Following impulses

It has been an interesting past two weeks. Ker Wells, who was my teacher at Humber College, came and taught basically the equivalent of my first year class. I've said it before and I'll say it again; six people is totally different than 22. In school I'm used to negotiating big numbers. I know that when we do work I'll have a short shot at feedback before we need to move on. Instructors time is limited, so I had to grab what I could when I could and at the same time try not to Bogart from the rest of the class.

Having two weeks with Ker and far fewer people to be taught made for a learning experience which allowed me to dive further into my craft.

You may not believe this, but there is an awful lot of technique work in being an actor. An actor needs to know how to:

1. Breathe
2. Move
3. Speak

Ok, that seems pretty simple, but they also must be able to do these things while being fully aware of themselves, the people around them, the space they are in and their relationship to the audience. It is a whole lot more complicated than learning some lines and knowing where to walk and talk.

Have you ever tried for a bit to just follow your impulses? Try doing it for a minute. As actors, we are trained to find our impulses near the centre of our body. This core can be talked about in many different ways, but I imagine it as the point where the nervous system explodes into a thousand different nerve endings (right by the belly button). Anyways, here are my instructions for your impulsive minute. Try to not judge if you are succeeding in this. The minute we activate the judgement part of our brain we lose our impulsive nature.

1. First, get in touch with your breathing. Breath is where an impulse starts. We can't live, or act without breath. Notice where the breath goes in the body when you inhale. Try to imagine it going all the way down to your core. Try to imagine the inhalation and exhalation are happening through the belly button.
2. Have you ever tried kegels? I know, it's a weird question, but there are tons of little muscle groups down on your pelvic floor that can help with awareness. Try activating the pelvic floor as if it was a fruit roll up that is rolling up towards your belly button. Don't worry if this doesn't make sense and you don't suddenly feel more "aware"; if you can aim to have an active pelvic floor then I think that impulses become more active as a response. It took me three years to figure this on out.
3. Start following those impulses. You have on minute. I recommend that you just start doing something, anything at all. If you are feeling stuck just try anything and once the body is active impulsive behaviour might take over. See if you can remove the brain from the equation. Follow one impulse until the next one comes and so on for a minute. What does this mean?
   • Perhaps you start with just flapping yor arms.
   • Your imagination tells you your a bird and you start flying around the room.
   • The impulse changes and now you are a fighter jet.
   • Following that impulse you've become the pilot inside the jet firing at enemy jets.
   • The impulse has shifted and what used to be your steering wheel is now two ice cream cones. Yum!
4. Are you still breathing?

The trick is to not need your brain for validation. The brain can be a jerk and pull your impulses out of their imaginative place and into reality. Also, really try to see what is you are doing. Build your impulsive world around you.

Have you tried a whole minute? Pretty exhausting? This is only one piece of the puzzle that is acting. I, at one time, referred to acting as juggling 50 balls at once. You have to be open to all impulses, but you also allow your brain to edit and transpose them, you also need to accept, and react to, incoming impulses from the fellow actors and the audience, you must also stay true to whatever the show is. There are quite a few things to think about.

Think about micro-expressions. These are the tiny changes in a persons face which reveal how they are feeling and reacting to the things around them. Each one of those is a subconcious impulse which, as an actor, you need to figure out how to bring to conciousness and harness for use.

I don't pretend to know how to teach people to act. I think that is crazy. I have discovered that all actor training, no matter how different, wants the same outcome: living truthfully in the imaginary circumstances. Being truthful, transparent and vulnerable are the hardest bits of acting, but they are also what create a magical role. Perhaps all this "follow your impulses" baloney doesn't make any sense to you. That's fine. If you want to do theatre you need to find whatever allows you to do it. This is just a part of the technique I have learned and use. Find whatever technique works for you.

A Challenge to the collective and all...

COMMENT CHALLENGE:

Watch this link and follow the parts through the entire performance of Bill Cosby's Himself (shot in Ker's residential town of Hamilton way back when) and then continue to follow the parts till the ending.

-> think about movement related to text // think about 'reliving' vs 're-telling'

****Share in the comment section of this post what the reason is why you may think this is, or not is, good storytelling (for the collective folk this is very important, please share, as this is the beginning of a two tiered challenge explored on this blog.

Challenge - technically qualify what strikes you about this story, told by this man, in this context, using the tools he uses... Don't forget the opening credits and his entrance on stage.

