Ancestry of Gaga; not Madonna knock off

 art, culture  1 Response »
Feb 282011
 

I just watched the new Lady Gaga music video for “Born this Way,” and I’d like to ask for everyone to stop calling the song a Madonna knock off.  The ancestry of the song and the video can be traced back to Madonna, but so what?  For me, there are clear moments of homage to “Vogue” and “Express Yourself” in both the song and the video, but the video also looks like something that film maker Matthew Barney would have put in his Cremaster Cycle.

Gaga’s work on this song and in this video builds on the foundation that Madonna laid in the late 80s and early 90s, but her imagery is more overtly erotic and androgynous, a nod to the slow but sure queering of everything that we’ve come to accept as “normative.”  And her lyrics rely less on coded messages and more on direct action.  Yes, it all feels familiar, but in the same way that a circumstance in a Brecht play feels familiar and then suddenly gets turned on its ear by some Verfremdungs effekt technique.

I’m not some crazed fan, and I certainly don’t consider myself one of her little “monsters.”  But lay off Lady Gaga, people, and enjoy the bounce that the song puts in your step.

Turning a corner and staying open

 creativity  No Responses »
Feb 272011
 

This past Friday evening the project that I have worked on for the past six weeks finally came to fruition with a successful opening night performance to a very receptive audience.  Anyone who creates something and then presents it to the public, regardless of format or discipline, knows that the opening/launch can be terrifying.  In the past I’ve always found myself wringing my proverbial apron, unable to let go of the project, and wanting to run out of the theatre as the performance unfolded.  This time, I feel like I turned a corner in my practice as a director, and I learned to just trust the work that I’ve done, and more importantly, to trust the other people that I’ve made the work with:  the actors and the production team.  As a result, I found myself sitting in my assigned seat at 7:45pm, ready to experience the work, and feeling much calmer than I’ve ever felt before, a feeling that continued throughout the entire performance.  I actually enjoyed myself!

It’s a lesson that’s hard to learn, but one that makes a lot of sense.  The act of sharing any piece of art with an audience is dangerous and uncertain for the creators.  It requires a giant leap of faith that the audience members will engage with the piece and invest the energy to make meaning for themselves about what is being presented.  While I try to be as clear as I possibly can be in my art making, I’ve slowly come to realize that my vocabulary for making meaning won’t always match with every audience member’s vocabulary.  Which means that not everyone will like the work that I choose to present.  This used to bother me a lot, because I desperately wanted to be affirmed for the work that I was making, but I’ve come to accept that my job is to make the work that starts the dialogue, not to judge it or force people to like it.  Martha Graham sums it up quite well in the following quotation about art making:

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to stay open and aware to the urges that motivate you.  Keep the channel open.”

Below you can find some pictures from the final dress rehearsal of Plays from the Provincetown Players, courtesy of our lighting designer, Emily Stork.

PUP: A potentially unpopular position

 culture  6 Responses »
Feb 232011
 

So media outlets are all abuzz with the Obama administration’s statements today about the Defense of Marriage Act.  I first learned about it when the American Educational Research Association (AERA) queer sig list-serv exploded in a flurry of emails this afternoon, and since then I’ve had a chance to read CNN.com and the New York Times coverage.

While the Obama administration’s statements are encouraging and could very well represent a major wind change in the US government’s position on what constitutes a marriage, I am left feeling a bit sad about it all.  To me, the LGBT community’s fixation on the word “marriage” has been nothing short of frustrating, and I had hoped that maybe people would eventually come around to the idea that “marriage” is not necessarily the word that same-sex committed couples should be adopting to define their long-term relationships.

For me, “marriage” does imply a long-term, committed relationship between a man and a woman; it does not describe the long-term relationship that I have with a man. The term “gay marriage” is at best anachronistic, and at worst, an example of a heteronormative institution that gays and lesbians desperately want to access.  Which quite honestly confuses me given the historical origins of marriage as a transaction involving property: “wife” is given to “husband” and husband’s family receives her dowry.  Antiquated, offensive, and backward by today’s supposedly “liberated” standards.  Yet the LGBT community, fighting for the rights of all its people, is in a rush to the “gay marriage altar.”  It is a befuddling contradiction that essentially says to me, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Don’t get me wrong.  I ABSOLUTELY want the rights and privileges afforded to my heterosexual counterparts in their long-term relationships, and I get that side of the argument for “gay marriage.”  I want those rights and privileges for all people.  I just don’t want the history that comes along with the word “marriage.”

Resistance: from the trenches

 art, creativity  1 Response »
Feb 192011
 

In her book, A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre, the stage director and teacher Anne Bogart dedicates an entire chapter to a discussion of the resistance that one might encounter in any creative process.  Given that I’m about to enter the second day of technical rehearsals for my show that opens next Friday and that there’s a lot of resistance right now, I pulled out my Bogart text this morning, and re-read places that I had underlined or marked with an “Amen.”

