumped right up into my throat.

Bitch did not just drop my baby. Lots of laughing after that one. Needed it. I hate that baby so much. Don’t you dare give me that baby. I wanted a monologue during it. As important as the work is, if it fucks up your life, it’s not valid work. Maybe a little identity crisis, but you should be able to go through the rest of your day.

Find yourselves in an interesting place in the room. Ross does the whole monologue holding the child before you actually move. If you feel like using some of those words, use them. You don’t have to be one of the people engaged at the moment – if you feel a part of the monologue, go ahead and express it. Whatever. Everyone is Aaron. And you can give it to the same sex. Other texts, also portions of the poem, are totally allowed.

Just legitimately got the chills as they are all speaking. I think because of Chelsea and Jen with the hate in their hearts about the mistress. Myself, myself, myself – some of you will smoke – a chorus. My mistress is my mistress. I’m not sure I know what the hell is going on or why it is interesting and extraordinarily moving – I suppose that is the point. It is as though vultures are circling around this baby.

Time for an arc. Everyone is Tamora. Man speaks, men are Aaron. Woman speaks, all Aaron. At some point, Aaron actively pursues the child. DON’T RUSH IT. And don’t be afraid to repeat things that have felt good in the past. If there have been things you have really liked, don’t be afraid. Everyone talking won’t happen until everyone is Aaron.

It’s so interesting that the Tamoras are repulsed by the child. That circling looked kind of cool. And then not all of them are repulsed. There is some sort of decision to be made about how to feel about it. Ashley and Chelsea in this sort of shared Nurse/Tamora position – felt like midwifery. Laying the baby at the feet of another. Feels like a legitimate abandonment. I love this turning on the floor that Keith is doing. I wish someone would hum a lullaby under this. This is so beautiful, this lullaby of mourning in the corner. And Zac with the heartbeat in the background – the baby’s heartbeat. OMG I love it love it love it. My my my my my. The baby up in the air and all of them reaching for it. AMAZING. Amazing.

GODDAMN PRODUCTION MEETING.

TITUS 15 February

Clapping community exercise. Stress lifting away – what a lovely idea, but also at the same time, what about letting that stress live? I always love these exercises that require everyone to live in each other’s bodies. It feels like an arrhythmic heartbeat, a little bit – or maybe the constant pounding of a team of marathoners. They have reached a rhythm in which they are really living in each other and with each other.

Three characters last time, Keith is going to do two each this time so we get all caught up. Think about the first character you want to do – three gestures and we guess which character, then three words, then tell us.

Characters in their bodies and language. Perhaps there should be a limit to the guessing. Self as a word that describes – interesting – an idea that certain of these characters live in themselves alone. Clarity of Tamora from Ashley – she is grasping and incredibly sexual in this interpretation. Witch, beautiful, mother. What is interesting about these is the idea of appealing to both an idea of icon/universality (that is ham-fisty on my part) and the notion of Titus as a specific piece involving very clear individuals.

TAMORA: treacherous, audacious, militaristic.

CHIRON: obedient, childish, ruthless

MARCUS: (gender will often play a role in what you see) obsessive, parental, ?

TITUS: gladiator, instinct, eagle

LAVINIA:

LAVINIA: idyllic and iconic (religion-like), sparkling and soiled, desecration

AARON: quirk, black, passion

TAMORA: maternal, proud, driven

----

LAVINIA: youth, prized, ravished

TITUS: proud, father, vulnerable

DEMETRIUS: demonic, edible, religion

TAMORA: other, queen, unrelenting

LAVINIA: silent, torn, captive

LAVINIA: submissive, sacrifice, bound

CHIRON: anger, discrimination, winner

DEMETRION: fool, primal, pawns [for me they really are just one – like them combining – it weakens them, in the course of action they are the same]

TAMORA: Titus, retarded (slowed), misogyny [she is that symbol]

SATURNINUS: paranoid, opportunistic, needy

TITUS: warrior, honor, tradition

---

Last Friday we did the Goths, today we are doing the Romans. Start with Chelsea’s first Lavinia gesture and basically what happens is that she’s going to pass to the right, take it in, adjust it – remains a gesture of Lavinia – from it or in response to. Can be subtle or huge.

