Category: Research

Last spring I made a proposal to an International Baccalaureate school to devise a drama program that matched their teaching philosophy. Their sister school, a bilingual school, invited me to begin teaching two groups of middle schoolers. So far it has been amazing for me and I think quite fun for the participants as well. Here’s my brief course description.

This class views the practice of theater as a form of research with the potential to teach new topics and create knowledge. In the first semester, students will study the body, voice, text, songs, traditions and technology. In the second half of the year they will take part in a collective idea generation and composition process. Throughout the year the class will research different theatrical perspectives considering the stage our laboratory. Participation will reinforce social skills, communication skills, and thinking skills. And it will nurture the physical, intellectual, and emotional balance of each student.

If you want to read the whole proposal click here: WISTheaterLabProposal.

“Everything appears OK but with an underlying sense that it is all wrong.”

The stories I’ve been hearing of the world right now don’t have a beginning middle and end. So why am I even thinking about telling stories like that? A few years ago I was feeling good about making art, having a job, voting for government, buying a car, eating food. Now? All of it makes me feel out of sorts. It’s not just these precise issues. It’s bigger. And I think everyone everywhere is feeling it. There’s no going back. We have to fall in love with each other all over again, but it won’t be built on what came before. You know how certain songs can make you feel like you are about to shatter inside? I feel like that edge is right where we’re at.

“Underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty- forever empty. You know what I’m talking about?”

Using a creative language that was dreamt up 100 years ago (or 50 or 20 years ago) in order to convince actors that they really are someone else, or provide some form for them to fill or even to feel as though they have some internal energy or presence. All of this feels so disconnected to what we are going through now. Theater artists who work with a limited set of tools and vocabulary can only make literal representations of life and therefore be left out of the deeper conversations about art and culture and the truths revealed in unlocking our hearts. Musicians can talk in such fresh and abstract terms about their music and yet still make an album that is relevant and that people want to hear. I want my theater to walk that line.

“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”

The way of searching is most important so I’m just going to throw away the expectation of finding answers and finally ask questions which are burning inside me. How do I bridge my ideas and experiences? How do I open my heart? What I need to know now is different than what I needed to know 2 years ago. I’m 33 years old and just now feeling the skill and strength to craft my own work. Build a platform of support. Develop a network of like minded makers.

The recent Enter Face project that I worked on as part of the Avant Art Festival was both the last straw and the final piece. It proved something that I have already suspected, technology is huge in how we make art. The digital revolution is having an undeniable impact on the evolution of analog. Seeing Akhe Russian Engineering Theater perform showed me, performance and art don’t need to be pretentious. It can be smart, imaginative, playful, poetic, and covered in wires. Hmm, now I don’t know if I’m making theater anymore. Not exactly, anyway.

“Whether you like it or not,

alone will be something

you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone there’s a very good chance

you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.”

Being fired and broken hearted is scary and it’s also exhilarating. Picking yourself up puts you in direct relation to that bottom. I see the craziness of all my past fantasies, imaginings, and delusions. I feel the sharpness of how cruel I had once been in matters of the heart. I hear the echoes of my footsteps as I traveled down false and twisted paths. I can only make something big and meaningful if I’m not pretending to be someone else. Poland has taught me that all songs are sad songs. And it has woken me up like a splash of cold water in bed. There are roots here that clutch such dark and spicy depths.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost;  that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

I do, I will.

 

Quotes:

Andrew VanWyngarden (from MGMT) in an interview with Electronic Beats Magazine, N° 35 (3, 2013).  

Louis C.K. in an interview with Conan O’Brien, 2013.

Miles Davis, maybe.

Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go. 1990.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walden. 1854.

[sic] It’s done. It was a lonely and winding process but I have completed my master’s degree course. Here is a summery of my activity over the last 12 months all of which became a part of my presentation in some way:

• Songs of Lear and Cherry Orchard: reflections from my journal regarding the experience of professionally working with Pieśn Kozła from April through December;
• Open Your Heart workshop: the continued response and feedback from students, journal reflections on the shortcomings, challenges, and achievement of this piece of the project
• Solo meditations: journal reflections charting my experience of being in the space alone, saying good bye (for now), meditating on my own origins, video recordings of my personal exploration of text and movement, forming my own deep questions;
• Body Alphabet workshop: journal reflections on my power and strength,  finding my own resonance, being heard, deep personal research from within a group, being surprised;
• Starting a Foundation: the next step… building a platform for the creative life I hope to live, a chance to dream big and at the same time place my energy within a frame work relevant to here and now, slowly integrating technology, finding ways to share the work, not just “like” on Facebook but Opening the Heart.

 

I didn’t do this alone and have many colleagues, teachers, friends and family to thank for their love and support. Notably these lovely ladies: Jessica, Angela, Anna, Niamh, Kamila and Mom.

If you are interested in reading my contextual essay which fulfilled my written requirement and helped me receive a merit of graduating “with distinction” go to my document page.

The Body Alphabet as developed by Zygmunt Molik while working with Grotowski is carried on by Jorge Parente. This workshop was so gentle yet it created a vibrant and powerful connection between all the participants. It led to some of the deepest work I’ve done linking the body and voice.

Documentation and Video Editing by Kamila Dydak.

With T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland as a starting inspiration I joined some colleagues in London on an urban expedition in the form of a four day walk on the river Thames. It was sort of like ››Romania except the 2012 Olympic Games were going on.

Here’s an email excerpt from the initiator of the Wasteland Project Stephanie Bain 30 May 2012 describing the aim of the research:
“I want to challenge the concepts and the boundaries of what the expedition model – as conceived by Teatr Pieśń Kozła – can be. I’m asking is it possible to do an urban expedition? Is it possible to explore a familiar environment, but to see it with new eyes when looking at it as inspiration for performance making? On re-reading The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot, I was drawn to the dialogues of London that weave together mythological images and songs that flow through the city by focusing on the river Thames as a rich symbol for birth, for death, for the passing of time. I was inspired to work on The Wasteland as performance material and this source text opens up the idea of an expedition to the communities around London docklands; Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs.
…
The expedition would be a walk along the East London to Essex portion of the Thames Path. I’m going to finalise this route within the next week but it’s likely that we’ll start around Canary Wharf and walk through Greenwich and Docklands and out into Essex. The idea is to talk to people on houseboats, to talk to people in pubs, to perhaps arrange a meeting with the veteran dockers union, to talk to people at some small agricultural fairs on route (lots of weird and very English stuff!). I need to do some more research this week, but there are some campsites along the route and in an effort to save money/adhere to expedition ethos we would probably be camping. Then we get back and get into the Tunnels space for the R&D weeks. There’s some specific actor research that I want to explore in this phase, but that’s for later. This email is long enough already.”

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

O Lord Thou pluckest

burning ~t.s. eliot