The end of finding and the ramble of finding it.

Today we had our fourth run of, what I shall call, the presentation piece of Phase One of the Devised Yukon Project.  Although the project will continue for the proposed next two years, we have compiled a collage of our work that we have done thus far, loosely linking the snips together based upon themes of movement, text, or feeling, often finding the linkages after we have decided to put what pieces in what order.  This phase of this project has been the most gratifying and focused of our two months of development, and also the most challenging.

As blogged on this site, I have at times longed for a root or source,  so that we could have a focal point we consistently and constantly could refer back to and honour in order to measure our sense of truth to a story.  I am a sucker for artistic formula.  The classical five-act play structure and Stanislavski’s term “the science of acting,” are ideas that inspire me.  I like looking at the creation of theatre as a science first, that has hypothesized experiments with set variables, that when once fully tested, then and only then do we blow the whole thing apart and start to find freedom.

When I use the term source or root, I am not specifically refering to a script or a novel or a song or a writing on a bathroom wall.  It is the vision.  "Why are we doing this?"

This project has forced me to let go of that notion all together.  We have collectively embarked on creating a method of creating, a vocabulary for that process, a set of experiments based upon experimenting alone, and, the ultimate challenge in my mind, to discover the root piece that we honour instead of having that source already in place.  When you have a root that you are trying to serve, it is easier to find a foundation of vocabulary to check in on the progress of the development and the imagining of how it is shared, because there is something to rely on.  The source has a beginning, middle and end, and has it’s own voice and its own truth of one imagined statement, so there is already a basis of direction, whether or not there is a director.  What excites me about this process of creation is the idea of re-interpreting or re-imagining the cathartic response felt, or lack thereof, when confronted with the source, and turning that response (that inspiration) into something fresh, with a new set of voices.  This is different from re-telling.  Having a root is like having veins that you need to fill your blood with; re-telling is like trying to dress up as a blood cell and go along for the trip.

When we worked with Ker Wells for two weeks in an intensive-workshop style the group was introduced to Ker’s process of “material gathering,” which was a monumental thrusting point into this final phase of the collective’s work this summer.  Ker offered us challenges/assignments (variables) to bring in scenes or stories or movement sequences that were gathered and compiled with an inspired base.  For example; we brought in stories of loss, and what that meant to us individually; we brought in stories of characters that inspired us in some way; and the most mentionable and influential assignment on the project thus far was Jessica’s assignment to interview with a long route bus driver.  The assignments were based in the elements of story, something always needed to happen - change needed to occur.  Learning this skill of material gathering is what has helped harness this project at this juncture, and has assisted in reining in the fleeting and wonderful imaginations of the group, helping to find a focal point of creation. 

Material gathering, though, is different from serving a source.  Material gathering is like show-and-tell when it is not realized or utilized for a higher energy of story-telling.  Serving a source requires that after experiments are tried, and all materials are gathered, that they clinically be questioned and assessed and re-adjusted, in whatever way, to honour the voice of the source.  Once we implemented this gathering of material and started to see ideas brought in side by side, the piece began to take shape and we found our source.  

This, I believe, is what Sam and Jessica were hoping to find; their source, and I hope as the project continues in the following two years that these eight weeks of discovering the root were beneficial.  

- Shaun​

Labyrinth

An idea that I had long ago has finally found it’s testing ground.  With the generous support of the group I have been able to start to see the practicalities of what in my mind looks like it will be/could be amazing. 

I am going to go ahead and give it away, but essentially the idea is getting actors to play living walls as they move and form a transformative maze with scenes budding out of wall placement and not necessarily plot. Plot would help, granted.  Getting actors to play walls sounds degrading in a way.  I did a show once where I had to play inanimate objects like trees and the like, and at first it felt degrading but eventually I grew into liking it because I realized the whole effect was something magical.  I hope that this same effect is felt, where ever this idea goes. 

I was very aware when I started “shaping” this scene of the collectives’ arms and their need to be raised for an extended time.  What has ultimately been beneficial is getting a chance to bud this idea and learning that indeed the effect is worth exploring more, and that in actually trying to practice this, and just seeing actors holding fabric above their heads dancing around, I have learned what the structural design of the walls needs to be to both give the actors (walls) the most efficient and effective mobility, creating a comfort for them, as well as give the fabric the shape it needs to maintain a wall-like appearance and give it the possibility of becoming something other than a wall using in a moment’s notice.