Lavinia becomes more violated in these gestures – I think this violence against her, perhaps because we hear so many college horror stories, is incredibly moving for this group – it is the rape and what happens after the rape and during the rape and it is a body in pain, in torture, in stillness – an enforced stillness? The idea of Lavinia unmoving and broken in the midst of a heap of bodies is an image I can’t shake – from that first rehearsal when the bodies were all heaped in the middle. Raging against her situation…how much we want her to – Crippled and falling. The strength of the vocalization coming out of the silence – another extraordinary layer that speaks to me viscerally.

She gave up and then got pissed and then gave up again. Disbelief. The falling. Fall, started to get back up, fall. Nobody did the romantic pre-death figure. First things you think of and response to the previous. I found it very upsetting to do, essentially it was enacting the stages of a rape victim, it was really hard to see that, but I’m proud of everyone for that. Cleansing thing that happened. Renewal and water. Trying to get it off – didn’t know if it was blood or water. Washing something that can’t come off. I’m smearing blood all over everything, this running blood water. This time we go the other way – how you take it in, you take a breath, and then do your action on your exhale. Keith’s first Titus.

I think it is so interesting that Titus is so much more vocal than Lavinia. As though there is something about her pain, perhaps, that cannot be given a sound. I find the desperation mixed with the brutality to be incredibly moving – horribly violent and simultaneously tragically trapped- he has no recourse but these violent actions, in this interpretation. For some of them it seems to be a real reaching out for power. Perhaps after Lavinia, that’s why. I can see the earth of Rome, the arms of his children, the blood of his enemies, all of these things around him – Titus as controlled by his environment and entirely UNFREE.

How different with the breathing? I breathe with everyone. The sounds – started to play with sounds, vocal and non-vocal. On one hand it helps us to be able to analyze the nuances of the move, instead of missing the ball – it felt harder to keep momentum, it would jam up – wasn’t as fluid between – lost its spontaneity, moves away from first instinct. How much expression there is in the way you breathe. Observations on Titus: Titus never gave up. Vertical struggle – the warrior inherent in Titus. Titus bringing things up, Lavinia bringing things down. More human aspects of Titus. Father sometimes, weaknesses, saw the panic, drawing on the ground – a touching moment. Find the weaknesses of strong characters and strengths of weak characters. Boring to do the warrior after awhile. He is steadfast when he’s being noble and we see his passion ofr his state. He’s a character that needs something to drive towards, he’s not self-involved, he really has to sacrifice more than you think of – everybody had such a strong stance all the time – Titus as grounded.

Men on one side, women on the other. Titus and Tamora. Gestures starting on the Titus side – responding to each other. Continuing to send it. Give it diagonally across. Stepping forward, but if you need stillness, that’s allowed.

Starting to find stuff, a little bit. It made Titus seem weak and seduced. Tamora is so manipulative – a lot of toying with, and Titus’s only response is straightforward. So many hand-offs of things – where you didn’t know how to react, which I think is a good question. They react violently. Wanted to react to the one across from me. You started to figure it out that you can start a response and pass the energy.

----

Boy-girl circle. Start to breathe and come back from break, back in the space. Bassianus gestures. Engaged the entire time – not standing and taking it in – start responding immediately, breathing thing, too. Inhale is the pose, exhale is the transfer. Come out of it as a response to what Liz is starting to do.

A lot of giving, it seems with Bassianus. Constant giving and shielding. And joy. It is amazing how many different feelings in Titus we are exploring.

