First Performance

As Mark said throughout our exercises, performing our "Not I" piece was very different in the space of our classroom than in the comfort of our respective bedrooms. Although I had run through my part many times, I found that I has spent too much time trying to master the material rather than stop and meditate on the formation of the words and the depth of the text as a whole. I enjoyed our exercises where we had to explore different ways of communicating our text, yet oftentimes I found myself lost in the delivery and would forget certain lines. Echoing what Jo has posted, I believe there cannot be true mastery of the performance technique unless the lines themselves are mastered. I suppose my nervousness in my own performance also detracted from this experience quite a bit as well.

I feel like one way we can all move forward in our respective pieces is by focusing more on our mouths. It's uncomfortable to remain deadpan and have our mouths do all the work of expressing emotion and meaning. I know I have to remind myself not to move my hands or furrow my eyebrows to convey the tone, but rather allow my mouth to accentuate and define it. I really feel like our discussions and exercises did bring this to light, but I have to continue practicing.

Research topics for presentations

For Presentations:
The theater after Beckett

Check these out. Use your resources. If you are confused, want guidance, or have a different idea you'd like to run past me, please be in touch. Use the blog to share with each other what you are interested in--hopefully we can negotiate topics and settle things before next class.



Mac Wellman -- american playwright. (also influenced by Stein)

Maria Irene Fornes -- cuban-american playwright/teacher.

Elizabeth LeCompte (The Wooster Group) --  american company/collective)

Stuart Sherman  -- american performance artist, creator of "spectacles" of manipulated obects

Spalding Gray  -- american monologuist (associated w The Wooster Group)

Ping Chong -- chinese-american creator/designer/playwright

Heiner Muller -- german playwright of harsh poetic texts often directed by robert wilson

Robert Wilson -- american director, "theater of images".

David Greenspan -- american playwright

Thomas Bernhard -- austrian playwright. brought attention to austria's nazi past, lived a tortured relationship to his country.

Peter Handke -- austrian playwright, novelist, wrote screenplay with wim wenders for wings of desire.

Athol Fugard -- south african playwright, author of Boesman and Lena, a post-beckett anti-apartheid play

Lee Breuer -- american director/writer, member of mabou mines. early work on beckett as a director then became a writer (theater of images) and creator.

Squat Theater -- collective in exile. important work in the 70s/80s.

Elfriede Jelinek -- nobel winning playwright, novelist. new model of womens' writing? new ideas about author/director relationship...JACKIE currently in NYC

Suzan-Lori Parks -- african-american seven sisters educated writer,also inspired by Stein

Franz Xaver Kroetz -- German writer of political plays

Sam Shepherd -- American movie star playwright also influenced by open theater, beat writing, american geography

Richard Foreman -- American post-modern theory influenced writer/designer

Karen Finley -- American monologuist of the 1980s, denounced by right-wing politicians for her obscene material

Naomi Iizuka -- American writer of new plays

Charles Mee -- collage plays, American

First "Performance"... What?... Who?... No!... Ours!

I sensed that each individual had a rather distinct relationship with the text - namely where it originated in the body and how it lived in space.  We are all mouths.  During the run-through I wanted to be able to focus as best I could on the experience of the mouths in the circle.  It became super difficult to do that with the copious head movements that many of us had for various reasons.  I also found myself becoming interested in the varying levels of emoting that was happening with the rest of the face.  The words lived in each of our moths quite uniquely.  For me this was the "action" of the text - how do the words shape the experience of the mouth.

Knowing the text through and through is certainly requisite for experiencing the semi-non-volitional torrent effect of the text and our next step as collaborators would be to continue placing the text in our bodies to be actually regurgitated.  I still sensed a bunch more collateral action in the rest of our bodies that I imagine want to be coaxed into the mouth.  Continued work might be - animating MOUTH - unbelievably intense chewing of the words - and allowing the text to be less cerebral and/or volitional.

