Won’t drink the water no more… Brendan McDonough

My main inspiration for this project is Genesis 22 of the Old Testament in which God, via the Angel of God, asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, and then when he’s about to do it the Angel comes back and tells Abraham he’s just been punked and he doesn’t really have to kill his son. My project is a wild exploration of this story, the characters and their individual perspectives. As Duty, choice, obligation and guilt began to arise as major themes I drew heavily on the Old Testament but also on my personal experiences away at school in North Carolina, here in the city and growing up on the North Shore of Long Island. Lastly I was inspired by the principles of Just War theory and the war currently being waged in Afghanistan.

My process was long term, on-going and sporadic. I would go on wild research binges, saturating myself with any credible information on the Old Testament, Abraham, Isaac, Angels, God, Satan, Afghanistan, Christianity, Islam, soldiers, terrorists, counter-terrorism, Post-Traumatic stress, Tom Waits, Duty, obligation and guilt. At some point I turned all of this information into a play including Isaac, the Angel of God and Lucifer but this was not conducive to solo performance and I found myself stuck. After a visit from solo performance artist Kristen… , I was inspired. She had found herself in the same situation of having a multi-character play but needing a solo-performance piece and so she simply told the same story through the perspective of one character. I tried this out and it morphed into a sort of post-facto therapy, confession session with the Angel of God and seeing as it was already November I decided to stick with this concept and incessantly play with it. I allowed this character to be porous in order to grow, change, evolve and absorb any new aspects, ideas and perspectives that seemed necessary or appropriate. Throughout the process I have been concerned with where this story is going. Its conclusion was a constant source of anxiety until I realized that I don’t have to know how this story ends, I just have to get this character through seven minutes of it and make sure he says what he needs to in this chapter.

I chose Tom Waits as my virtual mentor. He proved to be an inspiring and liberating guide on this venture. His music, writing and performance are littered with cries of the oppressed and down trodden or those down on their luck. He can inhabit and explode the dark and filthy corners of life, humanity and existence as well as wrench hearts and illuminate beauty and I want to be able to do just that. Like Waits, I like to consider myself multi-disciplinary artist and sans time restraints, my piece would include sound and music performed on various instruments and percussion. Waits has helped me to straddle the line between “Glitter and Doom,” his latest album title.

STILL WAITING (for the drugs to kick in) - Derrick DeMaria

i have never worked in a class that allowed for such exploration of the questions that plague the self. the breath of subjective that everyone brought every class inspired me in a way i never have been before.
the monologist brother theodore describes himself as a "philosopher, metaphysician and podiatrist." he is able to ground his aging, yet spry, double entendre ridden words in the everyday, making his work very accessible.
about four weeks into the class, a guest artist brought up the distinction between work made for your own pleasure, because you have something to say, and crafting moments that you would like have if you were an audience member. This idea challenged me the whole semester. I think my end product finally has shades that i would be interested in viewing if i was an audience member, but it certainly didn't start off that way.
one of my biggest break-throughs came while watching early episodes of SNL. The comedic experimentation amazed me with Kaufman's Mighty Mouse and Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin hosting; they are able to make metaphisycial ideas accessible and funny as all shit. They found a way to break things down to their absurdly simple core, usually dualities such as right and wrong or truth and fiction, and let them rub against each other.
In the end, i think i found some of this.
my piece circles around the illision of choice. most people go throughout their days thinking they are in comand of their every disission. i wanted to see what happens if the reality sets in, let the interwoven fabric of time have the responisblity of my actions and lets see what happens. i set a series of dualities up and let slam into each other.

Jonathan Kuhn on Hand ME Down

My piece, titled Hand ME Down, is rooted in the work of Ann Hamilton. This project is dependant on the objects I present and their histories. I am only a small part of my project. I do not instill meaning in my objects. Each object has a story, and my duty is to discover the history and importance of each of the hand-me-downs I present.

My piece is about continuing the life of another person through my relationship to an object: it’s smell, texture, markings, et cetera. In suspending the history of the object’s predecessor, an object is able to hold the legacy of the corporal in a tangible artifact, which can be worn on the body. Hence, the body of an other ultimately continues in the new owner of an object which was once important to it’s previous owner.

Katie Longazel on PIE IN THE FACE

Summary:

The piece begins as a direct address to the audience. The actress starts a conversational, relaxed, and comedic story on the importance of food. She talks about the food that excites her, motivates her, and effects her emotions. The actress begins to talk about a specific food phobia; key lime pie. She talks about the gross green custardy concoction, her father’s favorite pie, and begins to recount a memory of her mother bringing home key lime pie for her father on an Anniversary. The mood changes abruptly as the actress tells the story of her mother getting pied in the face at the hand of her father. She recalls the red and green left on her mothers face. She finishes the story, takes out a key lime pie, and eats it simply.

