by Gwethalyn
Session one began with the usual butterflies in my directorly stomach. Luckily, the butterflies are always quelled by the obvious enthusiasm of the participants to get started. We’ve got a good sized group of 19 students this year. Lots of returning participants, lots of graduating seniors who have been in the workshop multiple times, so they are a pretty confident group already. The newcomers really held their own though, volunteering for things left and right and joining in the discussion of the various plays we studied.
On day one we studied The Futurists and Jean Cocteau’s The Wedding Party on the Eiffel Tower. We tried something new with our look at the Futurists, asking some of the participants to create a couple of sintesi of well known stories and then performing them simultaneously. We got a lovely mashup of Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks that ended up with a giant wolf head chasing someone around the stage as the family of bears gave a final pronouncement: “DEATH.” I don’t know what Marinetti would have thought, but I was certainly pleased.
They really got the humor in the Cocteau piece (buncha sickos all around, thank goodness). There was lots of laughter at the antics on the Eiffel Tower.
In session two we read some Antonin Artaud and Maria Irene Fornes’ The Danube. We usually read things a little closer to chronological order, but going in strictly chronological order would have left us reading Artaud and Grotowski on day two and that seems like bit much, even for us. Fornes’ portrayal of small, beautiful human interactions in peril contracts nicely Artaud’s surrealism and Theatre of Cruelty. Their discussion of the Artaud pieces we read was spot on. I think Shay was a bit taken aback, as he didn’t have to give many of the teaching notes he had because the students came up with most of it on their own in the discussion. They are a shrewd bunch. Portents of things to come? I hope!
In order to get some good vocalizations going as we read Artaud we did some vocal work, making our voices sound like other things. One particularly nice moment was when Pearl asked them to choose either small happy bells or a chainsaw. Walking through the soundscape in the room was incredible as it filled with the contrasts between the two!
Other movement exercises included the usual building of our movement vocab with some walking and shaping, and my personal favorite move on exhale. I usually like to lead move on exhale, but this year I let Flinn do it, which meant I got to participate! I don’t know how it looked, but I know if felt good to ease into pure movement connected to everyone else in the space by the ever present shared breath. If only unity of purpose was so easy in all walks of life. Although, come to think of it, there are few dire situations that won’t be helped by good strong breathing.
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