Hello, everyone.
It's been over a year since we began this blog back in the spring semester of 2009. I'm teaching the same class again, but with a few important revisions; and because the course goals and materials are, for the most part, the same, I've decided to continue with the blog we used before. This way, it becomes an ongoing compendium of thoughts and information on the evolution of this community-engaged acting process.
Last year, we worked with the plays of Naomi Wallace.
This semester we're beginning again, but this time developing characters for a production in UofL's mainstage season, A Perfect Wedding (that link will take you to the script in its entirety). Students in the class will be choosing characters from this play on which to work this semester, and engaging with members of the local community as they develop those characters for performance.
This is, in part, an extension of the work we did on Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: A Theatrical Documentary on the Topic of Marriage, which we devised starting in 2009 and performed in April of this year. Our interest in that project was in using theatre to start an ongoing dialogue on the topic of marriage, especially with the purpose of joining the national debate over marriage equality. This debate has entered the news again recently, since Proposition 8 was overturned by a federal judge in California, but marriages of gay and lesbian couples were put on hold by the Court of Appeals. The case is expected to go all the way to the Supreme Court. It seems useful to find ways of using theatre to explore this issue with local communities.
But also, Mee's play addresses a lot of important and engaging issues: cultural difference, love and relationships, death and funerals, beauty. And it does so in a sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking way. It's a comedy and plays on the conventions of that form, but is also poignant and even dark at times. It seems like it would be a fun way to introduce the public to this method that is intended to make the actor's process more democratic, engaged and responsible to community.
And also again, this is a class in which students will learn about the theory and practice of a number of different artists whose work they may not have other opportunities to study in a direct and practical way. We'll talk about how this work can provide them with tools for building their own processes outside of school.
So it's a lot of work we have ahead of us this semester, but I think it will be fun and productive work! Students are required to post on here over the course of the semester, so it will be updated on a regular basis. Please please help us as we take on this project: we would love to hear any thoughts on what we're doing ... just click on the envelope at the bottom of the post to leave a comment.
We're starting by learning about Viewpoints training, and how to use it to stage performance compositions. You can learn more about this technique by clicking on some of the links to the right.
More to come, very soon ...
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Viewpoints: I think I've done this before...but not really.
So my first reaction to viewpoints was "Oh, yeah I've done this." Or at least something like it. I've done most of the execises we explored in the past but no body ever told me it was called viewpoints. I think that Tompkins had us doing something like this as the beginning of his warmup routine last semester, at least the moving through space part. And i don't think I've ever done all those exercises at the same time.
It is one thing to read about the concept on paper. It's quite something else to do it. I've always learned that way anyway. I didn't understand the concepts in application until I'd actually done them. To me the viewpoints chapter we've covered so far only explain the concept in dividing out Space and Time and how to apply them through various things such as Tempo and Shape. It was Amy's instruction that brought it to life.
What also I noticed was how quickly it develops ensemble. I seems to break down barriers quickly and I'm not sure how. I often wonder how these things are thought up and wish i was part of the creation process. I would have loved to have been in the room when someone said "Okay I think we should all move through space."
I can't wait to read the rest of the chapters...
It is one thing to read about the concept on paper. It's quite something else to do it. I've always learned that way anyway. I didn't understand the concepts in application until I'd actually done them. To me the viewpoints chapter we've covered so far only explain the concept in dividing out Space and Time and how to apply them through various things such as Tempo and Shape. It was Amy's instruction that brought it to life.
What also I noticed was how quickly it develops ensemble. I seems to break down barriers quickly and I'm not sure how. I often wonder how these things are thought up and wish i was part of the creation process. I would have loved to have been in the room when someone said "Okay I think we should all move through space."
I can't wait to read the rest of the chapters...
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Afterthoughts ...
I just wanted to post once more at the end of the semester to reflect on the work we did. First, I will say again that I was very impressed and grateful for the small group of students in the class. We had a group of eight at the beginning and a few had to leave because their schedules demanded it, but throughout everyone was very receptive to new ideas and gave their full attention and energy to thinking and talking about these plays and this process. Excellent work all around!
I was also very impressed with what the students put together for their final performances. Naomi Wallace's plays are already extremely relevant and moving, but I feel like the students were able to make direct connections with their own lives, current situations, and local people in ways that doesn't always happen, especially publicly, in acting classes. As I was watching, it occurred to me that if I were an audience member who wasn't familiar with how actors work, I would be intrigued just by seeing the process of research. And in addition to that, I learned a lot from the performances. I really think that if actors always went through such a process of research, interviewing and performing their work on characters, theatre would become relevant in a different way for contemporary audiences. That's an ambitious thought, but it does seem possible.
