a theatre collaborative
This extra post is to provide a forum for discussion of Dale’s suggestion that we open our sessions with Vocal Sequence work, and find further structure for sharing and creating work.
You can (and should) download the Vocal Sequence document on the Assignments page.
Discuss:
I would like to propose a way forward; not in product, but in process.
Not that there’s anything wrong with talking about product(ions). That should continue, I think, and must. But speaking just for myself, there’s always a sharp disjunction between what I think about potential productions and what i do when I’m engaged in a creative process. Often it’s not a disjunction as much as it is an antagonism. Mutual destruction is ensured in such a case, leaving me just staring off into space while waiting for sleep. For me, talking about the kind of work I’d like to do is often an exercise in egoaggrandizement, an attempt at self-justification through asserting some high-falutin’ critical and academic sensibility. To exploit my jargon, it’s indulging in an imaginary mode of reflection: how do I see myself, how do others see me, how do I want to see myself, how should someone my age be seen, etc. Once shoulds enter the picture they usually turn monstrous and omnivorous; next thing I know they are chasing me down like wild dogs.
Process, on the other hand, is very forgiving. It meets me where I am. It respects limitations. It breathes with me. It patiently teaches and offers reasonable rewards. I’m tempted to use my experience working on Coriolanus as an example, but the experience is too recent and we have many mixed feelings. I’ll just say it was a process experience that got me through and kept me fairly even tempered (for me) in the midst of a frustrating schedule. I didn’t worry about the product too much because my process kept me absorbed and distracted (in a good way).
Let’s give ourselves a rewarding and satisfying life while we wait for the “right one” to come along. If you know what I mean. No need to cloister ourselves.
Here’s my proposal. We open up a page on this site for ongoing creative contributions and exchanges. Wednesdays, I will open up the Newnan School of Dance at 6:30 for whoever wishes to gather and explore. That’s it. No pressure. You do not have to come on Wednesdays expecting to “act, perform, improvise,” etc. Just talking and observing is fine. Let your own thoughts of process lead you.
This may lead us to having several “irons in the fire.” Why not? Several works in progress? Experiments? A series of variations? Scripts? Other performance ideas? We each lean in with whatever process and sensibility fits us. Speaking for myself, again, there may be times when I feel so beset with thoughts of product and the burden of my own unrealized aspirations that spending a Wednesday absorbed in playing around in someone else’s ideas would be just the thing. To just engage in a process with no concern for my own future ambitions would be a welcome opportunity.
If we want to use Vyew as an annex for our online sharing, great. We will need to be reminded of passwords and names and such. As for our forum on this site, new page? or new post? Thoughts?
My one suggestion for our online work: avoid creating the illusion of human interaction and favor other encounters.
I’m not trying to derail the progress of the scene breakdown. I was cleaning a room and got distracted. Maybe this is more appropriate for the Lichtenbergian site since it represents divided attention; I don’t know. It does touch on theatre art, however, so…
I wrote a speculative little thing a while ago in which I tried, yet again, to synthesize two of my interests: performance and psychoanalysis. Yes, I know; I’m pretty predictable, but don’t begin chanting the Te Dium just yet. And no pained sideways glances. Have a look at it and see what you make of it.
I’m not much interested in being asked questions beginning with What did you mean by…. or entertaining editorial observations; as exposition and improvisation, it is what it is. Rather,I think there are occasional passages I’m quite proud of because of the way they articulate some pretty arcane Lacan concepts in everyday language. Also, I want to inspire new thinking on performance issues. To my mind, nothing I’ve offered is shattering original, just another stirring up of the familiar into a slightly unfamiliar brew.
Useful for Coriolanus? Not a bad question. It’s not my agenda in encouraging you to read it, but if it inspires, why not. Too eccentric? We can only hope.
Let me try to lay out the structures for improvisation and then, afterwards, offer some variations and comments.
For two performers: A and B are the participants. B’s constant objective is to question A with some form of: What do you want of me? A has the opportunity to make any demands of B he or she wishes. B is to comply willingly. A decides when this first phase is complete. In the next phase, A’s objective is to ask of B: What do you want of me? B, then, has the opportunity to demand anything of A. B decides when this phase is complete.
