13 April 2010

My brain may be a little scattered as I write this entry. Yesterday I saw Frankenstein and TITUS. make their runs with tech – well, I saw most of the former and the latter wasn’t really a run, per se, so I guess I should be more specific – on Sunday I was in rehearsals/talking about Shortcuts from 11 AM to 11 PM, and today I’ll see all three, with each other as audiences for the first time. It is a lot to take in, and might be separate blog entries, or just the longest one ever.

First, thoughts on Frankenstein: it has come so far from the bits that I saw on Sunday. In just the one day! I think part of that is the world created by the lights and costumes – there seemed to be something about wearing someone else’s ‘skin’ that helped them sort of access the things in themselves, perhaps? It all felt extraordinarily honest and real. Cassie, in particular, had a really compelling moment with Morgan as the Creation. The letters and grave-digging were so moving – I was brought to tears, though that takes little enough these days (not to underscore the beautiful work these young women are doing). Everyone’s feelings are so close to the surface. I can hear Chelsea Whitehead’s opening/closing inside the theatre even as I type out here. What Anne has done is really different from what Joel has done – their form has been locked down for a long time, which I suppose has been frustrating for the actors, but it is allowing them now to work vertically, as it is called (I obviously use this term really incorrectly – you learn something every day), and I think they are accessing some really beautiful moments of utter honesty. Everything feels really…full, and activated.

Then I came back to TITUS., as I am wont to do. I am not entirely --

Time for Tamoras. I suppose I will come back to this blog later. I am really interested to see how this work works. It works somewhat differently than I thought it would, but it definitely works. It is like a battle in her mind – the warrior and mother, two aspects of the same part? I think the discovering of the way Saturninus works will be interesting – it is interesting to add sex into the maternal and the violent and the combative.

[Obviously, I did not get the chance to finish these blogs - the evenings got away from me. I will be blogging extensively about my reactions to the final sharings/showings/shows and the process as a whole in the future.]

Rehearsing With An Audience

I have not yet been fully...able to write a blog about these showings. I shall, in great detail, eventually. For now, let me say that all of these actors are stunning me with their honesty...let me say that every show has moments that bring me to feeling whole...that these projects, together, help me understand and feel the world differently.

Thank you to all of you for sharing this extraordinary work with the world. Your vulnerability, honesty, risks, and freedom are inspirational.

We have some sort of video drama happening today. I’m intrigued. What will we be watching? Poem challenge is on. I’m excited. And I have no idea what I will do today – where shall I go? Who shall I watch? I’m so excited for this summer and being able just to concentrate on this kind of work, rather than feeling like I am totally scattered in my brain.

Kris says we are all zombies in the room – it is so true. The end of spring always feels so much more brutal than the end of fall. Perhaps the exhaustion will make the feelings easier to access, however. I would like to think so. So little energy to put towards self-defense and emotional protection means that we are more likely to put our vulnerability in the world, I think. And perhaps this is something about Grotowski’s work in general – or something about feelings in general. Any moment of . . . less protectedness means that there are more feelings in the world. I suppose? I am too tired for the ratiocination, I think. I can only have the feelings.

Every second of time is precious, as you know. Clips to show – videos. Visuals for you to stay liberated about theatre. What you do is already forming yourself and views about theatre. These three projects are already becoming a particular kind of work. You are learning what your work is becoming. You have enough work that this big open question has slowly transformed itself to the more focused work. The path of the fables show how this whole process becomes a form and the work is specific. You now know what you’re doing – or you know something about it. At this point, it’s okay for me to introduce a couple of clips to take you out of what you’re doing and to show ideas of theatre as a larger performing art phenomenon. It doesn’t have to be formed by the boundaries of the traditional theatre art. Broad spectrum of performance art. Dance theatre. Performance art. Music concert. We need to be expanding our ways of thinking about what we are doing.

CLIP ONE: Kodo Drummers

CLIP TWO: Butoh Dance

CLIP THREE: Vollmond by Pina Bausch

[I also adore her Café Muller.]

