We spent Thursday night just shaping up the piece, adding bits, sharpening transitions, etc.

Last night (Friday), we ran through it a couple of times, then sat around and debriefed our experience of the week. People were overwhelmingly positive in their responses. The class and its strategies seemed to open up new worlds to everyone in the group. (Thank you, Marc, for making those worlds available to me already, and thank you, Lacuna Group, for continuing to explore those worlds.)

Small but intrigued audience, and we had one of those to-be-dreaded Q&A things afterwards, although everyone seemed interested in our discussion/explanation.

The performance went well, we had a great time, and in the event we created some compelling images. It has given me some ideas to help break up some creative logjams I think I’ve been having in Lacuna. Mostly, it was a good lesson in being bold and not looking back. Leap, don’t look.

Last night (Wednesday) Michael showed us some stills from recent productions: tightly designed, neatly expressed. Then he presented us with a script to play with, made up of about a page and a half of the material we’d generated on Monday and Tuesday.

We worked our way through it, mostly stitching together the pieces that we already knew by dint of having created them. We worked out transitions. Michael had music/sound, and it worked well.

All told, we have about 10-12 minutes of odd but compelling viewing. Some very nice moments indeed. You might be thrilled; you’d probably laugh at several points (a deliberate provocation on our part).

A couple of thoughts about the class/process so far: First, as Michael was showing his stuff and how it correlated to some of the strategies he’s worked with us on, people were sharing their own experiences in productions that used similar strategies. I kept to my purpose of flying under the radar and just listened, but folks, NCTC has done it all. Yes, it seems that little ol’ Newnan has seen theatre as adventurous and inventive as anything Atlanta has to offer.

It also has become clear that while I have found the class to be invigorating and provocative, it has not been overwhelmingly revelatory: Lacuna has been using the same strategies, and on a much larger scale, of course, as we blunder our way through the “Creativity/Bear/whatever” performance piece. We may have thought we were at a loss, but I have every reason to believe that “real theatre people” would be intrigued by everything we’ve done.

Finally, the class has stirred up my brain to the point that I have had a scathingly brilliant idea for moving forward with King Lear over at Lacuna. All I need is fifteen people who want to blow it all out.

Interesting night (Tuesday). People brought in all kinds of apples and witty takes on apples. I had printed out several paintings of the expulsion of Adam and Eve, and we spent the night playing with literal tableau vivants, posing the two central figures in each of the paintings, then messing with the setup.

The most effective moment came when we were working with the Masaccio fresco. We had one Eve in the center, and three Adams around her. We linked the Adams (who were all female) together with a rope, then dropped that idea. Michael directed them to “switch” poses, with the Adams slowing looking up and Eve turning to look “back.”

It was strikingly frightening. We toyed with that awhile. I suggested the Adams then kneel (just to get some new levels into it), then Michael had them prostrate themselves. I added extended arms, one forward, one back. Michael added an apple to the rear hand (which the Adams concealed beforehand.)

It was cool. Then I “complained” that it looked like a feminist statement; could we try it with the three males in the class playing Adam? We did, and lo! it was better.

More later.

I decided to take this theatre class up at the Alliance Theatre called “Devising from Object,” taught by puppeteer Michael Haverty. The blurb was very vague, but it sounded very process oriented and performance art bound, and since my email from the Dramatists Guild also gave me a code for a 50% discount, I signed up.

Last night (Monday) was the first night. A last-minute e-mail from Michael told us:

We will be devising a short performance beginning with the theme of CRAVING or DESIRE. We will begin working with objects which both you and I will provide. On Monday please bring TWO objects to the workshop which symbolize, inspire, or are inspired by craving or desire in you. The objects can be of any sort: a piece of clothing, a book, a toy, a letter, a picture, a piece of furniture, trash, or food. You may take the theme as broadly as you like – desire for fame, pleasure, long life, supremacy, world peace, vacation – craving for food, drugs, love, connection, success, disaster – the possibilities are endless. The objects should hold a certain sort of power for you.

We will be working in a style based upon Tableau Vivant or ‘Living Pictures’ – an artform of the 18th and early 19th century involving the staging of popular paintings by live performers. We will modernize this form using movement, text, sound, and dynamic visual mise-en-scene. I thought you all might be interested in reading a little bit about Tableau Vivant and the artforms it inspired, including photography, silent film, and magic lantern shows. The wikipedia entry is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tableau_vivant

Okay, I thought, this could be interesting. Or it could be hideously lame. Who cares? I’m taking the plunge.

So what to take? I did a lot of thinking, and one thing I finally decided was that I was going to go under the radar with this experience. No one was going to know anything about me in terms of my extensive theatre experience, my ambitions or accomplishments in art or music or education, none of that.

I took a paving stone from the back yard, symbolizing the construction of the labyrinth and my desire for centering and self-knowledge.

And I took this book. I’ve owned it for probably 25 years. It had disappeared into the detritus that is our home, but recently my lovely first wife unearthed it and left it lying out in prominent places. It is full of toothsome young lads, demonstrating with their smooth long shanks , broad balanced chests, and offensively flat and rippled stomachs how to master the simple moves required to make one’s body look just like theirs.

Whatever.

I took it as a symbol of my desire to look like those toothsome boys, even though I never have and never will. As I said last night, since I cannot hope for youth and beauty, I will shoot for simple good health. And a flat stomach.

Anyway, there are an even dozen of us in the class, and everyone brought objects that were sometimes whimsical, sometimes serious, but nearly always evocative of deep desires that resonated with everyone in the room. A couple of themes emerged, one of which was that of escapism: most of us had the urge to be somewhere else, to be someone else, to be Other.