Process:

The piece was driven by the idea that an act of violence witnessed as a young person will consume you, unless you consume it first. The actress eats the pie, because for years the memory of the pie ate at her, preventing her from enjoying the dessert. The idea of “a pie in the face” is so associated with clowns and pranksters and has always been comedic. However the trauma of domestic violence is anything but funny. To explore these contrasting components in my piece I started by physicalizing the act of violence. Then I phicalized the child’s struggle within the family dynamic, and I told the secret of the child who witnessed the abuse. After exploring the story with mostly physical work, I felt that the charged content of the piece would be best expressed in a “stand up” or comedic address to the audience in order to play into the stereotypical pie-in-the-face clown routine and keep the shock of the violence intact. I felt it was important to address both the comedy and tragedy of receiving a pie in the face. My desire was to make them comfortable with me, the storyteller, and allow themselves to let their guard down and stay tuned for the entirety of the piece without feeling overwhelmed or sorry for the storyteller. The final piece of the pie, was figuring out how to end the story without leaving the audience with the charged material and bolting offstage, but also without resolving the story in pretty pink ribbons and saying “everything is ok”. I felt the only way to do this was to consume the pie myself, showing the violence taken in by the witness and the control the witness has over the violence.

Inspiration:

I was inspired by people who keep secrets inside and use humor to defuse painful memories. Daniel allowed us the opportunity to explore our own secrets in class and through that I found such power in secret keeping, but more so in the telling of a secret. Everyone who told a secret had a specific body language, way of speaking, comfort zone. I wanted to shown this seeming simply act of telling a secret.

Mentor:

I will always be in awe of Dawn Saito. Her ability to transform her body completely to inhabit a feeling, or a memory, an animal, or a tornado. She dives into her work completely and inhabits every moment onstage. There is not one steam shown in her performance, not one second that she is not present. Her organic and completely powerful performances can make the simple act of looking up, a moment that is bone chilling. I explored my story in physical storytelling, inspired by Saito. I attempted to inhabit both of the victims, and hope to in the future in habit the offender.

Whoopi Goldberg’s form of comedy used as an entry point to her audience struck me as extremely powerful. She can win you over with humor, and then send slam you with a message so profound and charged you can’t remember how you went from laughing to jaw dropped stun of “did she really say that?” I felt that the duality of a clown, and the two meanings of the pie in my story lent itself nicely to using Goldberg’s technique of storytelling.

Sarah O'Sullivan on MEAT

The disconnection of sexuality from the soul is the inspiration of my piece. My need to release and investigate without judgment inspired me to activate what had been going on. My sexuality was not in my control and I felt I was constantly being taken advantage of and used emotionally and physically. I was not honoring myself and in turn I felt weak and allowed unhealthy patterns rule my life. Then I found that I was just as responsible as anyone. I originally wanted to use the mask to represent the allowance of abuse. The mask is still and smiling while the body expresses what is really going on inside. Is it misuse on my part? Am I living my life in a manner that caused me to feel sexual shame and anger? Or did someone’s personal hand play the part? How did I let it happen and why? I began investigating my inner battle physically. I believe that beginning my process exploring physical movement lead me to experience and release blocks which would restrict my piece from evolving.

I learned something really important about my process. That is that I never need to be afraid of sticking to one idea. By trying many different forms of expression (ie: movement, mask work, text and imagery) I allowed myself to explore ideas without judgment or restriction. It was amazing to see what happened when I would put up a completely new addition and to not worry if it “fits right’. With the guidance and inspiration of the class I was able to develop an arc and give form and a foundation to every moment. By playing I was able to create a piece that I could share with an audience instead of it being an internal expression. I love how the theme changed. It started as the expression of a woman who is a victim of her own sexuality and grew into an empowering comment on violence and one’s ability to explore, embrace, and take power of his or her own body and heal their soul.

As an artist Yoko Ono inspired me in many different ways. Her inspiration affected me personally and proactively. The thing I most admire about her as an artist is that she works from a place that is universal. Her art is not just a statement but it actively supports the connection of all humans, elements, and space. This is what I get out of her art. Cut Piece is continuously inspiring because the meaning of the piece continues to evolve but it does not lose where it began. It is an international show that traveled all over the world and activated new meanings, interpretations, and effected new people. Thousands of people participated in the piece. I love that she created it for other performers to do as well, male and female. One thing that I love about her as an artist is because she does not just make a statement. She shares herself with the world and in turn gives people opportunity to engage in their own humanity in the presence of others. Having other performers to participate in Cut Piece allows the piece to constantly evolve and grow. It is a gorgeously generous gift to the world and that is how Yoko Ono has inspired me and guided me to progress my work on a more offering level.

Eva Patton on GRACE

INSPIRATION –

My piece entitled “Grace” has been inspired by my personal experience of trying to reconcile that the people I love so dearly (my family) embody a spiritual and political vision that I find much too narrow and exclusive.



I was raised in the home of a Methodist (evangelical) minister in Indiana. I was raised to believe the Bible absolutely literally – that meant no evolution, no aliens, no astrology. Any of the aforementioned were the antichrist; a cult; or worse: Eastern. But for me.....? Why can't the lines on my hand tell the story of my life? Why wouldn’t God arrange our birthdays with the patterns of the stars? Why couldn’t my cat Floyd be the reincarnation of Virginia Woolf?



I’m very thankful for my Christian upbringing – I always felt unconditionally loved and supported, and I believe that Christianity in its purest form is something to aspire to – pure and good. But I grieve that so few questions were allowed to be asked, that curiosity wasn’t encouraged, and that the church is often so narrow and intolerant in its scope, with more of an emphasis on sin and shame than on love and joy.



