Sabbatical Report

Sabbatical Report: A Narrative Account

Graham Paul
Spring Semester, 2006

I began planning for a yearlong sabbatical in the fall of 2004. At that time, I was developing a comparative study of contemporary U.S. and Eastern and Central European approaches to directing Shakespeare. The desire for such a project sprang from the fact that I seemed to be hamstrung in my own directorial approaches to Shakespeare. I felt that, if I could resolve certain issues in regard to the relationship between the Shakespeare’s text and the imaginative possibilities inherent in Shakespeare’s plays as performance events, I might be able to progress in my own development as a director and teacher. My understanding of the range of U.S. approaches to Shakespearean production was admittedly limited, and my understanding of European approaches was far more limited. However, I was tantalized by what I had learned of the differences between the two. I had previously attended a Salzburg Seminar entitled “Shakespeare Around the Globe,” during which I had gotten a strong sense of both the possibilities inherent in non-Anglophone Shakespearean production and the apparently paradoxical limitations of the Anglo-American tradition. I wanted to explore the possibilities.

To go back a bit further: For some time––in fact, as a result of my earlier sabbatical in 1995––we in the Theatre Department at Warren Wilson had described our program as “Shakespeare-centered.” Part of the reason was to give the program some kind of a focus, but the choice to focus on Shakespeare reflected our close relationship with the English Department as well as my own conviction that Shakespeare’s texts provided the most vibrant inspiration for creating theatre events which could deal with contemporary issues in a highly theatrical manner. At the same time, I had become frustrated with my attempts to explore some of the more exciting (to me, at least) contemporary performance issues by directing Shakespearean plays. My efforts seemed to me too often to be either timid or to employ unusual conventions more for the novelty than in order to accomplish a particular aim. I sensed that I would like to explore what some contemporary directors and critics refer to as a “confrontational” attitude toward the text rather than a more conventional “text-driven” approach (in which the director attempts to realize the concerns inherent in and supported by the text and to translate those for a contemporary audience). However, I realized that I didn’t really know how to go about it. I thought that if I could find models for the kind of approach I was groping toward, specifically Shakespearean models, I would be able to move forward.

I framed a series of questions concerning the question of “constraint”––what constraints, social, artistic, economic, and others, a director I might be interviewing was conscious of and how she or he dealt with them. Within that overall question, I framed other questions regarding the relationship of the director to Shakespeare’s text. I hoped to interview as many directors as possible after seeing their productions and possibly something of their rehearsal processes.

As it turned out, I was naive on more levels than I can even count.

Although I had developed what I thought was a credible proposal for an ACA Fellowship, including contacts I made with theatres and directors in the U.S. and Eastern and Central Europe (some old and many new), my proposal for funding the semester that Warren Wilson does not fund was turned down. I had not secured funding from other sources, so I was left with the decision to refuse the sabbatical or accept it for one semester only. I decided that a semester in the hand was worth two in the bush and took the one semester. The decision necessitated a radically revised plan: I decided that I had neither the time nor the funds for a truncated European study and that I would limit my study to U.S. approaches. I then reconsidered my reasons for designing the study in the first place. My choice, as I saw it, was either to a survey of the range of U.S. Shakespearean production, from the large, mainstream Shakespeare Festivals such as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (with whom I had already been planning a residency of some weeks) to the more exploratory regional approaches such as those of Shakespeare and Company in Massachusetts and Shenandoah Shakespeare in Virginia, to the more experimental approaches of various directors who, I hoped, would be mounting Shakespearean productions in the Spring of 2006. Finally, there were the “non-theatre” Shakespeares: prison workshops and park performances.

What, I asked myself, was I really after, given the reduced time and funds I faced? Strangely enough, I felt somewhat released by my reduced circumstances. Already I had worried that I might be taking on more than I could handle with a project of such scope; at the same time, I was becoming aware that perhaps the choice to focus on strictly Shakespearean productions, while giving shape to my study, wouldn’t really get at questions which were becoming of greater importance to me: Why produce Shakespeare at all? Why focus on a tradition and what has become a worldwide “industry” that seems, in this culture at least, to be a difficult means of creating a theatre of risk, danger, and immediacy? And weren’t those the the qualities I wanted for an enterprise which demanded so much effort? What, if anything, made doing theatre worth the effort?

I decided to touch some of the bases I had laid out, but not to touch them all or to be limited by them. I had already made some efforts, even before I knew my project was going to change: While attending a symposium at Davidson College in connection with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s residence there, I has spoken to one RSC director, who, when I asked, “Why do Shakespeare?” pointed out the obvious: “Well, that’s the question every production has to answer, isn’t it?” I also observed a workshop and keynote address by Cicely Berry, the foremost voice instructor in Anglo-American theatre, and I had the opportunity to ask her about American companies she admired. She mentioned only one that she worked with regularly: Theatre for a New Audience in New York. While I was quite interested in one of the two productions the RSC mounted at Davidson, Julius Caesar, I think I realized even then that the work of this world-renowned company, while admirable, wasn’t answering my questions. I also realized that I wanted to see new plays as much or more than Shakespeare; my focus on Shakespeare in the past had kept me from paying attention––beyond reading reviews and seeing the occasional play in Asheville––to contemporary playwriting.

I developed a long list of U.S. productions and workshops that I would try to get to. I decided to choose what seemed of the most immediate interest to me, whether or not it was Shakespeare. I couldn’t have made a wiser move: the non-Shakespeare productions I saw opened my eyes to more possibilities than would otherwise have been the case, and the Shakespeare-related work I saw allowed me to frame those original questions in a more productive context than simply “Shakespearean production.” Broadening my horizons also allowed me to include more of what I had seen before my actual sabbatical began into the frame of my study. For instance, during the previous summer and fall (2005), at the Spoleto USA Festival, Asheville’s own Stoneleaf Festival, and the Asheville Fringe Festival, I had been exposed to a number of productions and a workshop that I wouldn’t have otherwise considered part of this particular process. I included descriptions and reactions to these experiences in the weblog I now began keeping as part of my sabbatical activities: Contemporary Performances: A Sabbatical Blog (http://grahampaulblog.blogspot.com).

(By the way, it’s a good thing I made this blog the repository of my reactions to performances, books, theatrical experiences, and reading: As my sabbatical came to an end, the hard drive on my computer crashed. Of course, I had failed to back up my files ever since my sabbatical plans were truncated, and I lost everything that was stored on my computer, but not what was recorded on my blog.)