Bill Cosby's Himself

My Bus Driver Interview

Last Wednesday, Ker gave me a secret task.  He said, "Call Greyhound and try to get an interview with a bus driver.  Ask him the following:"

• Schedule?
• Ever stay in a strange place?
• What do you think about while driving?
• Any crazy thoughts?

So I called Greyhound and the polite man on the phone told me that he would give my phone number to the drivers but couldn't guarantee that they would call.  Less than six hours later I get a call from a man named Keith (I have changed his name for two reasons: one, to respect his privacy and two, because I have always wanted an anonymous source) who informs me that he has been driving for Greyhound for twenty-six years and would love to meet me for coffee that very afternoon.

Unimportant Info:

• I feel nervous.
• I have never interviewed anyone before
• I am wearing a hat

Keith turns out to be a delightful man who seemed to be longing for an attentive audience.  Perfect!  I asked him if I could record the conversation and he had no problem with that.  For the next hour I listened to him tell one fascinating story after the other, all the while interjecting useless questions into the mix.  It was great.  As we parted ways, he said, "If you have any more questions, or ANYTHING you want to know, please don't hesitate to call."  What a guy.

Then I went home and typed out the interview (word for word).  Have any of you done this?  If not, I would recommend it.  It's fascinating to observe how humans speak, and also shocking to realize how long it takes. 

Here are some of my favourite lines from the interview:

• "Yea, so I'd say half of our life, when we drive for Greyhound, half of our life, is spent alone.  Yea, that sucks."

• "When you first start your trip, or what not, you always got different people sittin' there, and driving up the Alaska Highway, well, they wanna see moose, they wanna see bears, they wanna see...so you talk to them."

• "When I first started I could talk to them all day and night.  I could damn near party on the bus with them."

• "When I first started we had nothing, nothing, it was "smoke signals".  If we got a flat we'd change it."

• "There was two wheels, one beside the other, and only one came out, so I thought, "okay," and then, all of a sudden, I thought the bus was going to self destruct."

• "I said, "when that hits the pavement, we're goin' for a ride," so I'm yellin' 'hang on!"

• "So she followed! Now she loves it...loves it."

• " I was lucky, I had a good bunch.  Some of them said, "I'm glad you came back."

Ker had asked the collective to prepare a scene to perform the next day, so I decided to create a scene about Keith the bus driver.  I used his text as a guideline and attempted to re-tell one of his stories which involved the wheel on his bus falling off while he was driving. We shall see how this text continues to be used within our creation process.

To conclude, I will post another video of Sam and Gen improvising using my choreo.  Enjoy!

New Photos

There are new pictures in the Devised Yukon Project Album.

donne-moi tes yeux

Une bouffee d'air frais nomme Ker Wells nous fait grace de sa presence depuis quelques jours. Loin de jouer le role de metteur en scene, Ker nous sert principalement d'oeil exterieur. C'est a mon sens, exactement ce dont nous avions besoin.

 Hier, nous avons le luxe d'avoir un public a qui montrer nos trouvailles. Evidemment Ker nous donne son opinion sur ce qu'il voit ainsi que des pistes pour nous aider a developper notre materiel. Ce que je cheris autant que ces precieuses suggestions est son oeil de spectateur aiguise. De faire du theatre a six, pour six, enferme dans une boite noire, ca use la creativite. Alors de pouvoir ouvrir notre univers a un regard neuf m'a fait le plus grand bien. Les choses prennent leur sens, ou plutot retrouvent leur sens premier. Celui qu'on oublie a force de chercher une aiguille dans une botte de foin.

La magie du theatre repose en partie sur le fait que c'est un art de l'instantane. C'est un art du partage. Tout ce que nous creons depuis quelques semaines, c'est dans le but de l'offrir a qui veut bien le recevoir. Ca fait du bien de se le rappeler.

body over brain

As Sam and Genevieve mentioned, we're working with Ker Wells this week.

One of the primary focuses of Ker's workshops has been creating a story sequence with gesture and text. In the first week of work, we came with a story of transformation, revelation, or loss, and translated that story into action so that we finished with a non-verbal embodiment of the story.

In the second week of work we were asked to memorize a short text that stimulates and interests us. The task currently before us is to link the text with last week's gesture sequences to form one 'story'.

I don't know if you've ever done this before, but I can tell you that it's hard. My gesture sequence is very specific, and completely different from my text. Smashing them together is a real mind meld. My brain has a hard time understanding the process of putting together two completely different stories. So I started, as Ker suggested, by just moving my body through my sequence and talking my way through my text at the same time. For my simple mind even this is a challenge. But as I do it connections are made that I never would have imagined, and elements are added to each story that never could have some to life when movement and text lived seperately. It's pretty magical.