The other thing I’ve continually struggled with, and I’ve realized over recent years that I am far from alone in this, is the politicization of faith that’s happening in our world today. As you might suspect, I am the only liberal Democrat in a family of conservative Republicans and it grieves me that somehow Christianity has become synonymous with political policies that endorse torture, instigate a senseless war, serve the rich, and blatently disregard the Constitution. I quit discussing politics with my family somewhere in the middle of Bush’s tenure. Somewhere around the time that my sister asked me “Don’t you just love Rumsfeld?” I realized that I had to let go of the anger, live my own life, practice my own beliefs and somehow find peace with us being diametrically opposed.



PROCESS -

I was inspired some time ago by Eric Bogosian and the way he describes how he works. He said that he talks/improvises into a tape recorder and then transcribes. Ever since I read that (several years ago now), I’ve worked that way when working on solo material. My mind can move so much faster than my fingers can type and I find that the stories come out effortlessly and in a more conversational tone than when I’m writing at a keyboard. Even so, they are VERY rough drafts that I have to edit and edit and edit.



My pieces are usually text based, and so I appreciated the early exercises that Daniel had us bring in emphasizing the physical – we were encouraged to let the body lead, to let the body tell the story. I had great fun with a physical exercise incorporating a Bible and a fan..... but I struggled with where to go from there. I went back and forth wondering what shape this piece “should” take – storytelling? Characters? I was so inspired by some of the physical scores that my classmates brought in early on and I wanted to do THAT. :) But I finally let go of trying to paste some form onto my piece that didn’t belong there. I kept asking myself – what is my deepest question? And the ever obvious (with a gentle reminder from Daniel) – what is my intention.....? Easy to forget when working on a solo piece, but it is just as important to answer specifically! Why am I telling this.....? What do I want to achieve by sharing this story....? I allowed myself to let go of certain objects, symbols, gestures I found early on – I had been hanging onto them with all my might and realized they were no longer working. I went through many days improvising and transcribing, and feeling more and more uninspired, uninteresting, and somewhat panicked that I really don’t have anything to say after all.....



Working on this particular piece was challenging because I was trying to do a character that was myself – I discovered through this process that it’s MUCH easier to do other people..... I let go of the idea that the whole piece had to be in my voice and that’s when I felt it took off. I got the first line and then the rest of the piece started talking....



From there, notes from Daniel and the class have been invaluable. I’m so thankful for that because that specificity and direction is what I really felt I needed at this stage of working on it. I’m happy with where it is today, but tomorrow.....back at it.





VIRTUAL MENTOR -

It is sooo difficult to choose just one. I have to at least mention a few solo artists whose work I’ve seen in the past who have really had an impact on me and made me want to do this kind of work.

§ I’ve seen all of Julia Sweeny’s shows and really appreciate her as a master storyteller – I love the way she weaves her stories so effortlessly and conversationally in front of an audience as though she were talking to all of us in her living room.

§ Years ago, I saw Dael Orlandersmith* do her one-woman show Beauty’s Daughter at the American Place theatre and I loved the way she melded characters with poetry – something I’m very interested in exploring because I’ve written poetry for years and feel that the poems often get at the heart of what I’m trying to express in a way that other text and even physical gesture can’t.

§ Danny Hoch* at P.S. 122– I can’t imagine a more masterful impersonator.

*also studied in this class



And from this class, Flying Solo, I have to say that I was most inspired by Jen Hofer. Jen is a a poet, translator, interpreter, teacher, and public letter-writer. What inspired me so much about her was not just her form or her content but her generosity of spirit as an artist. When she came to visit our class, she passed around these little books that she had made, astoundingly simple, beautiful little creations. She gives these books away, just as she gives away the letters that she publicly writes and doesn’t keep a copy (she keeps a log). In the moment I was handling that book, I became very emotional because I thought, here’s a person who’s creating these beautiful objects and then letting go of them.... floating them out there in the world, just for the sake of doing it, for the sake of sharing....



I sometimes question what the point is of creating my solo work (or any artistic product). In those moments of self-doubt, it’s easy to think – who cares.....? What’s the point? The world’s not going to change because of this. But she reminded me that the act of creation in and of itself is worthwhile. Create it and let go of it. A teeny little book – so full of meaning. It launched my thoughts in so many different directions – I thought about how we don’t make things by hand anymore; about how rushed we are in our world; about how (ever since the industrial revolution, I suppose) the modern day worker is removed from the beautiful final product of his or her labor; I thought about how meaningful it would be to give gifts that I made vs. bought; and I pondered for a long time about generosity and what it means for an artist to be generous in spirit. Thank you Jen. :)

Georgia by: Fariso Maswoswe

The color I wish to portray is gray. It sounds like birds chirping, children playing, adults drinking, and vultures feasting. It smells like the air of a sunny, raining day. It tastes bittersweet. I’ve become very intrigued by, scared of, obsessed with, bewildered, angered, excited, and stunned by the vastness of differing perspectives that can be born of a singular event. I wish to explore the idea of differing perspectives. I wished to explore the differing perspective from the same character during various stages of life. I wish to explore the differing perspective of various characters among differing social categories such as culture, age, and gender. I wish to explore the differing perspectives of the "good" versus "evil" forces of a situation: curruption vs. innocence, villian vs. victim. I wish to embark on a search for truth.