I will definitely do some things differently if the opportunity presents itself to do this again in the future. (Students can weigh in on this if they have the chance.) First, this is the assignment I gave for the final performance:
("Everyday Life Performance Moments," by the way, refers to an exercise that I took from Omi Osun Olomo's course in Performance Ethnography. It is a short excerpt from an interview performed verbatim, in the way it is spoken by the interviewee.)
I modeled this assignment after the composition work I learned when studying with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company years ago, and think it works well in a situation when there is limited time to compose a performance. I also have used it in the past, for undergraduate students who have very little performance experience. But this time, it seemed a bit limiting.
This may also because I worked along with the student and composed my own performance as part of the class, so they might have a model to which they could look (and also so that I would have something to demonstrate this process in other contexts). But I think that students who are more experienced would benefit from something less structured than this. The problem is that students have so much anxiety about this process, they tend to look for a template or a set of rules to have something that ensures them they are doing this "right." And so when I say "just compose a solo performance using the techniques we studied in the first half of the semester," it seems too wide open and students sometimes feel paralyzed. But the truth is, I think the performances would be more varied, in terms of structure, if I didn't include this list, or didn't show them my own work as a model. I wonder if I shouldn't be less concerned about easing students' anxieties, since sometimes solving the problem of "how do I communicate this character to an audience?" produces such compelling ideas. Not that these performances weren't beautiful and fascinating, just that I don't want students to feel that they have to follow a particular set of rules to get everything "right."
Also, one thing that was really unfortunately missing in this process was more engagement with the interviewees and members of the community outside of class. I always encourage students to invite people to rehearsals, but it never does pan out. That's where I think it would help to have a community of people already interested before the class begins. I think the fruitful conversations that might happen as a result of this process, and the changing relationship of audience to actors this is intended to encourage, really relies on seeing the process as more of a dialogue and equal exchange instead of a process through which the actors interview people and use that information to lend authority to their representations. In fact, that's the way in which this really is fundamentally different than "method" acting or other processes actors undertake - that it is a process that happens publicly rather than behind closed doors. That's also the reason for using the blog and Myspace, so people can offer their feedback as we work and allow their thoughts to influence the choices actors make.
Part of the problem is, of course, that people's time is precious, and to request that they give some of it up to work with a group of acting students is a lot to ask. This part of it ... the "community based," dialogue-driven part ... is perhaps the most important, and the one piece that has never worked. But once again, I am convinced that this process has the potential to introduce a very important shift in the relationship between actors and audiences, so we can all benefit from the questions and ideas being circulated through these processes. What I mean to suggest is that, rather than theatre artists working toward a "production" that is a final point, the whole process is something dynamic and changing, a conversation that can happen before, during and after what we usually consider the "performances" are over. If anybody has any suggestions for how to make the dialogue part of this process more successful, I welcome your comments or thoughts.
I was also very impressed with what the students put together for their final performances. Naomi Wallace's plays are already extremely relevant and moving, but I feel like the students were able to make direct connections with their own lives, current situations, and local people in ways that doesn't always happen, especially publicly, in acting classes. As I was watching, it occurred to me that if I were an audience member who wasn't familiar with how actors work, I would be intrigued just by seeing the process of research. And in addition to that, I learned a lot from the performances. I really think that if actors always went through such a process of research, interviewing and performing their work on characters, theatre would become relevant in a different way for contemporary audiences. That's an ambitious thought, but it does seem possible.
I will definitely do some things differently if the opportunity presents itself to do this again in the future. (Students can weigh in on this if they have the chance.) First, this is the assignment I gave for the final performance:
You might think of this performance as being akin to a live documentary related to your character, a collage, a quilt woven from a number of different kinds of fabric to represent your character, or a sort of “Frankenstein’s monster” of your character. The idea is to develop your character’s identity using different pieces of information—interviews, written texts, pictures, film clips, songs, costume pieces, etc.— and perform this montage for the class. You will then put that character to work in the scene you are performing. You can create the montage any way you care to do so, but it must include the following elements:
1. At least two “Everyday Life Performance” moments
2. At least two costume pieces
3. A piece of music that you associate with your character
4. All of the Viewpoints
5. At least two pieces of non-fictional research associated with your character (from news media, for example, or scholarly texts)
6. At least two artistic representations—not music--you associate with your character (film clips, sculpture, paintings, etc.)