The most memorable non-Warren Wilson events of my pre-sabbatical period were these:
-- A performance at Spoleto of Mabou Mines’ DollHouse, a wonderfully risky production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, directed by Lee Bruer, who is now one of the elder statesmen of U.S. experimental theatre. One of the many things this experience taught me was that what seems outwardly to be a strange and excessive treatment of a classic can get at the heart of the material more effectively than might a more “respectful” and therefore more cautious approach.
-- A workshop in Asheville which combined two physical techniques, Grotowski and “Viewpoints” to great effectiveness. I subsequently interviewed Rebecca Holderness, who led the workshop, who recommended that I attend a workshop with Shakespeare & Company, advice I eventually followed.
-- A performance in Durham of Tiny Ninja Theatre Presents Hamlet, a one-man show by Dov Weinstein in which he presented a 75-minute Hamlet using an assortment of, yes, tiny plastic ninja figures, equally tiny video cameras and light sources, and his remarkable acting abilities. What I thought was going to be an extended spoof turned out to be one of the best productions of Shakespeare I’ve seen. I interviewed Mr. Weinstein after the performance, and one of the many memorable things he said was in answer to my question, “What would you never do in a production?” He said that, since his entire aim was simply to tell the story in the best way he could, he would never do violence to the story. That left me with something to think about in terms of “confronting” the text.

Once my actual sabbatical began, I was able to begin reading in earnest. I surveyed as much literature as I could regarding recent U.S. Shakespeare productions. But I also began reading Vacslav Havel, and his writings are what made the greatest impression. I plunged into Havel for a couple of reasons: I was embarrassed never to have read anything by this major Central European writer, thinker, and political revolutionary. Also, current political developments were finally beginning to shake me out of my artistic cocoon––fear will do that––and I suspected that Havel’s experiences under communism might, in some way, relate to what was happening to America in the post-9/11 period. Also, I wanted to read his plays.

Havel’s political writings, particularly his essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” affected me deeply. His idea of “living in the truth” made me think about my attitude toward political action, about the possibilities and limits of art under such circumstances, and about my own naiveté. I quickly realized that there were no simple analogies between Czechoslovakia under communism and America under Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, but Havel had some prescient things to say in the 70s about the West and where we find ourselves in the 21st Century. Havel’s plays are wonderful, and I’m glad to have read many of them; I may try to direct one at some point. All of his writing helps me to focus on the problematic question of the role of art, and of my art, in bringing about political change. This concern was one that continued to develop over the period of my sabbatical.

A few of the performances in Asheville I saw during this time (January-February, 2006) are worth mentioning because they seemed to be particularly relevant to the conversation I was having with myself. As part of the “Asheville Fringe Festival” I saw a multimedia performance by “Awk Theatre/Irene Moon and the Begonia Society” called Scientifically Speaking. The performer, a professional entomologist as well as a performance artist, combined a wonderfully strange acting style with the strangest “powerpoint” style presentation on insects imaginable. Watching it in a tiny nightclub venue, I began to remember why I like performance that upsets my expectations so much, and how much I value surprise when it is combined with a sophisticated sense of style as performed by an artist who knows exactly what she is doing.

I also saw two Hamlet productions worth noting at this time: One, by Aquila Theatre Company (performing at the Diana Wortham Theatre) was safe, uninspired, and singularly unimaginative, and served to re-confirm my bias against professional Shakespeare. The other, a high school production at the Asheville School called The Hamlet Experiment, was a not-very-successful attempt to re-imagine the play. Give the venue and the limited acting abilities of the students, I found it thought-provoking and admirable, though disappointing. The thoughts it provoked in me had most to do with directing choices that I recognized with painful clarity in my own work: attempts to be “different” without enough clear thinking behind them.

During this time, I started reading a book that would affect my thinking during this sabbatical period more than any other: Joseph Roach’s Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance, a study of ways in which English, African, and American Indian cultures influenced each other in the eighteenth century and in the present, focusing primarily on performance in London and New Orleans. Ideas in this book were to heavily influence a production idea I began working on in the latter part of my sabbatical. I also made an entirely non-sabbatical-related trip to New Orleans, the first time my wife and I had gone there to visit friends and family since Katrina. It was a disturbing experience, to say the least.

A period of travel followed. I attended one disastrous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. The director, Tina Landau, was an American director whose work I had been eager to see, particularly because of her close collaboration with another prominent American director in whom I have been very interested, Anne Bogart. Seeing Landau’s Dream was informative but depressing: It was an elaborate, glitzy, clunky production which leaned heavily toward Broadway slickness without any sense of irony or, apparently, intelligence. It didn’t even seem to be an experiment gone horribly wrong, from what I could tell. I left at intermission, which is an indication of the fact that I had decided by that time that, research or no research (and, by this time, “research” was becoming a usefully flexible term for me), I didn’t have to waste my time dutifully seeing schlock. Fortunately, later I was able to see Anne Bogart’s own production of Shakespeare’s Dream with her SITI Company actors, and that production provided a very interesting counterpoint.

The following night, I saw a production in New York which was, for me, one of those astounding evenings in the theatre which I will continue to think about for the rest of my life: The Wooster Group’s remounting their 1988 production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, with Kate Vaulk, one of the country’s most extraordinary actors and a white woman, playing O’Neill’s male, African-American protagonist. The production was as simple and spare (though fascinatingly layered) as Landau’s Dream had been elaborate. I had seen the Wooster Group perform in the very early eighties, and followed their work in the press, journals, and books subsequently, but I had not seen a performance for years: The Emperor Jones simultaneously knocked me sideways (perhaps it would be better to use Anne Bogart’s formulation of her response to great art: It stopped me in my tracks) and confirmed for me the fact that, in the right hands, certain theatrical principles articulated by Bertolt Brecht and developed by many others throughout the latter half of the twentieth century: Ideas of the power of de-familiarization, the virtues of simplicity and transparency and effortlessness, and what is possible by artists who deeply understand what they are doing. For me, the production was a perfect piece of theatre, and it reinvigorated my waning confidence in the power of the path I had chosen. Even if my reach constantly exceeded my grasp, it was good to know that there were those who could actually achieve what I dreamt of.

