if . . .

It has become a part of a way of looking at playing the play. Developed over the years & seems time now to open and share. SoulWork: An Associology experiment on the play Grass Tomb by Oh Tae-sok . A Drama 119 class experience at "The Temple" (studio in Saskatoon) conducted by Raymon Montalbetti with music AeRan Jeong. Text Actors encounter a play. Read the playwrights text. Follow stage directions. Research the setting, the time & the place. Prepare to build a character. Create a role. Listen to the vision of their co-workers. Uncover emotional landscapes. Imagine a life. All this is known. It is the skin and bones, the tissue and muscles, the senses and thoughts and the heart and breath of a play and playing. What about the soul. I mean the soul of the play. Everything unknown beyond the play boundries. If a play has a soul how ... Peter Brook writes in the Empty Space : "In the theatre 'if' is an experiment." SoulWork is a noe...

The end of term brings final presentations.  A Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program ( SUNTEP ) group chose to play with the tool blacklight . They told a story of the creation of the medicine wheel. Mixing a natural animal soundscape with Electric Powwow  The Creator: 4 Medicines   a piece of disarming simplicity emerged to reveal untold depth. There was no narration just movement, sound & image. They affectionately called the music "dubstep powwow". The presentation ended with members of the class making a medicine wheel which glowed in the blacklight as seen in the photo. Within the written documentation was a deeply personal statement. Shared with permission. "A personal account that I had with a Sacred Eagle was last August.  Last August my 18-year-old cousin was traveling from Saskatoon to North Battleford when a tire blew. They did a 180 and landed in a ditch. My cousin got out of his vehicle and noticed there was an Eagle sitting...

This past winter term I conducted nine two hour sessions, once a week, with a highly creative, enthusiastic & energetic group of twelve Grade Three to Grade Six youth. Each session we explored materials and/or form: traditional (meaning rooted in the oral ways) storytelling, shadow plays, puppets, masks & fabric, hoop dancing, ribbons, creating a scene and playmaking. For our last session we returned to the source. I invited each to bring a story. It is a sign of the times that the youngest brought her self composed story on an iPod. The most intriguing "story" was scratched on a six inch diameter round clay circle wrapped in tinfoil displaying the story through pictograph. She called it a badge . (The shape was similiar to the picture though her scratching was not a natural representation. This was an art/social studies school project. Kudos to her teacher!) I was reminded of ancient Babylonia and the story of Gilgamish told in cuneiform. It shared the story...

There are rare times in the world of theatre when one feels honored to be present at a performance. Where a profound shared experience is being carved into living memory and at the same time a deeply personal response shutters through the body articulating, "I am here bearing witness to an important event."   The Native Earth Performing Arts production Almighty Voice and His Wife by Daniel David Moses at the Backstage Arts Centre in Saskatoon , Friday evening Jan. 27, was such a moment.  Peter Brook wrote in The Empty Space:  Repetition, representation, assistance. These words sum up the three elements, each of which is needed for the event to come to life. But the essence is still lacking, because any three words are static, any formula is inevitably an attempt to capture a truth for all time. Truth in the theatre is always on the move. And so the truth of what I felt, what I experienced, what so deeply touched the core of what it means to be human is o...

There once was a woman who spent a long time backstage. She had no reason for doing this, other than she was weary, and sadly she was  even more weary backstage, which is dark and consists mainly of scenic flats and props made to look real but are illusions.  One day she noticed a spotlight in the corner and decided to plug it in.  A beam of gold light shot across the stage. A group of actors flinched and shielded their eyes, a director shouted, a stage manager came running and stage hands appeared as if from nowhere thrashing about in the dark as if a fire alarm had sounded and they were seeking the exit. All stopped in front of the light. Dust particles danced in the beam and a moth wildly fluttered trapped eventually exploding nearing the heat of the light. Someone pulled the plug and backstage returned to its weary dark illusions. She thought about crying or maybe screaming but was too weary and besides she found herself onstage only no one could see her...