Today we worked on our own, and then watched as a group while Ker and Sam worked through Sam's sequence. Ker offered so much guidance and support in working this way, I want to relay some of my chicken scratch notes:

The action and the story should make each other clearer, not fight each other

The action informs the story

"We should almost never feel like you're controlling it. It really is just emerging in your hands"

The action helps you figure out how to tell the story

My favourite:

"This kind of work allows your body to challenge the brain for the role of primary driver"

It was pretty amazing to watch Sam work through matching his sequence and his text. When it was great, it really did feel like the body was telling him what to say, like he was getting the text from his actions. I'm not sure how often, if ever, I have experienced that through line with as much clarity.

What we are trying to say

So, I have finally found it my turn to write and I can think of nothing to write about. Well, that isn't necessarily true. I don't have any housekeeping, or updates to bring. I could possibly wrassle up some thoughts about this process we have been going through. It feels like this is the first time I've had the opportunity to comment on the work thus far. Be warned, this may get a bit rambly.

At the beginning of this work I set out the main goal: we are looking at what this world is, who the people are in the world and how those people interact with each other. Through these discoveries we would also hopefully find the beginnings of a story. Because I knew that whatever we created in these 8 weeks I would get to touch and shape and refine at a later date I wasn't too worried about clearly defining a direction.

Shaun introduced a goal of his own: to really know what the story is. At the time I didn't realise how counter this goal was from mine. I honestly didn't care about the story because I knew I could figure that part out later; once I had all the material.

These counter goals run to the heart of the current question I'm pondering. How do you acquire the focused direction that a director brings in a collective environment? We are purposely living without a director at this point in the project: decisions are group decisions. This isn't to say that there are no leaders. We have all taken on a leadership position at some point. I wish some would step out as leaders more often and I think they will once they know their strengths within the group. But, there is a feeling, I sense, going around that we are lacking a focus, a direction, to our work.

Part of me doesn't care. The part that says: don't rush, it will come if you keep probing. We have only worked for three weeks. There is no need to define what it is we are trying to say. In fact, the more time we try to do that, the less time there is for actual body–on–body work.

The other part of me feels lost. I don't know what I am trying to accomplish with these experiments. I see the world of the play unfold in front of me, but I worry that my collective members aren't seeing it, or are seeing it differenty from me. I also don't feel like I have the right to impose what this show should be even though, in the end, Jessica and I will be the last hands to touch it before it is produced.

What is great about all of this is the timing. Ker Wells is in town teaching workshops and he has agreed to come in a work with us on our material. I've asked him to take on a leadership role while he is here to try and focus the work thus far. I'm hoping that working with Ker will launch us into another inspired period of creation with the added bonus of some directed focus.

It is difficult to feel as if you work everyday to move a rock up a hill just to see it roll back down again. It feels like wasted energy. Myself, I'm studying that roll every time. I'm looking at how it changes in speed and direction. Whether the rock bounces off the earth, or crushes smaller rocks beneath it. I am fascnitated at how this rock reaches its' final resting place and how all of this compares to every other day I've moved that rock. This to me isn't wasted energy, it is evolution. This is the way I create theatre: one experiment at a time. And when you have the time to get into those details, that is when accidental magic happens.

Do you want to follow along?

Last week we shared a personal story with the group which led to each of us creating a sequence of gestures to represent the story. 

On Monday I decided that I would choreograph, on the spot, a sequence that combined some of the gestures that were shown.  I then taught this new sequence to the group.  At first we learned the choreography using counts which is generally how I teach. This became a problem because we weren't using any music and I realized that in order for us all to stay together one of us would have to be counting out loud.   We then decided that it might be easier to go through the moves and establish, as a group, where the inhalations and exhalations occured.  So we went through the sequence one move at a time and decided how we were breathing and for how long.  Suddenly we could do the choreo all together without anyone counting aloud because our breath was synced.

As the leader of this particular exercise, I then asked the others (Sam, Genevieve, and Sarah) if they would do the sequence facing me in a tight formation.  I noticed that the first half of the sequence was much cleaner than the second, so I temporarily cut the second half and asked them to do the first half over and over again.  I wasn't happy with the three of them doing it together, so I asked Sarah to come and join me as the audience.  I then asked Sam and Genevieve to start at the opposite end of the room, and repeat the sequence side by side as they travelled across the room.  I asked them to never look at one another, and to use the word hunt as their point of concentration.  I also gave them permission to repeat any part of the choreo if they wanted to.  Here is what they did:

Since then I have continued to shape this piece by taking the moments that I liked from the improv and rehearsing them into a scene that could be performed (in the sense that the actors aren't improvising anymore).  

