catching up...

The manic nature of this winter-spring has caused a full halt on my blog. Not for lack of things to write about, but rather for lack of time for sleep, much less writing.

Since we last saw our intrepid explorer, she has kept herself busy.

My collaboration with selardi for Tonight at Eight O'Clock was a resounding success; we sold out (over sold in fact...shhh!!) and had around 70 audience members experience the piece, what one of our volunteers described as "confused transcendence". It was truly an experiment, and in many ways, our goal of pushing the envelope of what audiences in Winnipeg will attend was a huge success. In fact, I think we under-estimated the audience's willingness to play along, and could have offered more. I'm continuing to think about this experiment in the dialectic relationship between audience and performer, art and viewer as I am creating and refining my ideas on the subject.

The next major project was as Assistant Director for Clever Little Lies at MTC; an entirely different experience, working with (extremely) professional actors on a new "straight" play. For many this may seem like a departure from my usual interests, however the play dove in head first in to some of the ideas that rest at the very core of all my work; the relationship between our reality and our expectations, and what we do to cope with that gap. In the contemporary world, we have been sold lifestyles and ideas about ourselves, and crafted images, and this play was yet another outlet to investigate how this can be damaging to our relationships. It was a fantastic experience working under Steven Schipper, and I had so many opportunities to learn how to drive the car, so to speak, in what a fellow local performer described as "NASA". Truly the MTC MainStage has all the big toys, and the freedom to create in this milieu was unparalleled.

Also, a version of the dissertation paper I wrote for my final work Approaching Antigone at RADA has been published by the Humanities Education Research Association! You can see it here. After all the yammering on this blog about Antigone, I'm sure you'll enjoy (or at least feel resolution). More to come on that project as I intend to resurface work on it in late 2015.

What now? Well I've got a few projects on the go. First up is the next instalment of my experiments with the audience performer relationship -- popART: Project Vapour. This takes a different form than the previous, returning to an installation style work that although does not fit the traditional definition of theatre (EG having a story and actors) I do believe is highly theatrical. The theatrical experience, however, is played out for the viewers of the piece.

Come see for yourselves if you like -- June 14 in the alley behind Artspace (Arthur Street, Exchange district, Winnipeg). More details here. 

Will share more in the coming weeks about the new play I'm directing for the Fringe, as well as a very large scale adaptation project I'm working on. Hint: I have spent a lot of time recently reading about Plantagenet Kings.

Oedipus Stadt @ Deutsches Theater, Berlin

This new translation which premiered with the Deutsches Theater (Berlin) in August 2012 takes the many plays comprising the Oedipus myth and combines them; we begin with Oedipus Rex, are thrust into Seven Against Thebes after his blinding, see a sprinkling of The Phonecian Women (and I am quite certain Oedipus at Kolonus, though my very dodgy German may betray me) and finally we fall into Antigone. All of this happens in just a couple short hours. The result of combining the pieces of the myth from their respective longer plays into shorter bits is that the hubris of this family, their fatal flaw, is crystal clear. Each of the characters dives into power, willful to set things "right", and each of them learns of their terrible error and the pain it causes. 

First, the staging - within a traditional theatre space, the stage has been morphed into a white bowl, with stark and visible lighting, within which rests a large unfinished wooden curve extending from the front row of the audience up the back wall. The actors enter and exit down log runways on either side of the curve stage, echoing their footsteps in loud shoes. Every movement within this space was highly specified, self-aware and yet highly emotionally connected. It is as if the concept of verfremmdungseffekt is as inherent as breathing for these performers. There were countless visual moments which caught me in the pit of my stomach, but none more so than the moment toward the end of Seven Against Thebes/beginning of Antigone in which the characters (at varying times and sometimes together) ran up the curve, then slid down, countless times, exhausting themselves yet continuing to push on in futility. The simplicity of the direction was outstanding.  