The Labyrinth as a mythical situation fascinates because it is a microcosm of what life really is; we reach points in our journey that we can only see or feel so far ahead of us and the minute options of which way to go. – “Do I go this way or that, where will that lead us?”  And we make a choice (or we don’t and we just stand still) based upon that analysis.  And then we go, often second guessing every step of the way, until finally someone says just trust your instincts or your gut, and the whole thing is blown wide open.  

-Shaun 

rounding things out

Today we did our second full run of the show. It's clocking under an hour. Its slowed down five minutes as we come into it more. Felt really good today.

The work, the words, and the actions really do come from us - I always knew that, obviously, but there is something about everything on stage under light that strikes me. I feel myself in and around the piece, and I see other people's experiences and ideas coming out on stage, melding into this story pot we've concocted.

I've never experienced this before. It's deeply personal but it isn't about me. And somehow these showings of our work to date cause me more stage fright than I've ever felt. Shows I've acted in, sung in, danced in, shows where I really didn't know my stuff as well as I do now, the level of stage fright they induced pales in comparison. Jessica mentioned, and I agree with her, that it's because of how personal it is - not that the story is personal, but the effort is personal. So much of ourselves is involved. Offering that effort up to an audience brings up a lot of anxiety. 

I have a feeling that because my stories are lying there hidden under action, text, and an overarching story, they're somehow barely disguised and waiting to be discovered. But really, no one will ever see them. They're forming the fabric of something new, they're no longer decipherable as my own very personal offerings.

I feel like I should say something about process and reflect on my past posts.

Maybe a round up of some things I've learned -

• if you use your body everyday it will talk to you more than ever
• trying a million things on their feet and getting one good thing is easier than thinking a milion things through in your head - there is a certainty possible in seeing things moving that you can't always achieve on paper
• impulse is a beautiful thing to be followed - if the result of the impulse is wrong, or not the best thing for what you need, another impulse will tell you so
• sometimes you think something looks great from inside, and turns out it looks like shit from outside; that outside editing eye really can't be lost. I know this, we know this, but how easy to forget and fall in love with ourselves all the time
• words can be used so sparingly and still have so much affect (i.e., the penultimate - 'For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. We should all be so lucky.)

I suppose I knew all of these things. But now I know them more than ever, and now I understand better. If I run into these lessons again, or struggle, for example, with being too verbose, or ignoring impulses, some little part of my brain will say 'Sarah ... remember what you learned with Sam Bergmann-Good, Jessica Hickman, Shaun McComb, Adele Gigantes, and Genevieve Doyon...', and I'll curse myself because I have learned, and I can't go back to pretending I don't know certain things. I have practiced and pushed myself to a higher standard. Shucks.

I'm really proud of what I have done and what we have done together. I think you should come see it. Friday and Saturday, 8pm, and a special afternoon tea version on Saturday at 2pm. You bring the crustless cucumber sandwiches.

- Sarah​

Google Docs in play creation

It is the last week here at the Devised Yukon Project. We are in that exciting time when things are coming together; pieces which were seperate a week ago are now part of the same puzzle. It is also a dangerous time where we need to balance our desire to work hard and make great theatre with the knowledge that we will need energy to perform at the end of the week.

Jessica and I have been using Google Docs since the beginning of this project. It has been a fantastic tool. Here is how we use it.

Grant Writing

All of our grants for the Devised Yukon Project started in Google Docs. This allowed us both access to the same document at once. Jessica and I would often having meetings over the phone while writing and editing each others' work. That is until we found the chat features. This, along with the ability to comment on specific parts of a document, made the consolidation of ideas seamless. We could write sentences together until we found the exact right phrasing and we could proofread for each other.

Budgeting

Google Docs also has spreadsheets with the same sharing capabilites as its' documents. By putting our budgets in an easily accesible location I'm able to look up our numbers on the fly. I can update them and Jessica can see them the next time she checks the spreadsheet. We not only keep our full project budget on there, but we also have many running tallies where we can see exactly how much we have left to spend on different parts of the project.

We also use the spreadsheets for registrations, contact information and tracking RSVP's.