When I first encountered this book several years ago, the concept of resistance in a creative process was very frustrating to me.  I would get very upset, almost paralyzed, when things didn’t go as I had planned.  As I sit in this moment in the middle of the most difficult part of any theatre creation process (tech), I still find myself frustrated at the resistance that I’m encountering, but I’m not letting it paralyze me.  In fact, I tell my students that reading Bogart’s thoughts on this subject of resistance and working to embrace the ideas has actually helped me to become a stronger director and as a result, my work has gotten better.  Rather than have the paralysis, I try to keep climbing the obstacles until I make it over the top and the next one appears.  It’s the only way to get the job done.  Thankfully, I have a team of collaborators who are there to help push me up over the wall.

Reading Bogart’s words again this morning have helped to ground me as I enter today’s rehearsal.  Here’s some of what she writes:

Resistance demands thought, provokes curiosity and mindful alertness, and, when overcome and utilized, eventuates elation.  Ultimately, the quality of any work is reflected in the size of the obstacles encountered.

If there are not enough obstacles in a given process, the result can lack rigour and depth.

Art is expression.  It requires creativity, imagination, intuition, energy and thought to take the random feelings of uneasiness and dissatisfaction and compress then into useful expression.  An artist learns to concentrate rather than get rid of the daily discord and restlessness.  It is possible to turn the irritating mass of daily frustrations into fuel for beautiful expression.

Thanks, Anne.  I needed that.

Anybody else?

Preparing to eat some pie…humble flavored

 creativity  No Responses »
Feb 122011
 

It’s 1:00am on Saturday morning, and I should be in bed.  The alarm will go off at about 5:00am, as I’m scheduled to be on a train at 6:45am to Philadelphia, where my brother Kevin will pick me up, and we’ll head to the second half of a 24-hour play festival.

As I type this, five playwrights are up writing as well, frantically piecing together a ten-minute play that must be submitted via email to the producer of the event by 7:00am.  This madness is part of a fundraiser for Learning Stages, the theatre company that I co-founded and have worked with for 20 years.  I’ve participated in these 24-hour events before in a few different places, but tomorrow will be my first foray into acting in one of these “quickies” and my first time on stage in about two and a half years.

Given that I am writing and directing a project for NYU at the moment, I thought it would make sense to do something “easier” and just act.  That sounded like a good idea four months ago when the date was set and I committed to it, but on Friday morning when it registered that I was going to be acting in front of 200 people in about 36 hours, I suddenly had second thoughts.  I’m tired from my own process, I’m frustrated with this particular moment where I’m waiting for elements to come together, and I’m weary of the rehearsal process.  The last thing I want to do is get up in front of a group of people and have to be funny or vulnerable or whatever the playwright hands me.  I started the day in a shite mood about this, wondering how I could get out of the trip altogether.

Later in the day, I had a bit of a revelation while talking with my dear friend and colleague, Judyie Al-bilali.  She had stopped into the office to prep for her next class meeting, and we started talking over the photocopier about the show and my frustrations and lots of other things.  We got into a discussion about actors and acting and teaching and directing actors in a university setting, and suddenly it dawned on me that going to New Jersey and acting in a short, ten-minute play was exactly what I needed to do in this moment.  I needed the humbling experience of remembering what it means to be an actor.

Two weeks out from opening, and this is about the time when the pressure starts to wear on me, and the actors become easy targets for my impatience and discontent with the process in general.  They are struggling to retain their lines and remember their blocking on an ever-evolving set that’s different every day that we go into rehearsal.  It’s easy to become frustrated, sitting out in the house, my script plopped open and coffee in hand, thinking I know it all, as they flounder around, valiantly I might add, working hard to tell the stories that we’ve spent the last four weeks exploring and creating together.  The task before them is overwhelming, and the last thing that any of them need is a director without compassion or empathy.

And so it goes that I’m going to eat some humble pie in a few hours and remember what it means to be an actor, what it means to hold a script in my hand and to have to communicate someone else’s story to an audience of people looking to be entertained or enlightened about the world.  Hopefully, the experience will be a positive one for all of us involved in the 24-hour play festival, but however it turns out, I know that the experience will remind me that the actor is the primary communication material that any playwright or director has to work with, and that knowing what it means to be an actor and tell a clear story to an audience will be invaluable to me as I enter the last stages of my own rehearsal process.  Without that compassion and empathy for the actor’s experience, I won’t get very far as the director, and neither will my production.

Devising an original framework play

 creativity  1 Response »
Feb 042011
 

In working on Plays from the Provincetown Players, the company has spent ample time in a devising process to create the framework play that holds the three shorter one-act plays.  As described in last week’s post, five NYU students break into a fictional construction site of the Provincetown Playhouse.  Throughout the devising process, we’ve had to consider who these students are and come up with reasons why they might be there.  I wanted the situation to feel as realistic as possible, so I’ve relied on the assistance of our dramaturg, Jenni Werner, the assistant director, Sarah Misch, and our cast members to provide input and guide the process.

Jenni and I discussed the danger of given circumstances that would not be believable, so I turned to one of our cast members, Tyler Grimes, for his assistance.  Tyler is a known movie aficionado, with an IMDB-like brain, and I thought that he might be able to provide some valuable insight into our “adventure.”  I asked him to consider some of his favorite adventure story scenarios, and here’s a bit of what Tyler had to say:

You asked me why people go on adventures. I’ve been wracking my mind, watching movies, trying to figure out various concepts. I have thought of a few, there certainly are more, but if you like one of these let me know and I can do more research.

