Work session: 1/28/09

present: Jeff B, Marc, Dale

After a slow start, Dale read a spam email he had received, a lonely-hearts letter from a young Russian woman. It didn’t produce any sparks.

Indeed, we really resisted working at all for a long time. Jeff read Dale’s “341 poem” while Marc perused some of Jeff’s Native American myth poem. Then Jeff asked Dale to read the text.

Dale performed page 14 from Jeff’s work, the Chipmunk monolog, by grabbing a scarf from the tub in the corner and turning his hand into a puppet. This Muppetesque approach to a severely potty-mouthed rodent was very amusing.

Finally, Marc, who had been reading and marking Old Man Wind, read the whole section out loud.

Then he went back and marked the actual speaking parts (plus other phrases) and read those out loud.

These two readings immediately sparked discussion and ideas. Dale suggested that it would be interesting to hear the piece twice (in a putative performance), once in full, and then again in “flash” mode, with just flashes of words and a barrage of images/props/projections that hit the audience with the story but in such a skeletal format that they’re not sure they got it all. (Dale in fact suggested that we might do the skeletal one first, and only later give the audience the full treatment.)

In fact, the discussion continued, the piece actually had a lot to contribute to the putative performance’s putative theme of “creative people in a non-creative milieu.” We never got around to working through the montage experiment that Dale had structured, but he suggested that an audience would be intrigued to see a repeat of such a montage overlaid the end of the Old Man Wind section when he’s remaking the four boys into new forms.

Marc suggested (and these are barebones notes, to be filled out in comments):

  • ritualized movement (Grotowski) which accompanies narrative, but does not necessarily elaborate or underline it
  • (here’s the movement he described as an example:
  • “unhinging one’s mind”: becoming a vessel for the text
  • “fighting against the narrative”
  • coming up with a “framework” for the evening’s work, like the YouTube above of Akropolis, in which a Romantic Polish poem involving encounters with Old Testament heroes is set within a concentration camp; not necessary for a successful evening, but something to be considered; a metaphor

Jeff talked about the underlying Native American concerns of the myth, the West as a darkening land=Death; the IronMan = the white man with his technological gifts; the self-sufficiency of Old Man Wind, who refuses IronMan’s offerings and relies instead on his own cultural artifacts; the children, unsalvageable after contact with IronMan, return to Earth.

We discussed an evening which could encompass a lot of the material we’ve generated so far and ways that might play out.

We resolved to keep playing and generating all kinds of material. Shape and show must come later.

NEXT: FEB. 4, 6:30, NSOD

  • TEXTS: Old Man Wind [doc]
  • PATHS: Vocal Sequence; Montage episode
  • HOMEWORK:
    • (Neo-Futurist scripts, always)
    • keep bringing in text, either randomly selected from one’s own library, or some online library like Forgotten Books; multiple sources OK; we’re dumping these in our box for use… somehow
    • Montage assignment based on Structuring Drama Work

7 thoughts on “Work session: 1/28/09

  1. Several comments.

    I saw Old Man Wind paralleling our own struggles as Creatives, and thus other pieces of performance that we devise could be overlaid/juxtaposed to this tale in various formats.

    There’s no reason we can’t hammer home lots of points with many iterations of this and other pieces of the evening. Perhaps the first time isn’t enough for the audience and we think they need to see it again. Or we show it to them differently and they get different viewpoints. Or it could be complete recapitulation after much development.

    Also, in my notebook, all the way down the side of the page, I’ve drawn an arrow and labeled it Hero’s Journey. So.

  2. I may try to start a file on my computer where I start making a graphic representation of our material, themes, etc. We can actually draw a score for our performance. We did something like that with the Man in the Marmalade Hat, didn’t we? But this is appearing as something more graphic than verbal in my head.

  3. I was looking over the “We’re queer” text, and the phrase “outsider art” came to me. It occurs to me that all of our art is “outside” the society (Newnan) we live in. That seems to be a point of our efforts here. It will be interesting to see whether we can avoid (1) simpering martyrdom, and/or (2) bitter blame of that society.

  4. Thanks for the re-assurance of Comment 4.

    I am reminded that EVERYTHING can seemingly be found on YouTube. Thanks for the Grotowski (and the Pina Bausch and the “Artaud,” etc) One can school oneself on all manner of approaches to performance just by perusing YouTube. In the back of my mind I’ve been feeling like I need to play the role of some kind of “apologist” for alternative (outsider?) approaches and visions. All the inspiration you need is on YouTube. No, Jeff, I know what we will do will be sui generis; fear not. I’m not saying it will look like this or that (or New York or Europe). I hold that anything is possible and urge everyone not to freak if I begin reciting text in a contorted posture that makes it look like I’m trying to fellate myself.

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