These are comments Marc made originally in response to the post on our first meeting. They are important for working on our assignment for the 4/28/06 meeting.
On THE ART OF TELLING THE TRUTH. I want us to produce an evening (coffee house-ish, readings-ish) with the above ironic title and based on our work with that exercise. Last night has inspired me to try and create one (prepared, not improvised) and to write some more about ways of using and developing the exercise.
Briefly, for now, the keys for me are in the “existential categories.” [Ed. note: time, space, body, objects, and intersubjectivity]
[Ed. note: this paragraph belies Marc’s “briefly,” so I’m bracketing it. Important stuff, but not critical until you’ve thought about all this a bit. Skip it if you like and come back to it later.] These I stole from existential-phenomenological psychology and various methods it employs to do “qualitative research.” Language, itself, speaking itself, are not categories, their puzzling nature is “bracketed” or set aside and we assume a person can transparently relate a description of an event. The best modern playwrights, of course, factor in the troubling nature of language and recollection, but you don’t always have to. It’s a good creative exercise for unfolding the possibilities in dramatic communication. And the fact that the event might have happened but didn’t flirts with the whole question of longing or desire or regret (part of our emotional secret as we work with this kind of material; it will fuel the whole production).
Everybody, take a shot at the exercise. You can work in solitude. You need not improv it on demand. Soon I will publish some more suggestions as I continue to work with my own material, but for now–
TWO MAIN APPROACHES:
- Think of the event. Describe it. Go back over the description and do an analysis using the existential categories. Which ones did you feature? Which ones did you neglect? Add to your full description by working through the neglected elements. Did you attend to what your “body” was about in the description? What happens if you do? How did you interact with others (intersubjectivity)?
- Think of event (both of these approaches involve positing the event at the outset; you could describe your way toward the event, but that’s “more advanced,” I think, so try one of these approaches first) Write descriptions of the event, one for each existential category (one for time, space, body, object, and for intersubjectivity) You will have five texts. Then experiment with cutting and pasting; combine elements from your five texts into the final monologue.
Then, ONCE YOU HAVE TAKEN ONE OF THESE APPROACHES:
Think through how you want to perform your monologue (it’s still you speaking at this point) using the five existential categories; create descriptions based on this exploration, see if additional lines suggest themselves, add them to your piece.
For example, what additional lines might be inspired by your attending to the performance’s
- time: “my speaking to the listener(s) is timeless; was that only three minutes?; I want to dwell a bit longer, to linger, over details”;
- space: “the listener and I are alone in a room in my parents’ house; I’m sitting in an uncomfortable chair (body leaks in here)”;
- body: “I feel insubstantial, all in my head”;
- object: “why am I telling you this, the words are hard to say, but the image is enjoyable, I want to conjure something for the listener, but I’m afraid”; and
- intersubjectivity: “the listener is an old friend but has never heard this story; I worry she will disapprove.”
How does thinking through this way make you want to add to or subtract from your monologue? Does it influence choice of word or detail? Re-work. As you re-write you are also doing your actor’s homework.
I’m going to try to compose one using method two by the time of our next meeting. I have to be out of town, but I’ll try to send the text along.
Some masterpieces of recollection in which you are unsure of the status of the recollector, i.e., is he/she remembering it correctly or even telling the truth: Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape; Pinter’s Old Times and Monologue; Shepard’s Killer’s Head.
The whole idea of “a memory that isn’t” is not all that foriegn. I like to consider myself an honest guy, but who hasn’t started telling a story (based on a real memory) only to realize in the telling that it isn’t all that fascinating after all. Have you ever expanded on what you remember? Have you ever adopted these embellishments back in to your actual memory of the event?
It would be interesting to have several folks tell their own versions of the same event that might have happened (but didn’t) in documentary fashion. One approach could involve tellings that reflect different recollections (none of them truly accurate) on the same event by different witnesses/participants. Another approach would be to have different players act the role of the same participant, but with tellings representing the evolution of the memory over time.
I like Turff’s variations. Also makes me think of Rashomon (play and movie). Lots of variations possible.
This has nothing to do with anything, but I think it’s interesting that when I think about working on this assignment, I think about getting my notebook and writing in it. It has not occurred to me to use my laptop; in fact, it seems unnatural.
Marc will say something about the scratching out and revision, the pentimento of the physical act of writing. He may be right.
I, too, had the pen and paper itch on this one.
I was struck by how the questionable nature of “truth” was primary for some. The exercise was born out of the more mundane notion that writers “make things up.” But with the ironic title, clearly it invites wider pondering. I love saying to the GHP kids, “You’re actors; you’re liars.”
It’s killing me that I can’t clear my plate and wrap myself up in working on this.
On the physical act of writing, don’t get me started. One of the elements in the Vocal Sequence is the Ideograph. If we look at the history of writing and alphabets and language, we find that the ideographs preceded the letters–the mark or inscription defined a cluster of notions. And was the mark a way of cutting a precise channel in the body, a way of rendering a particular bodily feeling to ground the lived meaning? Germanic children learned the runes by adopting body postures. Consider the cross as an ideograph, or the priest’s postures during Mass or what was the true heart of DelSarte.
In an otherwise forgettable production of Romeo and Juliet I watched recently with some Northgate animals at the Performing Arts Center, at the moment of accepting the future possibility of death in the unfolding of her plan, Juliet was in a cold single spot at the front of the stage; she extended her arms at her side, not in a full cross, more at 45 degrees than 90, palms facing the audience, her look directed slightly above the audience (I’m too lazy to look up the closing couplet of the speech). But it was chilling. It was beautiful. The production was full of this frenetic “playerly” energy for the most part, but at that moment ideograph and moment and word lined up perfectly, all play stopped and boom there was the full event in a nutshell. No need to continue. The production, alas, did continue.
I put the mark down and I watch it cutting a channel in me. What better way to render what never was.
In editing Marc’s comment above (paragraphs, Marc, paragraphs!) I thought it would be fun to link to some stuff about Delsarte. In searching, I came across this website: A New Alphabet: Embodiment, Language & Digital Literacy. I think there’s lots here to fuel our work no matter what we’re working on.
Hm. At the risk of feeding a monster, I have to point out Marc’s last line in his post:
“I put the mark down.”
Hm.
We had to put our budgy down…
Was it not well?