Sharing

Last week, Jessica intoduced the group to a new forum for communication with on another. It is called a "Sharing". It works like this: Every member of the group has the same pre-designated amount of time to speak about whatever is on their mind; while one member is talking the rest of the group is tasked with remaining completely neutral to what is being said; everyone must use the entirety of the time on the clock, even if it is just to sit and breathe; no member is allowed to comment on or question what another member has said; if a person feels compelled to try to adress something that was said, they can talk to the individual at another time and request a discusssion, which the original speaker has the right to refuse, ending the matter entirely. A "sharing" can last anywhere from 6 to 60 minutes, depending on how much time is chosen per person. I have only very slightly mixed feelings about this process. Mostly, I like it and find it extremely valuable both as a safe way in which to express ones ideas and feelings to the group and as a personal challenge to listen without judgement or comment, be it internal or external. We've had two so far. The first was on Tuesday of last week. It was a planned affair with 5 minutes on the clock for each. The second was after our afternoon work session on Wed. I will freely admit that I was exptremely nervous before the first one on Tuesday. I was worried that it might turn into a mass venting of the considerable frustrations that had been reverberating around the room in our creation sessions of the previous weeks and that the limitation of not being able to respond in any way might serve to fan the flames of dischord, rather than salve them. I was wrong. In that first session, we all pretty much just said what we were each feeling about the process, life, and other details of our situations, unrealated to the project. I could feel, and some even said, that i was not the only one who was nervous. The result was a satisfying half hour of respect and, well, sharing. Wednesday afternoon was a little different. Sam called a sharing - which any member of the group can do whenever they feel the need - after a very tying work session on a scene conceived by me. We did three minutes each, and the tone was very different from that of the day before. Emotions were running high after the tumult of the afternoon and natuarally carried into the sharing. In some instances individuals were called on very specific aspects of their comportment in the group, and in others, blanket statements were made about desires for future working with no indication as to who was infringing on this particular aspect of the process. I'm not sure which was less comfortable. I felt more confused and frustrated after the sharing than before it, as i was not able to disipline my consiousness not ot analyse weather i thought someone was talking about me or not. And yet, there was something viscerally uncomfortable about hearing a person critisized for a way of behaving, knowing that they are not allowed to respond in any way. I'm used to discussing things in a clear and logical manner, and so this is tested my comfort zone in a particular way (not a bad thing). I haven't yet discerned which is the better approach: is it better to be as specific as possible about the who as well as the what of a concern, or should the whole group get the same note or the same challenge and decide for themselves if they need to be on the lookout for personal lapses in applying it. Hard to say. Looking forward to future sharings and to getting a finer point on my perspective of the process. 

Advil and the creation of creation

I am battling (granted much like a solider who refuses to fight due to lack of sleep) through a cold, so the past few days I have been on a steady dose of Advil cold and sinus.  Summer colds are the worst variety of the virus, if it were winter it seems applicable to the feeling sorry for yourself feeling that often sets in during those downy months.   Being doped on cold medication is much like being one and a half steps behind everything going on, luckily I don't have my driver's license or else Whitehorse might have been torn apart, - laundromats would be replacing their store fronts, the Super Store might have had to hire a security team, or the Yukon river might have been the proud owner of a ninety something Pathfinder; granted this could be the case even if I wasn't on the cold medication, I have a history of recklessness.

Anyway as I fought through the haze of both virus and dope this week I have come to understand what I believe to be the fundamental gain of this initial stage of the Devised Yukon Project.  As we have been discussing on this forum, Ker Wells worked with us for just about two weeks and gave us a glimpse into is "process" or "method" of creation.  The term 'method' later came up in discussions, and I am going to continue to use that term instead of process.  'Process' to me is the journey that happens when a method is implemented to generate work and thus formulate material, and is different everytime that method is tested.  What has become evident in a very tangible fashion this week is that this collective birthed by Sam and Jessica has no method.  YET.  But the sprouts began to show themselves.