We began with one of the objects, an apple, and began playing with it. Michael put the apple on a black rehearsal box in the center of the stage. We added Rebecca pressed up against the black box wall, in fear/desire/something. We added a rope from the apple over to Holly, who knelt menacingly at the opposite corner. We had me crossing in super slomo from stage L to stage R with a hatchet upraised in my outstretched arms. We had Beau popping out from stage L with an envelope, whispering in Rebecca’s ear.

You can see how weird this is going to be. So far, so good.

Tonight I am taking construction paper cutouts of apples: red, yellow, green. White, purple, orange, blue, black. I’ve printed out multiple images of the expulsion of Adam and Eve. I’m taking cutouts of leaves (for modesty, of course). I’m taking the altar bell I bought last weekend in Greensboro.

More later.

The question arose, after Coriolanus, what next?

Other than “sit in my backyard and watch the fire with a life-giving beverage in my hand,” I hadn’t given it an awful lot of thought. But ideas have been bubbling up in my head.

I’m still fascinated by puppets and would love to use them in something. See, as an example, Blair Thomas and Company. The drawback is the time and money; as Thomas says, “It’s such a tall order to spend the time that puppetry needs. If you take shortcuts, it’s the worst-case scenario, and the puppets are treated as props.”

The works of Brecht spring to mind, especially The Good Woman of Setzuan or The Caucasian Chalk Circle. I really like Good Woman/Person and its challenge to morality, and it would be fun to develop either of those scripts.

I’d be really interested in looking at some stuff that I do not understand, and here I can give as an example of the works of Charles Mee. Mee has put all his scripts online, free for the taking/manipulating/deconstruction, and I don’t understand the theatrical impulse behind most of them. So let’s do one. As Picasso says, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

(Although this script by Mee is pretty powerful.)

There’s always Shakespeare. The Tempest could be fun, and of course King Lear is the Everest of them all. Or we could go all the way obscure and look at Timon of Athens or King John or Henry VIII.

I will now ramble.

I’d be interested in just developing something in that way that Marc knows how to do but I don’t.

I really liked performing in the park, the theatre not so much. I felt alive in the park, and merely observed in the theatre.

While the idea of doing a School for Scandal with the Lacuna gang brings a smile to my face, I am no longer excited by the idea of making costumes.

I liked working with all men. It will feel odd to have women in the group.

When I look at stuff like Charles Mee or photos of other company-developed pieces, I often think that I don’t have anything to say in such a piece.

I am also skeptical of the power of non-narrative pieces. I want to be convinced otherwise.

I like the idea of looking at the Neo-Futurists for real.

We could set aside a short period, three or four weeks, Wednesdays only, and study a text, then quit. Ideas and lines of energy might emerge, and that would be fine. Or not.

I need to work on music.

I’m in the back yard, sucking down life-giving beverages as Bertie Wooster might say, and learning Valeria’s lines for Coriolanus. I love Valeria. She’s a total butterfly.

There are several challenges to her, however. One is the fact that she precedes nearly every line with a silly oath: “O’ my word,” “O’ my troth,” “Indeed, la,” “Verily,” and on and on. It’s never the same twice. Since she’s in prose and not iambic pentameter, I don’t suppose it matters which one I use when.

The more interesting thing I’ve observed as I’ve walked to and fro about the labyrinth between sips of my vodka and tonic is how inflections will creep into my delivery which are absolutely right and absolutely hysterical. I stop to try to analyze the emotional/social impulse which caused that delivery, and while it may be blameable on the vodka tonics but is more likely to be attributable to my general inability to define emotional impulses, I find those impulses to be very slippery. Mostly what I find myself thinking about is the craft of acting.

These inflections are subtle and comically apt, and I can’t think that I would be able to hit them by musing ahead of time on the social impulses that created them. Instead, I think it comes of observing people and knowing the kind of person Valeria is and linking her to similar people I’ve seen, either in life or in performance. And in either case, the lady in question is still “performing,” so her delivery is always a bit arch, a bit “on.” So the social impulse I find myself following most often in her speech is “society performer.”

I don’t think that’s bad acting, either, actually. If the vocalization feels right, then, like Larry Olivier, I can develop the physical stance and the inner life to match. Outside in. If it works, use it.

Yes, I know I said I’d write every day, but you didn’t actually believe me, did you?

The Lacuna Group has had two work sessions, I hesitate to call them rehearsals, on our production of Coriolanus, and I have to say that I’m very excited.

It’s not that I’m confident, yet, about our chances of success, although things are looking very positive that we’re going to show up on October 25 at the Greenville Street Park with something worth watching. It’s just that the sheer brainpower in the room is exhilarating. It’s like being at GHP twice a week: ideas flow, textual analysis just happens, and there are mad skillz all round.

One of the rather interesting things about the group is their willingness to play. We have not cast any roles (although we keep putting Marc as Volumnia); we’re not planning on casting the show for another week. We’re just playing with scenes, solving problems (Can we keep the fickle Citizens from getting laughed at? How mean is Volumnia? How can we point up the tempo changes in this scene? How do we show Romans being routed on the battlefield?), switching out roles, exploring.

Somehow, out of all this, ideas happen, and eventually, we trust, decisions will be made.

I say “somehow,” but that suggests we don’t know how it works. We do know how it works. It works as advertised: you play without concern about result, and results come without concern. It is a marvelous way to pass one’s time.

It’s also rather wonderful to be reunited with such great actors from my past: Greg Lee, Dan Coleman, Jeff Bishop, Kevin McInturff, Marc Honea. (Matthew Bailey and Jeff Allen join us… Saturday, guys?) I only wish the others whom we’d invited to join us had the time to do so. To hear those familiar voices tackle Shakespeare’s language with even greater assurance than the last time we were all together is heartwarming. I’m verklempt.