Second Tuesday

Tuesdays have a weird vibe – back into the rhythm of the training, but also the start of a new composition project. Leon led Viewpoints today and I absolutely love his energy and his philosophizing. Honestly I half expect him to start quoting dialogue from The Matrix in relation to how we view reality. The exercise today of crumpling up balls of paper to look at the room spatially was great. We set the balls wherever we wanted and then stepped back to look at the pattern – or lack there of. From there we started shaping the pattern – clump, circle, square, triangle. The next step was to remove the paper and use bodies to do the same thing. Participating with 30 people trying to think as one is fascinating.

Suzuki was taught by Kelly – who, as it turns out, was at Stagewest in 90 also. Very technical class – lots of focus on body alignment and movement. We have most of the basic vocabulary down, but are still struggling with form – which is the point – it is a never-ending struggle. So – apparently after like 30 years with the same way of naming each movement the vocabulary changed this past year and all the instructors are struggling to remember the new names. Seems like it was done on purpose some folks didn’t become too comfortable.

The afternoon was a session with Kelly discussing how to use all this training in making work. Great personal take on the process and on the SITI process in general. There are, of course, no specific answers or methods to follow – but way to work. Reminds me a lot of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategy cards – where you shuffle the deck (if you are lucky enough to have one) or tap the app and a suggestion for direction appears. Follow that suggestion.

Much of the conversation about how this stuff functions is really grounded in folks like Duchamp and Cage – people that worked to change our perceptive of the ordinary. I love that about this work, but I also have to work a bit harder at keeping my mouth shut. I am really resisting falling into teacher mode, but it does happen every so often. Chiming in on a definition of Hermeneutics the other day in the composition class got me a direct question from Anne about Diegetic and Non-Diegetic music. I was surprised I could dredge something up, but there it was (one motivated inside the scene, the other outside).

So – along the lines of keeping my mouth shut – Viewpoints is very playful – you are working with so many other people and part of the process is seeing who will go along with you and who won’t. So, basically I tend to wonder – who wants to play? It gets me into a sort of riffing state I have a hard time dropping. So – If I come right from Viewpoints to lunch I have the urge to just start moving through the space to see how the random people in the dinning hall will react. This extends to whatever comes out of my mouth as well. The banter is designed to be playful. I was talking about changing the rules on my students in the dissonance class where I’m nice for like two weeks and then when we get to the readings about anarchy I become a micromanaging dick on purpose, someone at lunch commented, that I really like to mess with people. Yea. But, I probably need to pull back on that here outside of Viewpoint. I recognize that not everyone wants to be messed with, so I need to cool it before I come off as a total asshole.

Good rehearsal tonight for the second composition – this time with directors – which adds a different dynamic in that group consensus can be negated by the person in charge. I also have concerns about aesthetics – how far we will be willing to take an idea. I keep reflecting on the comments made during the critique of the first pieces that all ideas should be developed as far as they can go. We met for an hour to create a list of important or memorable events in the first act – we ended up with about 14 specific things – which may be too much for a 12-minute scene – but we will sort that out.

We also talked a bit about style and keyed off of TV – listing a dozen or so specific styles (infomercial, talk show, QVC, News, sitcom – that sort of thing). We then moved to one of the studios and did some space improve – out of which came a number of interesting gestures and ideas. Then we moved through the list of 14 events and the director paired them with the TV list. A few interesting ideas came out of that, but we may or may not pursue them.

My two favorites were announcing Vershinin's entrance like a film noir - you know - something like: Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin, AKA, the lovesick major, AKA the guy from Moscow. He had a look about him. You know that look. The look of a guy that would cheat on his wife with the first dame in black he came across, only to dump her and leave town as soon as possible once it got too serious. The other was announcing Natasha's entrance like a gymnastic sporting event or like a bitchy fashion show. These connections seem like something worth pursuing, but my concern is if we start asking questions about how these ideas serve the text we a dead.  

Compared to the first composition project I feel like we have dug a bit deeper into the text with this one so far, mainly because we have an assigned space. So the plan is to meet for an hour tomorrow to narrow down some options and think about Thursday and Saturday as two big workdays. I do kind of miss the full on collaborative process of the first piece, but we still have a long way to go.