On my way from New York to Louisville, Kentucky, I had one of those serendipitous conversations that are so delightful: As I deplaned for a layover, a young woman who had been sitting behind me mentioned that she had been reading over my shoulder as I wrote an enthusiastic response to The Emperor Jones. She turned out to be a playwright and teacher, a friend of the Wooster Group and a former student and now colleague of Mac Wellman, long one of the leading experimental playwrights working today. We had an animated hour-long conversation about the current state of playwriting in America, and I left with my brain buzzing.

The final leg of this particular trip realized another long-deferred objective: I attended the Humana Festival of New Plays at Actors’ Theatre in Louisville. I saw seven plays in three days. All of them, good and bad, were worth seeing. I managed to accomplish another objective of mine (I sound like I was ticking off items from a list, but the experience was richer than that, believe me): I saw Anne Bogart’s SITI Company for the first time, in a new play by Charles Mee, Hotel Cassiopeia (and saw the same actors again some weeks later in Bogart’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream). While I was conscious the much of what I was seeing was more “mainstream” than I would have chosen were they not part of a package, I was glad to gain some kind of a sense of contemporary American playwriting and production. I also managed to pick up two issues of a journal called Play (actually an anthology of new plays) edited by Mac Wellman. It was full of fascinating texts that, more than anything I saw at the Humana Festival, gave me a sense of the possibilities of avant-garde playwriting (for reactions to the individual plays themselves, please go to the other postings on this weblog).

I returned to Louisville the following week (April 3) to pay a visit to Curt Tofteland, Artistic Director of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival but more to the point, director of “Shakespeare Behind Bars,” a long-running workshop/performance effort he has been conducting in Luther Luckett Correctional Complex. I accompanied Mr. Tofteland into the facility where I met a number of the inmates he works with and watched him conduct a workshop with them (they were between productions at the time). The workshop was a revelation in several ways. Tofteland used techniques if exploring the text closely related to those I would encounter later at Shakespeare & Company, in which the immediate personal connection between actor and text is of paramount importance, and he used them with people whose present circumstances and histories were stressful and violent. As I watched the inmates work on exercises and monologues (chosen because of particular relevance to their situation), and as I spoke with them afterward, I was struck with the seriousness of their intention to use the text to explore, communicate, and above all take responsibility for their current conditions and the experiences that had led them there. They appeared to me to be among the most honest actors I had yet encountered. They weren’t “acting” in the sense of creating an illusion when they worked on the texts, and they weren’t “acting” when they talked about the work and its importance to them. Later, in a longer conversation with Curt Tofteland, he told me that he began the work as an effort the find out whether theatre really had the power to transform lives, and that he was now convinced that it did have that power, at least for those who were doing it. I drove back to Asheville thinking hard about the fact that the most compelling Shakespeare I had seen was in a prison workshop where theatre itself was a means to an end––self-transformation––rather than an end it itself. (For a detailed description of the visit and workshop:

http://grahampaulblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/4406-visit-to-shakespeare-behind-bars.html)

I traveled again to the Northeast a few weeks after my trips to New York and Louisville to take part in a three-day workshop held by Shakespeare & Company. On the way from Asheville to Massachusetts, I stopped in Staunton, Virginia, home of Shenandoah Shakespeare, a theatre company I had been involved with to one degree or another over the past ten years. I had kept this company in mind from the beginning of my planning process, since I considered it one American company that was committed to exploring Shakespeare’s plays in a noncommercial manner. They have consistently pursued their goal, which is to present Shakespeare in a contemporary style but without technical support that would not have been available in the original Shakespearean playhouses––that is, without augmented sound and lighting, and with the audience and actors equally well-lit. Their current experiment was what they called their Actors’ Renaissance Season, two actor-centered productions created without benefit of a director. The project represented a continuation of their exploration in the application early theatrical techniques to contemporary stagings of Renaissance texts, in this case Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I was eager to see a production of ‘Tis Pity, and even more eager to see Shenandoah Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse, a reproduction Elizabethan/Jacobean indoor playhouse.
The theatre was spectacular in an intimate way, and a fabulous performing arena. The productions themselves weren’t groundbreaking or terribly risky, but they were a very refreshing change from the usual conventions of big American Shakespeare: professional but mostly young, enthusiastic actors performing in a way that focused on the link between performer and spectator and went a long way––in the best moments––toward realizing the possibilities of an authentically live, immediate event. Not as exciting nor as accomplished an event as the Wooster Group provided, but quite worthwhile, nonetheless. I also had a fascinating two-hour conversation with Jim Warren, Co-Artistic Director of Shenandoah Shakespeare about the development of the company, the workings of the Actors’ Renaissance Season, and the trick of creating a company whose work could be of scholarly as well as theatrical integrity while staying commercially viable in a small Virginia town. Fascinating.

I spent the next three days in a "weekend intensive" led by one of the main actor/teachers from Shakespeare & Company, one of the most respected Shakespearean theatre companies in the United States, at their theatre “campus” in Lenox, Massachusetts. I had been asked to memorize a speech from a Shakespeare play to work on, a piece of text which I felt had a personal meaning to me. Because of an experience the previous fall in which my wife, Amie, and I had participated in “Building Bridges,” a nine-week course in Asheville race relations which I had been thinking about ever since, I decided to explore my own feelings about racial difference by putting together some of Iago’s speeches from the first scene of Othello in which he tells Desdemona’s father that “even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” I won’t describe the workshop in detail (such a description can be found here) except to say that I found it intensely fascinating, moving, useful, and problematic all at the same time. I have always had a difficult time when acting technique veers to close to what feels like “therapy”––an attitude I think is one part common sense to two parts inhibition––and yet I found this work, which relied on the teacher working at least partly as an emotional facilitator if not therapist, very effective. The goal, as in all good text-based acting, I think, was to find the source of the actor’s need to be saying just these words at this particular moment in time, and to work from there. In the hands of a gifted teacher such as the person (David Demke) leading the workshop, an emotional release didn’t become an end it itself; it became a way into the text. I found myself having that rarest of experiences (for me), and “acting breakthrough.” And, yes, an emotional breakthrough, too, of a sort, in which I understood the distinction between finding my own voice and “acting”.

The experience was directly connected to my initial sabbatical goal (or part of that goal): finding a way that a performance of Shakespeare’s text could liberate and could be “dangerous” in the way that freedom and liberation can be. Especially when viewed in connection with Curt Tofteler’s work with prisoners, this understanding seemed to be getting me closer to where I wanted to be. At the same time, however, I felt a kind of frustration: the actor’s personal was not what I was most interested in. But it was perhaps an important step along the way toward creating the kind of “actual” (as opposed to “virtual” or ersatz) theatre event I wanted to be able to experience and perhaps create.