Script Development

We began the Devised Yukon Project with a Master Notebook. It was a repository for everything that was happening in the studio. Every idea, action sequence, or moment of dialogue was captured in the Master Notebook. I began noticing that people were prefering to keep private notes for themselves and then capture only specific things in the notebook. Gradually, use of the Master Notebook declined until we barely use it every day. Instead, we've moved our capture medium to Google Docs. We have documents which are shared with every member of DYP. This way we can all contribute to the documentation of the project at our leisure. It doesn't have to be in the studio in a physical notebook. We've collected lists of materials, different bits of dialogue and eventually our full working script made it up there. Because every bit of material was already online, creating the script was as easy as copying, pasting and formatting. Now, we aren't using formal script formatting, but there is a template you can use with Google Docs that will let you do that.

I just thought I would take some time to write about an internal element of our process. This isn't something you would normally hear about when one talks about creating theatre, but sometimes you need to make it easier to make things good.

- Sam​

A freak out.

I learned something very valuable about myself in rehearsal on Friday...

I freak out when:

• We are trying to create a scene that no one has a clear vision for.
• It is a scene revolving around me and I feel a pressure (from myself) to manifest something on the spot that will make it work.
• There are five voices shaping the scene at the same time.
• We don't know why this scene is needed.

That being said, my frustration in this situation did not in any way make it easier for the group or allow us to move past this road block.  It made it worse.   My impulses were shouting, "we shouldn't be using this text... this isn't going to work" and I immediately closed down.  This is something I need to work on as a collective performer. 

In a normal actor/director situation I would have held my tongue and gone along with it gladly because I would have trusted that the director had a clear vision for the scene.  It would have been my job in that situation to manifest what he/she was seeing in their head.   I get worked up when no one has a vision.   To me this is a clear sign that the scene is not working in it's current form and needs to be altered in some way. Or we need to come back to this scene when someone has a clear idea for it and can offer it to the group. 

It has been seven weeks, and this is only the second time that I have felt frustrated in the studio. 

Pretty good hey?

Here is a clip of a bus prologue we are working on.

 - Jessica

Sprint Final

Je ne vous apprends rien en disant que temps est élastique. Les minutes s'étirent parfois en heures, en semaines, en mois. Parfois, une année entière s'écoule en un souffle.

Pour Open Pit, l'élastique vient de péter.

Il nous reste une semaine de travail pour finir d'agencer tous les éléments qu'on a pondu au cours de 8 semaines de labeur. On roule sur un horaire serré et l'heure est à l'efficacité. Maintenant que nous avons le schéma narratif, toutes les scènes, les transitions, la musique etc... Il suffit de se l'approprier. Nous avons aussi des choix artistiques à faire. Qu'est-ce qu'on garde, modifie, coupe? À quel point voulons-nous expliquer notre histoire plutôt que de la montrer? Voulons-nous plutôt laisser la liberté d'interprétation au public? Viennent aussi les questions logistiques de production: costumes, éclairages, son etc...

Toutes ces questions arrivent tard dans notre processus, mais elles ne pouvaient arriver avant. Quand on décide de faire du théâtre différemment, sans texte, ni metteur en scène, il faut avoir les nerfs solides. Et des maudites bonnes jambes pour courir le sprint final.

 -Geneviève

learning how to drive

It's funny, when I come to write this with a week and a half to go I find all the early thoughts I had about process and progress are out the window and I'm thinking more about how the end of this will feel on the emotional plane, how we're all going to scatter and this time will have passed.

I'm really smart in rehearsal though, don't worry. I don't forget about intellectual processes there. Just when I get home.

I want to acknowledge the emotional bit, I suppose. I'm attached to this group of people, this time, and this work. It came at the right time for me. This process and these workmates have kicked me in the ass, in the best way. This kind of work is hard. You need to get things wrong, you need to get out your shitty ideas in order to hit on something better, you need to practice. You need to work on your craft. It doesn't just come, things don't just come to you. This work has reminded me of that. It has reminded me of where my interests lie and that I need to learn about things before I can expect to be good at them. You can't drive fast without first learning how to start the car.

We have a running order. We have text. We have a show. We have a world, we have people who populate it with their stories and their movements, all of that which comes from us. As a group.

This is so much more exciting to me than the words of a single playwright on a page. I like playwrights. I like words, I like plays. But to be inside a group of people who have made something from themselves and are working to edit themselves, hone their work and their thoughts, it's a really exhilarating thing.

