if . . .

Sometimes it's best to let the director speak: Directors Notes      So, what exactly are we up to? Well, I've had a number of conversations and debates over the past few years as to what a theatre company really needs in order to put on a Shakespeare play. Do you have to have a dozen actors to do Shakespeare justice? Do you have to have elaborate historical costumes? And that isn't knocking large cast productions (nothing makes me happier than wearing chainmail and wielding a sword) or even knocking large cast productions (more actors on stage, yes please!). But if we're already willing to accept that we're all in a theatre and not in a castle that is over two thousand years old, then how "simple" can we go? Shakespeare's company didn't trouble themselves with accurate costumes, so we're not worried about it either. If Shakespeare's company had men playing women, then I see no reason why women can't play men (if an actor is wear...

You bring all you know about a person. Their life, their desires, their dreams, their likes, their dislikes, their duties and their practice.Yet it is the photos that haunt. I remember entering the retirement home on a January evening. The body lay resting on the bed. She rested a lot these days. The mind - well who knows what is in the mind. Not wanting to startle but hoping she would wake, washed the few glasses accumulated from the daily pill taking each morning and night, collected the invoices and flyers sorting then dispatching most to the trash, checked the telephone messages, turned on the television to Law and Order, though not too loud, and waited. Waited what seemed a long time. Only half an hour it turned out to be. I felt she was ok. Still sometimes sleep looks so close to death. Couldn't really hear any sound. She was almost ninety.  - Mom. Mom. I whispered. She didn't stir. I reached down and brushed her shoulder. - What? Oh, hi. My stom...

, Morning Prayer January 19, 2015 Our theatre guild has just wrapped another offering to our school and community. Last weekend, the play MacBird showed to audiences including grade 8 students who will become part of our Feehan Family. Thrilling tension, outstanding lead performances, many strong supporting performances, original writing, technical innovation – Macbird showcased the talent and commitment of our students and of course the guidance and permission of Mr. Montalbetti. Macbird is based on Shakespeare’s MacBeth, and as all those who have been grade 10 English students remember fondly, both plays are about ambition which overpowers compassion in the lead character. Macbird  is  tempted by power, the ability to control other people, and their desire leads to violence which spirals into their destruction. The play prompts us to ask and to wonder: when have we been tempted to put aside compassion and pursue what we want ruthlessly? Theatre, and all art, allows...

... yellow, pink & orange walls shelter us from the heat as the air conditioner clicks on & off ... a place of contrasts ... garish lights & humble artistic center stretch outside ... clean swept streets & unkempt staircases ... aggressive drivers & exceedingly polite greeters ... wide, fast flowing highways & narrow, empty passageways ... buddhist temples, shaman homes & churches ... the one constant in clothes soaked in sweat is exquisite food ... everywhere in open markets to single small eateries ... ... probably only slightly different than any city anywhere but it is the place I now inhabit to experience the familiar as surreal ... here I am the other ... the naive wave to me shouting out "hi" excited they can use an english greeting ... an elder reaches out smiles & strokes my arm ... school girls on their way home exclaim "foreigner" ... it all happens "on the way" ... ... many are anxious to demonstrate the g...

You practice the art of healing. You believe in a tribe & the migration of birds. You know about the mingling of Christianity & Confucianism. You tell of the four rivers & the delta waters. Are the churches, shrines, relics, saints and dyke observation sites of the depositif ? What are you teaching? ::Note:: ... traveling around the region near  Iksan ...

Réunir by Pj Prudat featuring the 2013-14 Circle of Voices is ... Letters float in ... Are they from the past to the present? From the future as recollections of the present sent to the past? Were they sent by the drum ... The fiddle ... The hanging wolf skins howling silently trapped in a braid of tree branches ... Perhaps the trees themselves  or the leaves of the trembling aspen dropped the letters to the earth Who reads the letters ... The Kookum listens ... a spirit Kookum, a grandmother to a people ... listens to her daughter ... her sister, her grandchild, her lover, her lovers ... listens to the voices of elders, leaders, oppressors, voices, gunshots, silence, shouts, the heartbeat ... listens to the aspen leaves as they tickle the sky with their stories Why  ... trembling aspens are relatively short-lived, an average lifespan of up 80 years in the wild ... reproduce clonally by root sprouts to form large long-lived stands, essentially, one large plant ... an ...

... went to a play last night   not too unusual   this past month   The Cherry Orchard   Ignorance   Our Town     will probably go to three more this upcoming month   try to go without expectation   been often disappointed   take the attitude  "not looking forward to this, really don't want to go but it's good to get out and do my duty, be responsible and see things" ...  ... this last one Love/Stories (or, But You Will Get Used To It)   Playwright Itamar Moses looks behind the curtain of contemporary romance in Love/Stories     yes felt like a lot about grief     a pedagogical lesson on theater [meta]drama[post-modern]conventions  intellect/emotion ... reading Red Doc > the next night & found this in Margaret Christakos: Slay it Again, Anne which captured the experience  Carson, through all of her work, writes about love as the atomic leveler of the self. Love i...