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the brilliant Susanne Wolff. The usher we spoke with in advance of the show advised that she has built a career on playing men, and in this instance was the most powerful Kreon I could have imagined. Strong and wilful, she played such an understated fiery soul, peppered with beautiful physical work. I could not take my eyes from her, and as the piece progressed into Antigone, when she assumed a key role, this feeling grew. There was a moment when Menoikus was arguing, and physically got right up into her face. A lesser performer would have done something, even minute, to indicate their displeasure. Wolff did absolutely nothing, with chilling effect. In short, she was unbelievable. 

I am extremely grateful to have happened upon this in my short time in Berlin; it has excited me to consider returning to my own grapple with the Greeks, and Antigone specifically, No More Prayers. 

The time to hesitate is through

We are here. After months of angst, tears, sweat, more reading than you can imagine, and rehearsals upon rehearsals, we are in our final week at RADA. I can't actually believe that I am here. It honestly feels like mere weeks ago that we were all crammed into the tiny basement studio on the first day, receiving our RADA booklets and cautiously selecting whether we would do scene study with Tom or Andrew.

I have learned so much about myself in this year. I have learned that I can make some pretty interesting theatrical pieces. I have learned that I can maybe, sort of, write a little. I have learned that the times when I feel most comfortable about a piece of work, those are the times when I haven't done enought. I have learned that I really like to scare myself into action. I have also learned from (and with) some of the most brilliant and talented people I have ever had the opportunity to be in the same room as. Tutors, obviously, but more importantly my fellow students, whose intellect, bravery, and talent have pushed me to become a better artist every minute of every day. I only wish that we could stay together and create work, rather than scatter the globe as we are bound to do. I will do everything possible to work with each of them again in the future.

So. . . as the title states, the time to hesitate is through. Dissertation performances are underway. I am assisting by performing in two presentations; Dena Rysdam Miller's adaptation of The Little Prince, and Holly Sharp's devised piece Nil by Mouth, about mental illness. I will also be reading a new play in development for Nika Obdizinski.

Largest looming in my future is my own piece - No More Prayers - an interrogation of Antigone through dramatic and philosophical history. Creating this piece has been a rollercoaster, and it has morphed to something completely different from what I first imagined, although simultaneously it continues to be an embodiment of that first seed of an idea. The piece I have ended up with is (I hope) the start of something bigger, that will continue and develop into a full production down the road. Thursday will be a "first viewing" for the work-in-progress, and I hope to share some photos and video of the presentation as well as the subsequent Q&A.

For all intents and purposes, the blog will be dark until mid next week, at which time I will try to make sense of this all. And wrap my head around the final written aspect of the dissertation, not to mention my impending move back to Canada and everything that entails.

In other news, I can happily announce that I will be directing a handful of readings for new plays at Sarasvati FemFest in September (Winnipeg) and will also be developing a piece titled Dear Mama, inspired by Sondheim's Gypsy for the RMTC SondheimFest in early 2013 (Winnipeg). More on those later, once I regain sanity.

Image: Cindy Sherman, Untitled 175

Musings on Creation

I really honestly feel that you need to write with live bodies. The piece I am creating now, under the working title of Approaching Antigone (who knows what the real title will be) is, in the end, a performance installation, that is most likely only going to have me on stage. I have spent a lot of time reading, researching, developing ideas, but somehow until I am in the studio, nothing really comes out.

Today, I spent a lovely two hour session with a like-minded creator, trying out things and bouncing ideas off her both intellectually and physically. The ability to ask her to try something, see it in another's body, enables my mind to start to piece together how this will look to an outsider, the images it is creating. Particularly working without mirrors, this makes it possible for me to have a sense of the stage pictures my work is creating.

I tend to be extremely image-based, or text-based, and have always troubled with merging the two into a single piece. I either create a dance-theatre piece, or a text-theatre piece. I am aiming with this to merge the two so that neither text nor movement could exist without the other; i want there to be a reliance, a relationship, between the two that is parasitic in nature. The movement feeds the words which feeds the movement.

Only one more workshop left with the actors before I spend 3 weeks on my own finishing the devising process. I am going to do the majority of devising work in my flat, likely recording myself and then watching playback. Then I will move to the studio for 3 sessions. This project is really big in my head, and I need to get it out into my body and on to paper/video so that I can begin to piece something together to share in July.

Might share some videos soon.