I thought it would be interesting for you, the reader, to see how this improvisation develops over the next few weeks.  Stay tuned for more.

A walk and some thoughts

 This video includes a walk around the Yukon Arts Centre and some thoughts on the collective process.

Blackbox Beasts

L'histoire d'un geste

Il y a autant de manières de créer une histoire qu'il y a d'histoire. Ça fait beaucoup.

On peut partir d'un lieu, d'un thème, d'un personnage, d'une couleur, d'un évènement, d'une condition humaine etc... Viennent ensuite les différentes manière de développer cette histoire. Encore une fois il y a une multitude de manières de procéder. Je pense cependant qu'elles se divisent en deux larges catégories: soit on travaille intellectuellement, soit on travaille corporellement. Personnellement, je suis une partisante du travail corporel comme moteur de création.

Je m'explique.

Je trouve qu'en cherchant une histoire dans sa tête, on risque de l'intellectualiser et l'éloigner de la vérité. L'histoire devient ce qu'on pense qu'elle devrait être. Ce qui n'arrive jamais dans la vie. Plutôt que d'évoquer l'histoire, on la démontre, la souligne, la surligne, on l'essoufle, et on finit par la vider. Lorsqu'on part du corps, on part de notre instinct. Ce dernier est selon moi bien plus fiable et pûr que nos cerveaux saturés. En retournant à nos impulsions plutôt qu'à nos connaissances, on se rapproche de l'humanité. Ce qui me semble un bon point de départ lorsqu'on fait du théâtre.

Depuis le début du travail avec Open Pit, nos trouvailles les plus intéressantes ont été accidentelles. À chaque fois que nous avons intellectualiser le schéma narratif d'une improvisation plutôt que de se donner le temps de le découvrir à travers nos actions, le résultat était prévisible et futile. J'ai trouvé que le plus concluant pour nos explorations était de partir de gestes simples mais évocateurs, et de laisser ceux-ci nous porter vers un récit qui nous était encore inconnu. Il est intéressant de remarquer que les mêmes gestes sont porteurs de différents sens dépendemment de qui les fait, comment, et avec qui. Maintenant que nous avons un vocabulaire corporel commun, il nous est possible d'orchestrer ces différents mouvement pour générer du sens et des récits.

Chaque geste contient une histoire, il suffit de lui donner l'espace suffisant pour qu'elle grandisse. Un regard de côté, une tête baissée, un poing qui se ferme, un haussement d'épaule. Ce sont ces mouvements que nous connaissons tous tellement qu'on les oublie qui renferment les plus grands secrets d'amour, de défaite, et de trahison. Pas les idées pré-conçues qu'on s'en fait.

when things make sense the first time

Dear recorded sounds (voices, stories, streetscapes, environments, instances, interviews; anything that once happened live captured in an audio recording);

There is something very beautiful about you.

Listening to someone tell a story captured in their real time when their real time has nothing to do with the time we’re in, that’s a beautiful thing. We feel it when we listen to old audio of whatever, speeches, commercials, interviews, broadcasts, there is something in audio recordings that captures a moment’s essence.

Last week each of us told the group a story of a time when we didn’t get what we expected. We recorded those stories in the moment. The audio was transcribed unedited (no punctuation and including all ahs, umms, ands, buts). The next day each of us read the directly transcribed version of our story to the group.

What happened was, frankly, awkward. Faced with the written transcriptions of our stories in black and white, we tripped and faltered over our own words and could hardly make sense of our original stories and intentions; the text was almost unintelligible in some places. There were some feelings of embarrassment, of ‘Oh God I didn’t really sound like that did I?’. And the reality is yes. We did. We speak how we speak and an audio recording doesn’t let us escape that. It holds us to how we expressed ourselves in a given time and place.

When we originally shared the stories, we understood each other perfectly well. But the written versions of our speech, when originally met, were stilted and confusing. It was only after a good revisit, punctuating, and editing that the stories started to make more sense. The words were meant for speaking, not writing. In order to make easier sense in written form they needed to be shuffled around, organized, lined up in little rows.

There’s something really magical and interesting about not being able to make immediate sense of an exact transcript of our own words.