There was to be a meeting.  A meeting at the Mill.  A gathering to give thanks - a homage. They arrived, bought provisions & slept.  They began to drum, sing & recite text. They found a small clearing in front of the Mill & hung a sheet. They created a series of songs & text following memory & instinct. From within a story emerged. Three days passed. It was time to prepare the feast. They cooked all afternoon. Everything was ready or at least as ready as could be given the time. The guests, who were actually the family and friends of the caretakers of the land, drifted to the place. There was a meeting, a feast & a giving of thanks.  This was not the meeting. There was another encounter. A facing. "Miller, you sleep" he suggested.  Who are you? Who is knocking at the door? Crying out for the door to open Without even searching for me. Even though I don't know you I can't bare to leave you. I try to open the door. The door is latched from ...

Enchanted Trails - Hiking with John Balzaretti Trekking The play is an original and fascinating to re-discover a territory, combining immersion in its nature and its real-world scenarios, the one inside the "emotional landscapes" suggested by the proposal stage, food and wine that complement it. The rustic dining and entertainment offered at the end of the walk are, in fact, the crown and the amplification of local knowledge through the enchanting charm of trails running through them. The Trek Theatrical Collinarea be held  Saturday July 27 2013.  Departure is from the entrance of the Castle of Lari with meeting at 17.00. From here we will move to reach, in about an hour and a half, the 'farm Stains, through a series of easy practicability and the typical Tuscan landscapes and rural rustic, made ​​of towering cypress trees, maritime pines and cool shadows holm. Once there participants will witness the spectacle of John Balzaretti "Pilgrim. Pilgrim, ...

Finally, after close to fifteen years of following reports, articles, books and personal imaginings I attended a presentation of the Workcenter of Thomas Richards and Jerzy Grotowski  on a wonderous July evening in Lari, Italy. Both teams of the Workcenter participate in the Collinarea Festival . We ascended ninty-five steps to the top of the Lari castle where Mario Biagini, director of the  Open Program  we are about to witness, greeted comers with an open-hearted smile, bending down to chat with children and embracing friends as they arrived. As we trickled in t he two male and five female actors sat, squatted or stood on the periphery of an open space. A box, staff, cane, bones and percussive instruments (bell, rattle, stone, tin pan) were discretely though obviously carefully placed in the 30X20 foot  cobble-stoned square. We sat on chairs or carpets surrounding the space. All were dressed in white and barefoot, exactly as I had seen in the many documente...

The five hour walk with the Cised group in the Versailles Gardens and Park proved delightful despite the grey skies. Minimal crowds, perhaps deterred by the cool, wet weather, made for a leisurely pace. Though defiantly the garden of  Andre Le Notre  a wonderful contemporary ambience infiltrates with the works of  Giuseppe Penone . He articulately states: “Being given the possibility of letting my work dialogue with that of Le Nôtre in Versailles is a great privilege. The garden is an emblematic place which sums up Western thought on the relationship between man and nature.  Laid out to exalt the power of one man, it underlines the force and power of nature which minimises man’s action, requiring unceasing maintenance work to preserve it.  The complexity of the garden’s design suggests the multiple ways of seeing it, and its extension and grandiose aspect contrast with the tiny dimensions of the person walking around it. The individual disa...

Visited a dear friend at Maison de Sante de Bellevue . He was frail looking.  Thoughts came to mind. We are made of a core that expresses the entire concept of self much like a radical the main component of an ideogram (an ideogram being a written sign that expresses an entire concept rather than a sound like a letter of the alphabet). When a clear gaze comes from outside the core can draw attention - various at[tensions] The core may be a gate or threshold and is certainly a border. We listen to each other on the threshold as we h[ear]. We are receptive to a gleam coming from an invisible gleam of self. Through the cracks in the core we see in-between spaces as the sunlight and/or moonlight shines. Our sounds stand beneath the core as a darkness ... the sound doesn't block the gateway but connects this side with the other so hearing is no longer impeded ... yet  the sentence is a wall. Think of self as gateways/openings not as repositories/containers ...

