“It was a wordless world she gave me.”
The participants started today’s session by disrupting everyday speaking patterns using this line from the Diane Glancy play we would be reading later. First, they tried manipulating the speed of the line: saying it as fast as they could, as slow as they could, and speeding up or slowing down through the line. When the participants slowed down as they spoke, it sounded like they were robots short-circuiting. Next, they tried experimenting with the pitch: speaking as low or high as they could and changing from one to the other while speaking. Their high pitched version gave me the chills because they reminded me of witches casting a spell. For some subtler changes, they played with which word in the sentence to emphasize and also taking a sharp breath in (what we refer to as “the unconcealed inspiration”) between words. All of these options lay before us as ways to deliver our text to the audience in order to focus their attention on our words.
Next, we played Image Theater. The actors were split into groups and then instructed to create still images to represent the theme of “family.” Also, there was a catch: they had to create them in complete silence. The actors frantically waved, gestured, and moved their group members into positions to create their images. When they were finished, they presented them to the other groups:
It’s always captivating how different each actor’s interpretation is as well as if they decide to be literal, abstract, or somewhere in between with the concept. Next, we played again, this time focusing on the concept of “culture.” Obviously, this word can have many connotations so watching each group come up with ideas was fascinating. When they were ready, they presented their new images:
Now there is something interesting! Two groups ended up creating almost the exact same image. What is it about the act of drinking tea that suggests “culture” to us? Beyond that wonderful coincidence, the images continued to differ wildly. Some were easy to make connections while others we were left contemplating. Understanding how we can communicate a feeling, word, or concept to an audience using stage images is a vital tool for our work. We finished our game by having the groups pick one image from family and one from culture and creating a transition between them. As always, precision was key, and the actor’s performances were silly, subversive, and downright frightening.
When it came time for our reading, I was excited because we would be reading a playwright who was completely new to the workshop, Diane Glancy. Born in 1941 in Kansas City, Missouri to a Cherokee father and German-English mother, Glancy struggled with being raised as if German-English was her whole history. So, she spent time with her Cherokee grandmother who Glancy says she “learned more from her silence” than from anything else, and that is where she gets her Cherokee voices despite not being raised as a Cherokee. Influenced by her heritage, most of her plays (including the one we read) are about the long term repercussions of the Trail of Tears and also modern Native American alienation from their past. On her philosophy of theater, she says:
“Words serve as transformers and the voice carries life, stories have the power to transform the present.”
Excitingly, we had time to read her full play, The Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance. The play features two characters, a girl and a grandmother, who speak of -Ahw’uste–a sacred spirit of the Cherokee who takes the form of a deer. The participants were quick to note the disconnected dialogue, mentioning that the characters do not always feel as if they are speaking to each other. Of her mix of dialogue and monologue, Glancy calls them “scenelets” and says that she shifts between them “not with the linear construct of conflict and resolution, but with the story moving like rain on a windshield–between differing and unreliable experiences.” When discussing themes, the themes of tradition and how tradition is carried on was mentioned. Also, the participants singled out a monologue by the grandmother at the end of the play, saying it left a powerful impression on them. In actuality, the monologue was a direct quote taken from an interview with a Cherokee person. On her writing, Glancy says she must gather voices, as a story requires many voices because we are what we are in relation to others. Other techniques the actors could consider using themselves in their writing are using the target story in the same way the characters discuss Ahw’uste, symbolic imagery, nonlinear arrangement, dialogue that does not feel like it is from the same conversation, and tension between characters that inhabit different ways of being. About the transitioning between the spiritual world of the grandmother, and the concrete world of the girl, one participant remarked: “I like the connecting of the two realities.”
Finishing all our authors in the reader, we ended with Korean-American playwright, Young Jean Lee. She originally studied Shakespeare at Berkley, but later realized what she actually wanted to do was write plays. Eventually, she studied playwrighting underneath Mac Wellman, who, when she felt stuck in her writing, suggested she should write about the thing she thought would be the worst write about. Thus, her play, The Appeal, was born–a satire of the British romantic poets. Lee’s play is undeniably hilarious, and we all laughed heartily as we read. As one participant put it, the characters act like “little kids going back and forth.” This is very true, and part of the comedy of the play is Lee’s mixing of the sophisticated persona of the poets with childish language and demeanor. Due to her own identity, growing up an American but being perceived differently based on her race, Lee’s plays often deal with the tension between expectations of identity and how they really act out. Also, the poets argue back and forth about the play itself, trying to decide which direction it should go. The acknowledgment in their role of the play is another angle from which Lee writes her comedy. One participant smartly remarked: “It’s as if the characters have read the script once, then forgotten it, and are now trying to reconstruct what they remember.” If the participants want to work under Lee’s influence, they will be sure to explore those techniques along with direct address, existential or philosophical dialogue that fails, scenes with no dialogue, and the condensing of expected plot points down to a few sentences.
With our studying of playwriting techniques officially over, we moved back to some exercises. First, Evan led the participants in shaping with sustain. In partners, they shaped on a count, then remained still for the same count, and then shaped again. The goal was to move as one without communication, using the whole count to move, and then stopping together with precision. When the actors began to make progress, we moved them into larger groups, eventually performing for each other. Staying aware of each person in the space and focus is what drives this exercise to look incredible to an audience.
Finally, we ended on a game of Human Membrane. The actors stood in two lines on opposite sides of the room facing each other. Then they were told to cross the space and as they moved past the other actors, slow down with tension before finally moving past. It made it look as if when the actors collided, there was some invisible, gelatinous force that they had to pass through. We also tried the game with other variations: changing speeds as they passed each other, making shapes , and saying dialogue. What resulted was captivating, and, as Gwethalyn reminded us, we were able to make it so just by following a set of rules.
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