Solo Performances: John Leguizamo, Danny Hoch, Spalding Grey,

So I am familiar with Freak but I have to say that reading it as opposed to seeing it...that’s something else. I’ve always wanted to do my own show but he is so brave with the things he talks about.
I don’t feel the written dialogue does him justice. It’s really fun to watch him because he will use a few simple props to tell all of his stories. For example, when his father hits him and he begins to fly towards the light he will lay belly down on a garbage can and pretend to be floating through space. If I recall correctly he will use a broom for the antenna. Then there are the physical gestures he works with. He uses a lot of the viewpoints, whether or not he calls them that. So I guess reading it won’t do everything for us.
Danny Hoch seems like it would be a fun watch but the video didn’t really show me enough to get a grasp of what his show is like. Although I read the article posted on blackboard it was difficult for me visualize him performing Bianca. It would seem to me that a lot of these shows are difficult to grasp once they have to be put to paper. To me I wonder what the point of scripting a show of this type would be. This show is an individual performance by and about a specific person (for example John Leguizamo doing his father) How can you pick up his show and do it as my own? Has that ever been done? Can it be done?
I can see if I were to take a story that Spalding Gray was telling and removed any specific reference to himself and told it as my own then I could accomplish it.

Matt's intro

I'm a 5th year undergrad at U of L. I'm a Justice Administration major planning to get minors in both Forensic Anthropology and in Theater arts. I joined this class because it is facinating both in the theater and creative arts aspects that drew me to THEATER ARTS, but also because of the cultural analysis that the Anthropolgical aspects that the class provides. From when I first heard of this class I felt that I had to be involved in such a interesting class and so far I'm very glad I did.

Hi! I'm Jared.

Hello all, my name is Jared White. I’m a second year graduate student here at the University of Louisville. I’m really excited about this class because I love creating new works from scratch. I’m excited about what we will accomplish in this class. About a year and a half ago I did a performance art piece for the first time. The piece involved me putting up several pictures of civil rights leaders. I had up pictures of Chief Joseph, Harvey Milk, Emma Goldman, Malcolm X and Caesar Chavez. Then I went along writing racist words on all their faces. With each picture I would remove an article of clothing. Once the clothing was revealed it showed the very same words written in permanent marker all over my skin. I would eventually by the end of the piece be completely naked and covered in racism. During this whole piece I had the star spangled banner (ironically sung by the Mormon tabernacle choir) playing while a slide show showed photos of white Americas checkered past with freedom. Then once I was completely naked I tried to wash off the words with a bucket of water while Elton Johns’ “The Last Song” played in the back ground. During this last song I also had pictures of hope continuing the slideshow.
I tell you this, not to brag but to highlight all that we might be able to accomplish with this class. We probably won’t be touching such heavy handed material but we can go far with the statements we can make.

Ready To Learn!

Hello All,

I am very excited to be working in this class as this will be my first community-based theatrical experience! Although, I'm sure some would argue that every theatrical experience is through community, whether it is defined as the acting ensemble and crew, the production staff, or even the audience. Anyway, I am currently an MFA student at U of L, trying to expand my knowledge of theatre as art and literature. And with the help of Amy and this class, I should hope to also be exploring theatre as anthropology (which I had never thought of before and I'm not sure why!) and community strengthening. I also have a special and exciting connection with this class because I am currently planning my own wedding for next August. So the ideas and connotations of marriage are fresh in my head, defining what marriage could possibly mean to my future husband and I. I also am getting the first hand-experience on how other brides and grooms view weddings and marriage. I am so excited to see what I can learn about myself and relationships while in this class!

Please Come to Our Reading!! Join the Process!

Hello, everyone. I've put together an announcement to publicize our first reading of the play on which we'll be working in this class. Please forward the information far and wide! We'd like to have as much community participation as possible. Please note that this won't be on campus, but at the Main Library, which I think is a more central location. I've included a map below, and information on how to get to the main library on the bus.

Saturday, October 2, 2010 at 12 noon
Centennial Room
in the basement of the Louisville Free Public Library,
Main Branch (on York between 3rd and 4th)
FREE and open to the public!



Community Reading
of Charles L. Mee’s
A Perfect Wedding
to be produced in the Theatre Arts Department
at the University of Louisville
in March 2011.

This reading is part of a course called “Acting, Performance and Community” at UofL. We are experimenting with a community-engaged rehearsal process to find ways of using our work on this play as a jumping-off point for community conversations about the issues it addresses, particularly marriage equality and cultural difference. The play is a comedy with some music and dancing, so the process should be fun**, but there are also darker moments and serious questions raised. Everyone is invited to participate after the reading in any way they wish: offer to be interviewed by one of the actors, attend one or more rehearsals and give feedback, follow and comment on our class blog, etc.

For more information, contact:
Dr. Amy Steiger, (502) 852-8446, amy.steiger@louisville.edu
or check out our blog:
communitybasedacting.blogspot.com




**Please note: the play contains some sensitive language and content. You can read it in its entirety at www.charlesmee.com/html/perfectwedding.html

The Main library is in downtown Louisville at 301 York St, between 3rd and 4th:

View Larger Map

If you're taking the bus, here's a link to the TARC website so you can plan a trip to the library on October 2.

WE HOPE TO SEE LOTS OF PEOPLE THERE! PLEASE COME!

Starting Again!: A Perfect Wedding

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 ...

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...