Month: February 2009

present: Dale, Jeff B., Barbara, Kevin

After some afternoon scrambling to meet some other day, some other time, we ended back at our usual time and place.

We warmed up with the Vocal Sequence, using phrases from Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to her book.” [doc]

Then we explained what we were up to to Kevin, who has been unavailable on Wednesday nights. After some general discussion, Dale zipped home to print out the Bear & Rabbit tale that Jeff had posted in comments for last week’s session, and to bring the roll of white butcher paper.

Dale then shared an idea he had about “The Boy who was afraid of nothing.” He filled the floor with stretches of the white paper, then drew a boy/puppet on a piece. Nice beginning. He needed a middle, something with the idea of the boy wanting to learn to be afraid, perhaps a signpost figure who offers to teach him, ending up in his bed waiting for the promised vision. Perhaps a bear, a wolf, appear, and then… “There arose from beneath his bed a white, terrifying figure: a single white sheet. ‘What are you?’ stammered the boy, frightened to his core. ‘I am a blank sheet of paper,’ said the figure. ‘Fill me with something worthy.’ Scream. Blackout.”

Everyone else, in trying to understand what Dale was up to, played with paper, creating characters. Dale suggested that this story could be used near the opening as part of our Fear factor.

We then played with the Bear & Rabbit tale [pdf]. Jeff began to narrate and the rest of us jumped in Story Theatre style. We played it in a fairly cartoonish manner, until we got to the line where Buzzard takes the wounded Rabbit into a closed room. At the line “But soon the Rabbit is heard screaming in agony,” Dale (playing Rabbit) gave it his best shot, actually screaming in agony. The rest of the story continued in its cheery manner, right up until the final reveal.

We liked the direction it took. We discussed having the Buzzard twist remnants of the white paper into bones and fur for the reveal.

As a piece, it would fit into our material about self-delusion/hubris. Dale asked for everyone to write down a quick statement about something they were defeated by, or were afraid to attempt for fear of being “destroyed” by it, to be used in a quick montage to follow the Bear & Rabbit tale.

At that point it was time to quit.

NEXT: FEB. 25, 6:30, NSOD

• TEXTS: Old Man Wind [doc]; Bear & Rabbit [pdf]; new Bear material; Dale’s giraffe piece, nude performance piece
• PATHS: Vocal Sequence; Montage exercise; Contact Improv
• HOMEWORK:
  • (Neo-Futurist scripts, always)
  • material based on The List
  • 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

present: Marc, Jeff B, Barbara, Dale

We spent almost the entire evening looking over Dale’s graphic display of material [pdf] and discussing it and adding to it.

Across the top is a five-minute increment timeline. That’s for later use.

Under that is a line across the width of the poster. It is labeled with the steps of the Hero’s Journey:

1. Separation
2. Initiation
3. Return

…along with a small box with all the steps outlined by Campbell.

At the bottom of the poster is another line, this one with the steps of the creative process, as pulled together by Dale from various frameworks:

1. Conception (having the idea)
2. Ideation (generating connecting ideas/material)
3. Incubation (mulling it over, backing off the problem, letting ideas germinate)
4. Parturition (creating the work from the results)
5. Verification (performance, publication, evaluation, etc.)

Dale had already put several boxes on there. He explained that they were not tied to the timeline in any way, they were just there to remind us that we had generated the material, and that we could then connect the bits any way we saw fit.

The Montage was there, with other boxes linked to it labeled “minimonologs,” which represent the paragraph-like musings we all seemed to generate last week when we first tried the Montage gesture.

There were the three versions of Old Man Wind as we discussed them last week.

In the center was the big label FEAR, with a box about Grizzly Man/self-delusion. That led to the identification of bears as an image we might want to have recur throughout. In Grizzly Man’s case, the bears represent the treachery of our material, our creative efforts, if we allow our self-delusions to ever disregard their dangerous nature. They will devour us.

Jeff was going to look in his Big Myth to pull out further material with bears. (2/12: he has done so.)

