family, running

Seattleite

In Seattle with the Miners, preparing for a family party this evening, to celebrate Nelle’s birthday (belatedly). Her birthday was August 28, the day before my parents’ wedding anniversary on August 29. Mia and I just made carrot cake and the Miners’ family recipe for blueberry cake.

Seattle is lovely. Blue and the light feels like it’s going to be cold, even when it’s warm. John and I walked to the overlook over the water last night.

I also managed to run this morning, the same path, about two and a half miles. I’m trying to train for the Rock n’ Roll 1/2 Marathon on Oct. 14 in San Jose. I’m starting at a place of being completely out of training, but the memory of running in New Orleans gives a small psychological boost to what otherwise would seem impossible.

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Uncategorized

Don’t Fear The Text

Great workshop yesterday. We incorporated the text of a poem into the chorus workshop. The group was very open to the work and we got to a place I’ve never seen before.

After one hour of basic chorus exercises, which we went through in just half an hour (Dara calling out leader switch, leader switching within group, more than one leader) we were taking a piece of text (Ruth Eisenberg’s poem JOCASTA) and handing out two scripts of it, which belonged to the Jocasta speaker and the Chorus speaker. Then there was a 4-7 person chorus improvising in the background.

The rhythm of the text was the “music” they responded to.

By our final improv, the characters were fluidly and naturally moving in and out of the chorus, in and out of text, and the responsibility for the storytelling was collective.

It was beautiful.

Jessica and Lava had many questions and ideas about how this method could be used – Lava wants to try it with a newspaper article. I’m still blown away that this simple integration of text, which I’ve been fighting off for so long (and avoided in MOH&H by the expedient of text without a linear sense to it) worked so well.

Credit to Jessica’s amazing calm sense of direction, and to the group of folks who were so open.

We had a very talented actress in the group, Betsey, who had a broken foot, and incorporated her sitting on a chair – that was a good development too.

It’s such a joy to me every time I get to do one of these workshops – and now I think pushing towards text is something I’m always going to do. Linear, narrative text, poems or plays, with characters and speakers. Why not? It works! And it’s the next logical step.

I’m so happy that Lava and Jessica both saw other ways this method could be used, with approaches different from my own. It means something about it must work. Lava also liked the idea of “the set being another actor.”

Jessica was concerned that with improv blocking some nights would be much worse than others, and I didn’t have a good answer to that, only to tell her that with training, that doesn’t happen. But she did wonder if you could use the improv chorus just for the chorus folks, not the characters. Which is what I did in Human Bombing, albeit without improv, so yes, you can. It’s just a method, and it works in a lot of different ways.

Abandoning the specificity of “this moment must look like this” has freed me greatly as a director, but I do understand that it’s not exactly what everyone wants to do. If I want this technique to be used I have to be open to any kind of use.

This is such a great feeling, to have shared the work with strangers and have them become friends. We went to the Tiki Bar afterwards and celebrated, but we evaporated early cause I was kind of wiped out from yesterday at Powells (I got both FLATLAND and GOLDA’S BALCONY) I also met with Melina, the MOH&H graphic designer yesterday at Staccatto Gelato. She was a former virtual collaborator from that show, and we’d never met in person.

Zack and I are off to Seattle this AM, at the end of our road trip.

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a propos of nothing, the chorus

Memory…all alone in the moonlight….

I remember writing a (bad) rhyming play in my youth, in which an irate member of the chorus chanted:

“We’re ignored by almost everyone, the immortals deplore us,
And no one in living memory has listened to the chorus!”

I sort of wish I could find the computer where things like that and SEVEN FACES OF EVIL are stored – but then again, sometimes the eraser of history makes me very grateful.

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a propos of nothing, travel

But It Just May Be A Lunatic You’re Looking For

Yesterday our progress to Portland was delayed by a brief visit to the Eugene ER, where we had to stop and make sure the enormous saucer-shaped bug bite on my leg, a souvenir of Crater Lake, was not deadly. But we made it.

I write from Portland, where we are staying with Jessica and Lava. Last night we got Chinese food, did karaoke with a live band at Dante’s, donuts at Voodoo Donuts, and watched a lunar eclipse at 3 AM with Annelise, the 3rd member of Many Hats Collaboration.

Today, we’re going to Powells and I’m having lunch with Melina, the graphic designer for MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL, Roz’s friend, who I’ve actually never met! Jessica and I do our workshop this evening.

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directing, int'l theater

Deutschland

Toby has just finished the intensive German program at Middlebury that I was going to do with her this summer, except I ended up ADing TARTUFFE at OSF. She wants to go to Germany in 08 and work together on a production – we’re thinking Von Kleist’s PENTHESILEA, with an all-transgendered cast.

And, more marvellously, she was in an all-German production, at Middlebury, of Max Frisch’s ANDORRA.

Will wonders never cease?

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convergence, directing

le covergence continues

Caitlin, Robert and I spent much of our time in Ashland jamming on The Convergence(TM) (TheaterMark). I can’t tell what this will become, but I have a strong suspicion that I’m going to continue working with those two for a long time.

Some thoughts that came up:

1) We want to have an invite-only group to start and make the actual “convergence”, open to anyone, a free workshop at the end. So we know what we’re working with before we offer it out to everybody.

