Category: Uncategorized

Lacunagroup has decided upon its next project. The group will undertake an exact, documentary re-creation of a performance of Act III, Scene 1 from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus the group gave on the evening of November 1, 2008 at the Newnan Community Theatre Company.

“That performance had certain qualities that I find fascinating,” opined group member Dale Lyles, “and the tension in the space was palpable. Not even Shakespeare could script such moments. I think the performers uncovered something very special that night.”

“If for no other reason, I think the contributions this work could make to our understanding of the neuro-physiology of memory will make it worth seeing, ” adds group member Jeff Bishop. “Oliver Sacks has offered to deliver a short spoken introduction.”

The group plans to develop the piece through a process of assembling and reviewing both spokenreminiscencesand assorted journalistic accounts. “Some of the original participants are still alive,” offers member Kevin McInturff, “and have been very generous with their time and their personal recollections. Considering the emotions we’ve asked them to re-live, they’ve all been quite fearless. We have a rich abundance of material to work with.”

The group sees this as carrying forward its interest in “photorealist” theatrical representation. Member Marc Honea hopes the result will be “an intense, chamber-scale offering in meticulous detail–a final, impossible rendering of the ephemeral.” Due to some moments of violence, the performance will be for adults only.

Don’t expect details at this point. All I’m saying is, there’s been some talk. Shakespeare opening scenes on the stage in the new park downtown. Perhaps experiments with various playing styles that make a difference in the great outdoors? There’s been some talk. Let this be a site for artistic coordination and planning. Carry on.

So what’s up with lacunagroup at present? The group is all about it’s blog threads. Wherever they lead, that’s what we’re doing. As always, we are interested in an active and collaborative creative process. The real work of lacunagroup is as much in the thread as anywhere else. The work goes forward as the thread goes forward. Cryptic, isn’t it?

If you read through comments in the previous post, you’ll follow, in part, the beginnings of a film project. Take a look. The work will be carried forward on this blog as well as in cameras and editing. Please collaborate if you find it interesting. The blog exists for you to make of the work what you will.

Let me throw out another possibility for a project before I talk myself into seeing it as irrelevant. Consider it another start for some kind of collaborative exploration which could turn into something beyond the blog or not. lacunagroup, I hear tell, on occasion, tries to find its way toward working with performances.

A slight, practically inconsequential personal association to autumn. Too general and indistinct to be a memory. What is it, then? Images to accompany a feeling of warm containment. My brother taught me how to throw a spiral during the Thanksgiving holidays one year. Then I was inside watching one of those Hannah-Barbera animated versions of a classic book which always seemed to be on tv during Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Between those two sets of sensations fall all of autumn, for me. And all of Winter, too, actually.

So I may spend some of my time on the blog working with this bit of stuff (bit of fluff?). In what way? Who knows? And it is available for anyone else who might want to take it somewhere. My interest is in using the material for any and all manner of ways to step off into experimentation. Still cryptic? Remember, we may not necessarily know what we’re after at the outset. And once someone does know something, it becomes one aspect now maybe feeding or inspiring other gestures. Or not. My hope is that the form things begin to take may be new and challenging.

Why this bit of material as a starting place? Exactly. Good question. And so it begins. I want to investigate it because it’s always there, particularly as the weather changes. Something, too, about it being apolitical and unspecific. Achieving a spiral was like learning to carry out a magic act and transform physical laws. Male bonding, of course. Initiation. Being home. My brother called me “Flash,” and I remember always laughing uncontrollably. The containment of autumn related to the containment present before sleep. Preference for autumn and winter as depressive. Others are free to take it up in some way. Or I may get encouraged to set it aside as my interests drift into something else emerging on the thread.

Re-reading our history through posts, I was embarrassed over how savagely I attempted to will something into being through nothing more than sentence after pretentious sentence. I can now admit to myself and to others: not the way to go. I honked a few rhetorical horns no better than the most untalented trained seal, thinking to build through impressive stunts. So, chagrined and wanting to make an end, here’s my last version of what I think lacunagroup could be. It doesn’t involve building or actually undertaking anything. Allow me to devote a few more pretentious sentences to this task; then that voice is done. Imagine: out in the middle of nowhere (let’s face it–we are) is this thread of thought that at times seems to give shape to notions of theatre and performance, art and engagement, creativity and ambivalence. (Why theatre? We start from our immersion in the history we have in common. I know I can’t drop an obsession overnight.) This thread unspools anonymously, perhaps, and reaches out to notions and places one is hard pressed to imagine being reached, especially in the middle of nowhere (let’s face it–we are). The thread might go from the discursive to the playful and on toward the outrageous, returning at times to the ruminative, here local, there global, staging a few abrasive associations, and never forgetting to engineer the occasional irony or equivocation. The thread is a kind of work, or (better) a working-through, spinning out as artful performance. My hope is that the actual thread will make its start by reacting against this post…

I couldn’t get Dale’s post to take my comment, so consider what follows my comment for the previous post:

A confection that will flatter and tickle those out there old enough to remember being taken by indulgent spinster aunts to see shows (or dare I write “plays”) in New York or London in the 40’s or 50’s. Or earlier, even.