He died a lot. Several times. How was this different? Unsettling. He’s another one of the ones that we don’t know. What we know about him is that he’s in love with Lavinia and then he’s dying. He is the more deserving. We missed some of his nobility. He’s much more animalistic than I would think. He was like a little lamb. Picking it up from the point where he’s on the run. We don’t think he retains his nobility. Trying to do the right thing – whether for myself or the good of Rome – not sure if I could tap into that. Another one of these – The gesture begins and then you have to start while the other person is moving – when you’re done, stay – start where the other person is – not mirroring necessarily the goal, but you look for an interaction. Take the energy and turn it – when it’s being turned, that’s when you turn back. Tamora – Ashley’s second.

I sometimes feel like the men weaken Tamora. No offense, guys. But she seems to live less in their bodies. I wonder what the way in for them is. Maybe not – just at the beginning, I suppose. And I feel like Tamora is KILLING THAT BABY. A bunch of times. And then she died.

Picked up speed. We couldn’t wait and we wanted to jump on each other. Really hard to breathe, to inhale and exhale. Frozen and not breathing. What did we learn about Tamora – the baby was important – passing energy – the energy became a baby and food (OMG A BABY AND FOOD – THE BABY IS ALSO FOOD!!!). Became the most narrative – it arose. Always really engaged in her trajectory. We, Tamora. Almost like a heartbeat – crazy, crazier, exhausted. Connected more with people who weren’t directly close to me. Found myself mad if I got myself in a position I felt strong about but I couldn’t see other people. A lot less sound – was that the breathing? Very percussive with bodies and the floor. A physicalization rather than an embodiment of sound. She is not vocal about scheming because she is so manipulative.

GD production meeting. I depart, most unhappily.

Frankenstein 24 February

Head/Hips/Turn/Walk, Walk, Walk in Victors and Elizabeths

Turns towards and away from each other

Elizabeths explore a uniform way of moving in this way; same thing with Victors. How does this inform the character? Victor – shoulders moving together? Debating the way Victor’s body works. Keeping in contact as they play.

Awareness of each other – might try different things – come to some concord on how these characters move.

Elizabeth looks sort of empty and foolish. Like a dog. I mean, not that the actors look like dogs – but they are evoking very much a sort of faithful little puppy in my mind.

Looking for a way that we take people who are different sexes and body types and finding a uniform way of moving for characters. Once you have found something together that works and you are all in rhythm with, start mingling.

It feels a little like they are fighting this. But that is too bad, because I love the look of this sort of disjointed Elizabeth whose head goes one way and whose hips go another. Like she is this crooked body with a head attached as an afterthought. I love it.

The Victors were so clashing, and the Elizabeths were so organized – it was a cool thing.

Chelsea and Rachel; Jessica, Lukas, and Cassie.

C&R doing the building scene and adding in some love letters – don’t talk. JLC – back to the exercise…yea, I can’t hear it. That’s okay.

Separate exercises to begin to build a story. Love letters between characters who build each other. “The memory of you…” she is perfect in memory and then the reality has to be adjusted. Seductive but not slutty – real pretty and she’s still not good enough.

I love that Victor is simultaneously entranced and repulsed by Elizabeth in Chelsea/Rachel world. And she fights it a little, which is sort of charmingly feminist – an attempt, maybe to reclaim Elizabeth for today. Esp. sharing her name, I want that mini resistance, I suppose.

Pretty things are happening in the back. They are making a nice picture. Lukas is against the wall holding Jessica while Cassie as creature stares at them. And has to lift herself into the world.

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.

