Rachel Rutherford: October 2004

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Dream of a Ridiculous Man opens

The Dreamer, the Prince holding Madwoman,
singing in 3-part acapella Russian harmony

The Dreamer fights the Prince

Prince, Dreamer, and Madwoman singing

PHOTO CREDIT: All photos by Mariana Markova.

I saw Akropolis's Dream of a Ridiculous Man Saturday. Their productions are like dream sex -- hot, vivid, transformative, and difficult to convey. Their kinesthetic poetry leaves a trail of images which echo and transfix, without explaining.

Entwined, desperate, thoughtful, erotic -- this show has the iron and pale moons of Dostoevski's Russia. The performers have that strange allure of virtuosos. They are so intent on their difficulty that it is left for us to interpret what we've been given.

I walked away from this show as if from a thunderstorm. Something raw and elemental had coalesced in the room and shaken us. I felt lost, hungry, fed on blue light and faery food. There was something horselike, something wicked, something dull. A witch, a father, and an aescetic braiding and unbraiding a story. I kept thinking of the horses who had lived in the forest when I was young, and how we would go to them by moonlight, sometimes sliding onto their backs, sometimes sharing their chuffing warmth. A horse by moonlight is half unicorn.

This is a breakthrough for Akropolis artistically, a new emergence. Their hallmark has always been a shocking truth somewhere in the show -- a birth, a kiss, a murder that goes all the way to the truth, and further. For the first time, these truths are appearing consistently enough to form an undercurrent of surging force. It is a reverberation that has nothing to do with the play itself, but which, like a feedback cycle, takes hold and grows. These performers have trained together for 3 years. That ensemble-connection is prerequisite for this reverberation to appear. Like the legendary bands, Akropolis has developed an unconscious language. These are mature artists, and they are connecting with new depth, intimacy, and truthfulness. They go mad together, with utter precision, singing.

Song blows through the production like wind. Like the rose light on the fortune-teller's table, it arises and fades. You almost don't notice, except you're suddenly close to trembling, to tears.

I miss longtime company member Brynna Jourdan; her surrender and search, her strength. But oddly, in this most Russian of pieces, the dark light of the current ensemble is perhaps more true without her. There is no goodness sometimes; the horse gets beaten by the drunken peasant; the lonely man stays lonely.

Dostoevski does not have Chekhov's heart; but he sees equally clearly the daily squalor and pointlessness.

Artistic director Joseph Lavy is as physically stunning as always, and shows a new piercing focus and awareness of his partners; there is a vulnerability, steady directness, and predatoriness in his connection. His work, while still grounded in interiority, now blazes toward his partners, who feed upon it. Music director & co-artistic director Jennifer Lavy moves easily between maiden, mother, murderer, hag. She is deepening into a new softness, sensuality, sadism, and laughter; a riveting performance and arcing soprano that forms the spine of the play. If Joseph's Dreamer is the mystic head of the piece, and Jennifer's Madwoman its primal spirit, then Eric Mayer's Prince is its steady heart. Deep-voiced, gentler and physically bigger than his partners, and yet unswervingly truthful, he anchors the play emotionally and relationally. The Dreamer and Madwoman are on hyper-personal journeys which only the Prince can enter and share.

I stood for the ovation, and then sat back down and didn't move for ten minutes. Most of the audience, in fact, didn't move. We were still absorbed, processing.

It is frightening how good this work is, and how few people are seeing it. It took 13 months to grow this show, and they are performing -- like their forefather, Grotowski -- for 8 people a night. It is like pouring 200-year-old champagne upon the earth.

All shows are at 8:00, Nov 4-7 (Th-Sun) & 11-13 (Th-Sat), $15. Call 206-934-7905 for reservations, or email here. Bring friends.

Blast from the kitty past

Remember Ed's cat, who crossed the country in the car?

Well, here he is now, lolling in full glory at home.

Sometimes I feel like the top cat. Sometimes I feel like the bottom one.

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Improv meets Kantor, ritual for the dead

This is improv.

This is Kantor.

I walked into Improv, already deep.

"We study Story to learn how to live," I said. "It's fractal. The story goes, "Once upon a time, there was a person named Me. And every day, they did exactly what they were supposed to do. Until one day... they realized something was missing. They needed more." Here begins the Hero's journey, the journey of growing up. Part of us wants to be cautious. It would love to stay in the "Once upon a time... and every day..." safe phase. No -- all the good stuff comes AFTER the trouble. Something goes wrong. You plan to be a doctor. But in pre-med school, you meet a girl from Turkey. Because of that, you fall in love. Because of that, you move to Turkey. Because of that, you become a gardener. We do improv to immerse in the arc of Story. So when the phases arise in real life, we know how to go through them."

Tadashi Suzuki's slow-ten training is the most potent form of this Teaching I know: You do not know. You cannot know. You must not know. Just go. Go mindfully. And moment by moment, it will be revealed. Perfectly.

Theatre is starting to bleed into life. I get how Greatness works in theatre, so I know how it works in a meeting about SourceSafe programs.

It's all a Game. On Saturdays, we invent "Freeze Tag" to amuse ourselves. On Mondays, we invent, "Finish this escrow document."

In America we have invented, "Let's invade Iraq, let's lie, let's destroy all our savings, and most of our friendships." This is a Destruction game. It is destroying our honor & self-esteem, has destroyed our financial foundation, and will destroy more. It might be a Phoenix game, where something stronger, younger, and truer rises from the ashes. Destruction games are always Death games and Creation games at once -- but there is no guarantee about what gets destroyed, what gets created.

I am bitter, sad, scared, angry, ashamed, and unsure of how to participate. Do I, like Scott and Larry, leave the country? Do I, like Kipley, dig in more firmly, knowing I am needed here?

To thine own self be true, whispers Polonius, And thou canst not then be false to any man.

Well, "true to himself" got Polonius killed, listening at doors. "True to himself" got Laertes killed, on Hamlet's sword. I guess the point is -- we all die somehow. You might as well die true to yourself.

Back to rehearsal.

=====================

Our group has nine adults, 19 to 45, who work in software, software, software, software, software, software, software, real estate, and taxes. Four of the nine are married to each other (2 couples).

The ensemble is gelling. Singing was fantastic. Easy rounds, with all the parts mixed up. We do vocal warmups, then mirroring, then group mirroring, which leads to intent blind 8-person knots, crosses all boundaries and leaves the group hot and connected. From there, we work on Story, specifically concentrating on a) being IN it, rather than narrating, and b) seeking trouble, embracing the, "Because of that... because of that..." cascade of revelation. We also work on the technical aspects of Scene Singing -- how to MC, how to take stage, how to be the lead singer, how to be the doo-wop backup chorus, how to end with a flourish. They're hot and on. They are beginning to embrace trouble.

Please to enjoy the difficulty, says Tadashi Suzuki.

Break.

After our snack, we did Little Boy, Little Girl. Now -- here we are. They are deep and limitless. I look at my agenda ("More Story, Review games") and sigh. Yeah, we need to learn that -- but they are so BIG right now. They could do anything. They need big teachings. Or I do.

"We're turning left," I said. "We need to cover the syllabus. But not today. We can't waste this Bigness."

I had them do Tadeusz Kantor's "Build Your Beautiful Home." I learned this in a cold old church in Wales, working with members from Aberystwyth's Center for Performance Research, Poland's Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song of the Goat Theatre), and 14 actors from 12 countries. Our teacher was Ludka Ryba, a longtime member of Kantor's Teatr Cricot 2, best known as the Washerwoman in The Dead Class.

Kantor, who died in 1990, is a Polish painter & sculptor who turned to theatre. He was completely unorthodox, since he thought like a painter and stood onstage conducting the actors in every production. Like Grotowski, Kantor was heavily influenced by the Holocaust. Auschwitz, which killed his father, lay less than 20 miles from where he lived in Krakow. His earliest productions were done secretly, in basements; had he been caught doing such work, he too would have been killed.

