On The Table

On The Table
Liam our stage manager and friend getting the word out...

Sunday, June 27, 2010

me, as always, trying to reiterate and clarify for myself the goals and thruline...

what if our act 1
our lets pretend that
is pretending that through a search for characters, details and some story
we can get a handle on place
and root it enough that when we arrive at act 2
we think we have a sense, some moments of recognition, of the place we started
then act 2 works to complicate that
and act 3 asks- what if we agree together to wed ourselves to others as part of place making...?
what is the delight, the frustration, and the impossibility of that
and how/why is that effort worthy of our time and energy?
as neighbors, as well as a bunch of people in rooms together for this night...

Friday, June 25, 2010

Some discoveries/thoughts...

ACT 3

A big discovery last night-

we were playing with act 3, and some wedding moments
and amidst an improv with james and rebecca, i asked them to describe to each other, potential spouses, why they had uncertainty about getting married.

And they spoke a lovely litany of fears and anxieties...
and it hit me hard later that night, in terms of our attempt to use wedding as a ritual/dramaturgy for a fantastical bringing together of community...

Living together is hard.
Change is scary

Marriage is when two people agree to be together, and take on those challenges, with intent and love.

In a community,
we live together
but not only do we never agree what that means,
we don't promise ourselves to each other.
We don't commit- certainly not publicly.
And yet we live together.
Bound by rules and tied together by resources, and some basic but vague sense of duty and shared responsibility..

All these things are at play when we share place,
same as when we share a life/home

This couple is getting married.

Living together is hard;
change is scary.

A state never has a comittment ceremony-
what is this event,
for this couple and for us...?

What can we ask this group of people from different places to help us make/accomplish that will help these two people make a commitment, and so doing, consider, in some unreal but meaningful way, what humans who live near each other might attempt if asked to be intentional and generous?

What does it mean to be wedded to strangers?
to place?

Also, act 1

A search for the meaning of place
via what we have been learning about Molalla and Portland...
we are seekers, curious and passionate about what place means- people, events, time, details...and trying to work that out in front of each other and this audience...

Act 2-
the changes in our state we must pay special attention to:

Population/demographic changes
Taxes
Environmental/timber conflicts
way of life/industry/jobs

and
welcome, interns.
We are just about all here now...

M

Thursday, June 24, 2010

inviting an audience to help us succeed

I don't want to play by a certain unspoken theatre rule on this particular project-

the rule i refer to is the rule that says
if we explain what we are doing, or why we are doing it
we have failed as artists because the work should speak for itself

but i think that rule only applies if we are attempting to make an event to be witnessed
to be observed and experienced thru a wall, beginning to end

if our event, to succeed, needs not just spectators, but participants
not just suspension of disbelief, but shared stakes

not just obersvation, but investment

and if we, the artists making/sharing the event have been talking about it for months and months
why not actually have the conversation about what we're trying to do
with the folks with whom we are trying to do it?

why should be the only ones who know what's going on, or why...?

i want act 1 to start with a clear, honest open ask-
an invite
a proposal

here's what we're going to try and do tonight
here's what we need from you
here's what we'll try and provide

you are here, so we're going to assume you want us as a group to succeed tonight
so let's try and do that together

i think we need the audience's generosity and trust and affection
yup, affection
by the time they get on those buses...

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

some act 3 thoughts from rebecca

From rebecca martinez...

I had a conversation with Joaquin about it, he has family in Mexico who are very poor, who are culturally night and day from him and when he and his brother go to visit, there is always an education that takes place, so that they can understand each other, even though their lives are close to incomprehensible.



They relate on a fundamental level, about family, about how each other’s life is on a day to day level, about what the other does each day to get some sort of sense of the other person.



About what each person does to take care of their basic needs, such as food, shelter, etc…




Food is a big way they relate. He told me about his aunt who cooks on an old wood burning stove (which is all she uses) and with the simplest ingredients makes items that are amazing in taste and simplicity, but using just what she has on hand. The resources available, and how that changes and differs according to place. We've talked about it before, but is this one of the conversation starters?


(Also, we spoke about his plans for his company, and how they are structuring a meal around the evolution of a relationship, for example, a salad with several unique ingredients that are all visible on their own, but then are put together to blend, creating story in this. He is very interested in learning what the story/conflict can be in Act 3 to build the menu around that in a narrative and sensory fashion.)


The other thing, of course, this lead me to think of is that there needs to be a desire to connect with others in the first place, so I asked him. His response was that he is interested in where he comes from, where his father comes from - from the land.



Of course, most people in this country come from rural roots if you go back far enough.



It seems like we need to peel away the surface and get to the core of the matter, what is it that people relate to? What is it that will interest them enough to get them to engage with other who are different?



What speaks to people as a whole?



We also spoke about a time when he went to see a play at Sandy Actors Theatre with his dad, who heard it was such a wonderful play. Joaquin was in the front, all dressed in black and cynical, and hated the play and the acting was terrible, etc, etc, but the audience was weeping at the end because it so reflected their experience that it pulled him into their world. I was very interested in that moment, in figuring out with him why he suddenly became engaged in this sense of community when previously he was so opposite. What he said was,



“I’m so disconnected from connecting that I connect to virtuosity and talent instead of just coming together and letting the meaning being in that”



What is it that we can ask people to engage in that has a fundamental meaning?



Is it asking tables to create a toast about, not where to live, but what their ideal of a place to live would look like/be?



Is it asking them to create a toast to reflect the core values of those at the table as a way to give the bride and groom a way to guide their own life together?