7. At least two of your character’s lines from the play
8. At least two elements of your character’s history that come from your imagination
9. At least one reference to your own identity and how it is similar to your character’s
("Everyday Life Performance Moments," by the way, refers to an exercise that I took from Omi Osun Olomo's course in Performance Ethnography. It is a short excerpt from an interview performed verbatim, in the way it is spoken by the interviewee.)
I modeled this assignment after the composition work I learned when studying with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company years ago, and think it works well in a situation when there is limited time to compose a performance. I also have used it in the past, for undergraduate students who have very little performance experience. But this time, it seemed a bit limiting.
This may also because I worked along with the student and composed my own performance as part of the class, so they might have a model to which they could look (and also so that I would have something to demonstrate this process in other contexts). But I think that students who are more experienced would benefit from something less structured than this. The problem is that students have so much anxiety about this process, they tend to look for a template or a set of rules to have something that ensures them they are doing this "right." And so when I say "just compose a solo performance using the techniques we studied in the first half of the semester," it seems too wide open and students sometimes feel paralyzed. But the truth is, I think the performances would be more varied, in terms of structure, if I didn't include this list, or didn't show them my own work as a model. I wonder if I shouldn't be less concerned about easing students' anxieties, since sometimes solving the problem of "how do I communicate this character to an audience?" produces such compelling ideas. Not that these performances weren't beautiful and fascinating, just that I don't want students to feel that they have to follow a particular set of rules to get everything "right."
Also, one thing that was really unfortunately missing in this process was more engagement with the interviewees and members of the community outside of class. I always encourage students to invite people to rehearsals, but it never does pan out. That's where I think it would help to have a community of people already interested before the class begins. I think the fruitful conversations that might happen as a result of this process, and the changing relationship of audience to actors this is intended to encourage, really relies on seeing the process as more of a dialogue and equal exchange instead of a process through which the actors interview people and use that information to lend authority to their representations. In fact, that's the way in which this really is fundamentally different than "method" acting or other processes actors undertake - that it is a process that happens publicly rather than behind closed doors. That's also the reason for using the blog and Myspace, so people can offer their feedback as we work and allow their thoughts to influence the choices actors make.
Part of the problem is, of course, that people's time is precious, and to request that they give some of it up to work with a group of acting students is a lot to ask. This part of it ... the "community based," dialogue-driven part ... is perhaps the most important, and the one piece that has never worked. But once again, I am convinced that this process has the potential to introduce a very important shift in the relationship between actors and audiences, so we can all benefit from the questions and ideas being circulated through these processes. What I mean to suggest is that, rather than theatre artists working toward a "production" that is a final point, the whole process is something dynamic and changing, a conversation that can happen before, during and after what we usually consider the "performances" are over. If anybody has any suggestions for how to make the dialogue part of this process more successful, I welcome your comments or thoughts.
Program for Our Final Performances
I thought I would post the program from our final performances for anyone who wasn't able to attend. Thanks to everyone who was there!
Final Performances for Community Based Acting
April 25 and 26, 2009
Characters and Performers:
Gin Chance from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Amy Steiger
Dray Chance from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Amelia Pantalos
Pace Creagan from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Will Gantt
Dalton Chance from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Melanie Henry
Boxler from In the Heart of America … Rocky Vanderford
Fairouz Saboura from In the Heart of America … Zac Gilbert
Craver Perry from In the Heart of America … Cassie Perkins
The scenes we will perform today are from plays by Naomi Wallace, a Kentucky-born playwright whose new play The Hard Weather Boating Party opened this spring at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays. In one of the plays the students chose, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, the character Pace Creagan says to her young friend, “Dalton Chance, when we're grown up, I want to stand here with you and not be afraid. I want to know it will be okay. Tonight. Tomorrow. That when it's time to work, I'll have work. That when I'm tired, I can rest. Just those things. Shouldn't they belong to us?" I find each part of Pace’s simple desire so moving - the "here" that means having a sense of place, the "with you" that means love and companionship, the lack of fear of persecution or loss, the need for satisfying work, and the need for rest - and this is so much what Ms. Wallace’s plays are about to me: the need to recognize which people in our world lack those simple human needs, to examine how we might contribute to their inability to have them, and to do our best to transform inequity and injustice in our own lives and communities.