The Dead Class -- the schoolchildren who have since grown up and died (mannequins made by Kantor)

The Dead Class -- the dead, returned to the schoolroom, where they mingle with and replace their younger mannequin selves

Let All the Artists Die -- the skeleton horse and ragged army

"Kantor had no system," Ludka said definitively. "I just teach you some exercises." But no one could work with Kantor without absorbing his reverence for Objects, his abrupt impatience for anything other than real doing. He wasn't a psychological-Method guy. "Just walk," says Kantor. "Keep walking. Don't think, don't feel, don't pretend, don't be somebody. Just walk. A man and woman, arm in arm, walking around a small pond is nothing. When they keep walking, twenty minutes, forty minutes later in that same loop around the pond, now they are something. [They are an Object, I think he would have said.] But not because of feeling. Because of keeping walking." I do not respect his Ethics, and I don't think he got Ensemble at all -- but man, oh man, do I respect his montages. He taught me to love what he loved: Objects, bleak juxtaposition, the twankling Hasidic holocaustic theatre of Death.

=============================

For forty minutes they worked without speaking, to transcendental music. The rules are:

1. Build your beautiful Home.
2. In silence.
3. You can use anything in this room.
4. Listen to what is evolving. The space itself will tell you what it needs.
5. It must be beautiful, to YOUR highest standards of beauty.
-- if you see something that doesn't belong, remove it
-- if you sense something missing, add it

The pure form of this exercise is, you build your home. After a while, you are guided to find your place in this Home. Then to eat dinner together. And finally, to go to sleep in it. The whole thing takes 45 minutes to an hour.

The alternative form is Journey to Ithaca -- you are on Odysseus's ship, searching for your home, to which, when you finally see it, you are not allowed to go, but you must return to sea. In Kantor's Milano Lessons in his big book, he leads you through having a wedding in this place you have constructed.

There. That's direct transmission of the Teaching.

I had the actors

- create your beautiful Home
- destroy it -- change things, try stuff, break things
- go toward beauty from that
- eat dinner together with real food
- during dinner someone dies
- have a funeral
- have a ritual for the dead, which everyone knows

In our last 20 minutes, I split them into the two large empty conference rooms next door, and had them be gargoyles, and then multi-person gargoyles. On the tables, using weight-bearing and touch -- "Be the Gates of Hell. Be specific -- are you ice? are you a thousand eyes? Violate the face."

It is a shock to walk through a conference room door, and find -- on five business tables -- a glowing hellish gargoyle, knotted out of bodies, in silent mid-snarl, grasping the ceiling tiles, radiantly still. "This could be in your meetings," I said. "This is within the human sphere of ability. Things get a lot more real when this level of Truth enters the room."

I loved the end of their ritual for the dead. They had just finished a mysterious group-mirrory thing, and returned to standing -- now what?

With a rustle they turned, and as quietly and naturally as if in a cemetery, walked away, leaving the body alone in its blanket, candles, and squalor. Two women drifted to the opposite side of the stage, and stood, leaning against the wall, gazing at the dead man like contemplative absent guardians. On the window, a shiny red puffy coat hung with its arms through the blinds like a crucifixion. Two windows down, three red plastic plates glowed, sun coming through them like stained glass. On the floor -- detritus. Napkins, apples and juice abandoned mid-meal, crumpled cups, towering sculptures of balanced upended chairs, pencils in traces of a forgotten formation, shoes.

"Ve get too soon old, and too late Schmart," said my mother last night, quoting the German family with whom she had lived as a young bride.

Friday, October 29, 2004

Everyone should have a Hot List

This is the Georgia's Hot List she posted in her blog:

"HOT LIST:
Totally superfluous list of guys I would do in a heartbeat, with apologies to C [her husband]:

Dennis Quaid
Taye Diggs
Jon Stewart
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jeff Bridges
The hot elf from LOTR
James Taylor because once you go heroin addict, you never go back
Keb Mo because I do believe he would send flowers after.
Britney Spears (who wouldn't do that girl?) (But not Jessica Simpson, who is too faux Britney)
Lyle Lovett, because of the Lyle Lovettness. And to get Julia's address in New Mexico.
Jeremy Piven and his BFF John Cusack, either in a threesome or a duo
Chris Rock because of his truly nasty imagination. Da-amn.
Louis Black because I am a charitable human being and he's so fucking funny.
John Mayer
Bill Clinton because how fun would that be?"

-- Odious Woman (www.odiouswoman.blogspot.com)

I love her range and diversity. I instantly started my own. "Will Smith...that dark-haired guy from Y Tu Mama Tambien..." I think this exercise is good for the soul. Especially if you approach it with her same largeness of spirit. Have at it.

Cleaning fool

There's nothing like having your brother come visit, to galvanize you into cleaning. If you're me, that is. He lives in Alaska and works on the North Slope, so we're a good quarter of the globe apart most of the time. And he's bringing his kids, so the house needs to be child-clean.

I have begun.

Three more boxes of stuff thrown away yesterday. A drop in the bucket, my friends. But a hefty satisfying drop.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Avocado and cheese, eclipse

Our fridge has food!!!

Last night for dinner -- Thai noodle soup (from a mix), whole-wheat English muffin toasted & buttered, fresh-sliced avocado, small sweet grape tomatoes, and thick cool slabs of Swiss cheese. Jeff had steaming cheese tortellini with alfredo sauce, and chamomile tea.

We have been on a long stint of beans & rice, peanut butter, and eggs -- so this is a lovely turn of affairs. We toasted Bellevue Community College, whose paycheck provided the bounty.

If you missed the lunar eclipse last night, check out Lohan's blog and follow her links. Enormous soft pix of the red moon, following the eclipse from beginning to end. As seen from Seattle -- or more precisely, Poulsbo.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Off to Non-Actors

In Acting for Non-Actors, we're doing the Scottish play. That is, the Shakespeare play whose name it is bad luck to say aloud in a theatre, which starts with an "M" and rhymes with "Lacbeth."

We're not doing a performance this quarter. Just working on the scenes. Without the pressure of performance, we can actually work more -- go deeper, explore more elastically.

The actors got their scenes last week. Tonight, we dive in. I've only spent time in this play once before. My experience is, it's got a strong undertow. The momentum of the plot carries its own inexorable urgency. It was the first time I had experienced, in showing scenework, that hungry silence in an audience. I couldn't figure out what they were so keyed into.

Finally I realized -- they're not seeing scenes. They're watching a play. They're waiting for What Happens Next.

Peaches, Alignment, 5 Rules

"What is the best way to avoid suffering?" I asked Michele McCarthy. "Go for what you most want," she said. "If that thing doesn't make money -- like, say you want a theatre in rural Eastern Europe -- then you have to set up your life to generate the money somewhere else."

"Even when you're going for what you want, you'll have to do things you don't want to do," she continued. "I want the world to all live in Greatness. So I have to sell. I have to write. I have to live with uncertainty. I don't like any of those things. But I am willing to do them, because they are on the path of what I want." She paused.

"The surest way to suffer is to NOT do what you want," she said. "I know lots of unhappy people with money."

This way, you get the peach. It may be expensive. But not nearly as expensive as not getting the peach.

You can solve for whatever you want. But if you don't say what you REALLY want, all the solving in the world won't get it for you.

I dreamt last night that I was talking with Kipley, who in real life is wrestling with this same thing. He looked just like himself, except he was a light-skinned black guy. We were preparing to make a movie, listing people and tasks. Kipley was going to be everything except the DP, but somehow there were still a lot of slots to fill. We talked about how beautiful Bertolucci's The Last Emperor was, who the DP was on that, & how could we get him. That morphed to us working on whiteboards and laptops. Which morphed to Karin driving us in her blue pickup truck to the first shooting location. We talked nonstop the whole time about theatre, greatness, and money.

The McCarthy's have an Alignment protocol that goes:

1. What do you want?

2. What's blocking you from getting that?

3. What quality or virtue, if you had it, would dissolve that block?

4. What actions can you do now, as proof that you are practicing that virtue daily?

5. What will it look like -- how will the world be different -- when you are done? When you have absorbed that virtue & are demonstrating it in full flower?