Head is Swirling

An MA dissertation in any form is a challenging prospect. One in which you will be not only researching a subject, but creating a response to it theatrically as well as writing on it academically is an entirely new level of challenge.

Things I am learning:

1) I really like to research. To a fault. There comes a point where reading yet another version of Antigone (or reading it again for the 100th time), watching anther German Opera version, or listening to another random lecture from the RA about any painter ever to have lived is just not going to do anything. You need to create. You need to put down the books and get up in the studio and just see what comes out. I am approaching this point now.

2) I have a tendency to want everything to fit to a plan, but at the same time happen randomly. The two are not compatible. I have been hit with two major setbacks to my plan - in the form of casting issues which were first solved, then sort of solved, then not solved at all - both of which had me reeling last week. Several hours we spent lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, surrounded by my iPad and copies of the play, listening to intense music whilst wondering what to do. I do learn the most from these things though; the times when my left and right brain are battling it out over order versus chaos are the times when the most remarkable ideas come out.

3) The play has the answer. It always has the answer, you just have to give it time to tell you. Luckily, I had the time in this instance, and didn't end up staying up nights bawling at my lack of options.

So, phase 1 of the dissertation approach (reading like a maniac) is coming to a close. My first workshop to lead will be in just over a week, and I am looking forward to just playing. It is funny that when reading, I get so many ideas, mostly in the form of physical images in my head, all of which seem to be contrary to the last. Right now there are about 50 "moments" I have imagined. The first 3 workshops will be a chance to try these out, see what actually works physically and with text or music, and then I will go away to try to piece together the first draft of a piece. Then I will come back for 3 more workshops to sew it together and share it on the 19th of July at RADA.

From here, oodles of reflection on the process, writing to pull in all the inspiration and thoughts to create the piece along with the future...where does this go now. And more importantly, where do I go after this whirlwind of a year, personally, and artistically.

More Questions

I just had my preliminary meeting with my tutor, Andrew Visnevski, in preparation for my dissertation work commencing in May. All I can say is that I had a lot of questions leading to this meeting, and now have even more, and even fewer answers and less focus. That said, I am extremely excited to have this project beginning, and cannot wait to see where it will take me intellectually, artistically, and personally.

Now to make a plan of attack, keep reading like a crazy person, and find some actor-collaborators.

New Perspectives

Spent a long and meandering day today, moving from one project to the next. Began with a voice tutorial with Adrienne Smook, an MA Voice student at Central who is offering small group and private tutorials for voice work with us. We first did a 45 minute group warmup, focused primarily on breathing - connecting breath with thought and the impulse to speak. One exercise I quite liked was a visualization of a specific place, where noises were used to identify things. This really served to help connect intention with breath and therefore voice. Another exercise I think I will use in workshops and classes is throwing a ball around the space, connecting breath, then a specific vocalization with the movement of the ball....aiming to curb the impulse to stop the breath and movement, allowing for smooth and continuous flow.

We also had a smaller private session with Adrienne, working on some more specific deep breathing and breath connection exercises. These really resonated with what I have been doing individually, connecting movement to voice - in this case, relaxation to voice relaxation, but using gravity in fetal or child's pose.

After this, went over to the Old Vic Tunnels for a dance dramaturgy workshop with Maryann Hushlak, dramaturg on Without Words. In some ways, this simply echoed our classes from last term with Paul Sirett about the role of the dramaturg. What I did find useful was the exercises and discussion on finding a language of creation. Maryann emphasized the importance of listening to how the creator talks about the projet, the kinds of words or phrases they use - this helps create a shared terminology of description for the process, and also enables creation of more practical materials like grant proposals. She also talked a lot about her process, particularly in the performance phase - analyzing the performance as well as the audience's reception. This is something I want to work into my workshop presentation in the dissertation - I am wondering if a Q&A would be useful to help understand the impact of the versions we see....and then help me draw some conclusions about identity and ghosts.

Finally, off to Birkbeck for Scene Study. A lot of talk of Hegel and Antigone today, so very apropo for my thoughts (not just now...always, really). I'm formulating my approach to the manifesto assignment, and think that I want to flesh out an anarchist tragedy of sorts...why do we need to define tragedy? Why do we spend so much time worrying about this? Now just to figure out how the form can merge...

