Session Three: Do blogs require clever titles? If so, does Handke actually rhyme with Kennedy? And if so, can I use that somehow?

In session three we were were joined by some new participants. Joyous hooray! More minds and bodies makes for a better workshop all around.

We read “Prophecy” and “Self-Accusation” by Peter Handke. Handke has some pretty radical ideas about what theater should be. In his early Sprechstucke or speak-ins he took everything away from the theatrical experience except the live performers and the language. Handke wanted the language to be free of the constraints of dialogue and his early plays are presented in direct address to the audience. He plays with the form and structure of language as well as the sound of language and wants to highlight both the importance of language and the way on which this importance means we are trapped by our use of language. If you have never done so, you should see if you can find Handke’s “Rules for the Actors” which appears at the beginning of the published version of “Offending the Audience” (his first sprechstucke). It basically asks the actors to forget everything they know and go out and listen to things like chanting crowds at soccer matches, concrete mixers, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles and perform like what they hear. Our kinda guy, right? Hell yeah!

We also delved just a little ways in to the work of Adrienne Kennedy, one of the greatest playwrights of all time (in my humble opinion) with a selection of “A Rat’s Mass.” As anyone who has read any Kennedy knows, dipping your toe in the shallow end is just the beginning, this pool gets deep fast! Kennedy began writing for the theater in the 60’s and despite the fact that she had Edward Albee as a mentor she had trouble finding a place in the theater. Seems there was no place for a female African American experimental playwright. She was too female and African American for the established experimental theater community, and too experimental for the established African American theater community. But her works evoked such power that even without the support of any established community they were produced and continue to be produced and lauded today. On top of being African American and female, she was also raised Catholic, and spent summers on her white grandmother’s plantation being raised with her white cousins. Needless to say, she has some experience in oppression, guilt, and identity crisis. The plays we read all center around an event so horrific it cannot be reconciled or understood in any logical way by those who were involved. The result is a kind of surreal dream world where language and images are fractured and confused and characters struggle to express themselves. Her plays often involve religious imagery and references to classical Western culture (another of Kennedy’s obsessions), especially the story of Ceasar with its betrayal and bloody imagery.

During exercise time, in honor of Handke, we did a little word jazz. We used the line: “You can find me, if you want me, in the garden – unless it’s pouring down with rain.” The work was a little slow starting as always, but turned out very interesting in the end. How is it that we had a line with the words “if you want me” in it and it didn’t turn in to an innuendo fest? Refreshing respect for the technique work, or a missed opportunity? I leave it you to you to decide.