Well, I was stuck on even being able to say what I want. So the first problem I tackled is, what's blocking me from THAT? I realized:

I'm not actually stuck on HOW to get what I want. I'm stuck on being willing to love myself enough to have it.

Figuring THAT out took a lot of work. Naming the problem correctly is half the solution. So that's what I asked for help on this weekend -- love. Lots of good ideas from Jim & Michele McCarthy, and the Diva Team. Asking for help is a meta-way of loving yourself.

A related tool which helps me over a longer arc is Kirby Shelstad's 5 Rules for Manifestation:

1. Say what you want. Be as clear and specific as possible."I want to go to art school" is hard for the universe-- and you -- to grasp. It is much easier to deal with, "I want to join the University of Washington's Printmaking MFA program, starting in September, 2005."

2. Say what you are willing to give up, to get it.
"I'll sell my house, I'll give up my job, I'll live in a dorm. I'm willing to work a college job & take out loans."

3. Say what you are not willing to give up.
"I won't give up having a room of my own, a latte a day, a car with regular maintenance, a movie a month, healthy food, a daily workout, and health insurance. I won't work a college job more than 10 hours a week; I'll take more loans if I have to. I am not willing to go more than 50K in student-loan debt."

4. Accept it when it comes.
Actually, I would add a step 3.5 which says: The Universe will start offering it to you right away. "Like this?" it'll say. "Like this?" The offers won't be quite right -- but by figuring out WHY, you'll get clearer about your goal. "Yes, I did say I wanted my own theatre... but now I realize, I also need it to have clear sightlines and a high ceiling. This one has a low ceiling and pillars every ten feet."

5. Let it go when it is time for it to go.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Teatr Slowackiego, Dziady, and Hamlet

I love this theatre in Krakow, in southern Poland. Flower-sellers in Krakow have sold flowers in front of Cloth Hall since 1200.

Cloth Hall in Krakow; flower-sellers with yellow umbrellas

The Slowackiego is a big theatre, built in 1893, focussing on the classics. You walk past it on your way from the train station. I thought it was a library. In soft beautiful Polish it is called, "Tay-ahtr Swovah-skee-ay-go." Pour that over your tongue.

Teatr Slowackiego

On your way to the balcony (double-click for full beauty)

The actor's view, strangely skewed

The spectator's view: a scene from Dziady

I was in Krakow by fluke. My plane to Warsaw had been rerouted due to fog. Instead of taking the next flight, I slid out the back and headed into town. "What's playing at the Slowackiego?" I asked the hotel clerk. "Dziady," he said. "Very classical Polish drama. Dark, philosophical. Not good for American girl." I grinned. "Jeg teatr regisseura," I said, one of my few clumsy Polish sentences: "I am a theatre director." He grinned back, bowed, and called the theatre to get me a ticket. I got their last one, after he assured them I was indeed willing to sit on one of the wood chairs they had added at the last minute for the sold-out crowd.

This is one of my favorite things -- to see theatre in a language I don't understand. It makes the mystery so much higher. You work harder; and what you find, you keep.

I first saw Hamlet in Russian, in Moscow, in a production by Robert Sturua. During her mad speech, Ophelia calmly gathered swords from all the court noblemen, then dropped them in a circle, one by one. Each stuck quivering in the stage. "There's rue for you; and here's some for me..." When she left, an empty stage remained, sprouting its crown of trembling iron swords.

Back to the Slowackiego -- whose productions have that same reverberation.

One of their gorgeous posters

Another one, equally strange and beautiful

And now for the best treat of all -- they have made two little videos, as if you had walked into the theatre and looked around.

This is a video of their stairs (takes a while to load, but worth it).

This is a video of inside the theatre (another slow load, but REALLY worth it).

This is their homepage, with a button for English. Galeria is the section with the pix; in there, Wnętrza is theatre pix, Plakaty is more gorgeous posters.

With that, thus endeth today's Moment of Beauty. Thank you Krakow, and Teatr Slowackiego, for your good effort.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Galleon

Popcorn, Darkover, divas, and masters

It's 1:00am. Jeff has finished his popcorn and is watching his tape of the Miami Hurricanes game. I just finished my umpteenth rereading of the Darkover novel, The Forbidden Tower, after a dinner of beans & rice and salad.

Improv went well. I am starting to find that balance between Deep Work and the classical transmission of the art. You can teach ballet any way you want, as long as the dancers' turnout is impeccable. Same with Improv -- you can teach any way you want, as long as the actors' acceptance of impulse is impeccable.

Kris is flying up from California for an extended Diva sesh tomorrow. Radmila has been painting a lot; I'll post her site when it's up. I look forward to the swift interplay, the discoveries.

I have begun to clean. This is a million-nibble task, but even those first 6 hours have made a difference. I don't mean clean like vaccuum. I mean clean like unearth the white art table from its three-foot sedimentary pile of paintings, papers, and books. Weed through thousands of books. Throw away three dumpster's worth of belongings. I don't mean clean, I mean purge.

For seven years, the gods murmured ceaselessly to me about theatre. I went nowhere without my cohort of rustling advisors, mostly Russian, mostly dead.

Since living at the Odin, they have fallen silent. Eugenio said this would happen. That after years of working for your silent Other, your Master -- one day the Master is no longer in the room.

I miss having the Master in the room.

When Joseph Lavy talks about Grotowski, he often says things I have never heard. For years, I wondered what book he read them in. It was only recently I realized -- those are lineage transmissions. Things his teacher, Jairo Cuesta, Grotowski's assistant, said. Or that Grotowski said, when Joseph studied with him that summer at Irvine.

Not everything is in a book.

When it was my turn to lead Boom Chicka Boom today, I relaxed and fled, into the private cathedral of myself. I shut my eyes and let the song wash through me. It was my longing for the song that called it. I sang on the heels of its shadow. At the end, the whole room was singing beautifully.

In NonActors, we're doing the Scottish play. In Bombay, Jyothi has painted her hands with a fort and a peacock. In Duvall, John is driving a Chevy truck while his own is in the shop, and loving it.

Kipley's cathected mom's advice is getting me through a lot these days. I find, "Fine, mom. All careers are difficult," incredibly reassuring.

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Cracking

"Our company is cracking today," said Brad in AfterNotes. A profound observation, and correct. Cracking is when the scene -- or the company -- surrenders. Something breaks. Something rushes forth.

Cracking cannot be summoned or commanded. One can only create conditions in which it might occur.

The first work is to begin. The second work is to crack. The deeper work cannot begin until the company has cracked. Cracking spreads as swiftly and erratically as fissures in a glacier.

It can come from anywhere. From a man showing how his father seared steak. From three-men in a Slow-Motion Monument-Melt, entwined and purposeful, forgotten. From a woman putting on eye makeup, before an invisible mirror. Newtonian bodies, toddling against the wall. A woman folding an invisible towel and putting it in a closet so matter-of-factly that we can tell it's light blue.

The especially fine and crumbly cheese brought for our snack. The humous and apples. Arizona tea.

Under that, what pleased me was the cracking comment itself. Bart Sher taught me what cracking is. It is part of how I work. But it's not something I've consciously taught. To have an actor see it and name it, means the lineage has been transmitted correctly.

And THAT is a good feeling.

Friday, October 22, 2004

One week to go

o n l y
a
w e e k
t i l l
D r e a m
o p e n s

Shout out for Nan

So, hey hey -- Nancy Colasurdo, the life coach you keep reading about here and in Kipley's blog, has entered the blogosphere. Woohoo!

Here is Nancy's blog. Here is her website.

This is her banner (not clickable, but gives the vibe).

Here is Nancy coaching Kipley at one of their weekly seshes.

A welcome addition to the circle. Stop by and say hey.

The many faces of god

Monks each see a different face of god. It is still god they are describing -- but the deeper they are in their practice, the more clear and distinct their vision becomes.

Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy are like this, as is -- in a completely different way -- Jim Rapson. They can all see the divine face of human potential.

"So, what's the path?" I asked one day. "You must become the Messiah," Jim said. "You must do your Work," said Michele. Jim Rapson would say, "You must await the Mystery." All three would say, "Persist."