This small glimpse you see of a much larger, work in progress is based upon my following burning questions: Is there such a thing as truth? Is there such a thing as a lie? Is there such a thing as both good and evil, or just one and the absence of another? Where do these terms come from? What happens when they meet? What happens when they mix? What happens when they clash? What happens when they collide to confront each other? What happens when they stay separated, distant, and silent? What happens when there is never a meeting of the minds? What happens when one person preserves knowledge only for themselves but leaves out everyone else? What happens when everyone else knows a certain knowledge but chooses to leave out just one person. What happens when you refuse to acknowledge what is right in front of your face? What happens when something is forced in front of your face? When is ignorance bliss? What happens when you remember something you are supposed to forget? How does the memory betray you? How does the mind, body, and voice betray you? What happens when both parties encounter opposite experiences of the same situation? How many stories can you get from one story? How is this dangerous? How is it beneficial? What happens when you love your enemy? What happens when your enemy loves you? What happens when you can't love? What happens when you don't feel the way you're supposed to feel? What happens when you don't do what you're supposed to do? What happens when you test the waters? What happens when when you step outside the box? What happens when you don't? What happens when you state the obvious? What happens when you do the unthinkable? What happens when break out of the conventions?


I first started my work as a non-text based movement piece with a long, red ribbon. I used this one ribbon to demonstrate many different items: a blindfold, a jump rope, wrapping paper, a shawl, a tie, a borderline, a noose, and eventually a life-saving rope. From there, I created four characters differing in age, gender, experience, and background. I had to discover the very unique way that each character walked, talked, dressed, sipped their morning coffee. In order to get to these exterior identities of each character, I first had to investigate the interior identity of each character. This includes research of psychology behind each behavioral pattern and belief system. This process allowed me to ascertain an understanding of how each individual thinks, and why they would think in such a way, which inevitably affects their ultimate actions and other visible characteristics such as walking, talking. An understanding for each character allowed me to veil myself in objectivity which is crucial to this process. Non-judgment of each character gave me permission to act as a clean slate, empty vessel through which each character is allowed to tell his or her story which inevitably comes to clash, combine, and compete with each other character’s perspective on events.


My virtual mentor for this piece is Anna Deavere Smith. The center of her craft relies on objectively presenting the perspectives of multiple characters through her one, singular body. She eminently displays this with Fires in the Mirror. What was most informative in study of her work in Let Me Down Easy was watching her transformation and transition from one character to another. With such appearance of ease she regularly changed her breathing, speaking pattern, body language for each character. Her simple set and very basic dress attire for each character worked wonders. She is the epitome simple complexity by doing a lot with just a little.

Collector

Tara DeVincenzo
Inspiration
So for inspiration in this project I used myself. Something I feel is an experience I have had that has affected me. Then looking at what questions it brought up about the world I live in. Over the past four years I have lost three people who were very close to me: one to cancer, one to a drug addiction, and one in a school shooting. Along whit these people others that I have known, maybe not quite as intimately, have also passed on. So unfortunately as it has been, I have been continually haunted with grief. With the piece I began to think about death in the ways it affects the living. How grief is reckoned with. I have noticed that the better I became at pushing the pain away and not letting it sit with me, really sink in- the more comfortable the people around me felt. This is not just limited to my peers who didn’t share my loss, but my family and my partner as well. I guess I just began to think- how funny- even the most emotional points in life we are expected to be able to handle privately. Knowing that I am an emotional person by nature it has always been vital to my life that I learn how to stifle those emotions to participate in society. So my piece really was born out of the desire to see what it looks like when someone really feels pain- in all its stages.

Process
A lot has gone into the process of this piece for me. First I had to unpack the pain that is associated with losing people so that I could look at where I was and where the piece would be going. Next I thought about what I wanted the piece to look like. This ended up being an unnecessary step because I really couldn’t control this part of the piece- I had to work intuitively and instinctually to find what I was really trying to do. I looked at the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and how I have experienced them-denial, pain/guilt, anger, depression, and acceptance. A lot of what I ended up with in my piece was born out of the assignment to allow my body to tell the story. In this assignment we were asked to express the subject matter with our bodies. I think it was successful because the story and subject matter is so personal that it is in my body I walk around with it, and it was a chance to let it breath. So from this experience, that liberated me from the fear of creating the piece, I was able to understand where I wanted it to go. I wanted to tell the story of a person just like every other person-including the audience members- who carried pain around with them everyday having to keep it bottled up for fear of its interruption in there life. Look at how we do it to ourselves as a society, viewing pain and grief as weakness. I didn’t want the piece to be about my pain. I wanted it to involve the audience, to involve their personal experiences. I wanted the piece to tap into the pain that we in American culture tuck away so deep even we can’t find it. I wanted it to heal. So I created a character that had the outward appearance symbolizing La Dia de Los Muertos to tap into that, but also had powers like a shaman to heal. I also had to pay attention to the magic that needed to pulse through the room and the character to allow this process to happen. In a way a lot of what I am trying to do is to fulfill this deep desire to have a burden lifted. Whatever the burden may be: pain, guilt, grief, depression, and embarrassment it can be taken away. I wanted to let everyone know they were not alone and to not be scared. So my goal was to give the healing experience that I have achieved through making this piece, to my audience. Side note: the mini story behind the balloons. First of all I have an unhealthy obsession with clowns and the circus so this was all probably floating around in my subconscious. I was still working with the idea of what a person who bears the burden of a ton of pain does. They carry it around with them; there heart-my heart- is heavy. So I had this idea of carrying these things around that were filled with the painful things in my life. Then I popped this water balloon to release the pain inside it. This worked as an image with the cleansing and the burst of the balloon. However, when I realized I wanted the piece to not be about a personal experience I began to become very, very lost. The balloons where what stayed because I could have the audience put themselves in the balloons.

