Megan called today’s rehearsal “the best day of the year” because we were scheduled to play Word Jazz–her favorite game. Every participant, past and present, could tell you their favorite exercise from the workshop if you asked them (mine is Quartets). But why do we get so excited for the same games over and over again? The other day, Gwethalyn remarked to me how thrilled she had been when she first read Kennedy as a participant in the workshop because she had never imagined theater could be like that. And just like the plays we read, the exercises in the workshop will also influence our work; some even make their way into our staging. So the games we play are also their own, small, theatrical performances, used in part to show us all the possibilities that theater can be. And, as Gwethalyn said, it is absolutely life-changing when one discovers a possibility that resonates with them. I love Quartets because I am fascinated by the idea that an audience can pull meaning out of three movements given to a set of actors to play with. Also, the games never get old because we work from our own brains and each other, and so each Word Jazz or Quartet or shape is completely improvised, making it new, exhilarating, and never to be seen again (unless, of course, I take a picture for the blog). This is the reason why our work in the exploration phase of the workshop continues to excite.
Our first game after warm-ups was Crumple. The assistant directors and I hopped in to play as Lauren assigned us all numbers. Then we explored the space as Lauren called out numbers. If an actor’s number was called, they began to slowly crumple to the floor until another actor touched them, which meant they were saved. The goal is to not let anyone fall all the way to the floor. It started out easy enough, but things began to become more frantic as whole groups of numbers were called out at once. Also, we changed speeds so we had to move at our slowest possible pace while still trying to save those who were crumbling. Running in slow motion to save another actor felt like being a film star in the intense part of an action movie. The actors had to stay focused on everyone, even those behind them, to ensure their safety. There were also times all the actors were called to crumple but one, and that actor had to work hard to make it to everyone in time. This happened to me, and the stress I felt was astronomical–everyone’s lives were in my hands! When it was time to finish, all our numbers were called, and we slowly fell to the ground.
Next, as previously mentioned, it was time to play Word Jazz. Megan (of course) divided the participants into groups of four and gave each group a line from the Wellman play we would be reading later. The groups were instructed to use the line (and only the line) to compose a piece of music with each other. Naturally, the actors were free to break down the line: saying only certain words, rearranging the sentence, or playing with just the sounds the words make. What was produced was a strange and delightful melody. Plus, the groups were able to end their pieces on their own, without prompting, which showed real intuition and ensemble mind.
After Word Jazz, the participants were instructed to each get a chair. Then they were told to shape using the chair, but they could only lay, sit, or stand. Ashley would call change, and each actor then picked a new position to shape in. It was intriguing to watch as the participants came up with new ways to use their chair in their shaping. They were also given suggestions for some of their shapes, such as “spiders are falling from the ceiling.” While most used the chair in different ways for cover, one actor stood on top of theirs, arms open wide to embrace the storm of raining arachnids. Once they had thoroughly explored shaping by themselves with the chair, we put them into groups of three. Now the instruction was that one actor must be standing, one must sitting, and one must be laying. Each time they were told to change, the participants had to work together to make sure all three positions were filled. It was quite difficult and took a lot of focus, but the shapes that resulted were wonderful.
Our following exercise was One Note Orchestra. I was able to join this one, so the participants and I sat around the room with our eyes closed. Then one by one, we were told to sustain one note until we ran out of breath. Then we repeated, but each time let the sound get a little bit louder. By the time the notes were completely filling the space, I felt my whole body tingling with vibrations. With my eyes closed, it seemed like I was on another planet as the tones mixed together. Even the note coming out of my own mouth began to sound alien, and I was unsure if I was still sounding at all. The noise in the room grew so intense that it was impossible to think of anything else until suddenly, we were instructed to stop. The sudden silence gave me goosebumps as our phantom vibrations still rang through the room. It was amazing how the space felt completely different after our sound stirred up and moved around the atoms. It was, for lack of a better term, very cool.
Then it was time to begin reading. We started with American playwright Dael Orlandersmith. Although her plays often depict people of color, she denies suggestions of racial intentions in her work, claiming she is a humanist–she writes for all humans as all races are human. Instead, she views it as her job as a writer to look at different perspectives without judgment and to write about the hard truths. In her play, My Red Hand, My Black Hand, Orlandersmith identifies the struggle of feeling unaccepted that comes with having a biracial identity, focusing on a daughter born to a Native American father and a black mother. Before we began the reading, we listened to a few songs referenced in the play–“Boom Boom” by John Lee Hooker and Link Wray’s “Rumble.” Orlandersmith’s writing is highly poetic and rhythmic, and so the use of music in her plays is an important technique to recognize. While listening to the piece being read, it struck me how her poetry felt jumbled, much like the daughter’s identity. When the reading was finished, the participants talked about how the heaviness of the piece was uncomfortable to them. However, this was Orlandersmith’s goal as she wanted the audience to experience the horror as well as the beauty of the horror. When asked what this play would look like staged, we eventually landed on the idea that it must contain dance to fit with her musical style. Overall, Orlandersmith’s lyrical poetry, themes of childhood and parental sins, specific music references, and having multiple speakers telling the same story would aid a small group in writing their own play.
In a complete one hundred eighty degrees turn, our other author of the day was Mac Wellman. With a disdain for naturalistic theater because he found it too common and predictable, Wellman began writing his own plays where there is logic in the illogic. One writer described his work as such:
”Experiencing a Wellman play, in fact, is like sitting through a talk by a lecturer whom you suspect is making some brilliant points, even if you’re not always sure what they are.”
I think this is an extremely accurate description as his work, although remarkably silly, seems to always have something deeper to say. We read from his play, Antigone, which was very exciting as he did exactly what we will later do in the workshop: take a popular story and explore it in a non-naturalistic way. With occasional references to the subject, stream-of-consciousness writing, spoken stage directions, and use of song and dance (this is a reference to the Greek chorus, which may or may not have actually sung), Wellman provides delight and confusion to the audience. One participant drew connections to Cocteau’s work, saying that “the nonsense keeps you on your toes and your attention on the piece.” Certainly, the participants seemed to really enjoy Wellman’s style as they either laughed along or let their mouths hang open with shock from the unpredictable twists and turns of his writing.
For the last part of the session, the actors walked around the space as we gave them different instructions. First, they pretended as if a giant bubble was placed around them, and so they bounced around the space off of each other’s bubbles. Next, they imagined they had a hook in one of their body parts that dragged them along. The actors fought with all their might against the pulling of their hooks. Also, the actors made shapes, and then imagined what it would be like for those shapes to move about the space. Finally, we let the actors create their own performance by giving them a set of rules: either be stopped in a shape, move in your shape, or walk around the space in neutral at a pace of one or ten. By the end, the participants’ hyper-focus felt tangible and would be enough for any audience to feel blown away.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.