Just to catch readers up if any of you aren't in the class:
We began by starting to learn the Viewpoints as a method of improvisation, both for ensemble building and for creating our own work. We started the process of having public readings of the plays we'll be working on later in the semester. Then we spent some time discussing solo performance as a particular form that can give people an opportunity to tell their own stories to audiences. Now each student is using the Viewpoints vocabulary to tell a story he or she wants to tell.
In The Viewpoints Book, one of the ways Anne Bogart and Tina Landau describe a "Composition" that uses Viewpoints as its foundation is
... an assignment given to an ensemble so that it can create short, specific theater pieces addressing a particular aspect of the work. We use Composition during rehearsal to engage the collaborators in the process of generating their own work around a source. The assignment will usually include an overall intention or structure as well as a substantial list of ingredients which must be included in the piece. ... These ingredients are to a Composition what single words are to a paragraph or essay. The creator makes meaning through their arrangement. (11)
Part of the point of this first autobiographical solo composition assignment is to allow the actors to explore their own identities ... who they imagine themselves to be, and what's important to them ... before they begin engaging with the fictional identities of characters and the histories of people in the community. It's also to give them an opportunity to practice building work in this way so that they can build on the experience later in the semester.
I'm posting the assignment here, just so readers will have a context for what we're talking about:
Solo Composition:
Performing Yourself as a Character
In this assignment, you will use the viewpoints (and the other “ingredients” on the list below) to compose a solo performance that focuses on your own identity. One of the challenges is to include everything on this list in the short amount of time provided. It is based on the idea that you perform yourself as a character every day, even if that character changes in different circumstances. And as an actor, you always bring at least a little bit of your own identity—your personal history, cultural background, likes and dislikes, deepest wishes, etc.—to the character on which you’re working. This project should give you an opportunity to explore what those things are before you start to work on a character who is in many ways very different from you.
In no more than five minutes (or less … just don’t go over five) you should tell the story of something important that happened to you (not necessarily deeply personal or emotional, unless you feel comfortable doing that. Just a story you feel you really want to tell). In those five minutes, you must use all of the following:
1. Your favorite song in some form.
2. A physical re-enactment of one thing you do everyday
3. A mention of your cultural background (whatever that means to you)
4. 10 consecutive seconds of total silence
5. All of the Viewpoints (Space: Shape, Spatial Relationship, Gesture, Architecture, Topography; Time: Repetition, Tempo, Duration, Kinesthetic Response)
6. A moment in which the audience participates actively
7. At least one costume piece
8. One object from home that is relevant to your story
You should turn in a sheet of paper with an outline of your script that explains how you’ve included each of these things. The performance should be memorized.
These performances are happening tomorrow and Monday, and we'll videotape some of them in case we want to revisit them later in the semester. I'm excited to see these.
After those are done, we delve into studying community based work.
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