Isabel arrived this morning on her way to Portugal for about 5 days. And while the weather has been gray and or rainy for days and days (of the 8 times a year that TfL sys a cyclist will get caught in the rain, I've had 7 this month), today it's clear and sunny.
We're working in commedia del'arte style now. Generally I really like the earthiness of it--the characters are motivated by the most basic of desires--but I'm getting a bit tired of the self-centeredness that's coming to the fore at times in school. Maybe it's that people are taking commedia to heart. More likely perhaps is that it comes from an awareness that we only have so much time left here and people feel some urgency to get what they can out of the program. Admittedly some of my aggravation probably comes from my wishing it were easier for me to claim that for myself. They're not all the same thing, but there is some overlap between assertiveness, self-centeredness, and pettiness.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Another week gone already?
Closing in on the end of Week 3. Only four more in this term. This year is gonna fly.
Back to the Future is coming along, as are the other platform pieces. The teachers gave us one more week to work on them before setting them aside for a while. Meanwhile we've been playing with masks in class this week. We got some feedback on the ones we made, which we'll start to use next week, and have used some of the school's masks twice so far. One day it was leather commedia masks, another, wooden Korean masks.
It's remarkable how you have to tell a story differently when you wear a mask. Movement and language have to be used much more economically; messiness and rambling are laid bare. In a way, we're being asked to do two almost opposite things at the same time: keeping an openness to improvisation and creating on-the-spot while also moving and speaking only when and as it serves what we're making up in the moment. There's also a necessary moment-to-moment awareness of how to hold your head so the mask plays its best. And since these are half-masks, ending just below the nose, how you hold your mouth becomes part of the mask itself, so that too becomes essential and magnified. So much to be aware of without being so focused on it that it blocks your spontaneity. It's a tremendous discipline to develop, and just watching others struggle with it has been an education in itself.
One story we were to prepare for last week was that of the crucifixion of Christ. (A rather ballsy choice to assign in an intercultural school, I thought. Then again, it's probably as well known a story as any.) The storyteller was to tell it from the perspective of 3 to 5 characters (which could be completely made up), switching back and forth between them, speaking directly to the audience or the other characters they were also creating. This we did without masks. Then yesterday those who hadn't had a chance to go the week before were given the same task, but with the addition of using the Korean masks. Instead of quick-changing between characters as those of us who went the week before did, these storytellers were to pause between characters, turn around, take off one mask, put on another, change character, and then turn around again to continue the story in that character's body and voice. They weren't to hurry, but had to make sure the energy/tension/atmosphere/magic of the moment didn't drop. Whew!
When you can't use your facial expression, everything else becomes magnified. And the abstraction of the mask moves the whole thing into a fantastical (transposed) world, where the artifice of the whole thing is apparent but also has to enhance the experience. It's almost like alchemy. I'm learning a lot. Again.
I'm also having to set up appointments with the osteopath. Again. This 54-year-old back of mine has bedeviled me of late. Acrobatics, as you might guess, is going very slowly. Some days I just do the conditioning exercises and spend the rest of the hour and 45 minutes stretching while everyone else works on handstands, straddle ups, and all sorts of other moves I don't even know the names for. My accomplishment of a 2-second handstand this past summer will probably turn out to have been the high point of my acrobatics career. But I can live with that.
Isabel passes through town twice in the next two weeks. It'll be a joy to see her. And I hear that it's about time for Thanksgiving again, since one American friend is hosting a turkey dinner this Sunday and my house is having our own gathering the following weekend. Christmas decorations are up in London stores (though much less so than back home). But the weather here doesn't give much clue as to the season. Weak sunlight, trees slowly going bare without much color, rain as often as always, I suppose. Not every day, but the air's always damp.
Here's hoping Isabel gets through immigration without a hitch this time.
Back to the Future is coming along, as are the other platform pieces. The teachers gave us one more week to work on them before setting them aside for a while. Meanwhile we've been playing with masks in class this week. We got some feedback on the ones we made, which we'll start to use next week, and have used some of the school's masks twice so far. One day it was leather commedia masks, another, wooden Korean masks.
It's remarkable how you have to tell a story differently when you wear a mask. Movement and language have to be used much more economically; messiness and rambling are laid bare. In a way, we're being asked to do two almost opposite things at the same time: keeping an openness to improvisation and creating on-the-spot while also moving and speaking only when and as it serves what we're making up in the moment. There's also a necessary moment-to-moment awareness of how to hold your head so the mask plays its best. And since these are half-masks, ending just below the nose, how you hold your mouth becomes part of the mask itself, so that too becomes essential and magnified. So much to be aware of without being so focused on it that it blocks your spontaneity. It's a tremendous discipline to develop, and just watching others struggle with it has been an education in itself.