Group Meeting 22 February

I feel like everybody is scatter-brained, so we need to take more effort into making our work possible. It’s a fragile point in our process – we’ve gone through so many weeks, where are we? Next week I will not give you any extra reading and this is the moment when you don’t read and we continue what we started. I found the poem exercise very meaningful and very useful where it works. And where it doesn’t work, I still would like it to open up as a possibility for your work. I’m discovering that by asking you this, I can read in the way you write the poem the problems you have inside and outside of the process. I can read your trouble by the way you write your poem. I want to use that to help you. There are actually two processes going on, that’s why this is an acting class – it’s not that you are just working on the project to stage an experiment, you are also working on your craft and art as a performer. There is an intimate connection that opens up between you and me, you and your colleagues, you and your directors and everybody else. It has something to do with the project but is also an independent project. Without my interfering, I also insist on an interaction with the level of your artistic growth with me. With some of you, I had an interactive moment with the poem. One sentence or a lot. It’s fascinating. I would like that to happen with most of you. Those of you who have not heard from me, I either haven’t found the place where it’s serving you or I’m thinking that you do not need me yet, which is also a possibility. With Zac – I don’t need to work with your poem. We have a good understanding right now – it’s not the place where you can learn something more – check with me. That’s why next week, no reading assignment, but I still want to interact on that level with you. Andd I was very clear in answering your poems, right? Free myself from rhyming, etc. Did it make sense to you? Make yourself free to the poem – in which way? You are very good verbal performer – and it is sometimes also your weapon that shoots you in the foot because you rely upon it so much and you become comfortable and block other ways of communicating. The form choked the poem – I read his poem as a cry, but since he constructed it in a methodical way, made it fit a form, it’s a choked cry, so work on it so it is a liberated cry. Makes sense in terms of acting. I like to develop scores, my detail gets too structured for my own good, too methodical with my work, and it gets a little forced/cute. You know it and are still choked by it – this is exactly on what level your imaginations are being employed. What is blocking you? Via Negativa. We all want the actor to tell the truth – that’s positiva. Via Negativa. Do not LIE. Do you see how it changes the way you work? No, I am going to question every time you lie – and that’s how you have to accept it – as people you lie all the time – catch yourself in the lie and examine it – that’s the Via Negativa. At one point, someone asked about Theatre of Cruelty – does it mean literally violence? Yes and no – in more clarification – for me, and for many people, the most cruel, the most violent act is when somebody tells the truth and doesn’t lie. That’s violence. Dare on that level – do it on that level. You were talking about telling the truth and do not lie – hearing it – you can find ways around telling vulnerable parts by packaging the truth – ways to word things that are safer. If you take that word – that claim – to the extreme – do not lie – that a clever way of telling the truth is lying because it’s making something set. A way of telling a story that doesn’t tell how it hurts you is actually a lie. Protecting yourself is a lie. You are in the department to tell the truth and not lie. Good amazing poems already happening and I am so moved. This is just phenomenal. Not the level of poetry, but the freer form of verbal expression – some articulation of feelings that you need to be articulating in your work. Good work is absolutely happening – keep doing that during this week. Reply and have an exchange. Those of you who are challenged to change your poem, continue.

I asked you to read this very important article because this is a moment in which you feel a little tired, form the semester and the process, etc. We’re into the game and almost halfway there and where am I and what’s going on. This is a moment where you see what is happening and don’t lie and what place, what source, this revelation, testimony comes and tells you the agony of the creative process. It doesn’t have to be that every process that you do is agony, but you can feel that if it’s all fun and pleasure, it’s not good. Every art department has pain built into it. Pulled from your quotes to see what from the article is meaningful to you. You found places meaningful to you and I also found them very meaningful. Maybe we are very much alike in the way we care about this.

--The most important quotation: “What do we look for in the actor?...”

Thinking about that is very meaningful. Think of your colleague as a mystery that you are fascinated by, you have a sincere curiosity about him and you are also a mystery for him or her. I don’t mean that you hold a secret, but I mean that you are full of secrets for your own self- you don’t know yourself. That process can help to bring that mystery up and it can become an event for all of us. A festival of human possibility.

--“I had then only one…”

The idea is that always what you do in connection to the text that you’re working with - you are looking for a place where you make personal connections and investments and something beautiful can happen. That place may not be immediately connected to the text, but they know it, all your colleagues know it – that moment of this amazing opportunity of expression. That moment of liveness is ultimately your key and your way into working with that text.

--Actual most important. “Create as if it were the last time, as if one were to die immediately after.”