Mentor
The person’s work I followed most closely during this process would have to be Kristen Kosmas. When she came into our class and read “Frieda Story” she did something that I didn’t know previously was possible in performance. She inhabited the room so intensely simply by making me feel like she was just sharing a story. I was hanging on to her every word. After she preformed for us, she gave our class a piece of advice that I have tried to keep at the center point of my process: regarding your work. Every time something I created coming out of my preoccupations, I tried to step back a look at what I had done and where it fits in my piece. To collage together the final project. Though Kristen’s style of presentation is very different from what I ended up making, but her subject matter is similar. Her work that I have read continues to feel both poetic and authentic, and that is something I am striving for in my piece. I also admired her restraint and knowing when to let lose. Also I can’t help but notice the Latin influence that has made its way into my work and I think that has something to do with what Frieda story made me think about.


the painting at the top is by painter Sylvia Ji

ON PANIC

On "ON PANIC",
By Chris Barlow

1.

What scares you the most?

What scares you most often?
What causes you to panic––
On a daily basis?
Adapting to life in a world which shuns our natural “Fight or Flight” response is easier said than done. Some of us don’t even try. Some of us channel these instincts into sports or law school or drugs. Some of us keep ourselves tightly wound, ever-waiting for the inevitable unknown calamity to strike. In all of us, that “Fight or Flight” instinct refuses to be silenced. Without natural outlets for our panic, the instinct mutates in us–– it becomes something you can experience over the mundane, the ordinary, the seemingly routine events in life.
Panic is hardwired in our bodies.
Panic is a central part of the human experience.
What causes you to panic?
How do you respond to panic?
Why can't we all just learn to panic––
A little less frequently?


2.

I started with a feeling.
The feeling of my chest clenching––
Seizing like a fist.
This is what panic feels like to me.
And since I didn't know what to do next,
I made lists.

LIST 1: What causes this feeling?

Calamities, atrocities, natural disasters, the horrible, the terrible, the unpredictable, the uncontrollable, the things that you can’t plan for, the things you can’t avoid––
This would eventually be called THE FIRST KIND OF PANIC (because of:)

LIST 2: When do I most frequently experience this feeling?

Expectations, interactions, relationships, the ordinary, the everyday, the totally predictable and absolute controllable, the things you watch happen to you from the other side of the room, the things that you could have sworn could have sworn that you weren’t going to do anymore! This was the second kind of panic.

And so I asked myself: What does panic sound like?
And I made many more lists and sat in front of a computer for a while.
But I couldn't shake this feeling that all of a sudden panic was everywhere. There was more panic in my life than I had ever suspected. According to several reliable lists, I was panicking all the time! Even when I had no idea it was happening.
And that's when it occurred to me that sometimes we panic before we even know why we're panicking. Sometimes the body knows before the brain does. Sometimes we panic about the little things because we're really panicking about the big things. But sometimes we panic about he little things because we really panicking about the little things!
Sometimes we just don't know why we panic.
And of course we don't perceive panic the same way we experience it.
Is panic an indicator of who we really are?
Is panic an indicator of how we'd survive in the wild??

This is how I would describe my process.
With an on-and-off clutching feeling.


3.

For my virtual mentor, I chose the musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson.
Laurie’s loose definition of “song” and “composition” were particularly attractive elements of her work. And images of “United States Live (Parts 1-4)”–– a single performer in a giant space–– greatly influenced my use of space and the microphone. Laurie’s ability to completely transform her voice, to play her voice like an instrument, is absolutely mesmerizing. Even in the era of Auto-Tune (now available for your iPhone), Laurie’s liberal use of the vocoder feels mesmerizing and new. She let her text breathe, stutter, start and stop–– she treated it as just another cluster of stars in her sonic universe. Sound can speak without speaking, it can speak with silence, with tone and pitch, groan and grunt. We can explore without any real road map–– the way Laurie explored America both figuratively and literally in "United States"–– and we can enter a piece backwards or upside down or totally sideways.

(CAT)Woman

CAT(Woman)

Jessica Farr

What inspired me to start writing my piece was utter dissatisfaction. I was lying in bed one night and a story poured out of me. I had a need to narrate the silly desire for a woman to live vicariously through a character on television. I was thinking of the lack of connection between people instigated by the contrasting utopian glam of unrealistic fictional superheroes on television in comparison to the banality and disappointment of everyday life. I thought of paralysis and obsession. It also made me think about how pedestrian society tries to separate themselves from actors- denying themselves of the fact that we are all actors and never cease to choose to play a role in our social lives. This is how we get by, constructing an image of ourselves whether it is ‘true’ or not, it is still how we perceive who we are (or who we want to be). I wanted to tell the story of the search for the self in others and how through complete isolation, we find out the most about how we are lacking and not only what we want but what we truly need to survive. I wanted to tell the story of a woman who finds a character she struggles with in that she cannot fulfill her own concept of sexual independence without her alter ego. And I knew, since I had always been drawn to the camp and mystique of comic supervillains, that I would have to tell my story as Catwoman.