Until next time,

-Jo

Handy Rehearsal

As an actor, in grappling with a text, I always go back to actions. What is the character trying to do with each line? What is driving them to speak? This has been my biggest obstacle in creating this work. I think that with this play, I started out thinking about "oatmeal" verbs when describing my actions to myself- things like "I want to discuss, I want to reveal," but I think that there is way more in the text that I have yet to uncover. What I need now is repetition, repetition of my segment of text in connection to the whole play. A big question that I asked myself, what is the character's objective in telling this story or even talking at all? If I can fully answer these questions, I think that I will be in much better equipped to bring this play to life.

Another thing that has been an obstacle is my curiosity. I am really fighting the urge to search online for other people's interpretations of the text. I generally like to read the play that i'm working on and watch other productions of it in order to study how others understand it and perform it; I generally think that is a beneficial thing for me to do. In this case, I think that it would detract from my raw interpretation of the play and influence me and my piece in a negative way. I do not want to go and watch others perform this play because I think that I will draw too much of my inspiration for my individual work form other people and that process happens unconsciously. The pacing, like others have said, is a place where I feel like I can take artistic liberties. I don't think that it was meant to really be a play of omissions, but if not, why are they included so frequently and what do they do to the actor/audience. And in watching other productions of the play, I think their pacing of words will influence me the most.

Long story short, I need to play more with stronger actions and find out how the play manifests itself within me - including how the words flow or don't flow out of my mouth.

Not I Rehearsal Process

At first I read the entire text out loud. Then I broke it up into beats and sentences so that I could track Mouth's thoughts. Kat C and I read through our shared text together and through repetition helped to memorize it. Alone, I recorded the entire text in GarageBand and would listen to sections, repeat them and then check for accuracy, in this way stringing together the monologue. After I felt I had memorized a sentence or two, I would go back and run the monologue from an earlier point. Once I felt more solid, I would run the monologue from the beginning and see if I still remembered the section I thought I had memorized from more of a distance.

Thoughts about questions:

Who is this character? Mouth seems to be the victim of an extremely traumatic event which has rendered her mostly mute and emotionally crippled. This traumatic event involved a man and a (now dead?) baby. Potentially a rape or a relationship that went badly. From the breeches reference, seems likely that sexual violence was involved.

People of the town she lives in seem to accommodate her speechlessness.

Why does she say these things? Once or twice a year, words flow from her. It seems like these words need to be released as part of a healing or exorcising process related to her past trauma.

What happens during this play? Mouth can't hold in her pain any longer and her broken words flow from her. A stranger listens and attempts to comfort(?) at points, but comforting in the face of such brokenness is not possible.

What is she trying to achieve/achieving by saying what she does? I think she's trying to free or rid herself from her demons in a ritualistic process (once or twice a year, always winter) but is unsuccessful as the attempt to cleanse herself starts to reinforce the trauma in a cycle - she wants to forget but through trying to forget she remembers and is further traumatized.

What do I need as a performer to be able to find and perform this role? A good memory... empathy.

Not I Process...

I initially started out the process by reading the text out loud to myself. It seemed like a logical place to start. Especially after last Wednesday's class, the text became much more manageable and accessible, and less of a daunting “how do I deal with these words on paper?” task. I tried different rates of speed…seeing how fast or slow reading affected the work.  Since we discussed the sense of urgency last class, I wanted to experiment a little bit with seeing whether or not urgency could be achieved without spewing the text at a warp-speed.  I found it to be a challenge, however I also found that it was a lot less manic, which almost made it a little bit more foreboding.

Actually memorizing the text, however, was a completely different ball game.  It was particularly difficult because I had to grapple with the different rhythmic patterns of the words on the page.  But after several hours of playing around with different sentence cadences (if you can call them sentences), it finally clicked.

I found myself using more of my musical senses more than anything in grappling with this piece. It felt as though each phrase had its own rhythm, its own musicality, etc.  Some lines were faster than others.  Some were slower than others.  I also found that in trying to take the lines at a quicker pace, it was easier for me to think about learning them in sort of musical phrases, then put the phrases together, and smooth out the transition between the phrases.  In summation, thinking of “Not I” as a musical piece without a tune has helped me get into the piece and work with it a lot easier.