I left Lenox and spent the next two days in South Hadley, Mass., where two friends worked in different capacities at Mt. Holyoke College. I stayed with Jenny Pyke and her husband, John, former Wilson students, and also visited with Roger Babb, an old college friend and theatre colleague from my experimental theatre days. Talking to Roger about performance theory and practice is always an intense experience for me, and this time was no exception. I also visited his directing class and spoke with his students as they presented and critiqued original site-specific performance pieces.

This visit marked a turning point in my sabbatical activies, though I wasn’t quite aware of it at the time. I had begun to think less and less about Shakespeare and more and more about “performance”. I also had begun to think more and more about a creating a production which would deal with a parallel interest of mine that I had been reading about, the construction of white identity. I was developing an idea for a performance that owed a good deal to Joseph Roach’s Cities of the Dead. Interestingly, my reading of this and other theatre and non-theatre-related texts was moving me out of Shakespeare’s time and into the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. I had begun to look at Aphra Behn’s novella Oroonoko and Thomas Southerne’s dramatic adaption, and plays of the time that reflected the encounters with African and Amerindian peoples in the early British Empire. Most of all, I had begun to imagine a kind of deconstructed (if it was permissible to use such a passé term anymore) Oroonoko which used the visit of four Iroquois indians to Queen Anne’s court as a context, an event I first learned about in Roach’s book. Now I began to work on such a piece in earnest.

I returned to Asheville, where these new ideas and the attendant reading, as well as a growing interest in performance used consciously as a vehicle for social change, began to consume most of my time and interest, but I wasn’t quite done with Shakespeare yet. I drove to Montgomery, Alabama, to see a performance of the SITI Company in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Anne Bogart, and I spoke with several of the actors after a post-performance discussion. The performance was remarkable in many ways––not least for the fact that the production was originally comissioned by the San Jose Repertory Theatre and now was being invited to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, two very “mainstream” regional theatres––and struck me as probably closer to standard approaches to Shakespeare anywhere but in the U.S. and maybe the U.K.; here, however, the choices seemed “avant-garde” (and, after all, Bogart’s company is seen as one of the leading experimental theatres in the U.S.).

I won’t describe the performance here, as I have quite a detailed description of it, and of my reactions to it, elsewhere (the May 14 post to my blog), but I will say that it raised new possibilities and problems for me in regard to acting and directing Shakespeare: In many ways, it realized the imaginative and very physical approach to Shakespeare I imagined I would see when I was planning to go to Eastern Europe, and it did so in an American theatre with work by an American company (though one with very strong roots in Suzuki’s contemporary Japanese training), which was something of a revelation. At the same time, my reaction to it was much less enthusiastic than my reaction to, say, the Wooster Group’s Emperor Jones. Did my sense that the performance was not “eventful” for me in the way I had hoped it would be arise from the fact that it was “Shakespeare” or was I just seeing acting that didn’t realize its possibilities? In other words, how much did the shortcomings I perceived––the lack of immediacy I felt while watching the performance––have to do with the material and its traditions, and how much were they the result of directing choices and acting technique? These are questions that I still haven’t resolved.
I could end this account of my sabbatical activities with this performance, which would make a neat package but wouldn’t reflect reality, because the focus of my interests were moving in new directions; as a result, my “sabbatical activities” continue still. However, I will briefly mention some further activities in bullet form (some of my research notes survived the loss of my hard drive and can be found on a second weblog I began in April of ‘06: Graham Paul’s “Oroonoko Project” (http://grahampaulwhitenessproject.blogspot.com).

1) Reading: As I have mentioned, much of my reading now was focused around the project I was planning and falls into three general categories: original and secondary material (including travel accounts, contemporary histories, and plays) about late seventeenth and early eighteenth century English colonialism in North and South America, the English slave trade in Africa, accounts of slave uprisings and other rebellions and Indian wars; a certain amount of reading (hardly exhaustive) in the field of white cultural studies, dealing with questions of the formation of white identity and its current characteristics; performance as a means of direct political and indirect action, including street performance, site-specific performance, and community-based theatre.

2) Conversations: Three examples of conversations (other than those I have mentioned already) that strongly influenced my thinking during this time come to mind. I met frequently with Ron Bashford, my sabbatical replacement as Theatre Chair, when I was in town, and I found these wide-ranging discussions on performance, directing, and acting extremely illuminating. I also met with Peter Carver, and Asheville director and teacher about his experiences in conducting prison workshops in theatre and playwriting (I had previously participated in a reading of a play written by one of the inmates he worked with). I also conducted email and live conversations with Warren Wilson colleagues Carol Howard and Philip Otterness about the project I was developing.

3) Workshops and conferences: I attended a few classes of a promising workshop in Suzuki actor training technique combined with Shakespearean acting held in Asheville before it died due to the conflicting schedules of the few of us attending; I hope to follow up with this teacher if possible. I also attended, for the first time, the Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting and Conference, a gathering of a number of community-based theatre companies and performers which occurs each year in the Asheville area. I have an extensive reflection on my participation in this conference on the August 13 posting to my sabbatical weblog; the three days of workshops, discussions, and performances I participated in and witnessed were fascinating and contributed heavily to my thinking about my own work as a teacher, director, and sometimes performer, and how it relates to my responsibilities as a member of the body politic. This is an area that seems to occupy (or preoccupy) more and more of my thinking these days. This conference was also absolutely critical to the planning for my First Year Seminar that was already well underway, and took me right up to the beginning of the Fall semester and the ostensible end of my sabbatical.

But, of course, there’s no clear end to this kind of thing; time just runs out.

NC Shakes. Fest's "Shrew"

Quick notes on North Carolina Shakespeare Festival's production of The Taming of the Shrew:

(Took "Shakespeare in Performance" class.)

Good, funny, relatively unchallenging and therefore relatively problematic production. Acting strong overall (great to see Graham Smith back; played Gremio and had all the students talking about how great he was--and he was). Costuming basically kind of Rennaisance to Cavalier (I think) and worked. Lighting less successful. Set: Used their basic unit set with upper gallery usually to good effect (the scene-played-between-upper-gallery-and-stage business perhaps a bit overused but nice).