My process involved a lot of mental vomiting, purging over my macbook (which died on me in the process- without backing my files up) and reconstructing over and over again the story of this woman, Cynthia, who is also me in many ways, and how she completes her self image through abandoning her everyday persona and giving in to the wonder of a saucy villainess on television. I wanted to show her distancing herself from the world and becoming more dependent, more obsessive, until her need to live in surreality overcomes her and finally she comes to terms with the fact that she might've had a little bit more of Catwoman in her after all. I watched mostly Batman episodes from the 60s with Julie Newmar (who was my Catwoman of choice) besides some Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman research. I had decided on Julie as a main focus, though because she came out of a more sexually repressed adaptation of Catwoman and was limited in how she could express her desires. Also, her version is a lot more tart and less overtly sexualized than Michelle Pfeiffer’s who had too much freedom. Julie Newmar’s Catwoman had a romance with Batman that was unbalanced and patriarchal whereas Michelle Pfeiffer’s was a rogue sex kitten and almost killed Batman many times over (and was depicted as insane and not just out for revenge). I employed movement, costume, props, and sound in my piece. Experimenting with various methods of expression including dance, mime, food erotica, masks, ventriloquism and straight subconscious narration. I decided finally that I wanted the woman to break free of her obstructions and to find solace in her own independence, sexuality and self-worth. I wanted her to celebrate all aspects of herself even those she was ashamed of in order to grow and move on. I wanted this for myself as well. Finally, when I used a bowl of milk in my last exercise I realized that transformation could be achieved through endowing the simplest prop in its necessary function as woman and cat. I could start off as the sulking, food hording cat lady sipping milk, and move my way into the over-sensationalized hyper sexual choice of turning feline and drinking the milk with my tongue, lips, and eventually whole face and grooming myself with my tongue in public space. I knew this would be the final transformation with no turning back. And the shell will be lost. In the end I hope I shared with others the experience of self-transfiguration and acceptance of the most painful desires in order to connect outside of the tv screen to something real with passion and honesty.

My virtual mentor is Deb Margolin. Deb Margolin has written over 20 one woman shows and in 2000 won an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance. Her piece I Am Monica Lewinsky inspired me to do a piece about sexuality, identity, and living vicariously through a public character. She writes in a similar tone to what I wanted to achieve in that she doesn’t take herself too seriously and approaches heavy weighted issues with both poetic language and humor. She also engages society in a way that points to their most shameful desires and makes them seem all the more absurdly human for it. She also points out how the Lewinsky situation created a discrepancy politically between duty and fantasy- and that is something I wanted to address in means of gender- a woman is expected at times to behave a certain way and what happens when she doesn’t? Who is she then? And how do women function in means of their own sexualized demise. Do they box themselves in? Do they allow themselves to be objectified or do they choose to wilt when they feel unwanted? How deep can an unrequited obsession burn until the loss is too great to bear and who do we become when our ideal image of ourselves has been shattered. How do we break through what is keeping us from making a true connection to other people as well as ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPBMKsze1Rg

Amanda Ellis on CHONDRIASIS

1. Inspiration

Daniel asked us pretty early on to articulate our most burning questions – ones that we find ourselves asking a hundred times a day or ones that we can’t seem to find an answer to. It could be anything, something very base and simple or something a little more philosophical and intangible. I found that I do ask myself a single question a hundred times a day and its usually a variation of “Am I getting sick?” or “Am I already violently ill?” or “I have symptoms, what do they mean?” and this led to one big question: “WHY am I obsessively paranoid about my health?”

2. Process

I’ve found that these very real fears about my health are part of such an internal experience that it is very hard to articulate exactly what it feels like, and even more difficult to try to seek counsel in someone who couldn’t possibly understand my situation if they’ve never experienced something similar themselves. I am well aware my fears are unfounded; I know it seems ridiculous. Therefore, the only way I’ve ever been able to express even the slightest part of this internal state has been through humor, and consequently the only reaction I’ve ever received has also been joking: “Shut up Amanda, you’re completely insane” and other responses of that nature. So, I initially thought my piece would be funny and I brought in some rough drafts that were parodies of this experience: frantic phone calls with my impatient mother, exaggerated mime sequences of blowing symptoms out of proportion, etc. But like the fleeting conversations that inspired these drafts, they were lacking in real substance.

Daniel challenged me to go to the “dark place that keeps me up at night” and in doing so, I found two things: that in these fits of debilitating paranoia, I ache desperately for anyone to assure me I’m okay (though it never actually calms me down or makes me feel better), and I blame most of these problems on the internet for making so much medical information so easily accessible. That is where my piece is currently.

3. Virtual Mentor

Of all the performance artists whose work we have experienced, viewed, and studied over the course of the past 3 months, the artist who stuck with me the most was Jen Hofer. Jen Hofer is a poet, translator, interpreter, and letter-writer, among many other things. She came to visit our class in September when she was in town with her piece, “Escritorio Publico.” This piece is something she does in various public spaces across the country (Union Square, for example). She sets up a small table and a typewriter, and invites people to come sit down with her and talk to her about what they’d like her to write in a letter. She charges something like, a dollar for a regular letter, $3 for a love letter, and $5 for an explicit love letter. The person employing her services can dictate to her exactly what they’d like written or tell her a general idea of what they’d like to communicate and she takes some poetic liberties. She addresses it and stamps it and trusts that in most cases, the intended receiver will receive the finished letter. What struck me so much about this piece and what has stayed with me is that Jen offers herself as a mediator between a person and someone they may have something difficult to say to. She sets up a very specific structure - table, typewriter, public space – and invites, but does not force, encounters of extreme intimacy and trust between strangers (Jen rarely knows the person she is writing a letter for).