The only obstacles I’ve consistently experienced is my consistent need to create images in my head to remember the words on the page, and sometimes there just simply is not an image to be had.  Without cue lines, or a through story, it has made conquering this piece a particular challenge (especially when you’re dealing with a section in the middle, like me).

NOT I

Memorizing this text is really difficult. I, like Megan, also find myself rocking back and forth like a crazy person, and for some reason it really helps me get the words out--maybe its something to do with the rhythm of the text? I tried to stop rocking while reciting and not only could I not remeber the words as well, but I also developed other neurotic habits to compensate. I tried saying the words with my eyes shut and that didnt work for me either (I was trying to embody the mouth more by lessening my other senses). Like others have pointed out I am also nervous about the pacing of the text since we talked about the urgency of escaping thoughts by speaking over them. I tend to say these words slower because the text is so scattered, but I am trying to find images or words that link what I have identified as different sections together, and hopefully this helps with the pacing.

I am trying to really separate my mouth from other parts of my body; I am trying to emphasize and explore the way words situate themselves in the mouth. I am hoping to reach a point where my body is still and relaxed while my mouth performs various word acrobatics with ease. I have found that some of the theater exercises we do for mainstage--like the one where we target a specific body part and internally inspect it--are very useful.

happy memorizing to us.

Mouth

M o u t h  - a great word

I have been trying to let the words dance around in my mouth.  Each segment engages my mouth in a distinct series of shapes and playful relations to the text.  In memorizing the text via chewing the words over and over, I am really memorizing the patterns of movement in my mouth and their associations with those before and after more than the verbiage of the text itself.  I am considering the muscular suggestions of the word-sounds to be the blocking of the piece for a fully embodied mouth.  I am trying to find my body at perfect rest so that I can focus experiencing this piece as solely through the mouth as possible.  

In each segment there are a few strongly associative words that begin to string together a chain of associations for me as I read/learn which - I think more retrospectively than else - generates what feels like a dynamically coherent narrative.  That's great.  I think more than anything so far, that is what I appreciate about this piece - it feels like its offering a new way of experiencing narrative that is visceral, associative (personal & sociological) and unstable.

Woo,

-Jo

rehearsing for "Not I"

Like Erin, I also found difficulty in the practicing of pacing. With the building of my memorization, I found my cadence to be slower and more thoughtful, which contrasts our discussion of the pace from last week. When I picked up my pace, I found I forgot the more fragmented pieces of the monologue that makes "Not I" so unique. I also felt that in my attempts to go faster, I lost any intonation. I would become monotone. I believe that this should not be the case - especially since my segment includes the court scene, which is pretty rich with meaning for the mouth's character. There should be emotion embedded into the monologue, but should not be lost in favor of pace.

As a side note, I also found that I struggled to memorize parts of the piece. Like we discussed last week, there isn't a coherent storyline that can be followed. Parts of my piece jump around or begin some sort of cyclical pattern, only to be lost into more incoherent speech patterns. It's difficult to follow, and even more difficult to conceptualize, and twice as difficult to memorize. However I did find that closing my eyes did improve my memory. Perhaps it's an emphasis on the mind or the mouth?

Rehearsal techniques

As I've been working on memorizing, I've been developing a couple of bad habits. Namely, the way I memorize is by pacing and reading out loud. I hope that means when the time comes to perform, I can stay put and spit my words out. I've also been having trouble with gesticulation; like most people, I tend to move my hands when I talk. In order to work against this, I've tried to clench my hands behind my back while I talk, but, weirdly enough, I've found it harder to remember the words when I do that.

In other rehearsal notes, I've been thinking about what we were talking about last week: about what it means to be fully bodied in the mouth. This has meant a lot of stretching of the jaw, puffing out of the cheeks, blowing out the lips; I've really been trying to explore the space of my mouth, how it shapes and contorts. I've also been doing a lot of tongue twisters, to feel out how my mouth tastes consonants.