When I look back at why I came to choose theatre over... well anything else I could have done neglecting the obvious brain damage I must have suffered at one time, and I look at the works that inspired me to make the leap into this line of work, the most pivotal work was produced by a creative team generating fresh work in a collaborative fashion.  Sure the team has been able to eventually publish the work they have created and garnered world renown, but they started the same as this collective, with an empty room and some possible exercises or experiments to mine or sift out a story to tell and an aesthetic to tell it. 

I have been relatively set on a goal of finding a story first in hopes that once we have a story or at least a hinge to begin discovering our aesthetic so that we can all have the same root to relate back to to make sure indeed we are serving the story as honestly as possible.  At this stage in both my own artistic development and what it seems Sam and Jessica hope to take away from these two months, I must let this ideal go.  This week, within a handful of hours, there was a clear juxtaposition of how the collective strategy can be utilized and in turn also can be exhausted and frustrated. 

There have been a number of directors that I have worked with where I have felt like I have failed.  Failed what?  Maybe I could say vision, maybe I could say idea, but what I will say is that I felt like I failed because I was never as good as what they saw in their head.  Sometimes in these incidences I have felt like the show would have been perfect if they had cloned themselves, dressed themselves in different costumes and done the whole play as an omni-bot.  These times have been the most unsatisfying experiences of my work history, my imagination and my presence felt needed only because cloning has yet to become an immediate and accessible science.  The collective faced one of those incidences this week, and not from a tyrant as I may have eluded to, but from one of the members who presented an ambitious idea that they were so excited by that they had fully formed a beginning middle and end without room for exploration and room for the rest of the collective's imaginations to be engaged.  This is so tricky.  I have a respect for those that can fully form both their vision and desired effect but it can feel on the inside that you are trying to fit yourself into a painting and not live a circumstance; and this was not to the fault of the member whatsoever, they were working from an honest place of inspiration and only wanted to contribute to the gathering of material.  Nonetheless it was frustrating and ended with tears and myself taking a couple of hours not saying a word.  This way of creation is not a method, it is human puppetry or paint by numbers with dull crayons and neglects, whether maliciously or innocently, the fact that everyone needs to breathe and that everyone needs to feel their imagination is of worth and contributes. 

What was integral about this experience, once the emotions had cleared, is that as a collective we started to sharpen our method by nixing an obvious failure of generation.  The shape that the idea finally took after we struggled through some hours of very little actual work may eventually be used in the future, but it became very clear why this approach is so deadly.  (Peter Brook talks about this realization very elloquently in that book of his The Empty Space - he talks about how his first day of rehearsal on a certain show he had shown up with a floor plan and figurines of each character and had mapped out every move of the play in his head.  After the first day he threw everything out.)

So today we worked very differently, though still with a member of the collective stepping out to guide or lead an exploration of an idea they had conceived.  Without getting specific, what happened was a serious of exercises and experiments that required the rest of collective to firstly be there, and secondly to contribute immediate and reactive imaginings of the idea/concept/vision being explored.

It is beginning to become clearer to me that a method in this work is a kit of exercises and experiments to tactically draw from to generate work and material, that both focuses the ideas or concepts that are to be explored, and also gives the collective body the liberty to breathe and imagine. 

Sometimes over the past few weeks we have been blindly throwing ourselves into knee-jerk improvs and odd games, but as we play with the formation of a method and the gathering of this kit of exercises and experiments it is a commendable process that this collective is working on:  we are discovering our method, our method of discovery, and once a method is found any story can built.

À droite toute

Merci Ker. Tu nous a botté le cul dans la bonne direction. 

Now what?

Nos dernières semaines avec Ker ont été si productives, que le groupe a comme défi cette semaine de garder le niveau d'énergie et de motivation aussi vibrant. Heureusement, nous semblons tous être prêts à redoubler d'ardeur pour rester sur cette bonne lancée. 