My piece certainly does not emulate the structure of “Escritorio Publico,” and whether or not Jen’s work is even considered “performance” I believe is up for discussion. I did however, keep her in the back of my mind throughout my process with this piece, and it definitely had some influence over the beginning moments, especially.

Oliver Lehne on his untitled performance project

Flying Solo: Reflection on Solo Performance Project

What was your Inspiration?
Initially I was inspired by a desire to explore duality, the extremes that we encounter in our lives and in ourselves. How can so many things be housed in a human body; how can one person be capable of great acts of compassion and senseless violence, and what possibilities are bubbling beneath the surface of people we presume to understand? I’ve also been grappling with my body and my voice and my creative instinct as powerful, remarkably independent forces; I wanted to understand why these forces sometimes flair up in sparks of passionate insight, communicating clear, confident truth, and why they are sometimes deadened or frightened. I set out eager to explore how I could manipulate these forces and access my own power. In short, I was inspired by questions that kept coming up from a deep place inside me that only communicated with my consciousness intermittently. How can any us access the power that lies within us, and how deeply do we have to delve into our subconscious to find the answers?

What was your Process?
In keeping with the structure of the class, I tried as much as possible to isolate the different elements of my piece, (i.e. the movement, text and visual components) before combining them into a unified whole. I quickly realized that what I was exploring depended heavily on the audience’s response; that the work resisted being pinned into a specific shape and always changed in exciting ways in front of an audience. I had to allow for a degree of improvisation, indeed this was essential in order to explore the unexpected behavioral and emotional impulses of my body. I struggled to find a form and a text in which this improvisation could live freely, as a large part of my process has been about reacting to things rather than bringing things into being. In that spirit, and in keeping with my questions about the unconscious vs. the conscious mind I chose to incorporate my dream journal, an entirely separate form of creative expression. This really worked, as the style of the journal was uninhibited, fresh, lively and entirely appropriate; my work since then has been about bringing that innocent, dreamlike but also bluntly confrontational feel to the whole piece.

What artist inspired you?
One performance artist who truly influenced me was Kristen Kosmas. She communicates with a direct simplicity both in her text and performance style that I find very compelling. This really speaks to the authenticity without embellishment, and connection without exertion that I hope to achieve in my piece. Kosmas’ work is accessible precisely because it is so unadorned; some of the utterances of the narrator in The Frieda Story are incredibly blunt and even awkward, but all the more resonant and profound because they aren’t dressed up in a lot of big words and complicated sentence structure. Kosmas also helped me see that I don’t need elaborate visual or aural effects, or even a lot of physical movement to create something that buzzes with energy. A minute gesture or a deliberate look or change in vocal register can be enormously effective if the performer is truly present and breathing. Finally Kosmas encouraged me to listen to myself and to the work; to see where I was confused or disinterested, where I was engaged and confident, what occasioned these shifts, and what interrupted the flow and why.

Elizabeth Archer on ____________-LESS.

I have been a sucker for disaster stories since I was small. Going to Ukrainian school as a child, I was inundated with stories of destruction and suffering in Ukraine that stretch back to the 10th Century….let’s just say the Ukrainian people have not had the best of luck in the last millennium. Because of this möbius strip of unfortunate events (the Russians invade, the Poles invade, the Tartars invade, there’s a famine, the Russians invade, etc.), the Ukrainian people have developed a distinct dialogue with their past (through music, literature and folklore) in order to understand their current reality: History does repeat itself. The images of Chernobyl I was shown every April (the anniversary of the catastrophe) fascinated the twisted, macabre imagination of mine and I have never been able to get the images of extra limbs and human mutation out of my mind. However, with this project I wanted levity, some way to explore the aftermath of chaos without stuffing images of sick children and parched earth down the throats of the audience. I wanted to see what comes after the explosion, how people pick up their lives, how hope exists, if it does at all. How do people relate to each other when their world has shattered? As I went along, the work became less and less about Chernobyl and more about how people look out for each other after worlds crumble and society neglects them.

My work took shape in two parts. First, I began with the obvious study of the catastrophe of Chernobyl. I read interviews, collected pictures and listened to music. I knew I wanted to work with objects that were presented in a theatrical manner, harkening back to travelling medicine shows of yore, so I began to hunt for what these things may be. I was particularly fascinated with the continual reference to Geiger counters (that measure radiation) and wanted to use the clicking sound they make as a base of the performance. The second part began when I visited my dido (grandpa). His house is full of relics and photos, mostly of my baba (grandma) and our family in Ukraine. I am obsessed with these photos. Each time I visit, I can’t help sifting through them and taking fistfuls home with me. I love the magic of old photos- the smell, the texture, the captured image of celebration, youth and even death. I wanted some way to share these photos with the audience, to give them the experience of holding sepia toned history. As I began to get an idea of how to marry these two ideas, I came about the notion of creating a travelling show with a woman displaced by tragedy, whose entire life is separated into bags. From there, I just began a series of improvs, seeing what I would find in the body of Baba. Each time I interacted with the audience, I found that she had this real need to connect with other people and to take care of them and from that stemmed this idea of giving everyone a mother to watch over them.