They mean the same thing. Jim's a golden-flames-of-glory guy, Michele's a here's-how-you-build-a-temple gal, Jim's a respect-the-space mystic. They're all great at it, and they're all right. Sometimes it's the glory that inspires me, sometimes it's the concrete that shows me the way, sometimes it's the glimpse of the Unknowable that dissolves and reforms me.

It was the same at the Odin, a company of deep shared vision. You could ask anyone there the question, and they'd answer in their own words -- and it would all match.

I have a similar experience in Diva Team. When we're hot, Kris can see the future, Radmila can see the power, and I can see the unsaid & the dark. Three faces of the divine.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Friends help

Today was a grey day. I'd lost all recent gains, cried at almost anything, felt like the slowest one in the snail race.

And then --

f r i e n d s

Lunch with one, soulful chats with two more -- "I feel terrible." "Me too." -- plus an unexpected email from a fourth. Some days that's what keeps you going.

Improv for the story

So last week in Improv class, we were working on Story. Lots of component skills, like Seven-Step-Stories, Status work, Exits & Entrances & Canadian Crosses.

Anyway, what I noticed -- which I had forgotten -- is how fun and funny Improv is. I love watching the stories unfold. I had gotten so caught up in teaching the skills, I forgot how fun it is to play. And to watch the plays.

My favorite scenes were where we were working on just one skill -- like say, Exits and Entrances. The point was only to get people coming in and out of the scene. No other rules. So instead of trying to do Yes And, AND move the story Forward, AND always have characters of different Status AND... -- we were just up there in an easy free-for-all, with people flying on and off. Totally fun.

I think easiness is the way in. The first two times I teach a class, I'm figuring out what skills to teach -- and what thing to teach over here, that magically fixes/prevents all the problems over there. But the goal is always -- how can this be easier? What order, or structure, can I set up so the actor feels like it's easy to keep being successful?

This Improv class is the perfect group to work with. Smart, talented, open, diverse -- perfectly responsive. If I hit on something that works, BAM, they're all great. If I try something that doesn't, they're still game, but it kind of lies there inert. Very trustworthy data, great research partners.

The other day I was frustrated during Status Wars as to why we were just dying in them. Low energy, getting lower, no fun. I walked over to the window, looked at Nature, and asked Stanislavski and Chekhov for help. They materialized on either side of me, gazed at Nature, and shrugged. "Not my area," said Stanislavski. "I prefer text," said Chekhov. They looked again at the dark shiny green leaves, and vanished.

I remember asking Peter Still, Bart's long-time sound guy, "When you're teaching actors to sing, and they have a hard time getting it, what do you do?" "Slow it down. And make them do it five times perfectly," he said. "What if they can't?" I asked. "Stay with it till they can," he said.

So, that's what I did with Status Wars. "They have got to get this," I thought. "It's at the core of Improv work. They're doing anything I ask. I just have to keep trying till we find the door in."

I slowed down in my head, studying the trees, and replayed Status Wars from the past. Ah, I noticed a difference. The times it was fun, one pair stayed up there and had a long war -- like, 20 or 30 turns. When it wasn't working, I had been replacing partners every turn. No time to warm up & find your groove. No room to play.

I turned back, and we tried it again, in long-turn Wars. Instant good results.

Improv is the first class in years where I am doing what I did the first two years I taught -- keep a lab notebook. After every class, I come home and write a long lab entry. I list the goals I was trying to achieve, how successful we were, what techniques we tried, what worked, what didn't, notes on specific actors, and any serendipitous discoveries. "WORKED GREAT" is a common notation, as is "WORKED TERRIBLY."

Next week: Environments. And more time to just get up and play. Stories are a learned skill. Skills improve with practice.

Chocolate chip cookies

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Edit not

NaNoWriMo is an organization dedicated to the belief that everyone has a crappy novel in them somewhere. And if they could just get that crappy novel OUT -- then it has a chance of becoming something decent.

To that end, they declare every November, "National Novel Writing Month." You register on their site by Halloween, then you have till midnight your time, Nov 30, to submit your novel. Their computer auto-counts the spaces to see if you have the requisite 50,000 words and sends you a confirmation if you do. That's it.

I signed up. I've only written 45,424 words in this blog in 6 months; guess I'll have to up the spew rate. Maybe that's their point: "Edit not."

What I love about theatre, part 1

I am speaking in relation to creating the kind of theatre that most touches me, ensemble theatre in the Polish/Russian tradition.

What I love about theatre is that it's as big as I am. As limitless, as voracious for truth and tenderness and beauty and glory and brutality and silence and stillness and little laughters and light. It touches and kisses and slams and sleeps and walks and luminesces. It O Splendors and sings.

I love that it uses all my gifts, and asks for more. I am good at writing and art and acting and choreography and music and improv and composition and fighting and dancing and speaking in tongues and mask and costume and languages and metaphor and story and poetry and groupwork and group incendiariness and transformation and greatness -- and theatre uses ALL of those.

I love that in a good theatre piece -- which I have seen fewer than 5 of in my life -- a resonance builds and shudders and breaks you open, until the winds blow through and tenderize you.

It is the same heart as spirituality, as mother & child, as lovers.

I love the sensuality, the asceticism, the rigor, the discipline, the severity, the playfulness, the dream, the great slow truths.

I love that it walks in both worlds, the mortal and the spiritual, and even a third one which cannot be named or controlled, but sometimes evanesces into being.

I love that it requires me to be an original artist AND a group artist.

It can shock. It is a vehicle for group greatness. That same chaotic unbridled force that is a mob -- that is delicious about being in an out-of-control mob -- courses through theatre. Pagan, terrifying, uncontrollable.

It's dangerous. It's real. It's alive. It absolutely forbids anything but greater and greater truth.

Theatre is a tiger.

It is the limitless lover, the long highway, the plain embrace.

Theatre is communion with god. I feel in adoration with the Divine when I do theatre.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Beautiful maps

I'm having that itch again to map my life. I especially like "story maps", evocative ones like these. Double-click to see their full gorgeousness.

I find these maps incredibly inspiring, like illuminated manuscripts. They are from the Barcelona Maritime Museum, photos by Matt McKeon.

Monday, October 18, 2004

Akropolis sings, I shiver

I got invited to a sneak preview of Akropolis Performance Labs' Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Because the audience was just a few trusted friends, we were allowed to stay for the warm-up period as well -- which is when Akropolis stands in a circle and sings through every song in the show. It's a Song Call, like traditional theatres have a pre-show Fight Call or Dance Call. It takes about 20 minutes.

Well, I have to tell you -- Song Call was my favorite part of the evening. The show itself was great. As always, there were parts that chilled and delighted. Parts that thrilled. Parts that enticed. Parts that surprised. Parts that were so violent I had to check out and look at the wall and count for a while. Parts that brought me back. The whole big satisfying ride.

But for me, since their singing is what grips me, Song Call was fantastic. They should have three tickets -- $15 to see the show; $15 to see Song Call, and $25 to see both. I bet there's a whole potential audience who would develop for Song Call.

When they sing, they are not like a choir. They don't consider it singing, for that matter. They call it vocal training -- a precise exercise of the actor's instrument. And they don't think like singers; they think like actors. Hitting a note is a physical action, as precise as a backbend. When they sing in a circle, they look like Olympic athletes singing -- physically engaged, constantly in motion, abdominal muscles engaged, absolutely vibrant in their bodies. It's like cedars singing, or wild horses -- something absolutely alive and visible, spirit made temporarily flesh.

When they sing in the show, it is unearthly. They can -- and do -- run at full speed while singing in clear unhurried harmonies.

However, because singing is a physical action for them, I'm not sure it could exist WITHOUT their theatre. It's only because they are so physically trained, and spend so much concentration on precise, filled physical action, that they are able to fill a song with that same kind of action. Without the body, the voice would not exist.

They have two long weeks to work on the show. This is the alchemical time when the ingredients cook into soup. I can't wait to see what it becomes.

Anyway. More news when there is news. They open October 29th. 206-934-7905 for tix or info.