That’s it. It is meant to be simple and lean. The intrigue lies in how the exercise is taken up by the participants and in the variations possible. Before exploring variations, have participants simply execute the exercise as it appears above. Discourage questions beforehand; the participants should be referred back to the instructions as an answer to all of their questions.
Continue reading “What do you want of me?: Improvisation Suggestions”
Dear Reader, I know these posts take as much of a toll on you as they do on me. I need to be cleaning house, but composing the previous post got me to thinking and now I have to post a note if for no other reason than to scratch a sign that new thoughts have entered the picture.
First point. A quick bit of retrospection has led me to confirm that pretty much all of my thinking and writing about theatre matters is an attempt to translate my psychoanalytic study into theatrical enthusiasms. One past feeding a deeper past as I keep dragging everything into an indifferent present. I nuture a comic book fantasy engendered by, no surprise, a play. Don DeLillo’s play The Day Room is in part about a mythical theatre company led by an enigmatic impresario named Arno Klein. The tales and legends spun out about the effect of the company’s work are quite fantastical and legendary. And infective if you are a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind set and already taken with the work of KRAKEN and other groups. Guilty as charged. All of my efforts over the past few years nurture a silly little notion of a company doing radically new work because influenced in part by radical psychoanalytic principles. So I write out my ideas for this imaginary company. I’m at peace with that.
Second point. In my previous post I neglected an element which will become crucial. I am not paying enough attention to the Imaginary Dyad as I sputter on about systems of meaning and signifying chains and formulas. It’s as if I want to deny the basic necessity for the Imaginary Dyad in theatrical matters instead of granting its priviledged place at every level. There is a fundamental “two-ness” in performance which you can’t escape and which shapes all meaning. It’s called Imaginary because it builds on the image of what is out there and our relationship to it. Pretty basic in theatrical issues: me-you, he-she, actor-audience, the observer-the observed, agent-object, “who am I to you and who are you to me?”, etc. It’s an interesting structure because it is so easily reversible: actor can become audience and audience can become actor through one fundamental flip (theoretically). And what occured to me was that members of a group trying to improvise in some radical psychoanalytic way need to understand the Audience as deeply as they understand themselves. In the Imaginary Dyad, performer can be audience and audience performer. You have to find ways to understand what the audience “wants” by understanding what you, the performer, want, and visa versa. So as I continue to think about putting together formulas, I’m also thinking about exercises and strategies which address the Imaginary dimension of the actor-audience relationship. And now my question is: how kinky is too kinky?
Here I am letting the site know what I’m up to. Thinking about a couple of pages. One will be a page on using and creating text (a script) in creative group collaboration. The other will be yet another quest for formulas to use in improvisation processes. I am a bit obsessed with this, I’m afraid. If I examine my motives for this interest, it strikes me on one level as an elaborate way to wrestle with a permanent creative block, to muscle my way through to something in spite of knowing full well there is nothing. Be that as it may. My current goal is to imagine a group wanting to create a signature style of improvisation focused on the idea of revealing the New Event. What simple formulas could be useful? I’m trying to figure out what New means with respect to creating signification in performance. Yes, that word signification smells of jargon. You can translate to the meaningful. How do you improvise and create new meanings for an audience? I’m fiddling with my hermetic Lacanian equations and formulations, trying to distill, and then I want to translate my conclusions into some kind of everyday language that doesn’t rely on jargon or theory or clinical notions.
Here’s a place for comments and discussion. Sharing is caring.
Attention adventurous performers,
Saturday May 6, from 2 to 4, Newnan School of Dance will offer a workshop introducing Contact Improvisation to interested dancers and actors and citizens (and as of this writing, it’s free). Annette Tomassi will teach it.
What is contact improvisation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_improvisation
It was invented in the late sixties by Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith, dancers connected, at that time, with the Judson Street/Grand Union group in NYC-(one of Twyla’s early stomping grounds, too). –Paxton trained as a gymnast and a Merce Cunningham company member. Nutshell definition: the active and passive giving and taking of weight with Newton’s Universe having the last word. Continue reading “Contact Improvisation Workshop”
A memory from Marc. You can download this as a Word document or a PDF file.
mouth to mouth
a monologue
Remember. Eyes closed.
Eyes closed? Now then. Continue reading “Telling the Truth: Mouth to Mouth”