And so these plays seemed ideal models for our efforts to find ways to examine and transform our relationship as theatre artists to our own community. All of us collected interviews with two or three people, and then we used pieces of those interviews in solo character study performances, using a technique borrowed from performance ethnography and the work of Anna Deavere Smith, who edits interviews into performances and speaks her interviewees’ words verbatim. We use her work because it gives equal attention to empathy and difference. Smith sees drama in the effort she makes to “cross the bridge” between herself and other people. In the introduction to her play Fires in the Mirror, she writes, "Character lives in the obvious gap between the real person and my attempt to seem like them. I try to close the gap between us, but I applaud the gap between us. I am willing to display my own unlikeness" (xxxvii-xxxviii). So as we worked, we noticed where we succeeded and failed in our attempts to get inside another person’s skin—and the important thing is what we learned through the process, through learning how to listen so closely to someone else, through becoming aware of how complicated human identity is, and the beauty and difficulty of that complexity, through finding out how to truly respect both the comforting similarities and the significant and fascinating differences between ourselves and other people.
Thanks for giving us your time and attention! We hope you enjoy the performances. We would love to hear your thoughts on our work or these characters and the questions they raise.
Final Performances for Community Based Acting
April 25 and 26, 2009
Characters and Performers:
Gin Chance from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Amy Steiger
Dray Chance from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Amelia Pantalos
Pace Creagan from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Will Gantt
Dalton Chance from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek … Melanie Henry
Boxler from In the Heart of America … Rocky Vanderford
Fairouz Saboura from In the Heart of America … Zac Gilbert
Craver Perry from In the Heart of America … Cassie Perkins
The scenes we will perform today are from plays by Naomi Wallace, a Kentucky-born playwright whose new play The Hard Weather Boating Party opened this spring at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays. In one of the plays the students chose, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, the character Pace Creagan says to her young friend, “Dalton Chance, when we're grown up, I want to stand here with you and not be afraid. I want to know it will be okay. Tonight. Tomorrow. That when it's time to work, I'll have work. That when I'm tired, I can rest. Just those things. Shouldn't they belong to us?" I find each part of Pace’s simple desire so moving - the "here" that means having a sense of place, the "with you" that means love and companionship, the lack of fear of persecution or loss, the need for satisfying work, and the need for rest - and this is so much what Ms. Wallace’s plays are about to me: the need to recognize which people in our world lack those simple human needs, to examine how we might contribute to their inability to have them, and to do our best to transform inequity and injustice in our own lives and communities.
And so these plays seemed ideal models for our efforts to find ways to examine and transform our relationship as theatre artists to our own community. All of us collected interviews with two or three people, and then we used pieces of those interviews in solo character study performances, using a technique borrowed from performance ethnography and the work of Anna Deavere Smith, who edits interviews into performances and speaks her interviewees’ words verbatim. We use her work because it gives equal attention to empathy and difference. Smith sees drama in the effort she makes to “cross the bridge” between herself and other people. In the introduction to her play Fires in the Mirror, she writes, "Character lives in the obvious gap between the real person and my attempt to seem like them. I try to close the gap between us, but I applaud the gap between us. I am willing to display my own unlikeness" (xxxvii-xxxviii). So as we worked, we noticed where we succeeded and failed in our attempts to get inside another person’s skin—and the important thing is what we learned through the process, through learning how to listen so closely to someone else, through becoming aware of how complicated human identity is, and the beauty and difficulty of that complexity, through finding out how to truly respect both the comforting similarities and the significant and fascinating differences between ourselves and other people.
Thanks for giving us your time and attention! We hope you enjoy the performances. We would love to hear your thoughts on our work or these characters and the questions they raise.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Post Solo Performance
Whew..., was it good? What was the response? I don't know, audience...what was the response?
I felt extremely good about the performances, of not just me, but of my comrades in the class. I feel like we all gave it all that we could considering (at least from my perspective) how much we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. I will be the first to admit that I was filled with dread beyond all dread, no matter how often Amy told us it wasn't that big of a deal (...but academics are academics!). However, having done one I reflect:
The last time I did my solo performance with a larger audience I felt like I was missing a big chunk of information. Granted, everyone is their own biggest critic, I realize now that Fairouz was in no way as developed as other people developed theirs...or maybe she was and I just can't see that? I will admit that I feel like I went a much different route when it came to doing my performance, I felt like I was doing a monologue a lot more than I was bring pieces into the piece to be examined, although that was a part of it. I felt that I didn't explain my process of creation, but rather did a weird monologue that was full of exposition of my character. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but perhaps it limited me...or I just didn't know how to develop it more (at the time). I ramble....