That’s all I really have to say about that. I liked it a lot.

And I think there is a mirror of this experiment happening in our process as a whole; recurring ideas are being explored, pared down, distilled – losing some verbosity, gaining some clarity. Cutting away, away, away without losing the impulses and excitement of the original discoveries. It’s a process of taking things back up again and trying to make sense of them in and of themselves and in relation to one another.

Tackling a recurring theme or image is much like being faced with the transcribed versions of our stories; we knew what we meant at the time, but now we have to face the idea again, make sense of it, and see what life can be explored there.

When can we see the show?

So, when is there going to be a play? This has been the most common question asked me whenever I start talking about the DYP. People are always interested in when there is going to be something for them to see; a product. I have a short answer and a long answer to this one.

Short Answer

August. In August we will be doing two things. First, we will be having two Open Studio Days. These are informal days when we will be opening our studio doors to the public. Anybody can come and watch our rehearsal/creation process, ask questions and engage in the creation of a new work of theatre. Although not a show, these open rehearsal are, to my mind, an interesting experiment in audience/performer relationship building. Secondly, there will be some public presentations at the end of the process. These presentations are not performances, they are designed to garner feedback and try out some things in front of an audience. Presenting unfinished work to an audience is an important part of the development process.

Long Answer

Well, I could get all theatre-ie on you and say that the work is never over, and nothing should be viewed at as finished, but if you are simply wondering when you will see a finished, polished, full production of what we are working on right now, the answer is two years from now. Our development cycle takes about 12-18 weeks (I originally wrote months, but I think I mean weeks). Since it isn't feasible to try and do all the development in one big shot (there is no way we could fund 12 months of straight development...yet) we've spread out our development into three steps ove three years. In the third year we will have a full production of the piece, which we hope to produce not only in the Yukon but elswhere in Canada. You may have noticed that the long answer isn't that much longer than the short answer. Well, the long answer does require some followup questions.

Why such a long process?

This, to me, is the easiest question to answer. Most people have a general idea about how a play gets created. First, a playwright sits at a desk and writes a play. Then, the playwright refines that play via multiple drafts and readings, and/or workshops. Finally, the play is given to a company of actors who, with the assistance of a director, puts on the show. One would think the most time consuming aspects of this process are the first two. Writing and refining a play takes time and energy. I worked on Mitch Miyagawa's Carnaval a few years ago while he was still refining it. I was lucky enough to take part in two workshops in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The play was then produced in 2007. That's three years already and it doesn't include the time it took Mitch to research and write the first draft of his play.

Imagine taking all three of those processes: writing, refining, and producing, and condensing them into a sinlge period of time. That is what we are doing. We are not just writing the script for a show, but we are also creating the staging for a show and refining both script and staging to a sharp point. Our process also involves many brains. While a playwright would be in relative isolation while writing a play, we have 6 brains working at once to create.

So, you might look at our timeline and think, "wow, they sure are taking a long time to make this play", but I think our development cycle is reasonable (and comparable to other development cycles) if one wants to create a strong, professional, devised production.

How does one production every 3 years benefit the community?

To answer this question I am going to have to try and alter your idea of benefit in relation to theatre. For most people the benefit of theatre is getting to see a show and in most cases they would be correct. The benefit of a Guild production is when those community actors take to the stage, not the three weeks of rehearsals leading up to that moment. At Open Pit, we are trying to shift the community benefit to include, not only the show, but also the rehearsal process. This is why we have a website that gets updated daily by all the creators. Think of each web post as a window into our rehearsals. This is also why we are opening our doors for Open Studio Days. I firmly believing in transparency during the process of creation. I also believe that through this transparency we can find a greater benefit than simply seeing a show. The best part about seeing a really good show is how inspired I feel leaving the theatre. What if we made that inspiration an ongoing experience through engagement during the process? I think people see theatre that they are invested in. I also think that by allowing the public into the process of creation you can create a strong investment.

There is also one benefit I have not touched on. That is having professional theatre workers in the community. There aren't a lot of us up here, but we are great people to have around.

Why are you exporting?

Quite simply, there aren't enough people here who see theatre. Part of the outreach we are doing is to get new people into the theatre, but in the end shows need to be seen for them to mean anything (or make any money, or have a continued lifespan). The Yukon is a great place to develop work. The people here are supportive and the arts community is amazing. Having grown up here I have a strong desire to feed back into the community which helped raise me. I would like to think that by exporting our material I'm not abandoning the north, but bringing the north Outside. I think that any theatre that leaves the Yukon is a representative for the Territory. We are part of the Yukon's cultural voice and we are bringing that voice to those who haven't experienced it. Even if the show isn't about the Territory I am still a representative of the Territory. I need my work to be seen, so I have to take it elsewhere. Theatre which is exported should not be seen as using up all the funding and abandoning the Yukon. We take the Yukon with us everywhere we perform.