Forward

Now that I have entered my action period, the waiting is done. I figure god (or the universe) is telling me all the time, very clearly, which options are for me. My job is to go shake the vines, find the paths that interest me. Fast, steady, positive responses indicate a "Yes." Slow or no response indicates a "No." The more action I take, the more steady the datastream of Yes's and No's becomes, and the quicker I can navigate.

I called the game startup, am waiting for them to call back. But I noticed, as I sat there with my hot coffee, after a fresh cold salad, my pen poised over a new clean blank book -- that I was really waiting for god to answer. When I got a voice machine, and then no call-back the rest of the day... well, that was a "No" for today.

Tonight I go job-hunting. This job may still come through, but I'm done waiting for it. Life Coaching and Exeter's PhD in Performance Practice are consistent Yes's. I signed up for my first Life Coach class, and am off to look for other revenue-generating options.

Feels good to be alive. Feels... inexorable. Unstoppable. Cheerful. Fast.

Or, as the Terminator would say, "I need your boots, your clothes, and your motorcyle." It took some convincing, but soon he had them all. That wasn't the important part of the mission. Those were just the tools to embark on it.

Our Town rocked

I saw the Sunday matinee yesterday with my mother. The play has found its groove.

All during rehearsals, my mother kept telling me that the definitive production of this show was the Paul Newman one on Broadway. After the first intermission, she sighed happily, and said, "Tom Skerritt is so much better than Paul Newman as the Stage Manager. Paul was a little regal for this role. Tom is affectionate. Homey. Willing to throw away lines. And what a treat, to get to see a production where everyone is the right age for the role."

After the second intermission, she said, "This Intiman production is better than the Broadway production. Your father would have loved that scrim. And those tall ladders. That whole act was beautiful. I am so glad I lived to see this." She wiggled her butt happily back into the seat. She didn't leave during either of the intermissions. "I don't want to miss a moment of this one, Rachel."

For me, it was incredible seeing the show with -- as is often true on Sunday matinees -- a mostly elderly audience. They liked act 1. They warmed up to act 2, the wedding, especially to the parents' vantage. But they loved act 3. They're all about that tender membrane between living and dying. They listened to the Stage Manager as if he was their long-lost older brother. THIS was the act that interested them -- the one with the graveyard, and the flashback; the making sense of death.

Standing ovation at the end. Quiet crying people walking out. A cast who still, perhaps, have no idea how stunning the production is that they are involved in, but was happy to get the ovation.

The Intiman put a lot of preparation into this show -- from getting funding for a full cast of 24, to setting up an extra-long student matinee run (sold out a month before we opened), to raising the budget for hiring someone like Tom Skerritt. They are repollinating America with our own texts. Most people don't see theatre. They haven't seen this play. But because of a couple years of focussed intention, thousands of people are now getting to.

We don't know what we're in, while we're in it.

Blackberry

Last week I began writing to you, instead of to myself. I don't notice much difference. I'm more nervous and I edit more -- but the blog itself doesn't sound different. I hereby declare the experiment at an end.

I think it's a function of audience. My lively direct voice kicks in when I'm emailing you, one-on-one. So many books were written for one reader. The Wind in the Willows. Alice in Wonderland. The Lord of the Rings. Winnie the Pooh. Tibet: Through the Red Door. Madlenka. A Wrinkle In Time.

Maybe I should write my theatre book for one beloved reader. Affect the space first -- make the space as safe as possible for the storyteller, and the truest story will emerge.

A blackberry tastes like a blackberry.

Arrival

This is me, right now.

For ten months, in the Five Truths, my Fairy Tale truth has stayed constant. All spring it was, "I have been to the mountain. I've gotten my vision. I'm going home. I'm plodding along, on my smallish-horse, on an empty road." Gradually that became, "I have lost my horse. I am walking on the road. It is a grey day and the weeds grow up to the asphalt." I was a king returning to my kingdom. A grey shade in a grey cloak in the wind.

I got home to my kingdom in June, about the time Nanda Devi finished. I found it empty and grown-over. Silent. No people, but undeniably mine. I hadn't assembled my team or told anyone I was home. Instead, I sat on a log at the side of a field, holding Excalibur, exhausted. And there I sat. For months.

In the real world, I ran out of juice for doing everything, while in the Fairy world I sat on the log under pale skies. I didn't know if I would ever stand up. Four months went by.

The first glimmering of change was -- as I said recently -- realizing that sitting was, itself, a spritual passage.

Saturday, in a free-write, I wrote that I have the dark powers of Lightning, Rain, Earthquakes, Famine, and Lust. And with that, I felt a surge of energy. I'm ready to go make the kingdom.

I felt like Schwarzenegger arriving in Terminator 2, naked and flickering with lightning. Pure strength and clarity of purpose.

People talk about the wilderness period of the spirit. What they don't tell you is that, at the end, it really could go either way. To switch metaphors for a moment, I didn't know if I'd be Frodo, getting on the ship to the Grey Lands, or Pippin, settling back into the Shire to live.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Dark morning cool

Yay! Heard back from one of my two "Hope this job comes through" companies, saying "Let's talk soon." I'll keep you posted.

It's 7:15am. It was dark when I got up, 45 minutes ago -- the sky is now paling into dawn. I'm up early to make handouts for Improv -- today is Story day, with a bit of Status thrown in. Plus, I've started making handouts to name the tools & processes we're discovering as an ensemble. Turns out, our deepest stuff starts from what I call Sentient Environments.

I love being up this early. It's another world.

I would really love a job.

Friday, October 15, 2004

Epiphany

I am having an epiphany. Only Kipley and my housemate have gotten the full blow-by-blow, but here's what it boils down to.

I finally get why this long drifting period has occurred: It's a spiritual passage. The pause before you enter the monastery. Before you accept your life's work. Before you surrender and obey.

I am not all the way through it yet -- that's why I chose the picture of the butterfly only half-emerged from the coccoon.

In me, this has been a pitched spiritual battle. "NO," some ferocious part of me hisses, "I won't DO it, I don't want to GO, you can't MAKE me." It's got to be allowed its full say, before we can proceed. In case it's right.

But eventually, you step forward.

A man questioned abbot Nistero: "What good work shall I do?" And he answered, "All works are not equal. The Scripture saith that Abraham was hospitable, and God was with him. And Elias loved quiet, and God was with him. And David was humble, and God was with him. What therefore thou findest that thy soul desireth in following God, that do, and keep thy heart."

--Verba Seniorum (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers)

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Color my world

Inspired by Lohan's blog...

I have
discovered
how to
use
colors
in my
blog.

Whee. It's easy. Here's how.

Key:
BLINK = type a left-angle bracket <
UNBLINK = type a right-angle bracket >

Don't actually type the words BLINK or UNBLINK. Instead, replace them with < or >. I can't put in the angle brackets, or blogger will make the code disappear.

1) Find the html colors here. Dark Orange, for example, is #FF8C00.
2) Pick the text you want to be colored
3) Put this before it: BLINKspan style="color: #FF8C00;"UNBLINK
4) Put this after it: BLINK/spanUNBLINK
5) So it looks like this: BLINKspan style="color: #FF8C00;"UNBLINKThis is the text I want coloredBLINK/spanUNBLINK

That code for orange, FF8C00, ends in two zeroes; hard to tell in this font.

Monkey me, monkey you

I want to get Life Coach certification. Luckily, there is an accredited school here in Bellueve. I went to their free seminar tonight.

A good upfront intro, nothing fancy. I didn't feel any stars or bells, just a continuing sense that this work would suit me.

"We all have a monkey," Jim McCarthy said once. "If your monkey ends up on my back, we both have a problem. A Rescuer is someone who collects other people's monkeys." He was talking to 20 software developers, mostly men. "They should call me Monkey Man," said one guy. "I have so many monkeys on me, I'm barely afloat. I'm just a mass of fur, bobbing in the sea." We giggled, but I never forgot it.

Coaching, although different from therapy, shares with it this bias -- that not only does your monkey belong on your back, but you are the only one who can take care of it.

Anyway, so you guys -- I am happy about this. This feels like a first stone of my "Multiple Revenue Streams" goal of compounding wealth.