Reasons:

Perhaps one or two of our characters have a recently deceased relative who somehow was involved with our theater and they are bringing his ashes to rest here. (Perhaps not that extreme but I think you see the point.)

To sabotage. Perhaps a character or two doesn’t want this theater here anymore, but when they find the “box” they are persuaded.

The classic, “running from the police so let’s hide anywhere” scenario. Basically stumbling upon the theater and having to stay to avoid the police (or something similar).

Treasure! Build up some folklore about the place and have our characters come looking for the “Provincetown Millions” or something a lot less corny.

The antithesis of the sabotage would be a group just trying to preserve the place. Perhaps they’ve traveled a long distance to get here and want to just hole up there so they can’t demolish the place.

Tyler also provided us with some stock character types that might populate whatever “adventure” we decided to use:

The hero/heroine: brave, sometimes reluctant leader of a group.

The brain: able to answer any question or solve any puzzle fast. Usually has a lot of information handy at all times. Sometimes wears glasses.

The skeptic: often questions everything. Not always the most fun in the group.

The joker: just there to lighten the mood. More recently the joker becomes a sentimental character with the audience, and they expect an “emotional” moment from them. Thanks, Judd Apatow.

The muscle: simply there to bust things open.

The love interest: there to make our hero/heroine doubt themselves.

The person there by mistake: arguably my favorite. Someone who just fell in with the crowd at the last minute.

The dead body: sometimes characters on an adventure will come across a dead body (more often than not just the skeleton), and it lets them know that they are now going farther than anyone else has.  Sometimes maybe they’ll carry the bones around with them.

These are just a few, obviously, and while they seem uninteresting on their own, the best use of these is when they are combined. The joker/skeptic is a great combination for example. When they combine, they sometimes negate their “downsides.” Ultimately, however, the most interesting group dynamic could come from the actors themselves.

Thinking of different types of characters that I always find interesting when groups are gathered, my first thought goes to how to create tension within the group. Siblings can sometimes cause this. Brother/Sister, Brother/Brother, Sister/Sister. Anytime that dynamic is present in a group, especially a group of adventurers, tension can arise. Arguments can occur, the need to protect one another (especially in a scary, new place)… all of these can be useful.
Tyler’s input on this proved to be very helpful for Jenni and I when we sat down to begin the preliminary outline for the adventure in the Provincetown construction site.  We generated several possibilities and then entered the rehearsal process on January 17 with some ways to “prime the creative writing pump.”

After an initial read through of each of the three one-acts, Tyler introduced his research.  We all went home to sleep on it and came back the next day, ready to create.

Our first step was to identify the five characters that would populate the adventure.  Identifying them actually meant creating them, literally “from scratch.”  Jenni and I had selected possible archetypes for each of the actors based on the roles that they would play in the three one-act plays, and then I set to work on a character devising process pulled from playwriting workshops that I’ve had with Pearl Cleage and C. Denby Swanson and from Sande Shurin’s book, Transformational Acting.  Each actor received a large piece of post-it paper and a marker, and I asked them to complete the following tasks and answer the following questions (thanks to stage manager Talia Krispel for capturing these prompts):

  • Write down ideas that are becoming clear to you within the framework of this piece – things you’ve already verbalized about your character that you know.
    • Think about how you want this person to be different from  – how do you want them to be different, how do you know they’re different?
    • Think about attributes about yourself that you want to bring into this character – what about you do you want to play within this character? Can be physical, emotional, mental, etc.
    • What is the character’s favorite color?
    • Favorite food?
    • Drink of choice? (alcoholic optional)
    • Relationship status?
    • What do you know about family background, history?
    • Why is this student at NYU – what is the character studying?
    • Where will the character be and what would the character like to be doing in 10 years?
    • What is the character’s greatest dream?  Worst nightmare?
    • Political affiliation?
    • Age of character? (17-22 age span)
    • Where does the character come from?  Where is home?
    • What is the character’s secret that no one else knows? (Generated by a different actor after reading the other answers above.)
    • Read the secret that NO ONE knows – then write down a secret that the character has told to one other person.
  • Give the character a name.

After the exercise, each actor was asked to introduce her/his character to the other members of the company, and out of these introductions, relationships emerged and the beginning of the adventure presented itself.  Each actor typed up her/his notes that night and sent them to me, and I’ve been using them throughout the devising process as a way to justify character choices and provide a foundation for the narrative throughline of the framing play.  Improvisations have been key to this process as well, and the use of audio recordings, transcriptions, and frantic notetaking during the individual improvs have all been invaluable methods for honing each character’s voice.
Stay tuned for a future blog post that will provide information about how we are using primary and secondary source materials to give voice to our three playwrights: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O’Neill, and Susan Glaspell.  In the meantime, click on the image below to see the show poster, designed by Chris Cantley of Cantley Art+Design.