2) Caitlin is opposed to going too strongly in the direction of postmodern dance (which she described as someone sitting in a chair, clapping 3 times, and walking off stage) Piqued though my curiosity is, I don’t think that’s the immediate direction we’ll be pursuing.

3) Caitlin will bring in some dancers, Rob and I will bring in some actors.

4) Robert and I are going to drive from LA to Indy after 1/24, to begin this work.

5) Whenever it is that we do get a chance to put it all together, we’re going to take it (and by “it” I mean “our fantastic collaborative masterwork” and drive it to Chicago for display.) Which means that I am interested in going after THE PERSIANS or ANTIGONE.

6) Using Caitlin’s photography skills as part of this – camera creating images? Maybe because she doesn’t want to speak her use of the camera is a form of speech?

7) I want to have a chorus focus, because I always do, but I also want to be open to whatever they bring in – which will inform the work. So we may be looking at 2 sessions, one exploratory and one more targeted, or just (ideally) a longer period of time.

8) Planning is on hold until Robert and I learn more about our own lives after 1/24 – some gigs in the works which could change dates.

9) Caitlin has visual artist friends (and possibly also musicians) in Indy who can contribute.

10) We want to draw on everyone’s strengths as a group, as performers of all stripes, which I think means we EACH need to teach workshops and each have agency as co-creators of the piece. Yet I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I really want to work on the chorus, and I want to be a guide for our process, especially nearer to the end.

10.5) So to clarify: starting with all of us teaching, everyone with agency to combine and create, but I do want the eventual focus to be choral. If I’m going to be involved, that’s what I’m most interested in pursuing.

10.75) Caitlin thinks the choral stuff is very similar to stuff she’s done in her own dance classes and she’s down.

11) We want to be open to what we discover. Anything. Which means, despite Dara’s strong preferences for 10-10.75, Dara is STILL open to something new and different. We have to go in like that.

12) A small(er) group may be good – I am so used to working with 6-8 – but we may actually want only 4-5, to start. Seeing the precision of the Graham company brought that home. If we had 4-5 who would be there all the time, that’s one thing – if we drift, perhaps more.

13) Seeing the Graham company made me understand the chorus in one person.

14) We want to keep Converging yearly. Around different texts or themes.

15) Would a more equitable way to run this be that we each get to focus on something in our Convergence – we each create a piece from it? So it’s less about me directing and more about all of us working together? Or are Robert & Caitlin cool with me bringing more focus to this and making it a convergence ON the chorus? Or am I cool enough to let that go and be open?

15.5) I hope I am.

15.75) And yet I do want to be able to show off a chorus piece in Chicago.

15.8) Doubtless all this is possible convergently somehow.

16) I guess I should ask them what they think.

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quotes, the chorus, travel

Greetings from Chenult, OR (pop. 75)

Zack and I are crashing in Chenult, having just had a long and beautiful day at Crater Lake. Enjoyed the Pinnacles very much. I had a couple of thoughts, trying to respond to the Robert Negron / Michael Dixon school of the outdoors affecting the arts.

1) that a truly site specific piece would involve responding to the “set,” or the outdoors. And how do you respond to a mountain? A tree? How does it affect the chorus?

2) that it would be great to try to stretch as much distance between two people on stage as there is between Wizard Island and the Phantom Ship – because they do have a relationship, those two islands – just as two people can have a relationship across miles of water. I mean this both literally and in the sense of emotional space.

3) There has to be some way to replicate the thousands of trees. The DENSITY of the forest.  And Martha Graham is much closer to it than I am.

Anyway, Chenult. Great cheeseburgers. Lots of enormous trucks. A brand of beer called “Moose Drool.” Good talk with the proprietor, Phil, of the Chalet bar & restaurant next door – apparently a truck stop has moved into town and that’s affected his business. His grandson tends bar and he runs the place. We shot a game of pool while talking with him.

Overheard in said bar: “A little fucking communication goes a long way.”

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dance, the chorus

Graham on the Green

Zack and I saw the Martha Graham Dance Company outdoors at the Britt Festival last night with Caitlin. It was extraordinary. The precision, the angles, the emotion – the abstract costumes. The most spectacular number was TECHNIQUE, a take on a dancer’s stretch and warmup. Zach preferred the take on Fascism, with the militaristic numbers. I know her genius is universally recognized, as a choreographer, but I didn’t realize how much it would speak to me.

A moment of focusing on a dancer’s foot slowly lowering – and realizing the gesture refers to crushing people – breathtaking.

The artistic director addressed the audience before it began, to give some context, and said, “The critics weren’t always kind to Martha. One of them wrote, after seeing her, “When I see Martha Graham dance I think she’s going to give birth to a cube.” ”

Seems like a compliment to me, of someone who doesn’t know how good what he’s seeing is. And a reminder that none of us can control audience response.

The performances were only marred by the mind-numbing number of bows they took after each one. I love OSF’s ensemble bow policy.

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theater

Sacred spaces

Dallas theater companies are moving into churches. The shared interest in the buildings will help preserve more historic places – and church spaces, being different from black boxes, will promote more interesting patterns of theatrical architecture. (Yes, in the Viewpoints sense and the other sense.)

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