The big chunk that I was missing was part of my character that I sort of tricked myself into thinking I really didn't need.... for example...the race difference! Ah, gad! It was as I was down pretending to have sand fall through my fingertips that I realized that I was not complete and I had turned this woman into a woman from campbellsville and I no longer believed in her anymore - that is, not to the fullest extent.
However, this has taught my loads! In fact, it makes me very excited to do this process again and I may just go around making ten minute solo performances as I please... I mean, I'm already the life of every party anyway, ha. But, on a serious note, I deeply feel that I grasp the level of commitment something like this takes and how I did not give it all the justice it deserved. It was a learning process though, and now I've learned without receiving a literal slap on the wrist. I think that doing TOO much research is always the answer instead of curtailing around a schedule - although, I do think that I gave it as much as I could in my current state of ...crazy and sick.
How did it affect me as an actor? technician?
How didn't it. I think it's obvious how it affected me as an actor, but as a technician it only furthers my evolving through process that...theatre is not Me or You - it's US. And, if it isn't US it isn't worth a damn. I think this only makes it clearer that research is important in all facets of ...LIFE. It's a crime to misrepresent anything and these techniques allow me to represent to a more full capacity. Also, creating these solo performances allows all this research and information to become tools for creativity which was the most fun. Being able to take SO many things and create a story from it, my own story (so to speak) makes me feel more like the artist that I strive to be. In the end, we're all artists, even the audience.
This was TOO much fun! Can't wait to do it again!
I felt extremely good about the performances, of not just me, but of my comrades in the class. I feel like we all gave it all that we could considering (at least from my perspective) how much we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. I will be the first to admit that I was filled with dread beyond all dread, no matter how often Amy told us it wasn't that big of a deal (...but academics are academics!). However, having done one I reflect:
The last time I did my solo performance with a larger audience I felt like I was missing a big chunk of information. Granted, everyone is their own biggest critic, I realize now that Fairouz was in no way as developed as other people developed theirs...or maybe she was and I just can't see that? I will admit that I feel like I went a much different route when it came to doing my performance, I felt like I was doing a monologue a lot more than I was bring pieces into the piece to be examined, although that was a part of it. I felt that I didn't explain my process of creation, but rather did a weird monologue that was full of exposition of my character. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but perhaps it limited me...or I just didn't know how to develop it more (at the time). I ramble....
The big chunk that I was missing was part of my character that I sort of tricked myself into thinking I really didn't need.... for example...the race difference! Ah, gad! It was as I was down pretending to have sand fall through my fingertips that I realized that I was not complete and I had turned this woman into a woman from campbellsville and I no longer believed in her anymore - that is, not to the fullest extent.
However, this has taught my loads! In fact, it makes me very excited to do this process again and I may just go around making ten minute solo performances as I please... I mean, I'm already the life of every party anyway, ha. But, on a serious note, I deeply feel that I grasp the level of commitment something like this takes and how I did not give it all the justice it deserved. It was a learning process though, and now I've learned without receiving a literal slap on the wrist. I think that doing TOO much research is always the answer instead of curtailing around a schedule - although, I do think that I gave it as much as I could in my current state of ...crazy and sick.
How did it affect me as an actor? technician?
How didn't it. I think it's obvious how it affected me as an actor, but as a technician it only furthers my evolving through process that...theatre is not Me or You - it's US. And, if it isn't US it isn't worth a damn. I think this only makes it clearer that research is important in all facets of ...LIFE. It's a crime to misrepresent anything and these techniques allow me to represent to a more full capacity. Also, creating these solo performances allows all this research and information to become tools for creativity which was the most fun. Being able to take SO many things and create a story from it, my own story (so to speak) makes me feel more like the artist that I strive to be. In the end, we're all artists, even the audience.
This was TOO much fun! Can't wait to do it again!
Pre Solo Performance
As I begin to write this, I can't even allow myself to think straight without playing music in the background. This worries me a bit because the weapon of choice is, of course, CocoRosie...perhaps they are becoming a bit TOO involved with my life. Perhaps? NONSENSE... I start to wonder.
"Now that I'm alone, I feel the lonely brokenness of all the wicked avenues I never sold my love on."