"After Stanislavsky, acting was changed; after Meyerhold, directing; after Brecht, playwriting. But after Grotowski?" - Richard Schechner Life is acting. Do we understand that ? Do we want to understand that . But what, in us, questions life is acting? What disputes that , despite everything? That we think thought is life. The most important thing is that our experiences reveal we are acting all the time. That when we feel we do not act we do not live. That we want nothing more than to live. We act. But we do not know that we act. We do not live. But we do not know that we do not live. Actors train to act. Actors keep the life of wanting to act. Of wanting to be in the living action. But how do we act? And why do we care about acting? Somehow, we have a real relationship to questions on acting, of living. Somehow, those questions mean something to all of us. We do not know what acting means.We experience not acting but the impossibili...

There once was an actor who was different from all other actors. Unlike them, there wasn't a consciousness of acting. The character thing-in-itself was as unknowable on stage as it was unknowable in the phenomenal world. The moment other actors entered the contours of a character it was as though they would test a possession and leave the limits of empirical knowing. Then when they exited they would return to a state of self consciousness as though they were who they lived to occupy. But this particular actor had no awareness of a playing self-possession, no awareness of a living presence, of exiting and entering and Instead would play each and every moment in a single life occupying stream. So for a long time when entering the character everything would simply move in a stronger current, and then, in what seemed like the next moment, would return to a slower flow with little idea of what had happened other than this intense sense of dispossession and unknowing because o...

North of Sleep At night,  my body is a compass swinging to every direction: past borderlands,  the ruins of unknown,  empty streets  en route  to elsewhere, slipping into rooms  where bearings  jolt me to a  wakefulness of frigid air and dormant train tracks  wait to halt traffic  twice a day. By morning,  I approach nausea, relentless calls  to speak some truth, a light with no shadow  but a heaviness.  The howl, dragged  from northern lights I couldn’t even understand. I stop, let my soul  go on ahead. Show me. (Shouting now.) Show me. (Frightened now.) The flaked ceiling points  to a bitten fingernail scratch   throwing grief across the back as a one perfect window  diffuses time. Noodles & coffee:  in a fractal tell a  haunting dirty knot  of restless  grime & eyes  bleed...

:: Note ::  ... anniversery ...

:: Note :: ... a  gentle soul was my uncle ... a thoughtful, caring individual who seemed to always be of service to the other ... my last image was of him talking to my son on a visit to Ottawa ... he had discovered Stefan's passion for history and listened to this teenager with attentiveness and respect ... before we left he gifted a book from his library ... other than his intense compassion & devotion to his family this was his deepest love - books: reading, researching, contemplating, collecting, challenging & most importantly sharing ... he was a bit of what I imagined 'a man of letters' and  wrote letters to my mother which she treasured more than any jewlery ... she will miss those words in meticulous handwriting ... we will miss his gentle caring soul ... in our thoughts we will receive his letters as he writes them from another place than the place of actuality ... 

Voices scramble thoughts all over the forehead Like a kool aid rash from hair dying. What can you tell from fallen locks Collected and wrapped in prayer flags Storied at the feet of marriage storks? Will they take on some meaning? The silly looks, smiles and smirks reveal nothing. A black toque hides, The altar carefully kept to honor Nothing less than a life of sand and ash. I am tired, beloved, of opening my heart To the want of eyes, Vibrating fully into empty space Marking time. I rub the darkness alone, here, under the cracking plaster of the cold.  :: Note :: ... tired ... 

I am lost in a foreign city. Usually the city is  in a state of ruin. Though I meet people from my long ago past am unable to find my way & never make it to the airport. The panic wakes me up. My university degree is revoked as it is discovered I neglected to hand in a required essay. My car is broken into and ransacked. I'm mortally sick unable to die. :: Note :: ... after a four year absence Oblivio : Stories and such by Michael Barrish returns ...  in the early days of blogging before twitter & facebook and the whole notion of social media he was a favourite ... his quirky humour & wit, clean & minimal look with what I believed to be a deeper sense of purpose inspired me  ...  the reason I love a good rss reader is a subscription may lie dormant for years & suddenly come to life ... as in the past   Four Recurring Dreams   inspired this post of mine ... I missed you Michael ...  much like the etymology o...