Take that seriously – we should all do everything with our whole self – if we do it all the way, then life really is beautiful. If this project is the most important thing you do, you do it as if you were to die tomorrow. You’re not holding back. Not only is it amazingly beautiful, but I think that’s the only way of doing the creative process. NO conversation about the text. You replies to me are telling me that you read it on many levels, it is a moment of contemplation about you in your process.

Candy rips the band-aid off and creates an act of violence.

All this talk of poetry, shall we hear a poem?

“A mother lost in time, time too late”

“You all fall down.”

Mirror – some moment that has no connection becomes alive and meaningful to you, doesn’t come out of concept, it makes perfect sense in terms of fitting the essence of the play. It makes sense to me. An element introduced in an improv, there’s a narcissism of Pentheus, and temptation behind this from the other side – who’s holding the mirror? Of course Dionysus, he loves your self-love, he uses it – and when the kiss happens? It’s the kiss. Because Dionysus is of both genders, for him – he’s probably capable of all kinds of sex by himself. Something about masturbation. Yup.

I really like the rhythm and how the words propelled and bounced via rhyme or same word, a chain of events that’s unstoppable, and I also am curious why it’s “you all fall down.” There’s losses on both sides – both parties, the two opposing screams are because there are losses on both sides – it puts the poem in the perspective of someone in the middle. Gives the people of Thebes who are affected the most and have no voice – it gives them a point of view – the Maenads are a tool and the people of Thebes are a tool and the middleman is always the one that’s forgotten.

I like the idea of taking something familiar like nursery rhymes and Snow White and making it very unfamiliar – I felt that kind of loss looking at something that used to make us happy, turning it in on itself and making it ugly, the loss of innocent perspective. And there’s more into it – there is a possibility of any Greek play that ever we know somehow is symptomatically emerging in tales and storytelling and children’s storytelling or all kinds of folk elements in the Western history, therefore of course bringing that children’s story into it is acknowledging the fact that some narcissistic element in the Bacchae finds its way into the story – part of the story can be bought into the play. This is a reference point that also makes it very much yours. You grew up thinking about that story somehow. As far as from what I could hear, it’s very interesting that it had violent imagery to it and reminded me how we are all capable of destroying things and it seems like a world that isn’t permanent. We’ve revisited that theme I don’t know how many times – the development of new skin, scabs forming over a wound, rip off that band-aid. You see how from the moment we ask the directors to tell us the first fable that things are really far away from a storytelling in terms of catching up the logic for the events – it is all becoming saturated with a dominant image of them coming from you and actually more poetic – theatre is staged poetry, that is how it emerged, as poetry. The Greeks were called poets. And so was Shakespeare, your buddy. Theatre is poetry.

Group Meeting 15 February

Poem day! I am excited to hear a little performative poetry. Perhaps I shall be inspired to write my own. This week, I am thinking about pairs – Janus-like, I suppose, if you will: Pentheus and Dionysus, Frankenstein and the creation, Tamora and Titus as flip-sides of the same coin. Perhaps because I, myself, am feeling a little sub-divided these days. Also, the question becomes, if they are two sides of the same coin, where does one end and the other begin? Is there a border between, or are we always already everything – is the sum total of the whole world, of every experience, contained a priori in its totality inside of our bodies – can I be everything and anything at any given moment? What a terrifying and liberating thought – that at any moment I can be a creator or created, bacchanalian or austere, revenger or victim. What extraordinary possibilities are wasting away inside of this well of untapped energy I possess – and how do I free them? How do I feel them? Where are they located? And am I free to be free to explore them – or do I have to choose that freedom in every moment, at every juncture? It seems that possibility – that freedom, if I’m allowed to be unspecific – can come only from its omnipresent awareness – not omnipresent, but constantly present, perhaps? So, to really change me, I have to live in total and complete awareness of my body all of the time. Maybe? I guess that is the site of exploration for all of these artists – how can I be fully and totally me in this very moment?