CLIP FOUR: Barbed Hula by Sigalit Landau

CLIP FIVE: The Constant Prince by Jerzy Grotowski

Potentially also of interest: Marina Abramovic

What’s in common with these short clips? Especially the Barbed Hula – operates on the exclusion of parts of the body, less of a focus on the torso and more of what’s not there. You don’t see her face – it’s not shy of the sexual organs. In theatre everything’s shown. What does everything have in common? There’s repetition – it allows you to have a canvas on which you can notice evolution and change. Elements of repetition in form. Everything is nondiscursive, nonintellectual – very visceral and still clear. You can make up something about what it’s “about,” but it’s about the visceral effect. Not language-based. Not necessarily identity-based, either expressed through emotion or physical movement. Emotion and creation are left for you to understand through. It can relate to everyone – the identification is in the emotion. Clearly choreography and no choreography in everything. Every impulse/gesture comes from sheer necessity. Even in the drumming, no human entity – just parts of a thought that makes sense in my head. A breakdown of human self. It becomes the ethereal elements unattainable to us because of our form. The energy that courses underneath our skin. Almost primal? Pure? Unguarded? We know inside what it is – but we can’t verbalize it. The way language carries information and the way we feel about it are not the same thing. Everything they were doing was true. It was in them. Not worried about aesthetic of what it looks like – all coming from a true place. We’re connecting but we can’t explain it. We identify with truth when we see it. What kind of truth? It’s truth that is…something universal and isolating. What is in the act of the barbed wire? What is in the act? It’s true – what is in that barbed wire that is different from what’s in saying it’s a nice day. Sacrifice? Cruelty? Something unrepeatable – it cannot return. It’s not the same. Truth of here and now shared and then gone. A truth of sharing the moment. The vanishing of that. The fact that everything is so fleeting. The idea of it is the difference between ritual and theatre. Every act it happens, goes, and doesn’t come until the need. It functions and it does something. The life involved in the ritual is of respect. It’s not coming back to you. It’s sacrificed. It’s gone and will never return. We don’t think about Hamlet or whatever in those terms. What you do is happening only once and part of your life, part of you, is never coming back. The next day you won’t have everything you had the day before. That part of you dies and never comes back to life. But at the same time – it’s propelling forward.

What exactly is the component of a propelling forward? The idea of not relying on your words – not living in your mouth – the idea that we understood the story or what I understood – very personal – we all felt something while watching it, but they weren’t telling us what to feel. I didn’t understand what but how they were saying. It wasn’t what but the manner of delivering it. Responding to music. Every performance is a death. Lives, dies, and is gone – and all of it is here. Done again instead of repeated. Repetition is not just a mechanical repetition – but act of doing something again. We’re identifying a sense of liveness. By liveness I mean the sense of something that is fleeting and only there for a brief time and it’s not something there for words. They all showed some excellent command of the body in order to channel some expression or life or an internal process. Not restricted to a specific identity – it’s an energy. Everything in every single one – no one is ever stationary – everyone has an active body. Even in the slow motion. Something about that. Moments of stillness, but it’s active stillness. Still and active at the same time. The process is just registered on a smaller level. Difference is being in the moment and completely focused. Focus on being still is on being in the moment. All of this is coming together in terms of meaning what sacrifice means.

Use their whole bodies to communicate – with the entirety of the body. Voice is the body – drum is an extension of the body. Goes back to what Smyra was saying. Not an act of the mind – an embodied mind, but not something that there are words for it. Everything that we see is a type of text, but not the language of spoken text. Symbolic system in which it signifies itself – you receive it through your eyes and through your entire body. Hurts when you see the hula. Every single piece had specific movements – nothing thrown out there. Complete control of the body. Because of that – and because it was so slow – went to me as beyond human. Terrified watching that stuff. Watching what hell looks like because of the way butoh woman – it’s like there’s not anything there. It’s pain on top of beauty on top of pleasure. It’s so much it’s overwhelming. Getting the primary emotion and so much more just because of the specific movements. In control. Yes, the woman doing slow-motion butoh is in absolute control, but you can also see the set of impulses on her face. There’s something that’s happening here and now that she has no control over and that sharing is happening as part of sacrifice. What I have is everything is front of me. I am literally here and I am literally performing and the muscle moves without me being in control of it. Sometimes part of the process – the body being in the process and being part of the process. That’s happening here and now again, but happening in a literal way. It’s not just the character’s imaginary suffering but it’s also the suffering of the actual actor in the room. Something actual, literal, real, truthful happening. Dancer tired and falls out of form – unable to live up to the music. He fails to dance in real time.

