Category Archives: the chorus

the chorus

Rhymes With Thesaurus

It looks like I’ll be subjecting the students of my former high school to another dose of the Greek chorus this June. Maybe I’ll be able to show them a tape of the show we put together at Indy. Or maybe I’ll get organized and try to hold a professional chorus workshop for adults in the same week.

I’m working on a rewrite of the 13 Chorus script tonight. I was pretty blocked on it, despite having made some casting and design breakthroughs in the past few days. But I got a lot of mileage out of whining to some of the designers during tech, and I just slept on it for awhile – and I woke up with one line, which is all I need –

“If only Medea had never, had never
(had never, had never, had never, had never)
If only Medea had never come here…”

And a little melody, which I will hum into this HTML editor and hope it transfers.

The great thing about having this blog going now is that I can write unrestrainedly about my own process, even if not about others’. Anyway, when I’m trying to do rewrites, I usually can’t crack them open until one line, whatever it is, arrives. I have this one line – so now I know I’m going to finish the rewrite.

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directing, LA theater, style, the chorus, theater

“The stones would explain the smile”

I saw a great show with Phil C last night – the Evidence Room/Unknown Theater co-production of Martin Crimp’s* ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE. Seventeen scenes in different styles, textures, and voices, all about one woman – Anne. Brilliant. And there were quite a number of choral elements in it, too. The two companies’ ADs co-directed it, alternating and switching off scenes, which is what I had wanted to try with a different show. So glad to see it working.

AOHL doesn’t have stage directions or divisions of text. I heard someone mention a production where all the actors learned all the lines, which is what I still want to do with choruses.

Every time I see one of Bart’s productions it makes me want to direct the play one day. Which I mean as a compliment to him. Often I see theater and it leaves me sick of the play, tired of it, never wanting to think of it again. Bart’s work makes the play seem like the most wonderful thing ever. Like there could be so many new discoveries in it.

Phil & I went to Cosmic Pizza after and discussed. I’m still spinning from the thoughts of the show. I wish I could see it again, but I leave Thursday.

Then, later, at the Silver Spoon with Ezra, this came up: has the presence of directors in theater actually removed some of the actors’ natural ability to self-direct? And who “needs” directors more – actors who naturally hold back, or who are naturally over the top?

Would it be a good thing for all actors to be in a production without a director? To try that? What would that mean?

*The very first show I worked on it LA was Martin Crimp’s DEALING WITH CLAIR, at the Matrix. I ran box office. Funny how these things come together – this Crimp will be one of the last shows I see in LA, for quite some time.

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the chorus, theater, travel

Dispatches from the Las Vegas airport

As if anticipating the excitement, over the Grand Canyon, a passenger went into medical distress. The flight attendants asked for doctors on the plane, and they clustered around him and lowered the cabin temperature. A woman in her thirties and a man over seventy confer over the patient. They lay him down in the aisle. We land and paramedics rush onboard.

We wait, and stare out at the skyline, and think about death. From the window of the plane: an enormous black pyramid wearing an Absolut logo over its triangular hips like a pair of designer jeans.

The first thing I see when I get off the plane is a bank of slot machines like docks in a harbor, with people anchored at almost every terminal – and an equally large wall of candy in plastic barrels, and children docked at those.

The sound of slot machines rings and arpeggiates through the air like crows mating. The sound of winning sounds like someone sliding the back of their hand up the keys of a reverby electric piano. It sounds like a smile. A big, fake smile.

A bottle of water costs $3.25, and an Odwalla $5.00. We’re not in Ithaca any more.

But, God, it’s a theater town! A spectacle town. I think about Dan and his year on the Blue Man show here. Posters for theatrical experiences plaster the sides of the moving sidewalks. I don’t see a single ad for anything but a show. Zumanity – Penn &Teller – Phantom – Chippendales – Mamma Mia – Spamalot – The Producers. The walls are bustling with the snarling, laughing faces of actors and dancers. And they look like they know they’re the only game in town. It’s sexy. I’m enthralled. All thoughts of email blasts begging for donations so that theater companies can survive are blissfully wiped from my mind. I’m in Athens – or perhaps in the antiAthens – and Dionysos is ruling the terminals.