One hurdle

My dissertation proposal has been approved!! Sparing you the boring academic bibliography bit, here it is in a nutshell. You can look forward to many obsessive posts on this subject in the future.

Introduction
The aim of this dissertation is to use a performance-based approach to understand questions of identity for the performer when approaching historical texts. Marvin Carlson argues in The Haunted Stage that audiences bring with them the history of a performance, so are never simply watching the performance in front of them; instead, they are seeing the current performer, all previous performers, and their ideal version of the character. This supposition is problematic artistically, as it creates a barrier of communication; added filters through which the artistic message of a piece needs to permeate. Using Sartre's ideas of Being and Perception in Being and Nothingness as a starting point (to be is to be perceived), I will examine perception of a performer and perception of a character as they are mediated through re-writes of the same story in different contexts. The filters of audience context and re-imagined characters interplay to impact engagement with the work; I endeavor to explore how these filters function in performance, and what can be done from a creative perspective to counteract them or make use of them. I have selected Antigone as my base text as she is a familiar character in Western mythology, and through history, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, has been re-written numerous times, each instance changing the character of Antigone to serve the time. My goal is to develop, through workshopped performance, key findings on approaches that will aid the director in using these filters in a positive creative manner when creating work.

Key Research Questions
What being is perceived when audiences see a performance?
What impact do changes in text and context have on audience perception?
How can the practitioner utilize these in production?

Method
Working with 1 male performer and 1 female performer, I will workshop:
Original Antigone - Masked Male performer
Transitional Antigone - Becoming Female
Dionysian Antigone - Music & Opera
Politicized Antigone - 20th Century in Germany (Brecht)
Feminized Antigone - 20th Century in France (Anouilh)
Rebellious Antigone - 20th Century Ireland (Paulin)
Post-Colonial Antigone* - 20th Century Africa & South America (Osofisan, Gambaro, Sanchez)
Who do you see? Antigone's Identity

* Session 7 is subject to change: currently I am struggling to locate a copy of these plays. If I am unable to locate these texts, an alternate will be proposed for this session.

The 8 workshop subjects will serve to create material from which a work in progress performance will be devised. Each workshop will focus on exploring the questions of identity for the performer, using the source texts as a guide, and a physical theatre aesthetic. Within each session we will investigate the layers of performer identity; actor-self, character-self, character-perceived.

Sophocles - Antigone

This has been a favourite play of mine for a very long time. The clash of forces between the ruler (master) and citizen (slave), father figure and daughter, law and reason is very vivid, and ignites my imagination. Antigone does what she thinks is right, and sticks by this choice...then cannot live in a world where she is condemned to death for this. Her suicide seems initially like she is cheating, however she has no other choice; this way she dies at her own hand and not that of her oppressor.

Interestingly, this play, unlike many Greek Tragedies, has a single action, but many side-actions. I hesitate to call them sub-plots, for they are still along the initial line of Antigone's plight, but the love story, suicide, etc almost tend toward our more modern understanding of plot.

image: Woman Struggling to Break Free of Contentment - Naznin Virji-Babul

Bertolt Brecht - Antigone

I have felt a connection to the story of Antigone for some time. At her core, Antigone is a woman who does what she ought to and not what she is told by convention; her defiance of expectation to do what she thinks is right echoes through later heroines in theatre history. And she stays with this choice, even when offered the opportunity to declaim her actions and save her life.

Brecht's interpretation, translated by Judith Molina, is an interesting update of the story. Brecht focuses on the politics of the story; contrasting the Elders' blind faith in Kreon with Antigone's action to honour her brother. For me, this breezes over the important philosophical argument, to reach the political argument. Clearly this is influenced by Brecht's views on the role of theatre, and also the time he is writing for. But for me the more important piece of Antigone's development is that she will not renounce what she believes in, even if given the chance to live.

This has made me want to re-read the Sophoclean original....with some ideas.

image: Antigone by Albert Toft (1907)