The pieces (esp. butoh and upside down) and performers allowed themselves to do one or two simple, single things and that was okay. It was okay not to have a bunch of stuff going on. The idea of something being enough. No fear, shame, worry – trusting that I just want to move my hands and that is enough. I will perform this and it is all I need to do. All of them are the idea of a total act. So simple and minimal, but then also expressing everything a human being can do. Sense of humanity. Everything and nothing at the same time. It is not mine what I do – it’s a gift shared and it’s everybody’s body. But to me it’s so disconnected from what we’re used to seeing and how I’m used to moving – seeing people move like that looks a little inhuman because of that. Neglected bodies full of suffering. It’s sacrificed to be everybody’s body. The movements and gestures and sounds are what’s underneath the layers of normalcy that we put on. What we understand as human is actually hidden. Moments are passing before we comprehend that they’re gone – we’re behind and we try and back-step, it’s like the ebb and flow of the tide. So I saw the stream of consciousness – it’s not primal. Anything that seems de-human is not human. It’s the most human – starting to access what humanity is. We use the word humanity as kindness, but that’s not what humans are. Perhaps in some elements – humanity is what we are when we are not censored. Pieces tapping into stream of consciousness. Role of artist in contemporary world is to remind people what it means to be human.

What if we cannot really live in the moment? We can’t. But what can be done as a gesture towards that opening into humanity? What is the role of performance work? In what way are you moved? What is it doing to your life? It’s not entertaining you – it’s bringing you back to life. We know we cannot live in the moment – living in the past and future make no sense – without being able to live in the moment, what is left? What does the performance achieve if these are all impossible things? That’s a tricky one to capture in language. Some of it is that we are sitting here in the room and are moved by it. In that way, something is happening in between us – some act of meeting is happening. One way in which the material works.

Anybody wants to share a poem? It’s too much for one day. One week to write your response – due next week. Final response paper informed by article on Genesis and is a response to your process. What do you want to share? I would like to get clips out and share them during our last in-class session. Criticism session and talking about our processes. What took place? Looking at ourselves honestly. We shared some work in the way. Shown honestly – what did we learn from the working process? What do we want to share? How do we capture it? How does it inform? What’s the next step?

Posters and promotions? There’s a whole machine behind this. That we don’t see. We’re creating them – each group. There’ll be something. Liz is going to write a program note. Work shown in a particular context. Doesn’t fly from Mars. Blood and sweat.

Let’s break into groups and have a good working day.

FRANKENSTEIN 2 April 2010

SCENE ONE

Boat. I have the chills. For official. I think this is a really intriguing beginning. And it also feels pretty full and rich. The singing is just lovely. And the swimming…and the poem is interesting, too. The destruction of this bond and her desperation – I think it is really clear. I like it.

Interesting. Changing to Chelsea’s monologue – I actually like this much better than her desperate swimming, I think. I feel like it sort of brings Mary into the world in a heartbreaking but wonderful way. She is a real woman of her time and of today, in this monologue. And then Shelley is the monster when she brings him back. I wonder what would happen if they did a warring poem – alternating lines from Mary’s letters and Shelley’s poems, perhaps? Or does Mary have a poem? There’s the ‘come to me my love’ poem. And that could be sort of awesome.

“I miss you I miss you I miss you.” Another moment of for realsies chills. I actually think this is terribly affective. Devastating, yes. And lovely.

SCENE DOS

The chairs. I saw the beginning of this incarnation. Something to start thinking about is volume. And watch wonky lines.

I like it. A whole lot. I love this story. I think it is sort of beautiful and scary and saaaaad. I think this is really pretty and creepy and sad.

“Creation Creation Creation Your Creation Yours” All of this just makes me really sad. It is very quietly powerful.

