A friend of mine on his blog linked to an AP article somewhat amusingly titled “Everything Seemingly Spinning out of Control.” I read a few paragraphs, choosing to view it through a distinctly ironic lends, and was amused. Then I read an email from my friend Erin detailing the script for her final project, which deals with dying with dignity and HIV/AIDS and was moved. Then I read the first paragraph of this review of Wall-E, and got a little choked up.
Have I mentioned that I believe art can save the world?
In the darkness of these days, both real and perceived, there is so much space opened for inspiration and light. Art is never more powerful than when it has something to say, and there is so much to be said in this moment, in this world, about both the beauty and the horror of what we have wrought as a (human) race. And I’m so awed at the prospect of jumping in and saying my piece.
Friday 27 June 2008
Monday 23 June 2008
Loving life right now
I'm busy - always rushing off to work or another rehearsal - but nevertheless have the time to look around, take a breath, and smile. Yesterday we had a lovely rehearsal for my piece wherein we chose the version of the story we're going to tell and began to build images, and then after it was over I gathered my chorus of women around me to teach them a lullaby/round/sea theme I wrote. We spent over an hour singing. The song is beautiful (it gave Natali goosebumps when we all sang it to her with three of the four parts!), and works far better than I could have expected - now we just have to see if we can make it work within the context of the piece (or make the piece work in the context of the song).
Also pushing life to the sunny side were the Atmosphere/Brother Ali concert last week, which was incredible; the Heaven and Hell Ball last Saturday, which was super fun and saw me coming home at 5am; and Empire of Feathers at the Camden People's Theatre this Thursday, starring three of my nearest and dearest. Not to mention the weather in London of late has been nothing short of lovely. Touch wood, but things are good.
Also pushing life to the sunny side were the Atmosphere/Brother Ali concert last week, which was incredible; the Heaven and Hell Ball last Saturday, which was super fun and saw me coming home at 5am; and Empire of Feathers at the Camden People's Theatre this Thursday, starring three of my nearest and dearest. Not to mention the weather in London of late has been nothing short of lovely. Touch wood, but things are good.
Thursday 19 June 2008
Down the rabbit hole
Is this what life could be like? Eating, sleeping, spending time with family and friends, and building and performing theatre the rest of the time (and having no time to blog - sorry!)? That was my life for nearly a week, and it was sooooo lovely...
The public presentations happened last week, and went well overall. There was some drama (aka blood on the floor) regarding what made the final cut, but everything more or less worked out in the end. I believe we had over 100 people in the house for each of the three nights, and though the closing evening was probably the weakest, which is never the best way to end a run, I'm still proud of us. We didn't have much time for self-congratulation, though, because less than 48 hours after closing curtain call we were back at school to tackle our final projects.
The format for final projects is this: every second-year (all sixty of us) must head up a project of our choosing, which at the end of the day we are entirely responsible for. We can cast our classmates as performers, directors, writers, musicians... whatever we need. And we have about 16 hours of rehearsal over the course of three weeks to put together a piece. The last two weeks of school will consist of 8 evenings of these performances - each only gets one showing, which will be the first time the teachers see it. Our class has 25 people, so 25 projects, split more or less evenly across the 8 nights. As of this moment, mine will be performed on Monday the 7th, and I'm performing in other people's pieces on every other night save two. It's exciting to begin to rehearse these, to get to step into other people's artistic universes and see what you can create. My first rehearsal is this afternoon and I'm less nervous than I have any right to be - the next few hours will be taken up with research so I can pretend that I know what I'm talking about. I'm thinking of exploring the epic storytelling form that we played with at the beginning of the year with the melodramas, and I'm looking into using the folktake of the selkie as the story to tell. I want a chorus of four women who sing, in addition to the main characters, and that's about all I know. (I was about to write "More to follow", but last time I wrote that it took me weeks to come back to the blogging world, so I won't make that mistake again.)
There really is so much more to write - about having my family here, which was So Great; about revisiting Palestine several weeks ago; about plans for the fall and the future - but writing about the final projects has gotten me inspired to go trolling for images and folktales on line in preparation for rehearsal. Wish me luck. I'll share my findings.
I hope you all are well. I am so very happy with my life these days, and it's incredible to me how autonomous, how independent I feel. I'm accustomed to always having an outside point of reference - usually Minneapolis - as "home", but I'm feeling more and more like my home is here, my home is where my life is, my home is what I carry with me, always.
I love you all.
The public presentations happened last week, and went well overall. There was some drama (aka blood on the floor) regarding what made the final cut, but everything more or less worked out in the end. I believe we had over 100 people in the house for each of the three nights, and though the closing evening was probably the weakest, which is never the best way to end a run, I'm still proud of us. We didn't have much time for self-congratulation, though, because less than 48 hours after closing curtain call we were back at school to tackle our final projects.
The format for final projects is this: every second-year (all sixty of us) must head up a project of our choosing, which at the end of the day we are entirely responsible for. We can cast our classmates as performers, directors, writers, musicians... whatever we need. And we have about 16 hours of rehearsal over the course of three weeks to put together a piece. The last two weeks of school will consist of 8 evenings of these performances - each only gets one showing, which will be the first time the teachers see it. Our class has 25 people, so 25 projects, split more or less evenly across the 8 nights. As of this moment, mine will be performed on Monday the 7th, and I'm performing in other people's pieces on every other night save two. It's exciting to begin to rehearse these, to get to step into other people's artistic universes and see what you can create. My first rehearsal is this afternoon and I'm less nervous than I have any right to be - the next few hours will be taken up with research so I can pretend that I know what I'm talking about. I'm thinking of exploring the epic storytelling form that we played with at the beginning of the year with the melodramas, and I'm looking into using the folktake of the selkie as the story to tell. I want a chorus of four women who sing, in addition to the main characters, and that's about all I know. (I was about to write "More to follow", but last time I wrote that it took me weeks to come back to the blogging world, so I won't make that mistake again.)
There really is so much more to write - about having my family here, which was So Great; about revisiting Palestine several weeks ago; about plans for the fall and the future - but writing about the final projects has gotten me inspired to go trolling for images and folktales on line in preparation for rehearsal. Wish me luck. I'll share my findings.
I hope you all are well. I am so very happy with my life these days, and it's incredible to me how autonomous, how independent I feel. I'm accustomed to always having an outside point of reference - usually Minneapolis - as "home", but I'm feeling more and more like my home is here, my home is where my life is, my home is what I carry with me, always.
I love you all.
Monday 2 June 2008
The Black Hole
Term four, my Last Term at LISPA Ever, has begun (a week ago - I'm a little behind, blog-wise). It should be crazy stressful, but I'm really really enjoying the long rehearsal hours, and savouring working with this group of people that will most likely never be all in the same place again after the next seven weeks. I mean, check in again tomorrow, and maybe I'll feel differently, but at the moment I'm content. Very content indeed.
More to follow.
More to follow.
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