Style was broad commedia-inspired for the most part. No masks or broad acrobatics (but moments of broad comic physicality), but characters were strong commedia types (again, Graham Smith as the Pantaloon was wonderful). At first I worried they would be trying too hard to be funny; then I sat back and just laughed. Lucius Houghton was also back in the small Gremio role--not brilliantly inspired but very, very good.

Struck by how much of the play is not Kate & Petruchio, which was good because their scenes became progressively less satisfying to me, while the other business became progressively funnier. Kate was good: Strong, broadly drawn shrew (she's often eating--an apple in first scenes--very aggressively, which pays off in the starving business): she's angry and frustrated with good reason, and apparently deeply unhappy, too. But played very broadly. Petruchio was exaggeratedly but believably macho, which worked well--not so broad that you could dismiss him, and very recognizable. The initial Petruchio-Kate scene played very well: very aggressively erotic and physical--a real battle between them, charged with the kind of eroticism that comes from fighting. Good. However, as Petruchio developed, he softened, and his voice literally softened until by the end he was difficult to understand (throughout, to a degree, but it got worse). More than that, the development of the relationship didn't quite work. He had moments of surprise that his "taming" worked so well, and I think he was going for a kind of ambivalence or regret (?) but expressed by dropping the voice and throwing away lines rather than using the words. As for Kate, I didn't quite get her transformation. It happens, as it must if it's going to anywhere I guess, in the "sun and moon" scene, and I got what she was trying for, I guess, but I didn't buy the shift from grudging acceptance ("I'll do anything just to get food or get to Padua") to embracing the game with him. Therefore, her speech at the end--and their relationship by that point--seemed to lack the depth it needed if the story was going to be about two people who matured past the power struggle into genuine loving playfulness.

Still, it worked to the degree that I found the end quite disturbing--because Kate (and the play) seemed to be saying, "Yup, that's how it should be: let the man rule the roost," in spite of probably trying for something a bit more nuanced. Then they tried to finesse it with a happy dance.

So I had trouble--how could you not have trouble with this play?--but enjoyed the performance quite a bit. And yet, I felt distanced from it and from Shakespeare. Looked around the audience at one point and thought, "It's a good play that is speaking to these people (or entertaining them, at least), but they're also pleased to be "at Shakespeare" and participating in the endless endorsement of our triumphant culture. Bothers me more than ever before.

8/13 Reflections on Alternate ROOTS

I just attended the Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting, held every year here in Asheville--but the first time I've attended. Otrabanda was one of the founding theatre companies in this network, which is now devoted mainly to community-based artists & companies, something I find myself more interested in than in the past. Anyway, I met two old Otrabanda New Orleans friends: MK Wegman, who was Don Marshall's assistant at the Contemporary Arts Center, who runs the National Performance Network out of New Orleans (she's still there). It was terrific to see her. I also attended a workshop about Katrina stories and spoke briefly with John O'Neill; I mentioned Otrabanda, and he asked where everybody was now. At the moment, he's part of a group of Gulf Coast artists performing an evolving piece called "Uprooted: The Katrina Project". It was quite a performance, especially John's role. I also mentioned Otrabanda in a group which included Linda Parris-Bailey, who directs the Carpetbag Theatre, a company that has been in Knoxville for a long time and who I knew nothing about till recently (shame on me). Her eyebrows went up: "Oh, Otrabanda". Which was nice. Her group is involved in something they call the Digital Story Project: they teach kids (and adults) how to use digital content to create documents telling their stories, working with the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley. I went into their studio at this gathering and there were TEN MACBOOK PRO COMPUTERS with teenagers on them going at it! They got a terrific grant (don't know who from) for good equipment. Linda said the project was a natural outgrowth of their performance work, which involves gathering stories from the community, and that they were using more digital content in their own live performances, too, naturally. Very interesting.
------------------

Here's a bit of a breakdown on who else I met and what else I saw:

Jump-Start Theatre, out of Austin:
I attended a workshop led by S.T. Shimi, co-Artistic Director. Missed the warm-ups (think they were Viewpoints-related) and observed one and participated in two exercises in creating performances using Anne Bogart-style techniques.
1) solo: given sheet of text selections and asked to pick one or fragment of one; instructions were to de-construct the text in some way (what that means to you), choose performance spot, use piece of clothing in unusual way, take 10 minutes to create and 1 minute to perform.
2) duo: same text sheet, pick two pieces but one had to be by George Bush (helped to limit choices), list of instructions included travelling, rhythm, one element of earth/air/fire/water, fall down, reversal, 2 languages, something silly, 20 minutes to prepare, 2-3 minutes to perform; worked with African-American performer (don't remember his name); we worked well together, had fun performing it.
3) ensemble: instructed to put three duo pieces together in some way; 15 minutes to prepare; extremely difficult though all trying hard to collaborate well--not successful outcome but informative.
Used the "critical response" way of talking about work, but without final step of "what to work on" (my words); I'll use the system but wanted to ask about missing step. Very, very useful work. Obvious, but reminded me that this is how I can begin my FYS work with students.

[Liz Lurman's Critical Response system (check JumpStart's website): 1) What worked, what did you like; 2) What questions do performers have for spectators; 3) What questions do spectators have for performers (careful to make them real, neutral questions); 4) suggestions for improving. To avoid repeating comments, group signals agreement with a comment usually by snapping fingers.]

------

Carpetbag Theatre (Knoxville) and Center for Digital Storytelling (Berkeley):

Talked to Linda Parris-Bailey and Marques Rhyne from Carpetbag and Andrea Spagat and Gail Nicholls-Ali from CDS; observed them working with teenagers on laptops who were on day 2 of creating their video pieces using Photoshop Elements and other applications (iMovie, I suppose, but also Final Cut Pro). Linda was eloquent about how the decision to go in this direction was a natural extension of what they've always done: help people in the community tell their stories. She said the company is working with digital content in their own live performance pieces, too. I was very impressed with Linda--she's obviously a powerhouse and Carpetbag was one of the original ROOTS companies. Silly not to have been in touch with them all this time--hope to get to Knoxville with students--they're hosting "Show What You Know" festival in October, bringing in other groups as well as showing local work. Check their website (http://www.carpetbag.org). CDS has a great "cookbook" online for doing this stuff (http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf).