:: Note ::  ... have always been fascinated with T. S. Eliot & Apocalypse Now ... thanks VorthosForum  ...

I   A wintastery Rice paper lanterns float on cascading milky ways. Thoughts stand frozen like star prints in the meridian. On the glacier  under the snow – the bones were crackling with the wind. Memories drift from the gauze of moonbeams – like a veiled volcano. Sleeping in the sparkling. There, I buried – forgotten in the frostline. II   Sharp claws of black scratch the surface – a curious rejection.  Roused from dream. I met an immense shadow in a pair of eyes. These meetings set out under ice  flows inside out. You see me I see you another no other. III   Go quiet as breath,   toward the density.  Troubles are a search. I hear the lament - the ballad of yesteryear. The red rhythm beats La neige blues meet We all fall down. I have been there - lying in times past gradient back traces. IV The ice fields open and he doesn't see...

Poster by Lindsey Rewuski :: Note ::  ... a training turned performance ... performed by Kristen Holfeuer & Jules Mercier | Music by Matt Voyno | Directioned by Raymon Montalbetti ... YouTube montage of For the You ... FaceBook Event Page  ...

Drama of Associology a statement Associology  is not a discipline.  It is the evidence of a drama. Drama is a relationship.  The relationship is ongoing.  Associology is an act of devotion in the relationship. I want to believe that in associology the act of drama is its own reward. I want to believe the drama, when one devotes oneself to it, extends beyond the boundaries of drama. I want to believe associology values inquiry over conclusion. To attempt to be conclusive is to attempt to make dramas that are, in effect, statements. Attempting to make a statement with associology undermines the idea that drama is a relationship. These words are a statement and they are not associology. :: Note :: ... statement heavily influenced by Douglas Witmer  ... the idea of Associology came from supervalentthought  :  A poetics of associology whose noise world sits me down in disbelief at the rare freedom of other people’s minds. Not bec...

"What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people's hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or a at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you're playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack."   - ( Life   - Keith Richards) :: Note :: ... seems like a good answer to What makes you want to create theatre? ... i enjoy reading musicians writing about themselves ....

... reaching for a perception founded on the unexpressed emotion within an image ... moments of open beauty, solid emotional tones, symbolic substance, and inherent abstraction ...  “I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.” ― Andrew Wyeth   :: Note :: ... working title Tundra ... joy of playing with Jules & Kristen ...

The practice begins with the creation of personal material by freely improvising physical movements and vocal sounds until a clear physical and emotional association is established. A series of associations are then created. These associations are then individually refined to become as exact and repeatable as any structured movement. Once the association is refined it is called a Glyph. An aspect of Glyphs are they keep their improvised quality being immediate and may seem to the spectator to be created on the spot, but in fact are highly scored. Upon creating a series of Glyphs, they are then put together in a larger sequence called a Petroglyph. The Petroglyph is a montage of physical and vocal scores (Glyphs) combined in such a way as to create an action. Shaping the Petroglyphs through pacing, duration, tempo and dynamics allows dramatic arcs to be rendered. The Petroglyphs are then aligned and rendered again into a piece with a rhythmic coherence. For the You is made up of fou...

Kristen Holfeuer / For the You / ᕦ What happens when we remember? What happens when we delve into the memories of others? Are we entitled to the knowledge contained in the memories of those who came before us? I don’t feel like this piece was created so much as remembered. If process, form, and content all inform one another, it is only right a piece about memory should be created by remembering and then shaped like memories floating (or sometimes hiding) in the brain. - Kristen ... engages the ancestor, lets her speak giving back her voice. Tells a story to the ancestor in ourselves. For the lives of others to truly matter the ancestor must be encountered to open the present. ... Walter Benjamin in 'The Storyteller', "less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding." ... enlists the ancestor to an attentiveness that lives & moves from breath to breath, body to mouth, sound to word singing the world we ...