“This reminds me of a place I used to work in National City, California, called Spotco Self Service,” Waits says as he leans against a pump. “I worked for a gentleman named Charles Spotco. I was always late for work. I used to stay out at night. I’d come dragging to work, used to get there about ten-thirty in the morning. He’d chew me out and scream at me for being late. He always said I’d never amount to nothing. I never thought I’d be standing in a gas station in Vienna Austria. If I’d of told him that one day, Spotco, I’ll be leaning on a gas pump at a gas station in Vienna Austria, he would have said you gotta be out of your mind.” - Tom Waits Sings and Tells Stories in Tom Waits: a Day in Vienna , a 1979 Austrian Film  ... was at that concert in Vienna ... his band was onstage for a good twenty minutes when finally he stumbled on looking disinterested & bedevilled ... nothing but a ruse ... the audience was restless ... it was the Vienna Konzerthaus not a bar in the...

Before fb & twitter & blogging is what it is now i wrote many a post like this. ... Herbert Blau ... knew of him only through his writings. The Impossible Theatre: A Manifesto came at the right time and i continued to read much of what he wrote. His theories attracted me at the start of my studies into theatre in the late sixties ... feel indebted to him & his passing causes me to pause & reflect on all those theatre workers who have shaped my path ... ... the first dandelions came this week ... a true celebration of spring ... await their arrival with patient anticipation ... my grandfather (now repeating myself though should write about Isadore Montalbetti) made dandelion wine & i love their sunny colour & their strength ... they have their season seeming to disappear in the heat of summer ... still each year they bring memories and smiles ... I stopped. The joy & discipline of writing/linking/searching/surfing waned. The purpose was never to b...

This past term had the oppotunity to instruct "upper year" classes. After an eternity of first year classes was excited. Posting the complete written responses.  STUDENT EVALUATION OF INSTRUCTION: WRITTEN COMMENTS  Course Number: Dram 467(02)           Course Title: Expressive Movement IV Instructor: Raymon Montalbetti  Academic Year of Course: 2012/2013  This class was fabulous to begin with, but as we proceeded the work revealed its meaning and lessons to us. There is no one besides Raymon that could have led us on this journey. I will never forget what I've learned here. Amazing. Thanks Ray!  This class had a very open structure which was something I was not accustomed to. I enjoyed my time, but sometimes found my attention waning as I didn't know what our learning was striving towards. Overall a very neat experience.  Raymon is a very unique teacher, one who I think that the department should use more wi...

:: Note ::  ... time & place not finalized ... 

... associology is not highly plotted, but certainly is elaborately structured ... plot, character, setting and theme logic are potential paralysis ... related or corresponding event, recurring image and action are the essential substance of meaningful density ... repetition is a pattern of associology and also of dream and neurosis ... a condition ... without tradition, without belief the process is that of filling or emptying ... ... associology is breakdown or breakthrough work ... the self is the obstacle ... the only consolation & grace of work is to obliterate or to encompass ... "Now what?" Is always the question. Now what? A workshop. A workshop for creative workers exploring inner aspects of action. Starts with the whole body in space listening to the bones and singing the sound to develop a capacity of open, vigilant awareness. Moves to playing with & devising materials in improvisational time to experience and discover personal impulses of place...

trees breathe seasons time not still as boulders nor rapid as the river more like tall, tall grasses waiting waiting for a sign a companion's touch the whispering wind if I waited that long ants would devour me & the sky would darken to briefly open crying: "dance skeleton dance bitter before the moon." it was the bones singing with the one-eyed snake my father smiled from the bellybeast smashing fists down shaking his head: "Find the the lost eye." for years & years I have walked trails by the river listening for ancient stories the words no one knows climbing out over the water seeing nothing beneath but mud or the sun diamonds reflection sage & holy strangers, warriors & birds overhead I turn & wait another year to retrieve the flames under whatever floats around dancing whirlpools even under the ice of tears in this deeper absent sky "Find the lost." the uproot pelicans circle a...

Elements towards a Cartography of Training to Performance sources      vocabulary   environment   structure   interaction constraints  sequences   transitions      rhythm     exchange (training)    (etude) (score)           (play)     (performance) accept         commit         develop          offer          share         Glyph       Petroglyphs       Practice        Witness         Audience          substitution to augmentation to modification to redefinition                                     Three Key Characteristics  ...

Reflecting on classes just completed. The body is, yet not only, movement. In work there is the emptiness called space ... or is it heart or rigor? In play the space parts then moves in to fill where the body's been ... or is it  absence that parts and fills or energy? We have deeply personal reasons for moving, working and playing. Yet always we partner to hold the space and to keep things whole. Memory is on our side as long as we observe, listen, encounter and reveal in dancingness. "It is about finding a true sense of your path in the theatre and in life and finding where it links. The only way it makes sense to me in any literal way is through the analogy of the waves of the ocean hitting the beaches of the earth. I see that theatre and art and the way of the actor is the ocean, a vast swell of the human spirit, whose full potential can never quite be tapped (though we strive to do so) and the earth represents our human, mundane life, it represents the ...