Is there a fundamental difference between the couple that requires the collective brain and emotional power of 100 people to help them discover that at their core they are fundamentally compatible and the differences are superficial?



In the end, people relate to things that reflect them personally, and if they can see this on the ‘other side’, does that do anything?



It’s all very utopian, and I can’t help thinking about BUILT and the build your own city and I’m wondering if something of that on a different and expanded level needs to be in act 3.



Those are my thoughts….

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Sunday morning, end of week 1...

So I have been thinking the past couple days about our Act 1, and yesterday, we did some filming with Sadie and Ethan Seltzer (who were both great sports as we work to figure our act 2 content).

And of course as we keep exploring the conversation we want to have, we constantly have to decide what our focus is…what we host, that determines where the conversation is when we turn it over (in a way) to audience members in act 3…And I think I realized something-

Friday night in Molalla, the dramatist in me got sucked into a narrative that is not necessarily the way for us to go… I’ll tell you what I mean.

In several interviews Friday night, the conflicts in our state relating to progressive environmental policy advocacy and timber interests kept coming up…mainly in the form of Molallans relating to us how the town was negatively impacted by the environmental movement, by the spotted owl controversy- mills closed, logging jobs went away…a way of life was systematically dismantled- so, keep that phrase in mind…way of life.

So I got excited about the possibility of that event, that time, being foreshadowed in act 1…that the changes were coming…that that decline/tension was on the horizon, and that would make for good act 1 storytelling…and as a result, a batch of questions we asked in the rehearsal room, and some of our story development…it began to follow this premise.

But

When we interviewed sadie and ethan yesterday, what started to nag at the back of my mind, and what ethan spoke about, was the danger of framing the conversation we are inviting people to have, by using the same old narrative that frames the broad stroke understanding of or state’s recent history…that conflict, that battle between timber and policy, between jobs and wildlife, between rural needs and urban values, between way of lifes…it’s a misdirection.

Its real. But it’s part of the way we understand what has changed and what the challenges are-

its not actually the whole change, and its also not the whole set of ‘whys’…

What is a way of life?

How long can it last?

Are we bound to each other as members of a state by some contract of social responsibility?

The spotted owl controversy began in the mid 80s.

Jobs began to truly be affected by it in 86, 87…

If we move Act 1 to include that in our Act 1 storytelling, we move away from a truly epic almost poetic event of statewide connection (Mt St Helen’s erupting) in favor of a quite human and understood economic and policy based division…

And I think that weakens our event.

Act 1 is our chance to get at what Molalla and Portland have been like up to 1980…not to be about major community challenges, but about ‘way of life’, and history, and a bit of story…I think we are working too hard perhaps to paint family strife…I think the families need to be compelling complicated taes, but I also think Act 1 is an introduction- to place, and to some people….

And I think Act 2 is about change- change from a variety of points- political, economic, personal…and I think act 2 moves through the frames we know we usually look at our state dilemmas from…and helps us prepare to be somewhere else in Act 3…

Shannon, this has helped me think about Act 2 a lot- its about change, hosting the antagonisms, as you have said, and about a journey through frames we expect and know, ad landing us in a particular and less expected frame…

If you ant some more context for the particular events of timber/environment, click on these, and you will really know a bunch more-

A brief conservative perspective:

a brief description from a more liberal perspective

go here, and skim the preface and introduction…real helpful.



Thursday, June 3, 2010

what are wee doing in week one?

you may be wondering...


well.


Saturday night, we have a gathering- a party.

A welcome. A start.

Sunday, there will be production meetings- liam, myself , bob Leonard and some of the design team.

Monday, our first session as a cast.

We’ll all be there except Joel, who arrives at the end of the week.

We will, in week one, focus on three main things:

1)

Structure of the two memorial services- I will be giving structural assignments alongside character suggestions, and together we’’ll investigate how we want this story, this act 1, to get told, and we’ll see how characters and necessary narrative start to reveal themselves.

2)

We will do some more researchy/documentary type collaborative and individual research for the Act 2 video. We will help Shannon and the video team get a jump on the bus experience.

3)

We will begin as a core cast of 7 (8 when joel arrives) to do some fairly rigorous physical ensemble building- some sweating- with an eye towards some physical vocabulary that I am imagining for Act 3- we won’t spenda lot of time in week one developing Act 3, structurally or narratively- we’ll focus more on Act 1, and I have a feeling the pressure cooker of not dealing with it much will teach us some stuff as other areas of the show become clearer for us as a group.

3a)

we will do some research/engagement work in Molalla, focused on our timeline and community details.

A tour of all our sites will need to come soon, but we may wait for joel to arrive to do that.

I am going to try, really hard, to use our time in really focused ways- assignments, on our feet work- when we need to talk, and conceptualize, we will, but I’m really going to use time to keep that to a minimum, and also utilize outside of rehearsal time in hopefully smart ways to have lots of conversations there in smaller groups- the production group (designers), story conversations (which I’ve asked Jono to really focus in on with me on this show more than in the past, cause I think he’s a story big brain).

And finally, question on my mind a lot these days…what in Portland’s history and in its contemporary life mark it as a ‘city’…as urban? From a ‘resource within our state’ perspective, in terms of how state funding operates, and even how portland is perceived by the state, its clear. But I do wonder, as Bess’s family chose to stay in Portland, to stay in the city perhaps, what elements at what points have marked, and do mark, Portland a ‘city’…

Cannot wait to be in the room with everyone.