SCENE TROIX

Hmmmmmmmm. Okay. I am into this, I think. I feel like I want more people around – it sort of feels like the final confrontation. And so I guess I sort of want the rest of them seeing how this ends. Or maybe that is not where it is? I guess I am just confused about how this fits in the world. Or…when? I don’t know. I think it is just me. I like it better the second time.

SCENE FOUR

There’s nudity. Oh. I mean, shirtless P-Pow. Not nudity, exactly. I was just startled. I fail to understand the thing on his face. I love this posing, though. I guess it is so he can make the David? Is the idea that Victor is Elizabeth’s creation? I guess I love this as a reimagining of their relationship, but feels a little weird. I do love the dancing. And I LOVE THE END when he freezes. But I want the creation to do something – he did. I love that. I think this is really cool. Oh. And Chelsea explains it. And it makes a lot more sense now. This is a cool thing to explore.

Replacing Victor with the Creation – neat. Way to go, Mary Shelley. This is making me have a lot of feelings. AHHHHHHHHH I LOVE IT.

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.

Group Meeting 29 March 2010

There seems to be more hysteria than usual in the room. But we are settling. And, it begins.

Ashley Collins’ birthday! They are so cute. They are so excited. Zac goes directly into his poem. I still love this poem. Bitter, hungry, vengeful. THE THEATRE OF BLOOD. Jessica’s poem – I am not able to move from this place. Selfish bastard, bastard. I do not want to be an organism anymore. I don’t constitute a being on my own. Jen, Chelsea, and Ashley – Red lipstick like a target. It’s like an orgasm in reverse.

A taste of what’s there in the poems. And it’s really beautiful powerful stuff. The tipping around is over – a lot of eroticism and violence in the poems because of the work and the dramatic situations, and because of all of the meaning we create. It is important that we start sharing these things and move forward. They’ll be developing into more performance-based projects. Next time I’ll dare some more of you to do it so it can become an event – it’s always an event, a provocation – even if I provoke specifically. A little as we can: we have to devote most of the class to rehearsals, because this is the moment when the projects are really evolving. Projects are still evolving horizontally – somehow the nature of our stuff is about the growing momentum in which your imagination/creative powers are being mobilized – you are doing more and more. I believe that as we propose these new scenes, they do not lose the depth. You’ve been developing these poems and I want to see if you want to unleash them as they unleash themselves.

Good to think of this as a project of unleashing your creative and acting potential. Can I jump over my own hoop and become the next possibility in my work. When it happens, it’s a phenomenon. When someone has a breakthrough, that’s the moment no one will forget in that classroom. Not just the person who has it, but all the witnesses. That’s how powerful this work can be.

ANNE FABLE:

Where did he go? I see you in my mind, I know you are near – no, I hope you are near. Where did you go? Come to me! Please! Come to me!

COMMENTS: Example of how the fable evolves, using the soundtrack. Chelsea Whitehead says it was really helpful – are you surprised? It made perfect sense to the people in the project. Since we had the doctor come in and talk to us about the text, we realized how fused Frankenstein is with Mary Shelley and Percy. We’ve decided to put Mary and Percy in our Shortcut, and I understand how Mary thinks, but now I feel things in my stomach. I’ve never thought about the idea that Mary might have felt abandoned by her own creation – she wrote this thing and it poured out of her and Percy retooled it, and she felt betrayed, he died, and he was her entire life – maybe looks at the work as a betrayal of herself. I think that fills a lot of the action in our response. Feeling abandoned and abandoning. Directed at Percy and at Victor. From my POV – it’s all the characters – Elizabeth, the Creation, Mary, Victor – all of them are looking. Every character is Mary? Really liked the sound – harkens imagery of the opening of the novel. Everything is so counter to the sound, it infused the violence and the cold of the scenario into the human elements. Really cool choice. I got a journey and searching, not just from the text, but from the sound as well. When the sound hit me, I was already in the bottom deck of an old ship and I felt like I had been there for a long time. Just to see Frankenstein, the whole story, characters, and author – just simplifying to searching and a journey that is never completed and never fulfilled. Never got imagery of a boat – thought about rocking chair. I felt like something searching for – the idea of motion without getting anywhere. In pursuit of something that will never be encountered unless it comes to you.

