Lacuna Group|blog

present: Jeff B, Brady, Dale, Summer

Brady and Summer had their second readthrough of Jeff’s adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Bear.” This is a very very funny script.

While they were working, Dale produced “Two-Hander #1,” a Neo-Futurist script for Jeff and himself. No nudity was involved.

Afterwards, Dale went over the kinds of things we’ve been working on and laid out the long-term plan for the group.

Finally, everyone played a noise-making. Dale had brought the staffs from Coriolanus, some heavy cardboard tubes, some PVC piping, and some 2-inch-thick corrugated cardboard. Everyone banged and thumped and blew, experimenting with sounds. We wound up doing a 2 against 3 kind of beat, with three people whooshing the PVC pipes in 3 and one person thumping the cardboard in 2.

NEXT: SEP 2, 6:30, NSOD

• TEXTS: Old Man Wind (doc), “The Bear”
• PATHS: Vocal Sequence; Contact Improv; Story Theatre; other
• HOMEWORK: write a Neo-Futurist piece

present: Marc, Jeff B., Barbara, Dale

Our first meeting since April, and in the Newnan School of Dance’s new studios!

We have been asked to consider working with NSOD dancers to put together a performance for the next downtown Art Walk. We talked about material we could possibly put together in the five weeks before September 18. This included some Neo-Futurist pieces, a revival of “Milky Way” and/or “Two Sunflowers,” and two of our bear works, “Bear & Rabbit” and “Old Man Wind.”

At the moment, we’re focusing on developing “Old Man Wind.” We took five minutes to read over the text again and propose ways to integrate dancers into the work.

Some ideas:

• cluster/machine, from which characters detach; music/sound created by the dancers
• indication of the “four corners” in some way
• use of turtle shell rattles, gourds, drums to create sound
• use of specific colors
• progression from noise and color to the stasis of the “young men” in the water and on to their rebirth
• objects spoken of but embodied only by dancers in some way
• the Old Man Wind embodied by a performer, but other characters indicated by movement
• the use of fabric, poles, lights (LED flashlights?)

We will probably need to meet more than once a week in order to get this pulled together.

In addition to this performance piece, we are also considering an evening of pieces to be performed this fall down at NCTC in the black box: Jeff’s version of Chekhov’s “The Bear”; Turff directing Ionesco’s “The Lesson”; and a collection of Neo-Futurist works.

NEXT: AUG 19, 6:30, NSOD

• TEXTS: Old Man Wind (doc)
• PATHS: Vocal Sequence; Contact Improv; Story Theatre; other
• HOMEWORK: be prepared to work the first 30 minutes on nothing but sound: vocalizations, body sounds, rattles, drums, etc.

present: Dale, Brady

No one else showed up. It was a very unproductive night, even less than last week’s when Brady showed up and no one else did.

present: Dale, Jeff B.

We talked a long while, just getting caught up. Finally, we dug out Old Man Wind [doc] and Bear and Rabbit [pdf] to work on, as promised in whatever the last meeting was.

We futzed our way through Old Man Wind, playing back and forth with the text for a while. Dale settled into the role of OMW, Jeff took the other parts for the nonce.

Dale became interested in the end, where OMW lies down in the water and promises to return. He worked on that more, sitting on the floor perpendicularly to the audience and slowly lying back, exhaling deeply on the last three words. One more deep breath/in/out, and then Jeff delivered the coda.

We then backed up a bit and played with the part where OMW changes the four young men into the different animals. What we noticed was that the first young man asks the Wind what he should become, and the Wind doesn’t answer him. The other young men decide rapidly on their transformations (some interesting body possibilities here) and leave. Then the Wind turns back to the first YM and demands, “What will you be?”

It occurred to us that the issue was that the YM was trying to abnegate his responsibility for choosing his own transformation, an idea that ties neatly into our Creativity arc. We developed an Image, wherein the Wind reaches into the heart of each YM as he decides, and empowers the transformation, a moment of ecstasy, perhaps?, and then with the first YM, it becomes an agonizing struggle about accepting the responsibility for change.

We ran back through OMW and started developing some staging ideas. Still very sketchy as a whole

Then we turned to Bear and Rabbit. We kept the cartoony nature of what we had done before and pushed it even further. Jeff’s Bear was heartier and boomier; Dale’s Rabbit was more Roger Rabbit, making constant hilarious under-comments as the action continued.

Then we adjourned for the night.