I start staring at an ad for UNLV that says “Do you have what it takes to make it in performance art?” and almost trip over the woman in front of me. Do I what? In PERFORMANCE ART?

I feel like I’ve gone tripping back in time to a sleazy Broadway, like I’m walking down some numbered avenue in pinstriped trousers, humming “They say the neon lights are bright…” People come to this place to have physical experiences. To see things live. They come for the damn plays.

Despite myself, I start wondering what it would take to work here. The Red Death / The Story Of O / LOST GIRLS / Pompeii Prohibited : The Vegas Experience? “The show that’ll make you wish you’d never come to Vegas?” Would Alan Moore license his work to a theater company? Or Battlestar Galactica: The Vegas Experience? Or, really, it ought to be MAHAGONNY, or Titus, or Aristophanes. An updated Thesmophoriazusae.* +

Or the Bacchae. They’re building a performance culture here and it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to transfer a serious play, isn’t it? Am I out of my mind? Is there such a thing as off-off-Vegas? **

Next time I’m going to have to go through more than the airport.

* From Wikipedia: “Thesmophoriazusae (Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria) is a comedy written by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was first produced in 411 BC, probably at the City Dionysia. How it fared in the competition is unknown. In the fantasy, the character of Euripides learns that the women of Athens are secretly holding a trial of sorts to decide his fate. The female population is up in arms over the playwright’s continual portrayal of women as mad, murderous, erotomaniac, and suicidal (even as his most sympathetic protagonists). They are using the festival of Thesmophoria, an annual fertility celebration dedicated to Demeter, as a cover for their plot to hold Euripides accountable for his slanderous words.”

+ Comic choruses on the brain. Aren’t they more active than the tragic? Can’t you say that they affect the course of the plot, sometimes?
Last night Lauren and I were talking Nietzsche and choruses, and I think I need to do a bit more work on how the comic choruses fit into that – whether they fall into the same spectator dynamics.

** You say obsessive. I say persistent.

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the chorus

Friday with the Greeks

It was a dark, cold day today in Ithaca. I spent it sitting at a graduate student carrell inside Cornell’s Olin Library, on the sixth floor, in my favorite call number: PA 3800, the Greeks. (Cornell lets you walk into their library without an ID card, a guest pass, or anyone checking any bags at all, unlike Stanford.) The new deadline from R&C has encouraged me to get it together and pick my four favorite choruses to work with. It wasn’t easy, but I did end up with mostly what I was expecting:

Sophocles – OEDIPUS AT COLONNUS (am still flirting with ANTIGONE, and using OAC as a kind of umbrella chorus for the entire project)
Euripides – MEDEA
Aeschylus – THE PERSIANS
Aristophanes – THE WASPS

It’s hard for me to let go of ANTIGONE because I so vividly remember Professor Ginsburg and Professor Abel, my Cornell classics professors from my TASP (Telluride Association Summer Program) analyzing those choruses with us. To this day, I refer to “May he never share my hearth – may he never think my thoughts” as an example of the chorus using the singular pronoun, the collective character of it.

I took the bus in, but I walked back to stay warm – and I swang by 217 West Avenue, the Telluride House, on the way back.

Professors Ginsburg and Abel are both dead now. I never saw Judy Ginsburg again after our TASP. I did see Lynne Abel in 2003, before I went to Germany, when Christian and I co-led a TASP at Cornell. I went to her house at the lake and she gave me advice, some of which I took. I never let her know how the play in Berlin went, and I heard she had died before I could.

At least I’m still working on the Greeks, and still with the ideas they gave me.

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convergence, the chorus

Switching gears, again.