What defines a Yukon artist?

I don’t know. 

I currently live in the Yukon, and I consider myself an artist... so... am I therefore a Yukon artist?  What if I had just moved to the Yukon a month ago from another city, let’s say Calgary, where I was working as an artist, and I plan on making the Yukon my home.  Am I a Calgary artist?  Or am I now a Yukon artist because I plan to stay?  Do I need to contribute a certain amount to the artistic community before I am considered a local artist?  When does this shift occur?

This train of thought caused me to observe the theatre community here in Whitehorse and the local artists who comprise it.  It seems like I can assume that most of us consider ourselves to be Yukon artists, yet how many of us are from here?  I think it would be fair to say that most of us come from somewhere else.   Quite often when you ask a local if they are from here they will respond along these lines: “I’m not from here, but this is home,” or “I’m from Calgary originally but I’ve been here for 27 years,” or “I grew up here but I left for a long time and now I’m back.”

I turn to one of our local funding sources to see what they say, and I found an answer.  In order to apply for an Advanced Artist Award it states that you must have lived in the Yukon for one continuous year prior to the deadline in order to apply.  Is one year my answer?  Is that how long you should be contributing to the community before reaping the rewards of its funding?   

It seems fairly ridiculous to have a cut and dry answer to any of these questions because I don’t think the definition of a Yukon artist is something that we can't decide intellectually.  Does that mean it’s a feeling?  We can sense inside when that shift has happened?  This intrigues me because at some point a new place will become home... but it’s not a definite moment.  It’s almost like an accumulation of moments that add up to this new sensation.  It’s like becoming an adult.  When did that happen? 

We have been reading some of Robert Services words to spark our improvisations and also to connect us to our location of creation – the Yukon.   I find it interesting that Robert Service became one of the most famous Yukon writers and yet he was born in England and travelled to the north of his own accord.  He arrived in Whitehorse and began performing his words at church concerts and used his experiences in the north to fuel his most famous poems.   Is he a Yukon artist?  My first response is, “Of course he is!’ but when did that shift occur for him?  Was it when he got a job at the bank?  Or was it when he went to Vancouver to marry his wife and bring her back to the Yukon?  Or was it when he moved to Dawson City and became a full time author? 

I don’t know.



Questions à choix multiples

En bons humains que nous sommes, nous aspirons tous à des résultats. À un processus qui ne nous fait jamais reculer, toujours avancer. À un agenda qui nous mène à terme sans trop suer. Et surtout: à la certitude d'un produit fini concluant. Èvidemment, je ne vous apprends rien en disant que la vie n'est pas un constant crescendo accumulant les bons coups et les réussites. Surtout pas dans une création collective. 

C'est ainsi que pour la première fois depuis le début des séances, nous avons eu nos premiers doutes et nos premières réelles discussions à savoir: Qu'est-ce qu'on fait? Pour qui? Pour quoi? Comment? 

Insécurité? sûrement.

Légitime? tout à fait.

Nécessaire? sans aucun doute.

Lorsqu'on simplifie au maximum le mendat du Devised Yukon Project, il peut se voir en deux parties distinctes. La première étant de prendre du temps de studio exclusivement pour apprendre à travailler ensemble, expérimenter différentes approches ,et développer différentes méthodes de travail qui servent la création théâtrale. Ensuite, la deuxième étape consiste à créer un spectacle à partir de ces explorations. 

Ces deux étapes étant claires, c'est la transition dans laquelle nous sommes qui reste à découvrir et maîtriser. La première semaine de séances était consacrée au mouvement. Nous avons réussi à développer notre langage et notre vocabulaire non textuel dont je parlais la semaine passé. En cette deuxième semaine, nous avons introduit le "vrai" langage dans notre travail, celui qui se met sur papier. Ce fut très productif, Mercredi soir nous avions déjà plus d'une heure de matériel textuel de notre cru. Maintenant que nous avons beaucoup de matière à travailler. Il nous reste maintenant à forger l'entonnoir idéal dans lequel placer toutes nos trouvailles pour qu'en ressorte le spectacle qu'on veut vous offrir.