(Although for the nonce, ye gods & goddesses -- I wouldn't mind that game startup company's funding coming through, like, TOMORROW. Or the bootcamps'. My play is done, I'm ready to go.)

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Akropolis Performance Lab's Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Well, lads & ladies -- every theatre I'm connected to is doing a show. I am going to tell you about three wildly different performances.

You've been hearing about Our Town at the Intiman -- 206/269-1900 for tickets & info, under-25's only $10 -- our regional theatre doing sharp beautiful work on the classics.

Next month, I'll invite you to Next Step Theater's Rumors by Neil Simon -- a straight-up comedy/farce by a small community theatre that always sells out. Rumors will be a great ride, with slamming doors all 'round. This is the show Scott is cast in, and discusses in his blog.

Today I want to alert you to what I would call the fine wine of theatres -- Akropolis Performance Lab, and their upcoming Dream of a Ridiculous Man, opening just before Halloween, October 29, for only 9 performances. This is not your ordinary theatre. They devise the piece from scratch, not from a script. In many cases, they know the precise movement score before they know what text will go with it -- if any. Dream has been in rehearsal for 13 months.

Akropolis is a holder of the Grotowski lineage, and a pure one. A hallmark of Grotowski-lineage theatres is that the actors train year-round, in addition to rehearsing, to a very high physical and vocal level. Here are some pictures of Akropolis's physical training, to give you an idea.

Akropolis's work is physical, poetic, with lots of acapella singing. Hypnotic, beautiful, even at times horrifying. The space feels shiningly clean after they work. Very few theatres in the world are trained in this lineage, and all the people in Akropolis have fulltime jobs -- so it is only out of devotion that the theatre even exists.

They are not a big theatre. The troupe, which previously performed Macbeth, Song of Songs, Beautiful Treasures, Jeanne the Maid and Russian Opus No. 1, has 3 members currently. The space they perform in is small, in the same building as Freehold Theatre Labs. No fancy costumes or sets. Just actors who are given to their work like monks are given to theirs, for about the same reason & reward.

Akropolis is not a date-night theatre, unless your date loves dark bleak poetry. I'd say, come early in the run & check it out for yourself. If you like it, come back with your date or another kindred spirit. It's a cheap ticket -- $15 -- so you could see it twice, or three times even, for less than one show at the Rep. And if you like it, you will REALLY like it.

Me -- as soon as they started singing, they had me. Here are a couple photos from their last production, Jeanne the Maid.

Here are some excerpts about their current show. If you want the whole thing, email me and I'll send it to you.

Akropolis Performance Lab Premieres Original Work, Dream Of A Ridiculous Man, Adapted From The Canon Of Dostoevskii

Akropolis Performance Lab's (APL's) newest theatrical work, Dream Of A Ridiculous Man, explores the underground psychology of Feodor Dostoevskii and his fantastical world of religious mysteries, suicides, love triangles, murderers, and holy fools. This original piece with music premieres October 29 and runs through November 13 in The Chamber Theater.

Three people find themselves caught in a Dostoevskian dark night on the threshold between sanity and madness, reality and fantasy. Theirs is a life a trois, afflicted with emotional and spiritual anguish, that revolves around a murder and its repercussions. Fractured and kaleidoscopic, can the events of this vision be taken for reality, delusion, or diabolically inspired hallucination?

APL engages a lengthy generative process for all its original work, placing great demands upon the company's performers. This incarnation of Dream has been in-process for 13 months. As in all of APL’s work, the text, the song, and the action are inextricably linked. Only at the union of these elements is the story fully manifest. Striking physicality and stunning vocal music are hallmarks of any APL event. With music direction by APL Co-Artistic Director Jennifer Lavy, Dream of a Ridiculous Man demonstrates, once again, the powerful artistic range of APL's company members.

WHAT: Dream Of A Ridiculous Man, an original work adapted from Dostoevskii
WHO: Akropolis Performance Lab
WHERE: The Chamber Theater, 915 E. Pine Street (4th floor)
WHEN: October 29 and 30; November 4-7; and November 11-13. Curtain: 8 pm.
TICKETS: $15 general public, $12 students and senior citizens. Cash-only. Pay at the door. For group rates, call (206) 934-7905
SEATING: Seating is limited to 40 people per showing.
PERFORMERS: Jennifer Lavy, Joseph Lavy, and Eric Mayer
CONCEIVED AND DIRECTED BY: Joseph Lavy
MUSIC DIRECTOR: Jennifer Lavy
URL: www.geocities.com/akropolis_lab

Talking to whom?

I got a comment recently, that this blog sounds like I'm talking to myself, rather than to you. I'd have to agree. I know some blogs that do feel like they're talking to me, so I get the difference. It makes me wonder, what would it be like if I actually were talking to you?

Well. Worth a try. For one week, I'll talk to YOU in each entry.

But right now, gotta run. More tonight.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

The gates of heaven

Today we did Neutral Text scenes in my NonActors class. We constructed a 6-line scene, then played it in a variety of contexts & characters.

One scene was between God and Archangel Gabriel, about the just-cast-out St. Jason. In attendance, like great marble lions, sat Archangels Rafael, Michael, and Donnatello, as well as a girl angel standing in the back, holding two scarves draped between a light pole and a chair. At the last minute, someone ran up and placed a tupperware container of homemade cookies just past the feet of the angel. "There's cookies in heaven," she smiled and whispered as she flew back to her seat.

For a long moment we looked at it -- the gates of heaven, made from flattened cardboard boxes and brown plastic chairs, with glowing archangels, and a blue-lidded box of cookies. Outcast St. Jason sat crosslegged in front, rocking mournfully to himself.

In real life, the girl angel has lupus -- a hereditary disease that is eroding her at 25. Some days she can walk, some days she has a cane, some days she's in a wheelchair. At the point where it was only her, standing with outstretched arms and scarves between the chairs and boxes, the cookie box at her feet, I had everyone look. "Imagine heaven looks like this," I said. "You see the white light, and whoosh -- here you are."

We looked a long time. Heaven looked pretty good, actually.

Polish director Tadeusz Kantor is where I learned this, the power of group-created sets, built with only what's on hand. He believed the more ordinary the object, the greater its energy. He revered chairs and umbrellas. Working this way, you start to perceive the Mystery of Objects. Each is beautiful and strange, with its own nature and secrets. Old egg cartons become strangely perfect models on a science teacher's desk, next to an upside-down water bottle balancing on its cap. The lupus actor's cane becomes a crook for one of the angels, never touching the earth.

For the ice rink scene, we needed music. "That bad old 80's music?" asked an actor who has sung in bands for years. "Yes," I said. "Have you seen my baby," he sang, in an easy high tenor as three other actors snapped their fingers. Every time we ran the scene, it began with that same perfect cheesy music.

The culling moon

I learned today that last month was the Harvest Moon -- the time of reaping and celebrating what you have accomplished during the year. The moon we are entering is the Culling Moon.

If the Harvest Moon is when you gather your basket of apples for the winter, the Culling Moon is when you go through and get rid of the one or two rotten ones. Left untended, they would spoil the whole batch. But culled now, your bounty will keep.

I can think of a few things I'd like to cull.

Monday, October 11, 2004

The power of patience & planning

I want to give myself a big present for my 50th birthday. I want the next 3 to 5 years to create a foundation for the next half of life.

I spend delicious hours contemplating what this might be. Get a PhD? Buy a house in another country? Hunker down and pay off this one? Get my best-seller line of novels going? Buy that first rental?

Take what you like and pay for it, says God. -- Spanish proverb.

On the deeper level, I want to begin growing a life of compounding wealth. Set up a solid foundation and health-care for me and my mom. Not only repay the people who have loaned me money, but in turn be able to gift them with an unexpected sum to do something sizeable and enjoyable.

I got the birthday idea from two computer scientists, husband & wife, at Xerox PARC. Their 50th birthdays were a year apart. They began planning five years ahead. For their birthday, each would get 6 months to do "Something I've wanted my whole life." He chose that they go live in Nepal and climb the Himalayas. She chose to rent a big hall and give a formal classical piano concert for all their friends and family.

