Well, we’re all lined up to have the largest group ever this summer. They are 27 strong and already a force to be reckoned with! We did some moving through the space imagining we were surrounded by bubbles that bounced off each other and getting anywhere was well neigh impossible. But the excitement of the group overall was palpable the entire time, they’re clearly happy to be here and ready to work.
There’s always so much to say on the first day and when that includes introductions for 24 participants (three were absent) and 7 staff it kinda eats into our exploration time. We had some fun with a little basic shaping and walking, but we didn’t get to all of the qualities we usually work on in the first part of the session.
We discussed the respect rule and what it means for our work and they all sat there soaking it up like sponges. Not only were they pretty much rapt, but I could almost feel the level of excitement in the room build as we were discussing it. That means that not only did they get it, they also got the implications for our coming work. The first sign of their collective super intelligence.
We started the readings off with some plays by Madame Rachilde, part of the Symbolist movement started in Paris in the 1890s. The Symbolists were directly reacting to the theater fads of the day, hyperrealism that was used to depict slice of life style stories about the bourgeoisie. They set out to prove theater should not be used to recreate what we know about life but to explore the unknowable in it we all experience. Because of this, they were the first group to formally propose a theater of total subjectivity. BOOM! Did you feel the doors of all future theatrical possibility being blown wide? Before the Symbolists declared their ideas about theater, the idea that a play could not be boiled down to one idea that could objectively be understood by every audience member in the same way was thought of as going against the very rules of drama. The Symbolists proposed a theater where no one answer could ever be discerned, the meaning would always be subjective. While a relatively un-touted movement in theater history you can see how important this idea has been to just about all unconventional theater experiments that followed.
And boy did things get unconventional quick! Our second set of readings was from the Dadaists. We read a little of Tristan Tzara’s First Celestial Adventures of Mr Antipyrene, Fire Extinguisher and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes’s The Mute Canary. Not long after the Symbolists were positing their new ideas about theater, WWI threw the Western world into upheaval. The atrocities of the war were so unbelievable that all logic seemed to have fled the world. The Dadaists believed that illogical times called for illogical art. Probably most important for the future of theatrical experimentation was their belief that anything could be art. All ideas about the rules for what goes were clearly an illusion, so that must mean anything goes! Dada performances were more like events in which spontaneity and chance played just as large a role as anything that had been carefully crafted. To give the participants a taste of this spontaneity, half way through the reading Cara asked some volunteers to simply listen and make noises in reaction to what they heard. The first time a reader was interrupted by a random improvised noise I saw several heads turn in shock, but just as quickly as they had been thrown they realized, oh it’s like THAT, well then. And they really got into it, both performers and listeners were clearly relishing the spontaneous aspect of what was happening. Their discussion on the possibilities for meaning and how one might experience a performance like this was lively and oh so smart. OH. SO. VERY. SMART. Quoth Hunter: “What are they feeding you guys!?”
We ended the session by creating a little Dada performance of our own. They each chose a line from one of the Dada scripts we had read and then improvised together moving from one place to another and saying their line in different ways. The first time we did it, it was pretty interesting, but I could tell we were suffering a little from not getting to work on all the qualities and aspects we usually do in the first third of the session. But, I figured, these guys are smart and oh so very game, so I just explained some of the different aspects they could make choices about: speed, level, tension, (Cara had already explained direct vs indirect movement), form of locomotion, stillness etc. Then I also said now try to work together to make this one cohesive scene. This was really throwing them right in the fire on day one. Guess what? No one got burned, not even singed. That last improvisation was oh so very interesting and just a pleasure to watch. As the applause of the directors was dying down Jim said, “Do you know why they are applauding? Because you were interesting, you were really very interesting to watch doing that.” I can tell, working with this group is going to be super interesting, and as anyone who has worked with us knows, to be interesting is the highest praise there is from us.
MXTW 2015 Session 1 Move on Exhale from Ashley Flinn on Vimeo.
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