So, my fellow Convergers are making breakneck progress on getting great meetings with folks in Indianapolis – there is lots of interest and enthusiasm. However, due to this progress, Rob and Caitlin need a draft of the 13 Ways Of Looking At The Chorus script, and they need it tomorrow – just another instance of the universe catapulting me into action. I’ll spend tomorrow hammering it out at the Cornell library. I just have to find the right choruses, and the right translations, and I’m very close to it.

Sometimes when you’re stalling, the real world comes up and smacks you with a deadline, and then you get it done.

I’m working from Collegetown Bagels in downtown Ithaca – and the radio is playing “Proud Mary.” Rolling…rolling…rollling indeed. Rolling with the punches.

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convergence, the chorus, Uncategorized

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At The Chorus

Here’s a sample from what I wrote about the Umbrella Project in process, for the 2008 Indy Convergence. It’s going to be an exploration of the chorus.

“The texts to be used are still under discussion, but will probably include one chorus from each of the major Greek playwrights – Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides – and one chorus created out of a text which is not a traditional chorus.

We will explore the nature of the chorus in all the different art forms represented by the Converging artists, with lots of emphasis on dance, music, and character acting – but also on using visual art and multimedia to stage the choruses.”

If anyone reading has opinions about what the best Greek choruses are to experiment with, for these purposes, please comment on the wiki for the project. Thanks!

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the chorus

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.

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the chorus

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.

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directing, the chorus

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.

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the chorus

Chorus WS Tomorrow Evening in Portland

Many Hats Collaboration presents a second workshop on
Improvised Choruses and Experimental Physical Theatre
with Dara Weinberg and Jessica Wallenfels

WHAT: Ensemble Performance, Generative Creation, Physical Theater

WHERE: Performance Works NorthWest
4625 SE 67th Ave.
Portland, OR 97206
503.777.1907

WHEN: Thursday, October 18, 7pm-10pm

HOW: RSVP to jessicawallenfels @ gmail.com por favor.

After the success of our first workshop, Many Hats is offering a second chance to experiment as we continue to investigate a new method of devising theater with improvisation. We will do exercises on the improvised chorus and investigate the text of Edwin Abbot’s FLATLAND, a text about dimensions and geometrical beings, using this method. Actors, dancers, musicians, directors, writers, singers and all artists, theatrical and otherwise, are welcome.

The improvised chorus is a work in progress – come and help us progress!

Donations accepted: $5-$10 sliding scale
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Please wear clothes you can move in and bring a water bottle.

Don’t forget to RSVP! See you the 18th.

Dara Weinberg is a director and choreographer who works with the free radical chorus, an experiment in improvised choral theater and creating choruses through imitation. Until recently LA-based, Dara directed The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an improvised dance play based on William Blake’s poetry, at the Met Theatre Company. Other Los Angeles directing credits include A Vast Wreck and Brandohead at Theatre of NOTE. She assistant directed the premiere of My Wandering Boy (dir. Bill Rauch) at South Coast Rep. At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she assistant directed Romeo and Juliet (dir. Bill Rauch) and Tartuffe (dir. Peter Amster). Other credits include Human Bombing for the Berliner Compagnie as well as choreography for the West Bay Opera Company and Sacred Fools Theatre Company. She assistant directed The Stones (dir. Corey Madden) at the Kirk Douglas. In December, she will assistant direct LYDIA at the Denver Center (dir. Juliette Carrillo). Her website is https://weinberg.wordpress.com.

Jessica Wallenfels (dir. Rest Room, Break, Then Open; choreog. OSF’s Romeo and Juliet, Mutt) and Dara Weinberg (AD on this season’s OSF shows Tartuffe, Romeo and Juliet, see bio below) will be divvying up a couple of hours to experiment and share on ensemble movement and physical theater. This will be on-your-feet actor/mover type stuff in a no-pressure environment. You’ll be creating and working in a group, as well as bouncing off of varied directorial viewpoints, in this evening for novices through experts. Many Hats Collaborators Lava Alapai and Annalise Albright will be on hand and throwing into the mix.

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