Or take my high-school philosophy teacher, Patt Hawthorne. She was a single mom who took creative writing workshops in New York each summer. One day, Patt met another woman there. They got talking, discovered they were both single moms, both high school teachers, both from Montana, both homesick.

Together, they chose a Montana college town -- which in itself, strikes me as a high form of self-care -- and bought a house. They found one originally owned by two artists, with studios on separate floors. They bought the house seven years before they retired. Each summer they took turns living in it, to get used to the town. The last two years they lived there together. When they retired, they simply stepped smoothly into a lifestyle they had already created. (And then, a few years later, out of the blue Patt fell madly in love and is probably returning to Washington. Nonetheless.)

One more. My tax attorney took a night class in Italian at the local community college. The group of students hit it off, and for the next four years continued to meet with their Italian teacher at her house. At the point when she was helping with my taxes, the group had just pooled their resources to buy an Italian villa together. They planned to share its use, as well as spend one week year there together, as an annual ritual.

Like my friend Ed says, "When I have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D, all leading to the same place, I can relax." He never does anything without at least Plan A and B in place, and usually Plan C.

Patience is a weapon. Planning is a weapon.

As someone for whom Desire and Action have always been weapons, these are powerful new swords to find in my arsenal -- heavy, balanced, honed.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Wanderer

I have a friend Jyothi, a software itinerant, whose belongings all fit in two suitcases and a bag. She can move at an hour's notice, and does, whenever the mood strikes her. She has worked all over the United States and is now in India.

I find this completely inspiring. It's a perfect example of, "Whatever you want to do, set yourself up to do it." Because she travels light, she can travel at a moment's notice. There are no impediments to the wind.

Saturday, October 09, 2004

A richness of costumes

Bart says the motto of the Royal Shakespeare Company was -- and may still be, for all I know -- "Everything can change with the last good idea." Even the set can change, even the day before the show opens. That motto is a badge of tech pride -- and of shared high standards. It's a commitment to what's right for the world of the play.

One of the joys of working at the Intiman, especially on a flagship show for which they have budgeted and planned and saved -- is how they, too, can change at the last minute.

Especially costumes.

In my world of theatre, there is barely enough budget, usually one designer and maybe Ann's Mom Who Can Sew. In my world, once Emily has a dress, that's her dress.

With Bart and Caitlin Ward, his long-time costume designer, the look is as fluid as the blocking or lights. Emily, the girl character, appeared two days ago in a white dress; yesterday in a blue dress with her hair dyed orange-blonde; and today in a white blouse with blue skirt and her hair dyed a lighter blonde. Every change got a step better.

Two days ago, Bart looked at the costumed actors in the lights and said, "They look gorgeous, they look period, but they look too NEW -- can we distress the clothes a big, make them more daily and human and kind?" The next day, we had; and all the people looked more real.

At one point, the director, scenic designer, sound designer, and costume designer were huddled together discussing the Stage Manager's costume."It's a lovely green." "But I'm not getting the character of it -- it is an ordinary cut and ordinary material." "We could dye and steam it, distress it more." "The cut is okay with me; I'm not getting the story of it, though, how is this helping the story?" "The Stage Manager is an ancient character, he is Odysseus. He is not of the time of this piece. His costume needs to be related to, but not of their world. Right now he's in their world." Silence. "Yeah." A chorus of general agreement at having identified the problem, and they disperse, satisfied that the costume designer will be be able to solve it on her own. Which she did.

What I love about that is a) the educated level of that discussion, b) that all the disciplines were articulate, and c) that there are the resources to make the changes, even the day before previews.

At yesterday's final run-through, I sat in front of two women I didn't know. "We're over-hire," they said comfortably, "For costumes. I'm a dyer, she's a draper. We're on loan from Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I've worked there 20 years."

Ashland has, for my money, the best costume shop & resources in the country. "Our costume staff is the second largest department, after the actors," said one of them with satisfaction. "At Ashland -- what you ask for, you get." "It spoils you, only working with the finest materials."

I once saw a Taming Of the Shrew at Ashland, where 6 men entered from hunting, each wearing a cloak of a different cut and fastening, each floor-length, each made entirely of leather.

If you go to Ashland, take the back-stage tour.

Our Town has 24 actors, each with at least two costume changes; so, we "over-hire."

Ahhh. Even at the big theatres, each has its own way of working. But this particular aspect, the changefulness and pride in being able to make those changes -- this is a shining part of the Intiman.

Gotta go, I teach Improv this morning.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Pale yellow chairs, I bring my dead

Our Town previews start tonight. We open Wednesday. Next Thursday, 10/14, is Pay What You Can night -- be at the Intiman at noon to buy tix; limit 4/person, min $5/ticket.

The set is of wood which has all been sanded, bleached, and stained a uniform dry pale yellow. The theatre has been stripped to its back wall, cavernous, with the thrust removed and a proscenium frame built. Audience will sit on throw pillows in the half-circle where the thrust used to be. The proscenium frame, the floor, chairs, tables, hatrack, ladders, and rolling door-frames are all pale yellow. It is amazing how theatrically that one decision lifts all the actors. Everything becomes a symbol. In dim light, the set feels like a desert, dawn. In white light, it looks like the sun.

Costumes follow an arc from pale to vivid -- in Daily Life they are pale, at the Wedding they are brighter, and in the graveyard they are most vivid.

None of the plain spidery wood chairs are of the same make, nor are the tables. Even the ladders are different heights, to support the illusion that the Stage Manager is using whatever is handy backstage, to tell the story.

From the sky, a stardrop -- a transparent cloud, sprinkled with lights -- slowly lowers in front of the choir as they sing. It is hand-made from four 8' sheets of fiber-optic cables, looped and strung, with lights twinkling every 2 or 3 feet. In the dark, you can't see the cables. all you see are hundreds of tiny firefly lights, like stars. We borrowed it from Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

In the rainy scene later, the fiber optic lights are turned off, and the cables are revealed in all their dull plastic drabness against a four-storey back-lit grey wall. They look like loops and loops of hospital tubing, hanging down. The glints on the cross-loops look like rain. A perfect Brechtian touch by Chris Akerlind, the scenic designer, where even the magic gets stripped back. Plainness is a deeper magic.

From the front rows, it's an actors' play. From the back rows, it's a director's. A Kabuki set, a Kabuki take.

"This is a received play," said Bart at our first run-through. "You could play these characters for a thousand years, and still not have explored everything that's there."

Our Town was one of my father's favorite plays to direct. During tech, while the stardrop twinkled in the blackness, and the choir sang, "Blessed Be The Tie That Binds," I put him on the seat beside me. "Look, Daddy -- I'm in a real theatre. Look how big that stage is. All those lights. We're doing Our Town. Those are real actors. That's a movie star doing the stage manager -- a 71-year-old, not a high school kid. That director, he trained in England. The set designer, he's from the East Coast. Listen, here come George and Emily."

I bring my dead to watch a play about the dead returning to watch a day.

"Pick the most unimportant day you can," advises one of the dead, when Emily is preparing to go back. "It will be important enough."

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Always enough time

To increase time, come more present.-- Jim McCarthy, software teamwork guru

First, we must slow down time. -- Leonid Anisimov, master theatre director

Acting for NonActors is a 3-hour class. It's at the end of a workday, so folks are tired. We also take a break for snacks & Moment of Beauty. Some years ago, I had begun teaching 4-hour classes on Saturdays, just to get more elbow room -- more time, more rested actors.

So I was worried Tuesday that I would pace myself too slowly. I stayed present, had snacks only an hour in -- "Is this too soon?" "NO!" they chorused, delighted to see food appear -- and plunged steadily and together into deepness. Just after the most gorgeous stuff (kinesthetic response, statues, & meltaways), I moved into AfterNotes. We sat on the floor in the amber light. I went around the circle twice -- once, giving feedback to each actor, once them giving feedback on what they learned and where they were now. In these early days, they always comment on the group & the others. Soon, they will only comment on themselves.