Or

The stage version of The Monk.

Or

Some spear shaking.

Or

Something Chekovian?

Keeping in mind evening commitments are exhausting, especially when moods are down.

Or something which might emerge out of very informal creative meetings. Something odd, refined and conceptual…

There might be a way to use this lacunagroup blog other than just sitting shiva for the International William Blake’s Inn Event.

Since we’re all out there dabbling in this and that, making names for ourselves, cementing reputations and the like, let’s use this blog as a way to check in with one another and discuss our various ongoing creative performance experiences, those occuring out and about on the cultural landscape and those taking place in our inner theatre spaces. Performance is a unique method of thinking in addition to everything else you can say about it, and the discoveries we make when engaged in this kind of thinking can be quite compelling and interesting. Our adventures will be amusing and encouraging, and our frustrations might be lessened if shared. And let that be the last painfully earnest and boring thing I say. Do you want to try this with this post’s comments section? Some sharing will require anonymity, I realize, and some facts and personages will require disguise. More creative opportunities!

After May 3 we can get back to developing our piece. Here’s a design concept I scratched out in Paint and worked a bit in Art Rage, another “successive approximation:”

I’ve taken Dale’s two torn strips and I’ve transformed one into the fabric of a world showing us Wm. Blake’s Inn set on a lovely green hill with blue sky in background (still a bit grammar school in execution, but I’ll work on it…). The other strip will feel more like a page torn from a notebook with sketches and a mystical watercolor wash beginning at the horizon line and rendering the sky, etc, in more “Blakean” hues.

Both strips will be scrim-like so that we can reveal night-sky stars and milky-way effects whenever we choose.

Note the circle on the notebook strip DSR. This will be one of the items sketched onto the notebook. At the beginning we will actually see angels inscribing this circle with a giant compass while Blake and chorus looks on. We will then begin to see the actual Inn appear USL. It is cylindrical and will rotate in harmony with the turning compass. The Inn will be about eight feet tall. It will have a back which can be removed so that it can rotate to reveal an interior. Various items will grow out of the top of the Inn like circus-tent umbrellas, sunflowers, telescopes, propellers, etc., and then retract when no longer needed.

The Concept at work is the following: Blake the poet transforms his visions into a living reality; so we have a page from Blake’s workbook and then a manifestation of that work in the reality of the Inn and its surroundings. It’s a piece for children, so I felt it important to make the Inn a concrete place on stage. SL is a playful realization for kids, SR is more abstract and mysterious. The tension between the two is meant to be a harmonious one. I want the kids to see sketches of Blake’s beasts and other notions on the notebook side which they then see brought to life during the production. But the entire stage is also to be thought of as the countryside surrounding the Inn (yeah, I went pastoral rather than a “house in town” but I suppose that could be negotiated…)

Plenty of room for coming and going, for the car, for dancing and puppets. Other set or scenic pieces can be brought on stage as needed. The Inn can rotate to its interior as a fireplace or window unit arrives downstage. Characters and puppets can emerge from the Inn as well as appear peeping through the windows. Plenty of room for chorus kids to stand and perch, achieving levels etc. Heavenly objects can fly in as needed.

I think the dragons mentioned at the beginning should appear later pulling the car.

Last minute thoughts. I think the platform should be angled a bit (more dynamic). The “notebook” half should be a touch wider. Not sure about what the “bare” stage floor areas should look like.

I may try a representation with the night sky glowing behind the scrims…

[cross-posted from Dale’s blog]

Another workshop night, again an intensive rehearsal kind of thing. Dale, Marc, Carol Lee, Melissa, and Denise in attendance, with Mary Frances joining us later.

Carol Lee had finished the sunflowers, so we were able to work on getting the sunflower waltz shaped up.

Dance is funny to write about, because we followed the same process of successive approximation we’ve always followed, but it’s all movement instead of drawings and discussion. I mean, I can say that we backed up the Big Bang and replicated it above the Two Sunflowers with the Field of Flowers, but is any of that going to make sense?

Or that we cut the second run across from the inverted V and went straight into the Field of Flowers? Or that we didn’t have time for the weave-through heading into the Tableau, so we just did the Big Bang, one waltz turn, and then ran into a pas de chat and spiked the Tableau?

See what I mean?

Eventually, we snagged Molly Honea and two dancer friends, so we had five dancers and ten sunflowers. We laid our choreography on them and lo, it worked! Super cool!

I had to come home and write it all down before I forgot.

Problems with the invitation: we just can’t get the screened sunflower right, and now we have 500 invitations that cannot be read. ::sigh::