I have been working with Jen Hofer as my virtual mentor. Ms. Hofer began her work as an escritorio publico because she loved writing letters while I began my work based on my love of old photos. While discussing her work with our class, Ms. Hofer spoke about putting on her ‘escritorio’ outfit (complete with glasses and a suit) in order to write these letters for people, thus adopting a persona and making it a unique performance art experience. I have worked with the idea of persona my own piece: the shawl, the glasses and the bags create ‘Baba’ who is able interact with the audience and tell stories in a way that ‘Elizabeth’ cannot. Hofer’s aesthetic of celebrating the romance of old things (for her, a typewriter; for me, old photos) is something that seems exceptionally powerful in a day and age when our experience and interaction with images and words are largely restricted to those on a computer screen. The ‘gift economy’1 that Hofer establishes in making books and giving them out to friends and audiences is something that sparked my interest and spoke to me- I love the idea of the audience coming away with a ‘souvenir’ from the performer. The magic of performance, to me, exists in the exchange between audience and performer in the telling and understanding of a story. Because these pictures mean so much to both me and to Baba, the giving away of these photos is a way to express what neither of us could ever find a way to say in seven minutes. After all, they’re worth a thousand words, right? Finally, Hofer’s use of translation and poetry within her work helped me to better understand how to incorporate these elements into my own work. Baba is actively translating everything in her head from Ukrainian to English in order to share her story with the audience, and though this was uncomfortable for me at the beginning, Hofer’s idea that ‘translation is to be not hyphenated but collided’2 allowed me to use both languages within my process. The poetry, then, is found when Baba’s words, mangled and incomplete, collide with her thoughts, which are very clear.

Samm Kumar on LUCIFER'S LADDER

What was your inspiration for this piece?
I didn’t begin this class with a specific idea in mind. Rather, I came in with ideas that I wanted to explore, which included gender bending and the sexual exploitation of women. However, I didn’t develop the genetic code for a cohesive piece until I was hit with a very unexpected source of inspiration. I’m almost embarrassed to admit to my story’s pop culture roots. Oddly enough, Shakira’s ”She-Wolf” got me thinking about the similarities between the roles of women and wolves in mythology. It occurred to me that both are portrayed as either malevolent or benevolent depending on the story. I incorporated this notion into a plotline I was working on, involving Lucifer and his plight in heaven.

What was your process?
As my story began to take shape in my mind, I quickly became overwhelmed by the amount of ideas I was working with simultaneously. I was fostering a plot that explored women’s journey with power and sex, following the stories of Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Billie Holiday and Marilyn Monroe. For the purposes of time (and my own sanity), I needed to narrow the scope of my focus. I created a collage to visually map out my ideas before I began writing. After I had written out a cohesive version of my piece, I began to work with it three-dimensionally. I set it in the space incorporating props in physical gesture into the composition. Sometimes the text shifted to accommodate the movement, but the change was always welcome.

Which artist most influenced your work?
When I first saw Daniel’s list of potential mentors, my eyes were immediately drawn to one name: Sarah Jones. I was first introduced to her work through Facebook; a friend of mine had posted her TED talk on my wall. I was floored by the versatility, the depth and precision of her performance. Her ability to bounce effortlessly from character to character is reminiscent of the work of Anna Deaveare Smith. I observed Jones’ structure and composition very closely. (Part of my larger project includes fluid transitions between distinct and highly developed characters.) I’ve tried to incorporate some of her work into my own, and look forward to learning more from her as this piece progresses.

FLYING SOLO - Course Description

FLYING SOLO IS A COURSE EXPLORING THE HISTORY OF SOLO PERFORMANCE AND SERVING AS A LABORATORY SPACE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SHORT SOLO PERFORMANCE PIECE.  

In jazz music, and by extension in jazz culture, the solo is the compositional space in which a player’s passion and virtuosity are exercised to illuminate the player’s personal perspective. Yet, while compelled by individuality, the solo is contingent upon the broader context of community.  The soloist exists in active relationship to the presence of others. The solo is a call by one voice intended to evoke response from the other players, at the same time it is a single response to the continuous call of the song.  The specificity of the solo in jazz culture will serve as a guiding principle for us as we move through this theatre course, flying solo.  We will create solos inside an active and responsible community. We will call to evoke response and, thereby, invite dialogue.

The course will include requisite reading and research in performance theory and theatre history as pertains to the subject of solo performance. we will examine work by solo artists, some of which has been categorized as theatre, some of which has been categorized as conceptual art. Our investigation is intended to seek an expansive understanding of the spaces conjured by these artists and to take relevant cues from their work as we undertake our own.

Each participant in the course will develop a solo performance project which must be firmly rooted in a rigorous process.  This process must include gathering, research, improvisation, writing, rehearsal,  sharing, reflection, revision and refinement. process will be shared in class weekly. The course will culminate in an evening of sharing with the larger Fordham theatre community; for this evening each student will prepare 7 minutes of material.