But knownst to us..
“Needless to say” is so kindergarten. It’s so disingenous. If you say “Needless to say,” you actually confuse the meaning of the amount of needing to say something.
Either
1) you really don’t need to say it but are saying it anyway and apologizing for that by throwing in “needless to say”
2) you do (need to say it), but you want to make it seem like you don’t.
3) You do need to say it but you want to make everyone feel like they should have known it already.
Either way, the phrase serves more as a marker of calling attention to the phrase after it, than conveying the actual amount of need of saying. So instead of saying “Needless to say,” I’m going to start saying “I’d like to draw attention to the phrase after this opening clause, and I’d also like to make you vaguely uncomfortable about whether or not you should have known this information already.”
Goes in the same camp with “Clearly”, “As we all know,” and “I know I don’t need to say it, but…” It’s all bad directing. It’s all telegraphing.
Needless to say, I like the phrase more after having written this post than I did at the beginning.
at the bottom of the pot
Tomorrow night, the director of Golda’s Balcony (Aaron Davidman) is performing his one-man show, A Jerusalem Between Us, at the JCC East Bay. Tix.
“A Jerusalem Between Us” takes stock of recent controversies that have divided Americans and American Jews. The play untangles the Rachel Corrie controversy, considers the word “apartheid”, reflects on the spirit of Jewish values and wonders what’s left of the Left. Giving voice to different characters he meets along his journey, one man travels from America to the Middle East in search for answers to some of the most provocative questions of our time.”
Needless to say, after all the time on GOLDA, I’m very interested to see this.
Twylie-Baz Tharpmor?
My parents saw ACROSS THE UNIVERSE and called me to say that I should do a musical based on Dylan (too late) or Queen (too late) or Fleetwood Mac.
“Except RUMORS already is a musical…”
“You know, like MOULIN ROUGE…”
I want to do FASHION NUGGET: THE MUSICAL. I see it as the story of one excessively self-reflective guy and the voices in his head. (Now that’s theater.)
Actually, I think it would be great to do something called JUKEBOX MUSICAL – maybe it’s a dance-improv-chorus thing? Where the audience actually gets to pick the songs from the jukebox and they improvise dance (and a plot, and characters) to whatever it is? And the plot continues to the next song? Maybe that would be truly awful.
But, look, a real musical made out of a variety of different rock songs – like a jukebox…oh wait, that’s ROCK OF AGES…Anyway, the form is in the air. I am serious about Cake.
PaperForm
I
Talking with friends about methods of writing papers:
– writing and letting the structure emerge as you go, vs outlining in advance
– using bullet points and section titles (which I have gotten more into lately) vs. letting other paragraphs serve as transitions.
These days when I write, I write something six times too long and then slash it into shreds. I don’t outline, or if I do, the outline emerges as part of the writing.
II
I wonder if there’s a way to do things like this within a play: section headers, paragraph transitions. Probably in a very simple manner, with something like Word For Word, just by having one actor read them out to announce another’s speaking.
III
If you direct SPOON RIVER, do the actors say their own names? “Lucinda Matlock,” and then the monologue?
IV
Sort of like what was going on in LARAMIE.
V
The Elements Of Style: The Dance-Theater Extravaganza.
everything you need to know you could have learned in nyc in the seventies…
I thought I had posted this before but it didn’t take. Anyway, I did 3 audience events for TheatreWorks last week, and at one of them, I met a woman who had directed a production of ANTIGONE with an improvised chorus in it.
Yes! That is, the chorus improvised different movements every night, and the lines were not assigned. It had 3 people in it.
She studied at NYU and ART in the 70s and used Viewpoints methods to develop a movement vocabulary for the chorus.
Needless to say, I was very happy to have heard this. Precedent.
Improvised (Structured) Chorus
So, I know what the next step is, post-Portland. The next thing I think I have to do with choruses is figure out different ways of imposing structure within and around them that don’t break up the creativity of impulse. Make it more like the jazz it keeps getting compared to.
And the next workshop I do will be about that.
Chorus plus structure.
Except I want as much as possible of the ideas for the structure to come from the actors and be regulated by the text, not by me. Spontaneous structure.
I suppose I should also hone in on one of the Greeks for the text. Go back to the original. I’d like to take several weeks on all the different Greek choruses within the context of their plays – I started looking at that when I was writing a pitch for someone and realized I’d never really shook it out. But this is the area where I keep getting slammed, this is where, if this method can grow, it has to grow.
If it can. I am feeling a little discouraged these days – wondering how on earth I ended up spending so much time and energy on this. Is doing an all-chorus show the theatrical equivalent of writing an all-rhymed thesis? Impressive, weird, but ultimately useless? Am I now actually at the point of wanting to let this go, in the same way I did rhyme? Am I only doing this because it’s hard and seemingly impossible, not because it has value?
That can’t be right, not when I still see bad choruses being staged. It can’t be. I keep on wanting to do the next round – Indy, Ithaca, San Antonio, if possible – I keep wanting to show these ideas to Caitlin, to Amina, to my other friends, and see how they will react.