Beginning to develop my solo performance I was really nervous. I knew I had a lot of information but due to my crazy semester and schedule and the outside world...and perhaps my overall effort in the end, I didn't develop the character as much as she deserved to be. I focused mainly on how her situation in the play could be played out, that is regarding her feelings of loss and not really being able to understand her brother's disappearance. If I've learned anything this semester in my own life it's that I now know what it's like to have someone in your life and for reasons that you canNOT understand they are gone. I wanted that to come across. So, I interviewed Cassandra Perkins, the one and only since she had a similar situation involving her brother leaving for the service. However, their stories don't really match, thankfully nothing tragic became of Cassie's brother, but the feeling of losing someone close to you (or that you might) was what I wanted to hit upon.
"He's my evil shadow dove, my black palomito. Can't shake him like a diamond skull... I can't seem to do so. Can't just rub him out like the mob used to do so..like memories of porno and tear stains and tobacco...oh...it's a mini disastro"
What else? I was able to use my information regarding the first gulf war to give a setting for the play since the rest of the show is set... in some...other world it seems. Boxler, especially exists in this world of living/dead...and I begin to think that Fairouz and Craver are no strangers to this weird existence. For this, I wanted to incorporate a part of a conversation that the class had had about the setting for "In the Heart of America." I chose to set my performance/scenes in a hotel room that was full of sand. That is to make the gap between life/death america/iraq more apparent.
What is most interesting/scary is that will it be ten minutes? I know Amy would say it really doesn't matter, but that's the academic part of all of this coming together. The stress of it being an assignment helps it work and makes it even more daunting. Here's hoping that it goes well!
"Now that I'm alone, I feel the lonely brokenness of all the wicked avenues I never sold my love on."
Beginning to develop my solo performance I was really nervous. I knew I had a lot of information but due to my crazy semester and schedule and the outside world...and perhaps my overall effort in the end, I didn't develop the character as much as she deserved to be. I focused mainly on how her situation in the play could be played out, that is regarding her feelings of loss and not really being able to understand her brother's disappearance. If I've learned anything this semester in my own life it's that I now know what it's like to have someone in your life and for reasons that you canNOT understand they are gone. I wanted that to come across. So, I interviewed Cassandra Perkins, the one and only since she had a similar situation involving her brother leaving for the service. However, their stories don't really match, thankfully nothing tragic became of Cassie's brother, but the feeling of losing someone close to you (or that you might) was what I wanted to hit upon.
"He's my evil shadow dove, my black palomito. Can't shake him like a diamond skull... I can't seem to do so. Can't just rub him out like the mob used to do so..like memories of porno and tear stains and tobacco...oh...it's a mini disastro"
What else? I was able to use my information regarding the first gulf war to give a setting for the play since the rest of the show is set... in some...other world it seems. Boxler, especially exists in this world of living/dead...and I begin to think that Fairouz and Craver are no strangers to this weird existence. For this, I wanted to incorporate a part of a conversation that the class had had about the setting for "In the Heart of America." I chose to set my performance/scenes in a hotel room that was full of sand. That is to make the gap between life/death america/iraq more apparent.
What is most interesting/scary is that will it be ten minutes? I know Amy would say it really doesn't matter, but that's the academic part of all of this coming together. The stress of it being an assignment helps it work and makes it even more daunting. Here's hoping that it goes well!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Schedule for Final Performances: Solo Character Studies and Scenes from Two Plays by Naomi Wallace
Hello, everyone.
First of all, I've fixed things so that anyone interested can comment here on the blog. Better late than never.
We'll be giving a public demonstration of our work for this class, and we would love to have everyone come to our final performances. We will be showing solo character study performances that incorporate interview material, interspersed with scenes from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek and In the Heart of America by Naomi Wallace.
Saturday, April 25 at 2:00 pm and Sunday April 26 at 7:00 pm, in the Thrust Theatre at the University of Louisville:
View Larger Map
Please come and let us know your thoughts on the work we've done this semester! And invite friends, too.
First of all, I've fixed things so that anyone interested can comment here on the blog. Better late than never.
We'll be giving a public demonstration of our work for this class, and we would love to have everyone come to our final performances. We will be showing solo character study performances that incorporate interview material, interspersed with scenes from The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek and In the Heart of America by Naomi Wallace.
Saturday, April 25 at 2:00 pm and Sunday April 26 at 7:00 pm, in the Thrust Theatre at the University of Louisville:
View Larger Map
Please come and let us know your thoughts on the work we've done this semester! And invite friends, too.
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