We finished perfectly on the stroke of 9:00. "I like to end on time," I said with satisfaction, getting up. "See you next week." They didn't move. "What time does class end?" asked an uncertain voice. "Oh!" I said, remembering. "9:30! We still have half an hour!"

I paused. "No, I think we're done," I said. "Go home." They left, cheerful that they had had their deep experience AND ended early.

It made me laugh. Here I'd been worried about having only three hours -- and I fit it all in two-and-a-half.

To have more time, come more present. First, we must slow down time.

Talent

This first encounter is the rockiest. They have never been where we're going, and I don't know if they will go. ("No quizzes! No tests! No grades!" yelled one of the Improv actors, leaping around the room at break. "I LOVE this class!" "Nope. Just a performance in front of 50 strangers," I said dryly.) In the early stages, while they still look like daily humans instead of translucent gods, I am scared of them. It's not till after Check-In... usually well into Walking... that they start to luminesce and I start to relax.

"How do you know if they want to go?" I asked my acting teacher, Mark, once. "If they really want the biggest scariest ride?" "If they're in the room, they want to go," he said matter-of-factly. To this I cling, in those early hours when they look like strangers.

"We're a pretty talented group, huh?" asked one actor at the break, as we munched crackers and cheese and grapes. "I don't know," I said. "I can't tell till I see you move." He visibly relaxed. "I'm glad you're not one of those people who think everyone is talented," he said. "I think everyone has hidden depths," I said, thinking. "What lies in those depths... is the Mystery." He nodded and left.

Like Katagiri Roshi I believe Talent is a water table, available to all, which we tap with our human effort. Like Leonid I believe our task in life is to make all people Talented. Talented, to me, means being supple enough that the Mystery can flow through you.

Teacher

"What would you do, Rrrahchul, if you could? What theatre would you build?" asked Leonid once, sitting in the moonlight after dinner at my house. I described it, haltingly -- how I would have a troupe and train them and make performances. "You are not a director," he said decisively. I felt chopped in half. "You are a teacher," he said. There was a little silence, while I reflected glumly. "I, too, am not a director," he said. "I, too, am a teacher."

Madeline L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle In Time and The Wind In The Door, was once having an Immortal name the Gifts of each child in the story. "You are a Teacher," she said to one. "And you are a Namer -- you can Name what a person is." At the age of 10, I thought, "What's the difference?" At 47, I still think, "What's the difference?" Perhaps because in me, those are both part of my Gift, inseparable.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Moment of beauty

Actors look to me like the moon, the crag, the house in this painting. Helplessly, endlessly beautiful. Like driftwood.

I taught the opening class of Acting for NonActors this evening. A rainy windy night, people coming from home and work, sitting nervously in a white, no-windowed classroom. This time I'm in a yoga room, an inner room with a rug and amber dimmable lights. Everyone goes "ahhh" when I turn off the fluorescents, turn on the ambers, start the soft music, and teach them to moosh. "Leave your life at the door," I begin, "You can pick it up on the way out if you need it."

Mooshing is like a poor-man's massage of the shoulders, arms, neck, and head. A way to get us connected to the earth, our breath, and humanity. My acting teacher, Mark, used to have us do this and I have carried it with me ever since.

Anyway, they looked beautiful. And seeing wild gorgeous humans makes me long for more beauty. That's why I'm including Starry Night.

I turned in my Odd Tuesdays binder today. It did not look like those actors. It looked like an actor trying to Look Good -- full of nervousness, defensiveness, fear. I had tried to make it like a business binder. I give myself credit for making it and turning it in -- a step is a step -- but I'm going to redo the format. Make it sweeter, more baby, more like the Starbucks journal. So there's not a lot of Important Noise, but just some enticing goals.

Monday, October 04, 2004

Binder swap

So here's a great idea. My friend P. who works in a real estate office, has always wanted to write a romance novel. So she and another woman at her work decided to buddy up. They had a "Binder sesh", where they put together their 3-ring binders with all the sections they wanted, including one at the end called "Feedback."

Every three weeks, on Friday, they trade binders. They take the weekend to read their partner's new material. In the Feedback section, they write their comments, encouragement, hits, thoughts, inspirations. On Mondays, they trade binders back and head into the next 3 weeks.

Isn't this great? A strong support mechanism, that dovetails with the actual flow of life, uses the people you already know, and doesn't take much time. I found a friend, we're going to try it out. We're calling ours, "Odd Tuesdays," because we decided to swap binders -- well, e-binders, in our case; most likely Word docs -- every other Tuesday.

Tuesday, I found from years of software development, is the best day to make a deliverable due. You have most of the week to work on it... you have the weekend... and if you're not quite done, you finish up on Monday and bam, you hit Tuesday right on time.

Ever since I met with Nancy, the Life Coach, I have been realizing how much structured support around tasks would help me. This is a form which will help me now.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Group theory -- 1, 2, 3, (4), 5, Some, 16, More

With 16 people, all the Gifts are present. In any smaller group, there's always something missing. I noticed this by doing many retreats with different-sized groups, working in software startups, and directing.

The Gift that's missing isn't what you would expect, either -- it might be Fun, Intuition, Sexiness, Play, Downtime, Follow-through, Eloquence, Courage, Organization, Reading, Realism, Cooking, Instant Action, Dreamtime, Giving Great Dinner Parties, Is Russian.

There are always Gifts in the room that are not being shared, even within the most intimate group, even marriages or between children; because we're all growing. There is always tender emergent stuff at the edges. As more Gifts check in, the world transforms.

Different environments encourage and suppress different Gifts. A church group, an office, a therapy room, a kitchen, a playground, a gym, a fair, a forest, a town. This is why I love theatre -- theatre consciously uses metaphor, creates space, explores how the world affects the people. Odai Johnson says the great playwrights know how to use the liminal spaces -- the space between, beside, almost.

My counting system, for group thresholds, is:
1 -- the starting infinity
2 -- makes the biggest difference of any increment
3 -- an incredible, suprisingly large boost of power. All the things you never knew you were missing, until it walked into the room. If 1 is "I have a dream," 2 is "I think we can do it," then 3 is "I know we can."
4 -- a curiously unstable size
5 -- a nation. This is the first level where it really locks on, an incredibly stable powerful number. Some groups stay this size for a long time, or their inner core does.
Some -- all the sizes from 6 to 15 feel the same to me -- capable, but missing something
16 -- all the Gifts are present. 16 people can do anything. Eventually they will need help, but they CAN... do ANYTHING.
More -- the grey area until up around 30; the growth period
32-ish -- starts to swell, can swell to 36 at the upper limit
The tough spot -- cantankerous, people leave, new people join, memories of The Early Days are diluted and lost, a changeful time
50-ish -- new structures emerge and dominate
75-ish -- the culture settles in, enough to make the new structures work
108 -- this is the next number like 16 -- where suddenly you're in a whole new world of what's possible.

THE INFINITE STRANGER, THE INFINITE SELF

I added "Is Russian" to the Gifts list above, because of a discussion yesterday. After class we stood in the sun, talking heatedly about the presidential candidates. We had moved onto domestic issues, when Anya said, "The medical system in Russia is so much better than here." Instant silence. "There, we do not have insurance systems, each person pays with their own money, so the prices stay reasonable. Not crazy like here." There were a few murmurs about whether people HAD their own money, but everyone was fascinated. "The equipment in a Russian hospital is new -- maybe 10 years old, at the most. But the equipment in Overlake, and in (I forget the other hospital she named) -- it is 40 years old!" She shuddered. "I prefer the Russian hospitals." More silence, broken by a small voice saying, "Try Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland; they've got great facilities." But mostly, in that moment, the world had changed.

It reminds me of rehearsal a few years ago, with an East German woman and a Russian woman, in a scene set on an Indiana farm. In the backstory improvs, we had gone back to the time of World War II. "When did that war begin?" I asked. They answered at the same time, with two different dates. We talked for a while before we realized -- we had three different dates. Our wars each began when our country entered it.

Knowing each other better leads -- as it should -- to conflict. Like that old theorem of the four stages of group-formation: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing.

From theatre I would say -- the more intimately you know someone, the more infinite, strange, and translucent they become.