I keep hoping that there is a way to make this method scaleable and usable.
Imagine if I could get past keyword: imitation, if I could go beyond saying just imitate other members of the group, and into a technique for staging choruses that could actually be used by other directors, in the same way that Meisner can?
But at the bottom of all this is definitely a fear that I’m spending my life and my most energetic years wasted on stylistic digressions. And sometimes I wonder, often I wonder, if I wouldn’t be happier and feel less like Don Quixote if I were “only” writing.
I do believe that it’s possible to move your life and your art forward on several fronts. It’s not a pie. You don’t have to give one thing up to explore another. But is this really what I wanted to do with my life? Do I care about directing choruses, or do I care about writing plays? The answer is and always has been – writing. And that scares and disturbs me, when I see myself giving so much more energy to forms of staging.
Staging is like writing, I guess, if actors are words. Maybe.
Social Networking of Nations
There’s a wildfire raging in San Diego – if Zack has to evacuate, we’ll know soon.
Reading, relentlessly and quickly and not with much depth, books found around the place: THE GAME. ADVENTURE CAPITALIST. That book about only working 4 hours a day. There’s a style of literature of acquisitions, of experiences – cumulative value – pickups, countries, etc. How much, how many. I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of it lately. People who have traveled all over, or slept with a ridiculous number of people. It’s like friending. Brief connections. Ticking off a list. If visiting another country is no more meaningful than picking up someone in a bar (not that both can’t convey a certain set of meanings) then no wonder there are so many (mis)understandings between people and between countries. It’s like friending. Like social networking sites. If it’s that easy to do, maybe it’s not worth doing. And if your experience of other countries is just going there and flinging around American dollars (there was some quote in the 4hrs/day book about “Things get fun when you earn dollars, spend pesos, and pay your employees in rupees” that horrified me) then you’re not experiencing them. You’re colonizing.
Of course, there is something to be said for just connecting with a variety of people, or countries. Something so much, that people spend over half their day on Facebook. It feels meaningful. And it’s a quantifiable sense of achievement. But real connection comes from more than “friending” other nations, other people. Friendship isn’t a verb – it’s an adverb – it’s how you do the thing you’re doing.
I’m thinking of a woman I met at the Doug Fir in Portland, a blonde post office employee drinking a margarita, who told me she had spent 3 years in the Peace Corps in Nepal. She came back to America, got married, and 3 years later her marriage is over. Now she wants to return. The time in Nepal feels more meaningful to her than her time here. She was able to see her work manifested in helping to build a school. She went there to teach English and realized that doing that was less helpful than building infrastructure. Rotary sent her books for the school.
I’m not hating on Myspace, or Facebook, or on tourist travel. But I do think there are more or less meaningful ways of connecting with people, and with countries – and the most meaningful take more time. I just want the friends that America and Americans are networked to in the superficial sense to be more closely connected.
phrealism
Last night LaCona and Cisco and I went for shabu shabu on Castro St. Incredible. I talked to her about if I need to take time off from the chorus. She thinks that there’s no reason to stop working on one thing while I try to elaborate on another. She’s probably right. The need for more realism doesn’t necessitate the end of abstract expressionism. And it would be a shame to stop now, just when I feel like I’m at the point of another breakthrough around jazz and improv and structure. But that breakthrough is going to be a lot of work. Sometimes I wonder if it really is easier to do film…
Mere & I watched Golda’s Balcony this afternoon, and I took maintenance notes – and we’re now at 2319 doing laundry. We’re going to an 80’s night in the city somewhere tonight. About two weeks till this period of sojourning in the Bay Area ends.
Decomportlandressing
Back from a very, very whirlwind Portland, where I saw Chris Coleman’s production of CABARET at PCS and did the chorus/Flatland workshop, and pitched Matt & Ben. As usual, Jessica & the Many Hats folks were fantastic.
It was a challenging but good workshop. It was easier than we had expected to get people to be triangles and Pentagons – Jessica led some character “drafts” sessions that reminded me of commedia work, where everyone works on being one character together –
“Two Squares greet each other crossing in the street.”
“Little Squares playing in the schoolyard.”
She’s so good.
But despite her help, it was infinitely harder than I had dreamed to see how it integrated with the text.
I’m starting to realize that using the improvised chorus like a jazz method is going to be as hard, if not harder, than “blocking” – since good improvisation with structure needs just as much attention to detail. I got kind of discouraged at that realization, but am trying to stay positive.
The actors liked the text. They particularly connected to the “Code of Women” and the restrictions the Victorian era placed on them. And Michael Rohd came to observe the end of it – good to finally meet him. But I still feel very exhausted at the idea of the massive amount of work that staging FLATLAND would be.
I may just be worn out from my delayed flight the next day. I was late to the understudy rehearsal and only arrived in time for half an hour of work with Joan. Rebecca and Heather ran lines, and that was helpful for her, but I still feel like I screwed that up. Remind me to never again fly on the same day I have another commitment – ever?
I did, however, really enjoy getting to be specific with Joan. Even half an hour of good work with someone makes ten hours of airports and trains seem worth it.
Dara Weinberg 