We fit together now in a way that we couldn't have at first. We know each other now, and how we work. We couldn't have driven our collective car as fast in June as we can now.

We have another open rehearsal tomorrow (Wednesday August 10) from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, please come by!

-Sarah​

Come out of the woods

Two weeks to go. Whew! I can always tell when things are good because time moves a lot faster. When we began the Devised Yukon Project it felt like every day went so long. Now, we have more to do and there aren't enough hours in the day.

We held an Open Studio last Wednesday. People could come in and watch us work on some material that we were planning to use for our presentations on August 19th and 20th. I feel like it was pretty successful. Ten people showed up and seemed excited or at least engaged in what we were doing. As a collective I don't think we held any punches when it came to the work we were doing and I feel like we included the public in the process without being too invasive. It makes me want to do more of them even earlier in the process. I hope on the next project we can have one a week from the beginning.

I've been thinking about more stuff like that. Getting people in early and trying to start the conversation. We haven't quite solved the riddle of how to engage people in the process of creation. These web-posts are a good start and the open studios are a step in the right direction, but there has to be more. I'll be looking into more interactivity in our future work.

Speaking about the future, it is the time where Jessica and I start looking at next year and where we want to apply for funding. We've decided to try and do a few different projects next May - September. This means that you, the public, will be seeing a lot more of us and hopefully we of you.

Alright, now I must go and edit and memorise text. A tricky part of devised work is getting the words in time to learn them all. I will do my best.

Ja mata.

-Sam​

Why isn't performing enough for me?

When I was a kid I was in a dance production company and I volunteered for everything...whether that was painting the sets, sewing the costumes, setting up the chairs, or running the projector.  I wanted to do it all, and my parents were the same.  My dad would be rolling sets on and off stage after building/painting them and my mom would be sewing costumes onto bodies backstage.  It was amazing. I think this wholehearted involvement has bled into how I choose to work now, as a professional artist.

I have had many contracts where I have auditioned and hired as an actor/performer.  I remember my first time asking the Producer, “Are you sure you don’t need any help? “ but I soon realized that everyone would prefer if we just stuck to our own roles.  The set designer designs a door, the builder builds it, the painter paints it, the producer organizes how it gets to the theatre, the stage manager sets it up, the director puts it into the right place, and finally the actor walks through it.  Basically the actor is encouraged to focus on making his/her performance the best it can be and not to worry about the details.  To some this is wonderful, and in many cases essential, but I often feel a lack of investment in the show.  Someone has my props lined up on a table for me, someone tells me when there is five minutes to show time, my costumes were provided, the set has arrived, and all I have to do is perform.   I don’t mean to make it sound like performers do nothing because that’s bullshit, but I think productions are better when the performers are involved in making the show happen.   Or are they?  Maybe they are just better for me.

I remember after one of my shows my Dad came up to me and said, “The skyline set looked awesome... but I’m sure glad I don’t have to paint anymore little windows,” and then he laughed.  He had sat in the audience and felt proud of his involvement, which also enhanced the performance for him. Who doesn’t love going to a show where you can sit in the audience and think, “I helped make this happen.”

The reason I have been thinking about this today is because Sam and I are in that amazing/exhausting first year of a theatre company where we are doing absolutely everything.   Eventually it will be wonderful to get some operating funding so that we don’t have to scramble as much, but I must say that I thrive in this environment.  I love that I know where every cent of our budget is being spent and I love that I am utterly and completely involved in not only this company but also the public presentations we are currently working towards.   We are all working hard, and I think it will show. 

- Jessica

marteau à la main

Bien que pertinente et nécessaire, la période pûrement exploratoire du travail est maintenant derrière nous. Il s'agit maintenant de créer des scènes qui servent notre structure narrative et notre esthétique. Open Pit regarde maintenant uniquement de l'avant. Depuis plus d'une semaine, nous construisons. Étage par étage, un clou à la fois, en luttant contre le vertige, mais nous bâtissons.