The process, which went on for five days, involved writing a script, making notes on the script about the kinds of images to use, recording a voiceover of the script, gathering images (scanned, from web, shot digitally) into "rough" folder, manipulating images in Photoshop, and then putting it all together: editing, animating, synching sound. Gail talked about the difference between "explicit" and "implicit" and the fact that images didn't need to reproduce explicitly what the words said. Good stuff.

The kid's work (shown Sat. night) was all terrific, but some of them really got creative about digital/audio manipulation and coordination. Later Gail told me she had meant to tell the audience something along the lines of how we don't have to worry about the future if we can just turn these kids loose with the right tools.

-------

Sat in on meeting of our local ROOTS region (NC, TN, KY). Lots of talk about need for communication and getting to each other to support the work. I suggested Stoneleaf (my big mouth). I find myself wondering about the organization, if it has--as Cohen-Cruz indicates in her intro to "Performing Communities"--somewhat lost direction. So much emphasis on praise and support is absolutely necessary, I know, but seems like there can be criticism, too (I was around far too little to get a real sense of the overall dialogue).

--------

Listened to a fascinating presentation ("Interventions and public gestures") by Rajni Shah, a London-based performance artist. Most exciting event I attended (for me) because she was addressing exactly the issues I'm interested in regarding the "intersection of art and activism" (slogan of ROOTS) with an emphasis on the formal aspects of the art. She showed a video of one of her pieces, which took place in a gallery-like space--not the direction she wants to go, and then she talked about a number of U.K. performance artists doing interesting work. She gave a handout with several listed:

The Lab of Insurrectionary Imagination (Lab of ii). Many videos online (13 Experiments of Hope) of work by Richard Dodomenici, Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, Lab of ii, Yomango, The Permanent Assembly Against War, etc. She also gave me a hard copy of an absolutely fascinating article that I think is on their website: "In the Footnotes of Library Angels: A Bi(bli)ography of Insurrectionary Imagination" -- just loaded with references to other articles, etc., and terrific in its own write.

Rajni then asked if we wanted to imagine (and perhaps perform) "interventions" of our own. She gave us each a piece of paper and asked us to write or draw something we'd like to see during the Annual Meeting. Then she had us fold them in an interesting way of our choice and put them in a hat; we picked one out (not our own), looked at it, and then were asked to describe something it suggested to us that we'd like to do (possible or impossible). Then, after this process, she gave us some of her criteria for an intervention:
An intervention should: 1) be at heart a gift; 2) be something you believe in, and also challenge your usual way of working; 3) open a window to change without imposing any particular viewpoint or argument; 4) respect the space and expression of others, seeking permission where appropriate.
She also noted that it's not necessary to always be joyous! It's ok to create disturbing images, which can be gifts as well (in response to the prevailing sense at this gathering, I think, to support, celebrate, affirm).
Great process. I became INTENSELY aware of my own sense of inhibition and fear of performing in this way. Interesting. Want to use it for class.

Finally, we went outside where [ ] (can't remember his name; teaches vaudeville at Swannanoa Gathering, but I don't know him) was doing an intervention: he was seated in an easy chair, apparently sleeping, hat pulled low over his eyes; on a table beside him, he had a sign: "Emergency Nap Intervention: Bush is still in the White House, Lennon is still dead, and I just want to sleep" (or something like that); "write a note giving me a reason why I should wake up," and he had a pen and post-it notes. People had written notes and stuck them to him. Example: a teen-age girl (apparently) wrote "Good Great Sex!" and stuck it on him.

-------

Walked out of a couple of things: one, what I thought would be a discussion of "the intesection of art and activism" started with asking the group to write words or pictures of "what freedom means to me" and speak, sing, or dance, or show. I thought, this is too dumb for me, and snuck out. Things like that.

---------

A "performance" where kids showed what they had been doing in an acrobatics workshop during the week. Human pyramids, swinging them up in the air and standing on supporting hands, that kind of thing. For some reason, it was intensely moving. It was performing at its best: children absolutely being there, proud, scared, excited, putting themselves on the line. It struck me as the best, most valid performance I had seen.

--------

A "story circle" workshop led by John O'Neill and the Katrina Project people, in which we were asked to break into small groups of 4 or 5 people, tell each other stories (could be about or not about Katrina, but they all had to do with our response to the disaster in some way) which weren't supposed to exceed 3 minutes, then take a minute to just look at each other and reflect on their stories, then a "cross-talk" session of responding to each others' stories, and finally 5 minutes to make a piece which somehow incorporated them. Some of the performances were interesting but none were amazing, of course; almost all seemed to involve moving in circles in some way (we spun in a group circle repeating phrases we had come up with in response to the stories); on involved individuals each coming to audience members and whispering something and bringing us onto the floor ("out of dark comes light; so move" what what I heard and repeated). Anyway, it was interesting but all pretty obvious--as how could it not be. Made me think (as I thought again during the Katrina performance that night) of the difficulty of performing a response to a cataclysm like that, and how it invites clichés which we hesitate to label as such. But I liked it.

--------

The closing evening performance session (Saturday night) took place in the chapel, a large rectangular space with folding chairs and a cement floor (with dance floor taped down). Some great stuff:

The children (and teens) being presented and doing some movement stuff--6 or 7-year-old leading a large group movement which included adults, the teens doing a movement and/monologue piece which was angry and angsty but fine, a couple of teens just presented and praised for working and leading.

A video presentation of all the digital stories created by the kids in the workshop. Many were very basic (though all impressive) and some more imaginative--but all were very effective and personal statements from the creator, real assertions of what was important. One funny and effective one: the young woman (all had voice-overs of the creator telling the story) told of all the accidents that had happened to her, some life-threatening, some not, and after each one she would say--and the words would be superimposed--"I know I'm here for a reason." The "reason" could be anything or something she didn't know yet, but it was good.

Two young white women (in the 20s?) performed outside during intermission. They seemed to be visitors, not connected with a group or even ROOTS but doing childcare. Anyway, they danced with flaming torches while friends drummed and sang (I joined in on "Aiko Aiko") and managed not to set their long hair or scanty costumes on fire--quite professional and accomplished, actually. When I got back to my seat, they guy next to me said wryly, "Well, every group should have its sprites," which captured it exactly.

A performance of several dance numbers by the teenage dance company Moving in the Spirit (which sounds religious but isn't as far as I can tell). Four women, all very good and two outstanding. Many of the pieces were "modern dance" with the kind of aesthetic abstract movement that implies and which I don't particularly care for, but one of the pieces (which was created for adults and then set on--and changed by--these dancers) was done with 4 chairs and was amazing, just amazing: sharp, angular, angry, surprising, difficult, stunning. Very little of the "dancey" stuff. About Southern women who are expected to smile and say "yes" all the time.