J'aime les remises en question dans un groupe. De se complaire dans le plaisir qu'on a à jouer et à se regarder ne dure qu'un temps. Ensemble, nous nous posons des questions pour trouver la route dans laquelle nos six chemins se rencontrent. Et ensemble, nous mèneront la route jusqu'à qui veut bien nous entendre. Et peut-être que ce sera votre tour de remettre en question. Qui sait?

beginnings of a story lab

This week (yesterday) we started what we're calling a story lab.

The idea behind the story lab is to play with text and storytelling. To begin, Sam offered a theme of 'a time when you didn't get what you expected'. Yesterday we each told stories on the theme. The stories were recorded on snazzy smart phones and transcribed lovingly. Today, we'll bring in printed copies of each story and swap 'em. Then it's off to the races, playing, remixing, and mashing up text like nobody's business.

How does it feel to give your personal story over to someone else to read aloud, ahhhs ummmms likes ands and all? How does it feel to hear someone else take on your memory? How does it feel to hear your words interpreted by someone else?

I have a feeling it will be pretty disconcerting.

I really like playing with stories. In our collective's terminology, it jazzes me.

Why?

On a basic, personal level I like hearing people tell stories. I like being told stories, I really like audio of stories being told. Listening to the voice. Hearing the story in the air outside the teller's mouth, story made into soundwaves, story made external. Being part of someone remembering or creating and sharing something. Feeling like I am there, inside the story. And then I come to share it, and I can repeat it, creating new life and variations.

On a the theatre creation level, I'm interested in playing with story. Upsetting it. Seeing how telling and retelling and retelling makes us feel. In particular, I'm interested in the sharing of true stories by the people who experienced them (i.e. I tell a story of my first day of school) vs. mediated stories and memories told by people removed from the actual events (i.e. I tell a story of my first day at school, Sam records it, Jess transcribes it, Adele reads it, Shaun directs it, and Genevieve adds images to it).

In this vein, I've been thinking about these folks -

In February nervous system system (Vancouver) presented a show called close at hand. In the show, two female characters improvise monologues about their first experiences of death, swapping text and story lines and repeating stories over and over, talking over each other and slightly altering things just enough so that the audience is left wondering who actually did what and what actually happened to who. It was compelling and discombobulating to watch. I felt I was being toyed with. I was denied the satisfaction of tying one story to one person. My expectations were upset over and over. This story telling was not comforting or lulling, it was jarring. We were being lied to, but being lied to in such an evident, unforviging, and yet still disturbingly convincing way.

secret theatre (Halifax) is developing folkloremobile, a piece of work exploring folklore and the amateur stock car racing circuit in the maritimes. In the making of folkloremobile, audio recordings of stories are gathered, shaped, transcribed, and recorded by a cast of female actors. The final presentation will incorporate these recorded stories listened to on headphones wirelessly connected to FM transmitters in a space. In this case, story has been altered from its original source and filtered through a transcriber, the makers of the work, and an actor. As the stories are broadcast through various FM transmitters in the presentation space, each participant's experience of the 'folklore' will be shaped by their journey through the space and their interactions with others within that space.

So this week we'll find out where our own explorations of story will take us.

I'm jazzed.

Just some updates

There has been a deluge of new and exciting posts on Open Pit this past week. So much so, that I don't wan't to pry your attention away from posts by our new contributers. I'm just going to highlight some recent additions to this website right here.

Workshops

Nakai Theatre in association with Open Pit is hosting two workshops this summer. I've added a Workshops page with all the information. I'm hoping we can offer more workshops in the future, so it made sense to have a place with the information for them!

Images

There has been some sneaky photo capturing going on while we work on the Devised Yukon Project. That's why we have a new gallery section where you can see awesome shots like this:

Archive/Search

I've also added a couple tools to make finding a specific post easier. First, is the archive where all posts are listed in chronological order. Secondly, is the search page where you can easily find something based on its' title or its' content.

List of Authors

The final addition to the site is the list of authors on the right-side navigation. By clicking on a name, you can easily navigate to all the posts by a single author. So, if you only like what Jessica writes (and who doesn't) you can click on her name and not be distracted by my posts anymore.

Funders

Not a new addition, but I thought I would point out all of our awesome funding partners at the bottom of every page. We have been very lucky to receive funding from three (four if you include the workshops!) different granting bodies on two levels of government. Now, there is a formal way I'm supposed to thank them, but I don't have that in front of me so I'll just do my best:

Open Pit gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council For the Arts, the Yukon Arts Fund (department of Tourism and Culture), and Culture Quest for the Devised Yukon Project

We also want to acknowledge the Cultural Industries Training Fund for supporting our summer workshop opportunities.