Today I really want to keep us short to meet here because I see the rehearsals and see how much time you need to work. One new fable today from Anne and next time from Candace. Announcement about homework – I tried to explain why I wanted these poems. And some poems know it, know why I asked for them, and some poems don’t. Ultimately, it’s – I don’t care about poetry in this class. What I care about is something else. Why did I ask you to write poems? TO try and get a more creative and honest response. Yea…but not exactly. Something a little less inside of academia, more a response that would resonate with our artistic side. The raw emotion that comes with writing poetry – all you’re dealing with is the emotions, so you’re writing your feelings, allows other people to see what you are feeling. Poem is an avenue for feelings which are more complex than thoughts – something thoughts have on top of themselves. You want us to try to get away from a collective me and into a rehearsal I, so maybe to talk personally about ourselves and be open to the personal work. Images. Ultimately, nobody is wrong – ultimately, my goal is what? For us to get out of our heads to feel through our bodies. Looking for honesty. A way into work. Absolutely. This is the main reason – it’s your way into work. So…you see now the clarification. Many are really good – I see that work can be happening from the poem. You already have some performance possibility in the poem. Those of you who haven’t done as well can try again – does your poem give you room for work? If so, then it’s fine – if not, try to rewrite it and do it again. I will be responding throughout the week.

I posted an article on Blackboard by Grotowski. His testimony of a project that I feel is like your project, although he took more time and worked in a professional company and didn’t have to go to school. The project is very similar. He is trying to reply to a text and he ends up directing a different piece of devised theatre than he originally intended. A beautiful path going from one end, dropping the text, preparing a performance, and then asking for texts. The text disappeared, then improve situations, then theatrically devised piece, and when it was almost shaped, they brought in important texts that were crucial to individual actors and performers. That path is phenomenal to read about. Reading about one of the most important performances in the modern history of theatre. This is a formative performance piece that changed theatre as we know it. Apocalypsis cum figuris. You will hear about responses in which that work resonates/reverberates. Read that text and you will enjoy it, and then write me a very short response in which you only say one thing: what is, to you personally, the most important thing you remember from reading the text? Pick one thing that, if it’s all lukewarm, then say it. Be honest about it. We all respond to different things. Don’t perform anything – just tell me honestly what you found in the text. I want to see how you read this kind of testimony of devised work. We try to create something, we try to find ways in which this work can be done.

It’s all okay as long as you think it serves your work. Ultimately, I will judge – but if I don’t see it, we can have a conversation about it. You guys are not doing too much for this class, right? A situation in which we are together on a journey and we are trying to see what is the next step.

ANNE: love letters from Victor and Elizabeth. “While we are apart I am incomplete.” “I am incomplete – I dream of you and think only of you.” How interesting. I love it cause it never happens – all this emotion and build-up and it never happens and the creation kills her. Didn’t say who it was from – could have been from the monster. ‘Cause Elizabeth doesn’t have thoughts. The form? This is how Frankenstein is told – through a series of letters. It’s interesting to challenge the notion of romantic love in our culture because it is now reserved for the young and beautiful. I must be ugly and old. In the 40s, so many older actors play romantic roles – you can believe that this is a possibility of romantic love, but you are shocked because we are not used to seeing older people, people not granted access to beauty. It’s a new idea to introduce that notion of love – you hear it read and it is a beautiful letter – you can thinkof Romeo and Juliet, but it could be old and ugly. Beautiful quote from Yeats: my mind is, no, my heart is full of beauty and desire captured in a decaying body. ["Sailing to Byzantium"] He still desired all that we reserve for the young and beautiful. Very interesting way of approaching. Maybe we are all attracted to Frankenstein – like Beauty and the Beast, without the Beauty. One time, a long time ago, when I lived in France, I had this job where I worked at a retirement home for not so well off people, older people who shared rooms and it was kind of romantic looking in an old castle on the lake, but it wasn’t for the rich. These people were dying every couple of weeks – and every once in a while you would see romantic love between people who are ready to die and shit into their beds and pee all over and yell all night and they would be outside and sit in the sun and you would see R&J happen with these old people. The combination between possibility and desire. You clearly see how the heart never ages in some people.

Let’s work.