Does everyone know the story of Percy and Mary? Percy died in a boating accident in Italy. He was Mary’s husband – he was already married when they met, and they left each other’s families to be together – she was with him when she wrote Frankenstein (some believe he wrote it because she couldn’t), then she started revising around the time he died in this boating accident. The story is they pulled his body onto the beach and set it on fire, except his heart – which made it back to Mary and is pressed in a book. Mary devoted the rest of her life to his work and editing her work with him in mind. Victor has a creation and Mary Shelley’s novel is a creation – a monster creation. And she is producing. And that is somewhere to get you there, in the level of literature. And there’s a real story behind it, and the connection to it is discovering these levels of telling. The fable that Anne told is not the fable of the novel but it is a gesture towards the characters from the novel reaching out to the dead poet and the real person. I also loved the idea of the rich concept that does not end on the level of concept, but goes into the meaning of the work of art – related to a very concrete situation. Somebody’s life is taken and delivered into that work of art. Somebody’s life is there, taken into it. Not just a product of imagination but anchored in reality and sacrifice and true feelings. That’s an unexpected turn that you took. In the past week or so, I came back around to thinking of my original attraction to Frankenstein, and it’s the scene where Victor is asked to create a companion for the Creation – that’s the moment I have always loved. There’s a thread that runs throughout all of this. Sometimes even an obsessive desire for another – a lover, friend, companion, creation – always a strong desire for someone else who is a counterpart.

Here’s where we are with our projects. All three fables have gone from the original storytelling and now we talk about very concrete things happening to our senses. All of them are now focused on almost a single event – or a particular idea of juxtaposition, etc. They are become really more completely refined – a very concrete set of parameters. That reduces and focuses your creativity, which now becomes framed and your creative impulse can function more vividly in a smaller space. NO methods to work – you might discover your best ideas then. You have to discover your own way of working. I would like to stress that if there’s anything you should be learning: there is no ONE way of doing theatre, even though the school is trying to tell you that there is. No – it is never really prescribed and it always needs to be discovered. The pivotal points that change theatre historically come from the negation of the process found by a big director/playwright/actor. I don’t belong/believe/buy. I have to create my own kind of work. Not only in theatre but in every genre of art. Why am I doing it and how can I do it? Is there a way that I am not able to express myself? If so, I have to find my own way of working.

Zac – went to dance concerts. One ended and I sat in my car and cried. Passion in dance. I was upset because I’ve felt connection in music and theatre, but never with dance – associated dance as part of something and not as its own passion. Beautiful to see someone connected to something. The dance department is producing cutting-edge work. Reminded me of wonderfully creative things. I was seeing relations to everything we are working on. A lot of what you said about getting to that place and working and doing this tiny thing that’s so passionate. These two danced together for the last time and it had operatic gospel music and the way they were desperate and connected – you could see in their faces and bodies, they were crying and dancing at the same time – an overflow because you have repeated it so many times that you can go somewhere else with it. A humongous explosion of emotion and love. It seems to me that with the division into separate buildings and connections, it’s not like the Greeks – it used to be poetry unloaded through music and dance as theatre. That’s why the chorus was the most expensive part. Theatre once was all these things. Dance-theatre. Musical-theatre that wants to become more music oriented that falls into its own monstrous problems. And we admire all these possibilities and should be collecting all these branches of arts and putting them all together instead of dividing them. One performing art event.

It makes sense when things start with your body. You see dancers do everything just with their movement. Trying to communicate every thought in my head through movement is so hard. And you could see it all in this dancer. It blew my mind. I have been working so hard and trying to do it, and she just does it. Almost like working backwards – what’s most human is moving physically, speech you have to be introduced to. Speech becomes a replacement for movement.

Butoh dance from Japan and it’s recent. Primitive instincts. Every time he did a performance, he looked totally different. They would do all these different things to make these primitive instincts and feelings – all revolved around emotion and what carries you to create. Related to the ground and beats – really intense – put their bodies through so much. A lot of naked butoh out there.

SITES: http://www.butoh.net/butoh/Home.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh

Let’s work.

TITUS 26 March 2010

TITUS 26 March 2010

First, a run of what they have.

The beginning of what they have is interesting…

I feel like it is a little talky, and it’s a little linear for my taste, but I think there are some really beautiful moments.