Cette semaine, Open Pit a pris un virage: Sam B Good a pris les rennes du projet en mains. Sans être le metteur en scène, il décide des choses à travailler, quelle approche adopter, il nous assigne des tâches précises, et assure ainsi la cohérence du portrait d'ensemble. Chacun garde son apport créatif, mais avec la présence d'un chef d'orchestre pour nous garder tous dans la même tonalité.

Depuis le début du projet, nous parlons de "collectif". En effet, le désir d'Open Pit est de rassembler les forces de chacun pour créer collectivement un morceau de théâtre qui n'est pas dicté par la vision unique d'un metteur en scène, ou d'un texte déjà écrit. Après avoir tenté de travailler sans aucune hierarchie pendant plusieurs semaines, on en a éprouvé les difficultés. C'est ainsi que Sam a prit un pas de l'avant pour le bien du groupe. C'est un grand changement dans la dynamique et le fonctionnement du groupe. D'avoir un guide permet de garder cette même liberté imaginative individuelle et cette même volonté de parler en tant que groupe, tout en aillant l'organisation nécessaire pour que nos idées se rendent saines et sauves jusqu'à vous. 

Après le départ de Ker, on aurait pu décider de rester dans notre routine de collectif et de continuer à tout gérer à six, mais on a changé de direction. Ça prend de l'humilité pour un groupe d'ajuster son tir et de s'adapter aux difficultés que l'on rencontre. De toute façon, une route qui va toujours tout droit, c'est plate. J'aime ça les virages.

 

you made me lose control

I'm vibrating. I feel like I've had an explosion of creative energy in the past three days. Maybe it's been on a slow boil for a couple weeks and now the pot is just exploding with bubbles falling all over the element.

Ker being here, big things. For sure. A lot of work on impulses, as Sam mentioned.

One of my favourite things we did with Ker was a very simple exercise that I think he called 'the square'. We form a square with each of us at one corner, creating a large playing area. One person enters the square and improvises movement. Other people come in and out of the square as they feel the impulse - they share a time of interaction with the person inside, and generally the first person leaves while the second person takes their action and the space to a different place. And so on.

But really, the only 'rule' is to follow each impulse as it comes up. I know this is what we're supposed to always do, but it really clicked for me in this exercise. I think because another rule is no judgement - don't judge your own action while you're in it, and don't judge the actions of others. If you don't have an impulse or can't think of what your next 'move' might be, stay still until you find something. No worries.

When you're in the square and someone else enters, you don't have to rush into the world they've created. And vice versa. When you enter the square you don't need to take on what the first person is offering. It's really interesting when people are in the space and aware of each other but don't run together to create the same thing.

Somehow this exercise feels a bit to me like all the best things about dancing alone in your room

  • all of your moves are awesome
  • you are completely in your own world
  • everything you do is right
  • you're free from the eyes/thoughts/judgements of others

So doing that really felt good to me. It helped my impulses make elbow room for themselves in my stubborn head. Which also helped in the other work we are doing. For me when I free my impulses I feel more confident to connect dissonant thiings together, so putting text from one story on top of movements from another story feels okay, feels exciting.

On this note of following impulses to put weird things together, I made something - really I just squeezed together things other people made - combining 'You Made me Love You' (Judy Garland) and 'She's Lost Control' (Joy Division).

One of the things we're working on right now is a big list of things that we think need to happen in the story we're telling. I think that there needs to be a waltz. I'm not exactly sure what that will look like yet or how it will feel - zombie waltz, love waltz, murder waltz, the last dance. Sam asked us to find source material that we can use as a jumping off point in creating scenes around these ideas. I thought of two different songs that I wanted to live together, and I'll use the audio and lyrics this week when I work with the collective to shape the scene.

Imagine Ian Curtis and Judy Garland waltzing together. I think he brings out the dark side in her.

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!

 

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.

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?

Open Pit Theatre is based in Whitehorse, Yukon on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation, and the Ta'an Kwäch'än Council. We are honoured to devise, rehearse, and perform on these lands.