One story we were to prepare for last week was that of the crucifixion of Christ. (A rather ballsy choice to assign in an intercultural school, I thought. Then again, it's probably as well known a story as any.) The storyteller was to tell it from the perspective of 3 to 5 characters (which could be completely made up), switching back and forth between them, speaking directly to the audience or the other characters they were also creating. This we did without masks. Then yesterday those who hadn't had a chance to go the week before were given the same task, but with the addition of using the Korean masks. Instead of quick-changing between characters as those of us who went the week before did, these storytellers were to pause between characters, turn around, take off one mask, put on another, change character, and then turn around again to continue the story in that character's body and voice. They weren't to hurry, but had to make sure the energy/tension/atmosphere/magic of the moment didn't drop. Whew!
When you can't use your facial expression, everything else becomes magnified. And the abstraction of the mask moves the whole thing into a fantastical (transposed) world, where the artifice of the whole thing is apparent but also has to enhance the experience. It's almost like alchemy. I'm learning a lot. Again.
I'm also having to set up appointments with the osteopath. Again. This 54-year-old back of mine has bedeviled me of late. Acrobatics, as you might guess, is going very slowly. Some days I just do the conditioning exercises and spend the rest of the hour and 45 minutes stretching while everyone else works on handstands, straddle ups, and all sorts of other moves I don't even know the names for. My accomplishment of a 2-second handstand this past summer will probably turn out to have been the high point of my acrobatics career. But I can live with that.
Isabel passes through town twice in the next two weeks. It'll be a joy to see her. And I hear that it's about time for Thanksgiving again, since one American friend is hosting a turkey dinner this Sunday and my house is having our own gathering the following weekend. Christmas decorations are up in London stores (though much less so than back home). But the weather here doesn't give much clue as to the season. Weak sunlight, trees slowly going bare without much color, rain as often as always, I suppose. Not every day, but the air's always damp.
Here's hoping Isabel gets through immigration without a hitch this time.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Back to the future
Two weeks in now. A lot of our work has been in trying to get a good start on the platform piece. The group I'm in is working with Back to the Future 1. Others are doing Nosferatu, The Princess Bride, Moses (part of the Book of Exodus), Star Wars (the original one); so you can see the variety. I hear that one group is doing the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy--with five people on a door-sized platform in about 10 minutes. This I gotta see. And this afternoon I get to. The pieces aren't expected to be in finished form yet. We'll come back to them as we learn other styles and skills.
You could say that what we're doing is learning different languages, different styles of storytelling that require different kinds of structure and movement. Each is probably best suited to particular kinds of stories. If we keep on schedule we begin with commedia dell'arte tomorrow. I've just made my first papier-mache mask. The masks don't have to be traditional commedia characters (which I know little about). Mine has a big nose, the suggestion of a curly mustache, and an arched eyebrow. He looks kind of like a Cyrano de Bergerac or a musketeer. We'll see how it plays.
Today we also get to see the Initiation Course (first year students) present for the first time. I'm really looking forward to this. Last year I enjoyed those times when the whole school gathered--there's no more appreciative an audience than people who know what it's like to struggle with what you're trying to do--and the second-years said how much they learned by watching us do the same thing they had a whirlwind trip through the year before. A bit like traveling back in time.
(Cue movie soundtrack: Huey Lewis and the News...)
You could say that what we're doing is learning different languages, different styles of storytelling that require different kinds of structure and movement. Each is probably best suited to particular kinds of stories. If we keep on schedule we begin with commedia dell'arte tomorrow. I've just made my first papier-mache mask. The masks don't have to be traditional commedia characters (which I know little about). Mine has a big nose, the suggestion of a curly mustache, and an arched eyebrow. He looks kind of like a Cyrano de Bergerac or a musketeer. We'll see how it plays.
Today we also get to see the Initiation Course (first year students) present for the first time. I'm really looking forward to this. Last year I enjoyed those times when the whole school gathered--there's no more appreciative an audience than people who know what it's like to struggle with what you're trying to do--and the second-years said how much they learned by watching us do the same thing they had a whirlwind trip through the year before. A bit like traveling back in time.
(Cue movie soundtrack: Huey Lewis and the News...)
Saturday, November 14, 2009
They lied
Yet another wet one.
Guess I'll have to start wearing summat like wellies on me feet, now won't I?