I adore the whispering.

I continue to love Ashley and Zac as Demetrius and Chiron.

I think the Lavinia “talking” is really affective.

POEMS

We are having feelings about our poems. I’m delighted. That means they are real.

Dayne

Their lies are almost too much to bear.

Zac

This isn’t a cinematic escape – life is in the flesh, not in the streams of projected action. Connection. Gratification. Stripped naked, bare, barren, wasteland. You may lose faith in love, but never lose faith in hate. Oooh. Wow. Kind of an amazing poem. I kind of love it.

Ashley

I wrote this thinking we were going to go in one direction – sex is violence accepted. Walking down the steps breathing. Open your fucking heart and listen. I need him to hurt. Open your fucking eyes and look. Open your fucking ears – do you hear her screams? I wear lipstick like a target. Open your fucking mouth – want to taste their blood? My lover brings me his hand – I sleep with it. Open your fucking hands – oh – you can’t. Okay. Wow. Just wow.

Nick

I desire to feel alive. I breathe again as a new being, moving without a single thought. Interesting.

Keith

What means you this? I am Bassianus – deny me not. I am confused. Obvs. Frequent occurrence.

Ross

So, I don’t know if this means anything. Worry is a convoluted mess of wasted energy. She comes to me when her vices fail her. Nothing ever wrong – except her. The self is not sole, but we are isolated. We don’t die simply because we must, but because we need to. Because we want to. Life is the struggle to fill the void when ourselves became our bodies. Assured I have the answer to a question no one asked. I LIKE IT.

Jen

I am miles and miles of pumping blood. I am living flesh. Scented with the sweat of the generations that made me. I am avast sea, an incomprehensibly vast sea. Deep deeper. Infinitely restrained. Hidden and horrible fantasies. A cut. I am terrifyingly liberated. And it is too much for my weak body. It is too much for my weak mind. Frail and extraordinary. Wooooooooow. Amazing. Yea.

Liz

I watch from somewhere inside myself. We are so sick of playing with fire. In a world made of glass a single pebble can ruin all. You’re toying with time. It’s a vicious world, tyrant. I’ll be your pebble. I am burnt. Wow.
Apparently, we need the film Funny Games.

Chelsea

What wasn’t there to come out. I can’t feel myself breathe. Was it empty before? I have come undone, unhinged from myself. What I cut out. I’ve lost something. Wow.

ASSIGNMENT: 20 minutes to write a song – music and lyrics. It cannot fall back on the song. What is the song about? Not love. Windows?

SONGS:

Chelsea

My little precious darling dear, why would you hide from me? I’ve ripped your love from you.

Dayne

I waaaaaaant her. I neeeeeeeeeed her. I’ll have her. She will. Be mine. Her hands her hands her hands her hands. This is totally fucking creepy and awesome.

Zac

Adrfit from the life of the man I’ve become. I’ll never be free. I’m stuck here, picking through ashes of ice. I like this. A lot.

Nick

Limitless bearings and fall from his hands. Garnet skies eulogy, burning oceans cry to me. Whispering winds deaf to me. Nick’s voice in song is actually really creepy and interesting. I am kind of into it.

Ross

Boys turn to men, but they don’t grow no older.

Liz

I’m here. Oh wait, I do. I have no fear. I wait for you. For I am here, waiting only for you. Ummm. Yes. Yes. YES. I love this. Love, love, love. Take your time in finding me, for I have time to spare. YESSS.

Keith

We fight like hell to figure out the things we knew before.

Ashley

Amazing tone. I love this humming. It resonates in the whole courtyard. It’s really not that bad to die. Now the heat and sweating and the dripping will stop. Let me know the geography of your hell.

Jen

I’ll see you where the sun sets east. Don’t forget me. Consuming beast. Cut you down and tie you up and feel your disease. Yea. Yup. Okay. I like the singing. Let’s sing.

Ross’s Thyestes monologue. I’m excited. I have not seen this in a long time. Nice. I like it. It’s cool. I don’t know how it gets used…but it’s definitely cool.

Zac and Chelsea’s chair work. I don’t quite understand how this works in the world.