I’m reposting this from the email because I don’t want it to get lost in email history. It bears consideration and discussion here on the blog.
Marc says:
Noel knows I don’t know what I’m saying half the time, myself. And yet, I go on (Beckett). I cannot keep counsel (Shakespeare). Noel, you complete me (Cruise). You find the meaning I lack.
So one way for me to begin working on an idea is to propose an image which prompts a question. So these are questions prompted quite a while ago by local places and other such things. So listen, everybody, new work can grow out of seeing images and asking questions:
Why would an architecture student insist on designing nothing but impossible playgrounds?
One result of this preoccupation is that she lives at home with her mother, a wealthy West Paces Ferry divorcee.
Her mother involves herself with sadistic real estate developers and continues each relationship until she has to be hospitalized for injuries. What is the daughter supposed to do about this?
If she chooses to leave, why? Why does she drive till she feels like she’s reached nowhere? Why is nowhere a town?
There’s a woman in the town who rides around on a bicycle. Is she homeless? Are those children by glimpsed by the warehouse hers?
Why is our architect fascinated by the woman? Why does she rent an apartment in the town and spend her days following the woman around?
The architect discovers that the woman participates in violent role playing with members of a local church who see these sessions as a form of group family therapy. Why does she act the surrogate in these dangerous secret ceremonies?
The mother’s relationship with her current real estate developer is getting potentially lethal. The daughter can do nothing but listen as the mother describes over the phone what is happening. Why?
The daughter gets involved with a local real estate developer in the town who likes amateur digital photography. Is he connected with the local church and their arrangement with the homeless woman? And why does the architect submit to pose for him?
She posed for one of her professors while studying at the Institute. This same professor finally took all of his canvases off their frames, hot-clued one on top of the next, then sliced down through the accumulated pile with a chain saw creating a series of “sedimentary sections.” Why?
Why would the architect and the homeless woman dress up like Ashley Wilkes and Scarlett O’Hara and have a picnic by the river?
So these images and questions are all part of the same set at present. Is there a possible narrative to link them? What other kinds of moments might these images and questions support? A playwright could certainly script answers to these questions. But there might be denser, unscriptable methods of rendering a performance around such things.
My main point is that I’m sure I’m not the only one who can pose questions for performers to investigate.
Marc’s giftedness in coming up with compelling images and questions is always amazing. This is the kind of process I am anxious for the group to explore, even if it’s not right away. It falls in the category of “kinds of theatre I do not understand” that is one of my personal goals for joining this group.
So naturally I have questions:
That last one just slipped in there.
No answers required. I’m just thinking out loud.
To Dale’s questions, I don’t think it unreasonable for us to define what success looks like. IMNTBHO, that definition should not include goals that look like this:
– Performed flawless reanactment of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware
– Performed before a large audience that found themselves, at the end of it all, in a state not significantly different from if they had listened to hours of Vogon poetry
I think language more visionary, and frankly, vague is acceptable. Just as a starting place, it might include something like the following:
– Create a common language for creation of art
– Increase the performance skills of group members
– Discover and explore new means of creation(stop thinking like that Dale, that’s not what I meant)
– Develop a community of performers that are more effective when working together than they ever could be individually
After re-reading everything, I decided my post appears (and may actually be a bit) off topic. However, I do think a clear vision will help us to answer the smaller questions, such as ‘When does exploratory become self gratification?’ Not that there’s anything wrong with that…