Guess I'll have to start wearing summat like wellies on me feet, now won't I?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Soaked to the bone again
And in one place the standing water was so deep my feet were pedaling underwater.
Two down, six to go--for the whole year? Or did they lie?
Two down, six to go--for the whole year? Or did they lie?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Soaked
They say ("they" being Transport for London) that if you bike year-round here, you'll only get caught in the rain eight times. I hope they're right, hard as it is to believe.
One down. Seven to go.
One down. Seven to go.
Off we go?
They say the postal strike is over, or at least on hiatus until after Christmas. But my visa application is still in transit to the processing center, 12 days after I mailed it. It took a month for my Oyster card (tube & bus pass) application to get across town, but only two days to get it back after they processed it, so who knows what my chances are of getting my passport back in time to travel home for Christmas. (The Home Office is not known for processing things quickly. It was their slowness that started this whole dragged out thing in the first place.) So the saga continues, silently and at a distance.
Meanwhile, classes have started. It's all structured very differently this year, with mostly shorter classes and often longer waits in between. Tuesdays are the worst for the group I happen to be in so far. First class: 12:30-1:30, second class doesn't begin till 4:15. Some of this is due to occasionally splitting us into 3 groups of about a dozen. Some of it in having one fewer classroom/rehearsal space. My class is also a lot smaller. We started with about 45 a year ago. Now, with the addition of 2 people we didn't have last year, we have 35. The smaller classes are good, but we're also getting only an hour to an our and a half each day with the main teachers, whereas we got 2-1/2 hours last year. And there are no voice classes this year since neither of the voice teachers came back. In its place we have a group-singing session.
One thing I knew would be different: Our improv/creation work is more specific this year, focusing on particular styles of theatre. We're doing platform dramas now--stories compressed into small spaces and time frames, with no costumes, no props, just 5-7 people on basically a table top and a lot of imagination. It's fun, and quite a challenge. Next we move onto commedia. We're making our masks now. Later some Greek chorus work and epic stories (melodrama). Then clown. Along the way there's some bouffon and grotesque. I'm not sure what all of this is yet.
We continue to have acrobatics, Alexander and Feldenkreis movement classes, and space lab, plus a course in "company development," which gets to a lot of the practicalities of starting and working in a small theatrical company. And a new course called Applied Techniques, in which we specifically build on skills we learned last year in a supplemental way to what we do in the other improv classes. We're also learning a traditional mime routine in one of the improv classes.
So in some ways it's tremendously busy, while in others we seem to have more time in our hands in between things. Our classes are also afternoons and evenings (which means that this time of year we don't even start till it's almost dark), plus Saturday creation times. Later in the year, classes end altogether and it's all individually designed projects for the final 10 weeks or so.
And so in we plunge.
Meanwhile, classes have started. It's all structured very differently this year, with mostly shorter classes and often longer waits in between. Tuesdays are the worst for the group I happen to be in so far. First class: 12:30-1:30, second class doesn't begin till 4:15. Some of this is due to occasionally splitting us into 3 groups of about a dozen. Some of it in having one fewer classroom/rehearsal space. My class is also a lot smaller. We started with about 45 a year ago. Now, with the addition of 2 people we didn't have last year, we have 35. The smaller classes are good, but we're also getting only an hour to an our and a half each day with the main teachers, whereas we got 2-1/2 hours last year. And there are no voice classes this year since neither of the voice teachers came back. In its place we have a group-singing session.
One thing I knew would be different: Our improv/creation work is more specific this year, focusing on particular styles of theatre. We're doing platform dramas now--stories compressed into small spaces and time frames, with no costumes, no props, just 5-7 people on basically a table top and a lot of imagination. It's fun, and quite a challenge. Next we move onto commedia. We're making our masks now. Later some Greek chorus work and epic stories (melodrama). Then clown. Along the way there's some bouffon and grotesque. I'm not sure what all of this is yet.
We continue to have acrobatics, Alexander and Feldenkreis movement classes, and space lab, plus a course in "company development," which gets to a lot of the practicalities of starting and working in a small theatrical company. And a new course called Applied Techniques, in which we specifically build on skills we learned last year in a supplemental way to what we do in the other improv classes. We're also learning a traditional mime routine in one of the improv classes.
So in some ways it's tremendously busy, while in others we seem to have more time in our hands in between things. Our classes are also afternoons and evenings (which means that this time of year we don't even start till it's almost dark), plus Saturday creation times. Later in the year, classes end altogether and it's all individually designed projects for the final 10 weeks or so.
And so in we plunge.
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