Finally, "Uprooted: the Katrina Project"--a performance by a group of 10 Gulf Coast artists which I believe was still evolving and which they were also touring. The project is supported by ROOTS. It was well-performed, and had moments of real power, as well as moments (speeches, movements) that were very clichéd. John O'Neill's character--dressed in a white seersucker suit and cloth cap and carrying a large umbrella, was very strong: mostly he just chuckled and laughed and crossed the stage very slowly, but in his one speech he introduced himself as "Legbah, or Baron Samedi" and said that when you were at the crossroads and had to make a decision to do something (or to do nothing, which is also a decision), well, there he'd be. That evil laugh.

-----------

A final thought: The most extraordinary thing for me was to be with a large group of people, artists, performers, most of whom were not white. And the fact that it seemed extraordinary spoke volumes to me about how circumscribed and impoverished my relatively segregated life is. I don't think "diversity" is a particularly helpful concept here, because it sounds like an ideal, something that's supposed to be good for you like organic food. I mean the sensation of life as thick instead of thin, viscous instead of watery, bumpy instead of smooth, and often loud and raucous instead of quiet and well-behaved. Gimme more of that.

7/20 Reactions to "Butoh & Beyond"

7/20 Brief thoughts and reactions to “Butoh and Beyond”, BeBe Theatre, Asheville (curated by Julie Becton Gillum):

Six different (very different) butoh pieces, many performers; interesting how I reacted to each of them, very subjectively categorizing them as to who seemed to be able to “do it” and who didn’t (me not even really knowing what “it” means in terms of technique, only in terms of how they reached me or didn’t). Actually, I think “it” means being totally present and totally exposed. I think Julie is almost always that way when she performs: somehow, she creates an open image by appearing to be totally possessed by the character; yet “character” is the wrong word. But it’s no longer Julie, either. But whatever it is, it is so exposed and available that it sucks me right in even when I am repelled by the grotesquerie.

I keep thinking of Grotowski (early) talking about the actor as sacrificial victim, choosing to undergo something for us (not the same as performing for us). Butoh is really pure Artaud, I think...

Not everyone seems to be able to do that, and some of the performers weren’t able or chose not to risk it all. They were “representing” something rather than inhabiting it. They were playing it safe (even though I’m sure they wouldn’t agree). Probably what I would do if I were to try butoh. Though maybe it has everything to do with training.

Two other performers seemed to be at Julie’s level, though I responded differently to each of them. One seemed to me to be doing it all, and I was drawn in to a degree, but most of the time I found myself watching him go through something without caring so much. I admired what he was doing but was uninvolved. In the end, it seemed masturbatory.

The other performer really seemed to have the same “transparent” quality. Even lightning fast changes of expression were authentic, were really reflections (not representations) of something she was undergoing. Though her piece seemed to contain butoh clichés (or conventions, I guess you’d say), it worked for me.

Then there was one other performer who upset all my neat theories. When she began, I thought she was extremely representational, playing characters, unauthentic, dancey even (she played against projections of Katrina victims, lots of very strong images). However, while images of New Orleans alternated with old-fashioned stills of black stereotypes from old films (I think), she blacked her face--she was African-American--and proceded to perform an amazingly disturbing parody of white stereotypes of black people (minstrelsy) which included hip-hop and very eroticized images. The funny thing was, it seemed to me to be absolutely authentic, maybe because it was performed with such gleeful rage, and her eyes we glued to her white audience. I felt absolutly complicit in the performance, absolutely accused. Incredible.

I found these performances fascinating and provocative (still not tired of butoh, I guess), in part because they seemed to get right at the question of what is going on in performance. Who is the performer and what do I want/expect of her/him? What is the relationship between performer and character? Between performer and spectator? What is communicated? Where does meaning lie? Why does it succeed and why does it fail? How can something actual be made to happen in a performance situation?

7/17 Notes on meeting with Peter Carver

7/17 NOTES FROM MEETING WITH PETER CARVER


Met at City Bakery. Talked for three hours! Great conversation!!

PRISON WORK:

His work in prisons (one in Mitchell/Avery counties? another one in a different location) is through the UNCA Distance Learning program (Elaine Fox)

Scott Walters and Laura Facciponte have been teaching in prison, and Rob Bowen doing it now. (all UNCA Drama Dept. folks)

In both cases, project became making a play with one of the inmates as playwright. In first case, authorities prevented performance at last minute, demanded that script be stripped of all bad language and violence, then never let it go on even bowdlerized; in second case, Peter didn't try for public performance--just did a reading with the members of the class and one invited guest.

Peter now asking if he can teach a playwriting class to formalize the process; waiting to hear which institution he'll be sent to.

Talked about seeing "culture of violence" that prisoners come from--how far from that culture we are, how little we know, how enthusiastically they respond to violent images in plays, etc.; how he gained trust partly just by his obvious dedication, returning week after week; teaches one three-hour (two-hour?) session per week for 16 weeks; at times gruelling; would begin by showing half of a recent, good film (much better quality than they usually get, but then administration told him had to be PG-13 rated); first group started out numbering 16, ended up about 12 when those not really interested dropped out--still a large group.

Talked about how into it most of the prisoners became, how excited they were when they thought they were going to perform (and how the performance being cancelled confirmed their expectations of the administration), and--most interestingly--how much they enjoyed the idea of performing, of being seen.

Contrary to Curt Tofteland, Peter said he didn't expect that doing theatre was going to fundamentally change the people he worked with; for him, what was most important was that they be heard, that their story get told. That's why getting the script out (public reading at Arts Council) was vitally iimportant even after performance cancelled.

Peter seemed to have far less cooperation from prison administrations than Curt found (Curt had allies in high places as I recall). His sense was that, with a few exceptions, prison staff not at all interested in rehibilitation issues, only punishment. Didn't want prisoners to "get away" with anything; mistrusted prisoners and Peter himself (what's in it for him?)

Possibilities: 1) bring Peter to WWC to talk to theatre students (and others);
2) talk to Scott, Laura, Rob about their experiences;
3) contact Jane Sobie who is interested in working with teenage girls in prison;
4) take Peter up on his offer to join him for one teaching session;

Peter said there seem to be a number of Asheville theatre folks interested in doing prison work; maybe something collaborative can come of it. Keep talking.