We talked then about the creative process and brainstormed some ideas we thought could be included as we generate work:

• use William Blake’s Inn as a throughline of the Hero’s Journey, since it’s a major completed work and Dale has been through the entire process with it; possible performance of selections; the Return in this case being the Rejection of the Gift
• Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book,” which Dale then extrapolated with Barbara’s fear that she’s the “non-creative” one in the group: if Barb (or whoever) were to write a letter to her unwritten, unplanned, unconceived novel…
• a bystander who sat over to the side during the performance and who, while we nattered on about the creative process, actually wrote something
• image of self as a creative person [Marc worrying about creating/sustaining that image]; the impostor syndrome; technology-enabled creative personae [?might need explanation]
• the more mediums the better: the polymath in all of us
• creativity conference/seminar as framework for the evening
• accolades from the spouses
• our work on a “spectacle” for the Centre/Park event
• linked from FEAR in the center:
  • uninteresting
  • acceptance?
  • authority?
• Dale as Creativity Guru/Shadow [shadow?]
• “What are we avoiding?”
• “Other people need to fail if I am to succeed…”
• Reactions (linked to Verification in the creative process line)
• “What were you expecting?”
• FRAUD
• loose connection to reality
• “abortive attempts”
• The Grand Delusion–Bliss
• self-flagellation
• rolls of paper
• “Where’s the present?” as in “we talk about how to wrap the present, how big a box to put it in, when to give it…” but…
• “it’s not me”
• audience indifference
• spite

We forgot to include, but I will here:

• successive approximation

So. Now.

We use this beginning of a list (I’ll mark it up on the graphic and reprint it) and start to generate material. Then we can start figuring out how to combine it, line it up, stage it, etc., etc., etc.

NEXT: FEB. 18, 6:30, NSOD

• TEXTS: Old Man Wind [doc]; new Bear material; Dale’s giraffe piece, nude performance piece
• PATHS: Vocal Sequence; Montage exercise; Contact Improv
• HOMEWORK:
  • (Neo-Futurist scripts, always)
  • material based on The List
  • 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

present: Dale, Marc, Jeff B, Barbara

We warmed up with the Vocal Sequence, all independently. As agreed upon, we faded out and Marc took the center, beginning a Quick Pass exercise. After several passes, the action was back to Marc, and Dale joined him in the center, where they paired up to continue the Vocal Sequence, with a little Contact Improv thrown in.

After a few minutes of that, Marc called a halt so we could debrief what he and Dale had done. [comments in the comments, please!] Marc also read out a list of interventions or responses for that kind of work from a handout he had developed for his classes at GHP. You can download a copy of that handout here: vocal-sequence-response-interventions [pdf].

Then Dale asked us to work on the Montage exercise. Everyone took a few minutes to write down five items of some creative effort of theirs, either a finished piece, or something they’ve been working on, or something they’d like to work on. Then we read them out loud around the circle.

There was actually some reticence, if not resistance, to this basic idea. We talked about the anxiety of “confessing” that we’re creative, of unashamedly claiming to be creative. What if we’re self-deluded? is the worry. However, as Dale pointed out, if we’re doing a piece on being a creative person in a noncreative place, then that paranoia is part of the process we need to explicate.

Also, to some extent we as artists must delude ourselves into thinking that what we’re working on it worthwhile, that it is “good” in some meaningful way. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have the courage to continue. That delusion is also worth examining. Jeff and Marc referred to the Lichtenbergian airing of Grizzly Man, with the delusion of that character ending with his being destroyed by those delusions. An idea worth exploring.

The idea behind the Montage exercise was that we could then take these items and turn them into a choral montage of creative bits, a barrage of ideas that the audience could then sort through as we began to reference some of them in other bits in the performance piece. We tried it once, but then we ran out of time. Dale went over to the other studio to help spot a ballet lift, and by the time he got back, we were done.

We did not get to two new texts that Dale had written, one he called the “giraffe piece,” and the infamous “nude performance” piece.

NEXT: FEB. 11 6:30, NSOD

• TEXTS: Old Man Wind [doc]; Dale’s giraffe piece, nude performance piece
• PATHS: Vocal Sequence; Montage exercise; Contact Improv
• 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