Chacun d'entre nous est appelé à diriger une scène qu'on pense nécessaire/enrichissante/utile à notre histoire de base. C'est ce sur quoi nous bûchons depuis une semaine. Et non seulement c'est productif, mais c'est aussi incroyablement satisfaisant de voir les morceaux s'emboîter. Comme vous avez peut-être pu le lire entre les lignes du blog, de créer une pièce à six est une réelle histoire d'amour. Avec ses tensions, ses chicanes, ses passions, ses caresses, et son réconfort. Tout n'est pas toujours rose et harmonieux lorsque vient le temps de créer. Au début du processus de création de scènes, chacun voulait être entendu, le ton montait, et l'efficacité baissait. Nous avons cependant appris à laisser la personne diriger sa scène à sa manière, quitte à s'ajuster par la suite.

Je suis heureuse de pouvoir vous dire que nous avons maintenant du matériel solide sur lequel on peut s'appuyer pour continuer à cheminer. Nous avons une histoire, des personnages, des enjeux. On a même un titre: Nowhere Near. Vite de même, on dirait une pièce de théâtre.

Toutes ces scènes que nous construisons viennent de nous 6. Et bien que nous travaillons tous dans le même sens, pour le même projet; notre manière de travailler varie d'une personne à l'autre. Maintenant que nous avons suffisemment de matériel pour créer une pièce, il s'agit d'harmoniser le tout. On construit des unités, maintenant vient le temps de les souder et les ajuster. La prochaine étape pour Open Pit est de s'assurer que nous construisons tous la même maison. Et qu'elle tient debout.

 -Geneviève

many hands make light work

I'm thinking today about how we all help each other out.

As Sam mentioned in his post yesterday, we're working right now on 'shaping' scenes where each of us is offering and leading the development of a scene that we have conceived.

This shaping role is new to all of us. It presents a double level of difficulty; firstly, we're taking on a role that we're not accustomed to. And it isn't exactly an easy role, shaping an idea (usually from scratch) with five people standing in front of you. Secondly, we're all working with material in a way that we've never worked before. So we're taking on a new role doing new things.

It's hard. As we've all said.

I've noticed that we're getting better at being the shapers, for sure, but we're also getting better at being shaped. We're willing to dive into things that we don't immediately understand, or things that are hard. We're willing to push on longer and work past a point of comfort or contentment in order to support another getting closer to realizing something. We're getting to be really good clay, flexible and willing. That's a nice feeling, as someone being shaped, to give yourself over to someone else's way of working, and it's a great thing as a shaper to know that the people you're working with trust that what you're offering will lead the whole group to something valuable.

It's kind of a feedback cycle; being more effective shapers helps the people being shaped, and being effective clay makes the shaper more confident and better able to explore wilder after wilder ideas.

You can see us helping each other out in action at our open rehearsal tomorrow from 2pm to 5pm in the Yukon Arts Centre studio. Come anytime, leave anytime. We might ask you to help us out, if you're willing.

Down to work

"What surprises me most about humanity is man. He sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies never having really lived." - Dalai Lama

As we get down to business I realise I need to double down on my present. I can spend a lot of time thinking about the future: Where is this project heading? Where is Open Pit heading? Where am I going to live after I leave Toronto? That quote from the Dalai Lama helped zap me into nowness and I feel ready to get down to work.

I won't rehash what we are doing. There are some great posts by the other members that can fill you in. I did want to share some thoughts on shaping. Shaping came about as a way to fill a need. I wanted to experiment with creating sans director. Eventually I discovered that although you can survive on a day to day basis without a director, it helps to have someone who is guiding things on the outside. Hence, the shaper. The shaper is not the director. The shaper is in charge of their scene which they proposed. Again, there are lots of other posts covering our current process. So, after one week of working with shapers I came up with a few thoughts on what made a shaper successful. I want to share them here.

• It’s ok to keep secrets from us. I like not knowing the full plan. It helps me not to get ahead of myself.
• Try different experiments before trying to put it all together.
• Work in chunks, present one element and then layer onto that.
• Take the time to think about where you want to go next. Don’t feel like we always need to be doing something. If you need to plan your next move take the time so that you can effectively relay the information to us.
• Don’t ask for feedback right away. It lets us gain momentum in the work and lets you get comfortable.
• You decide which idea to follow. We might have 5 great ideas, but you choose which path to follow. Do it subjectively. Which one excites you the most?
• I find working from an action, or an objective is easier than working from an idea. Can you turn your idea into something we can do?

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. 

Fight Brainstorming

We began a new phase this week where each of us is required to plan and offer a scene. Here is my brainstorming for a fight scene:

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!