music and reporting in

Just met with Devi Mathieu and she loaded me up with songs from Saint Francis' time - some probably written by St. Francis or at least influenced by him. So exciting. She said these songs are written with definite rhythmic structure. She said the troubadour songs which influenced St. Francis were word poetry driven and not based in set rhythmic patterns. So I get to dive into this and start getting a sense of what kind of sound/music do I want to permeate the piece. I love these dichotomies. And then throw in sound/music spinning off from words and rhythms of my play. And remember Emily Dickison based her meter on hymns of her day. Lots of sound ideas here.

ANY MUSICIANS/ SOUND PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WOULD LIKE TO COLLABORATE?

Tomorrow I get to hear a private reading of my piece by a poet and an actor friend. This will help me externalize it a bit more when looking to see where gaps might be.

I realize I'm in a bit of a quandary about what to call this work. If I call it a play, then people's expectations are a more word driven piece. I saw an amazing "play" called ARABIAN NIGHTS by Mary Zimmerman and realize that my piece is between this and dance. So I end up calling it a "piece" most of the time. Have to get my brains around a better word.

Doing Everything in Nothing

I've been kicking my self lately since I have been doing nothing on my play. Other things have been taking up my time: a wedding, working for Obama. I'm not a great multi-tasker. And on my list of important things the previous two items easily came first. Then one day I read a story of a taxi cab driver helping a dying woman. Normally i'd feel wellings in my upper chest - sensations almost outside my body. But that day I was feeling heart tugs and tears coming from the very center of me. After that when I'd be hearing the stories of my daughters, my husband or simply feeling my love for them, I could feel my heart. I could feel motion and movement and upwhellings and spirals of sensation emanating from my heart. Some days it would be the same old sensations of before and then some days it would feel like an explosion. A profound change.

A profound change out of nowhere? Realization. For months I've been repeating Emily Dickinson's "A Single Screw of Flesh" to myself under my breath, out loud, before I fall asleep, choreographing it with my hands, saying just the vowels in it then the more muscular consonants- even sending it out from on "stage" in an ancient Greek theater. Just simply saying this poem over and over in different ways in small little snatches of time. Feeling the impact of words on me. Feeling the sounds and rhythms. Catching the feelings and sending them out into the world. It was just one poem. Small actions of inconsequence. I was doing "nothing". Not really a work at all. And then, amazing grace. In working on something small I was doing everything.

A Thought on the Aftemath of the Election

Emily Dickinson wanted to be a politician.

The Beginnings of Theater

I just got back from Greece and had some heart throbbing experiences in theater. First of all my husband and I went to Delphi the home of one of the ancient oracles. There, there was a Greek theater nestled into the side of a mountain. It seated an audience of 5,000 which looked down on the orchestra where the chorus took place and looked out on a breath stopping view of the valley below. The Greeks liked to have the audience look down on the actors like the gods look on us and have the audience realize the foibles of mankind. It's kind of like the Buddhist blue skying technique where when you are mired in troubles you are supposed to spend time looking at the sky. Perspective. Perspective. What we loose so often. So I walked out onto the central spot of the orchestra and started doing one of my monologues from my play, a bit under my breath since I didn't want to impinge on other people who were there. I felt something I haven't felt in a theater before. I felt held, taken care of. The curve of the audience as it was placed in the hill was the perfect curve for the "stage". The proportions were perfect. I felt like I could do no wrong on that "stage". I made "mistakes", but they were ok and I took my time. My words came from myself from my being present in the moment. Now that's good acting, but here I didn't have to do any preparation to get there. The space did it for me. I didn't have to "do" anything.

The second theater I went to was in Epidaurus and that theater's capacity was 15,000 people though I heard that when Maria Callus sang there they squeezed in 17,000. There the ethos was for people to stand in the center spot of the orchestra and speak, sing, do whatever you wanted. I stood there and spoke with a sending out voice. Not pushing, or speaking loudly. Just sending my voice out to the audience. I spoke three monologues out loud and the acoustics were such that my voice both echoed back to myself and soared to the uppermost reaches of the audience. I was pulled into a heightened sense of theater that you can get from performing from a great play. The enormity of the theater plus it's astounding acoustics plus it's perfect shape created the physical container for drama. It's a place where every word is literally heard and literally supported. I sent my words out and they came back to me and fed me. Thrilling.

Later a guide came and struck a match on the center stone. It rang throughout. Imagine Maria Callas singing there.

The Greeks: no microphones no acting techniques. They used location and use of space in location to create the effects they wanted. Feng Shui experts.

Clown of God

I just figured out that I'd love for the Saint Francis actor to have a strong clowning background (comedia dell'arte, buffoon). St. Francis in his humility thought of himself that way. I kept getting stuck with how am I going to find a male actor with a movement background who loves poetry. There aren't that many out there, so this is perfect. Everything I know about St. Francis was that he was a physical physical man who threw himself into everything he came across- sometimes literally. I even had a children’s book about St. Francis called “The Clown of God.” DO YOU KNOW ANY CLOWNS?

vowels and consonants

Well my eldest was reading about Daniel Radcliffe (you know, the actor who played Harry Potter) and his preparation for the main role in EQUUS. He did some intense training since it's quite a jump from film to stage. One of the exercises he loved was reading the text through by just pronouncing the vowels and then reading it through by just reading the consonants and then reading the complete text. I tried it with my play and the results in one pass through was astonishing. The unconscious comes through with much stronger articulation and rhythmic sense. It made the poetic sections stronger and more differentiated from the prose pieces. My voice became stronger with no physical effort. I got to know my work directly on a whole different level. It felt like diving into the ocean.

In the Telling

I’m learning so much by memorizing Emily Dickinson's poems and saying them out loud. Yesterday saying the words “inebriate” I could feel a propulsion of breath bursting out of my mouth to be sucked in by the words “of air”. Leaning into the words and letting them create sensations and then feelings in the body. (Check the August 1 post for the poem: "I taste a liquor never brewed.")

I'm beginning to read a book by Cicely Barry called "From Word to Play: A Handbook for Directors." In the beginning she says there is no difference between words to action and action to words. Now I'm beginning to feel it. The body speaking is a moving instrument. Barry says we must bring sound back into theater. It reminds me of what I learned from studying with Shakespeare and Company in the Berkshires. They pointed out that before written language the sounds in the oral traditions were so graphic that the TELLING evoked intense feelings. That's why Shakespeare's language is so visceral and compelling. When really spoken the consonants clang, burst, throb, ssssss's slither and lisp; lll's be liquid lilting waves. Sounds go straight to the "body" of the audience.

Makes me understand why theater is so wonderful. To hear a live actor reverberating on stage with all the nuances and minute tellings...