Physical Theatre and Dance

I was asked to briefly describe the difference between phyiscal theatre (see the workshops we are hosting) and dance. That is a tough question; I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, so I've hit the google pretty hard. Here's what I've come up with.

Dance:

A series of movements that match the speed and rhythm of a piece of music
A particular sequence of steps and movements constituting a particular form of dancing
an artistic form of nonverbal communication
Dance (from French danser, perhaps from Frankish) is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting.

Physical Theatre:

is the craft of building theatre through physical actions, characterization and stage composition. Physical Theatre uses as its primary means of expression movement, dynamic immobility, gesture and a variety of acting techniques. ..

Physical theatre is used to describe any mode of performance that pursues storytelling or drama through primarily and secondarily physical and mental means. ...

First of all, there are a lot more definitions surrounding dance than there are physical theatre. These don't help to differetiate dance from physical theatre, but it is beginning to look like dance could be a part of physical theatre. Physical theatre is dance and text and gesture and a whole slew of other potential things. Physical Theatre is a blanket defition for theatre that uses the body as much as the voice to tell a story.

I ran across an article from the New York Times that seems to argue in the opposite direction (physical theatre is just a type of dance). The whole of the article, written by John Rockwell, is focused on British physical theatre, but the first and last paragraphs seem relevant:

ALL dance, even the most abstract, includes theatrical elements, and all theater involves physicality. What, then, does the term "physical theater" mean? Is there any difference between physical theater and plain, old-fashioned dance?

And in the final paragraph he answers his questions:

The barriers between the different performing arts are fluid: dance flows into theater, which flows into music and song and stage pictures. The emphasis among the various elements of performance shift, from piece to piece, from creator to creator, from decade to decade. In the end, all dance is physical theater, even the most sternly abstract, and no country has a monopoly on it. It's just that the British seem particularly good at it these days.

The whole article is worth a read in order to fully understand Rockwell's argument, but I can understand that physical theatre is dance with a shifted emphasis, or, conversely, dance is physical theatre with a different emphasis.

This probably doesn't make the answer any more clearer. Oh well, I did my best. Feel free to weigh in with a comment. Here are some other opinions:

Anna Efthymiou - Porto Physical Theatre

I have learnt that physical theatre can act on impulse, you can move when you feel the moment is right, this is another clear difference between the physical theatre and the timing needed in dance theatre.

Lloyd Newson - DV8 Physical Theatre

However when we made Strange Fish (1992), the risk was not so much about physical danger, but whether dance can deal with complex emotional narrative, and whether tragi-comic theatre can in fact be created through dance alone. You can take risks without always being physical.

Sonnet for a Sunday afternoon

Flying the Coop

Behind every beautiful thing there s been some kind of pain, Bob Dylan

The Devised Yukon Project completed our first week of exploration in the Studio Space at the Yukon Arts Centre. We have been developing a vocabulary through various forms of improvisation and slowly tilling the earth to find our story that we need to tell. In doing so, we have been presenting ideas for experiments and working them without judgment, pushing each other for clarity and chaos.

With the first week compete and as we start to find our collective rhythm I would like to comment on my hope(s) for the next seven weeks of discovery.

Our point of concentration for the project is Outside, which is obviously a very broad theme, there are so many micro themes that can be extracted from the term itself. My hope is that this theme will push the collective to not only examine what it means to be outside, be it yourself, the outdoors, etc, but also to explore the opposite element of inside.

Through our improvisations and experiments I have noticed a collective discovery, the hint of an apex of interpretation of the under current theme of Outside, and that is of breaking free. Some of the physical images that have begun to recur with only four days of studio time under our belt are of escape and the force to which we escape from. Sometimes we are bound to floor and need to fight against the unseen force grasping our movements; sometimes en mass the collective will signal out one and the rest will move as a monstrous menace threatening any variable of safety, be it physical, or mental or emotional. To truly examine this idea of breaking free or escape we must now delve into the ugliness that we must break away from, to find freedom we must know why or what was/is keeping us bound; how vicious is it? Where does it come from? What does this prison look like and who or what is controlling the entrapment that we must free ourselves from? And ultimately what is the call to adventure that inspires the great escape?

I hope that as our explorations continue that we can really mine what in our story is the force of "inside" and how much we can cage our hearts before we find the beauty of losing the pain.