OTHER MATTERS:

Peter brought one of his AB Tech. productions to Reed Center. They have pretty active program there (talk to head: Levonne Griffin, 350-2048; good person)--could be a good "test audience" for Oroonoko Project or FYS projects.

Good person to contact: Lloyd Weinberg, AB Tech's Service Learning person. Taught jazz at UNCA for a long time. Knows a lot of local groups/organizations (mentioned a group of war veterans who meet weekly as one example).

Mentioned two guys at AB Tech doing digital media--I should check them out.

Book to check out in UNCA Library: Medea Project (working with female prisoners)

Website of local guy doing multi-media in spheres (MountainX story?): themap.org

Scapegoat Theatre (Karen ?) local group did The Exonerated; tried & failed to get it into prisons, but she's interested in doing more...

New Orleans connection! Peter went to UNO and worked for Asheville Lyric Theatre. Also worked closely with Buzz (went to Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival with him to do a Henry V--incredibly boring state but a great production). Also knew Dane Rhodes and other folks.

reactions to: bobrauchenbergamerica (7/12, Asheville)

Reactions to final dress rehearsal of local production of Charles Mee's bobraushenbergamerica
July 12, 2006
North Carolina Stage Company (Catalyst Series)

directed by Treavor Gouge and Amy DeGiralamo

What I liked most about this production was first, that these people decided to do this very interesting play (first in the four-part series, second of which is Hotel Cassiopeia), and second, that they didn't do too badly with it. It wasn't the visual feast that it would have been with the SITI Company, but it also didn't have that annoyingly self-conscious, self-congratulatory presence. The actors weren't bad--some were quite good in a conventional sense, though they lacked the sense of space and physical control they needed (most annoyingly, they didn't know how to hold still, nor to use stillness--except the woman playing Bob's Mother). But they connected when they needed to connect, and they found a simplicity that worked more often that I would have thought.

I was a little disappointed to discover that Mee suggests most of the non-verbal actions that I had thought were found by the actors and director. (His scripts are online: http://www.charlesmee.org/html/plays.html.) Looking at the script, I think this production didn't take the kinds of chances that Mee seems to be asking for. However, what might have been the most "alive" moment for me was invented (Mee calls for a 600 piece brass band, or a bagpipe): a man came onstage with a saw and bow, sat, the cast gathered to watch as he played "The Star Spangled Banner" on the saw (excellently). It was just great, mainly because it was exactly what it was. And it sounded wonderful, of course.

I think I like the play more than Hotel Cassopeia. It doesn't have that "twee" quality (though that had much to do with the lead actor in the SITI production). It's a very different play, though in the same non-linear style. Actually, this play was much less obviously connected to the artist, less representational, more of a collage (both plays seem to be constructed to mirror the style of the artist). Whether it's the script or the production, I think it was too long and seemed to rely too much on a series of monologues toward the end, one after another. And--although it seemed long and a bit shapeless toward the end--I kept thinking that it needed more stillness, more space to breathe.

Moments I remember well:
-- playing national anthem on saw
-- man welcomes us (halfway through) and says he'll talk about how the show was put together; but then we realize that the "show" he's talking about is a gallery opening and he's the curator.
-- and then the art show (which makes a point of saying anything can speak of the point of view of the person who made it, and be valued for that as art) turns into a yard sale just by the Mother putting tags on all the objects on stage--which relates back to her saying earlier that her grandmother's possessions were all gotten rid of at a yard sale, when she would rather have thrown them against a wall to see what they made broken up.
-- look and attitude of Ryan as pizza delivery guy/murderer: geeky, innocuous, totally alienated from the act he tells about.
-- actress eating cupcakes as she talks through her full mouth about trying to find love: great idea and very well-acted.
-- contrast between frenetically joyful squaredancing/clogging interrupted by actor getting shot, followed by another actor telling chicken jokes.

Other thoughts: Made me think (as every performance does these days) about whether anything was really happening for me, even as I enjoyed the performance more than many. Mostly: no. What do I want from a performance? Just to be amazed, gobstopped, to have my life changed (if only for a time). Is that so much to ask?

Reactions to "The Accidental Activist"

6/13 Reactions to The Accidental Activitist

OK, so I just watched this dvd, The Accidental Activist, an expertly produced video of a one-woman show by one of the woman who conceived "The Lysistrata Project". My reactions are mostly negative but I want to analyze them a bit. As a solo theatre piece, the form was predictable and mostly boring, the usually "this is the story of me" business; as acting, it seemed to me to be utterly false (except occassionally when she was playing someone other than herself, which is interesting), a real example of "look at me, I'm acting, oh, look at me now, I'm feeling really deeply" (only it was all indicated); as a political statement, it seemed difficult to argue with, strong, and, in the end, sentimental--which undercuts most of the good stuff, to my mind. I'm probably being more critical and negative than the piece deserves, but it makes me made and makes me cringe, all at the same time, because it wasn't about the war and the victims of war, it was about her.

Of course, what have I done?

On the positive side, I guess you could say that the piece was actually completely honest, because she was absolutely demonstrating herself. She is that showbizzy actress (I guess). Well, maybe not, maybe she was characterizing herself, because in the two extended scenes in which she played other women, she actually seemed like quite a good actor, if in a quite conventional sense.

But the paradox that I really want to get at is the fact that, as she demonstrated herself and "re-stored" or reproduced behavior from her stories, the style seemed to me to rob the event of authenticity. She wanted us to believe that she was really talking to us, that something was actually happening at the moment, but it wasn't. Somehow, not even the reproduction (storytelling) was actually happening (granted, this was a video of a live performance). Her talking to us was supposed to be real and wasn't; her acting out of other characters (when it was developed) was far more authentic because it was clearly artificial. In other words, the same old paradox.

So I think part of the lesson, as far as creating a performance piece, is this: heighten the artificiality and avoid any suggestion that the fictional event is "really happening". Only then will it be real. I need to remember this the next time I try to write a scenario. And avoid sincerity at all costs. It's only the most basic idea in theatre, the one I pretend I've been trying to teach all this time.

Oh, and one more thing about her piece, the "content" part that really spoke to me: She satirized herself as only able to describe the result of the piece she wanted to make, what it would do to the audience, but utterly unable to describe what it actually would be. That seems to be pretty much where I am with this current piece.