Just finished the 14th official-overhaul-rewrite of "Summer People." I need to hear it aloud and tweak it before it can be sent out the door...this month marks two years that I've been working on this one play.
Granted, there have been two-and-a-half plays in the meantime, and each has taught me plenty. Still, when I think back to the original "gee, I think I'll do a writing exercise" that got the "Summer People" ball rolling, I have a hard time recognizing that writer.
This has been the semester, here, where I've started to have growing pains. I still absolutely want feedback on my work from my mentors, and I'm still learning a tremendous amount by teaching...but some of my classes have frustrated me. I've started to resent the time they take away from writing, rewriting, talking things through with collaborators. I'm hoping this is just a sign that my time here is almost finished, and that I have taken/given what I need to. I think it's more a referendum on that than the classes or teachers per se, whom I've liked.
It's also true that the longer I'm here, the more I'm in production rather than simply writing, the more aware I am of the politics at work around me. Now, this can be a good thing...I'm aware of them, so can behave accordingly, so can move through the systems, official and unofficial, with more ease and success than I could initially. But it also makes me more aware of, and wary of, the politics that are at work within any institution, be it educational, arts-related, or a for-profit business. That, too, has been part of my education here. For better or worse. I don't like going back to the lessons of Macchiavelli to get things done. But I will if I have to, with the best of intentions. Which is a bummer.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
From No Passport...
Oct 31, 2008
by Geoff McMaster
Esteemed writers weigh 'what matters' in their work
Nobel laureate Derek WalcottEdmonton - Nobel laureate Derek Walcott has a message for young artists: if you're looking for applause or recognition, you may be in the wrong business.
"The really great artist works on in a private silence that does not need the accommodation of applause," said the celebrated Caribbean poet, playwright and visual artist. "That is the only message I can give the young."
At a Faculty of Arts panel discussion, Thursday, called Writing: What Matters, Walcott lamented the competitive spirit in contemporary cultural production, arguing that it has very little to do with being an artist.
"I believe we have come to the point where we are all measured as artists by these various criteria that really have nothing to do with the craft that you practise. In the West, success is measured by the amount of money you make. I'm increasingly disturbed by this, because it makes the craft competition, and it makes it financial competition or career competition, and it's disturbing that the young have to be fed this.
"What is the answer to the artist who craves recognition or applause for his or her work? It may be nothing. It may be simply what that artist contains in him or her self."
One of the most accomplished literary figures of modern times, Walcott is on campus to participate in the Great Minds, Nobel Ideas program, bringing Nobel laureates to the U of A from the Caribbean and Africa. He is the first Nobel winner to visit the U of A as part of the program.
Walcott explained that he grew up in St. Lucia, "a very, very small, obscure, semi-literate island in the Caribbean," and was not the least bit embarrassed by it. Since it was far from the world's cultural centres, he was able to resist assumptions of the dominant esthetic, which can be trite and suffocating, he said, resulting in the production of what he calls "bright trash."
If the standard of the centre were the only possible measure, "you would not have (Gabriel Garcia) Marquez writing about his little town in Colombia," he said. "You would not have (William) Faulkner writing about an absolutely obscure hamlet in Mississippi."
The unstated bias of mainstream culture is that nothing of value can come from a "backward origin, that you can't have genius in obscure places," said Walcott.
But nothing could be further from the truth, he said. "Genius is found in the most contradictory places...You cannot predict who will speak for their country."
Walcott also admitted that he was "a little horrified" to learn of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's dismissive view of the arts during the recent election campaign. "It's profoundly scary when the leader of a country can be so ridiculous in terms of thinking of his artists as people who are not needed.
"People who presume to speak for the common man demean him - they do not help him. It's insulting to the ordinary person to be told, 'we'll create an art that will get down to your level.'"
Also on the panel were U of A writer-in-residence Lynn Coady, playwright-in-residence Kevin Kerr and Edmonton's writer-in-exile Rita Espeschit. All spent time attacking Harper for his remarks on the arts, but they also discussed what makes their work worth doing.
Coady, for instance, elaborated on Walcott's description of that lonely, silent place where the artist dwells and why it's important to seek it out.
"Something I struggle with more and more these days is the notion that every time I sit down to write a new novel, I'm making a choice to distance myself even further from normal life as most people know it," said Coady. "I'm choosing to embark on a project that will keep me indoors and alone for large swaths of time, while my bank account dwindles.
"So why does writing that novel matter so much, to the extent that I would put myself off from a world I desperately want to connect and engage with? I guess the paradox is I do it to accomplish the very thing it simultaneously prevents me from accomplishing - to connect and engage with the world. It's the best way I know how to do that."
Ending a two-week visit to the U of A, Walcott will teach a three-hour master class in poetry for graduate students on Saturday. He has also led master classes for undergraduate English and drama students.
The Writing: What Matters forum was hosted by the departments of english and film studies, drama and political science. A podcast and audio recording will be made available by the Arts Resource Centre for teaching and learning purposes.
by Geoff McMaster
Esteemed writers weigh 'what matters' in their work
Nobel laureate Derek WalcottEdmonton - Nobel laureate Derek Walcott has a message for young artists: if you're looking for applause or recognition, you may be in the wrong business.
"The really great artist works on in a private silence that does not need the accommodation of applause," said the celebrated Caribbean poet, playwright and visual artist. "That is the only message I can give the young."
At a Faculty of Arts panel discussion, Thursday, called Writing: What Matters, Walcott lamented the competitive spirit in contemporary cultural production, arguing that it has very little to do with being an artist.
"I believe we have come to the point where we are all measured as artists by these various criteria that really have nothing to do with the craft that you practise. In the West, success is measured by the amount of money you make. I'm increasingly disturbed by this, because it makes the craft competition, and it makes it financial competition or career competition, and it's disturbing that the young have to be fed this.
"What is the answer to the artist who craves recognition or applause for his or her work? It may be nothing. It may be simply what that artist contains in him or her self."
One of the most accomplished literary figures of modern times, Walcott is on campus to participate in the Great Minds, Nobel Ideas program, bringing Nobel laureates to the U of A from the Caribbean and Africa. He is the first Nobel winner to visit the U of A as part of the program.
Walcott explained that he grew up in St. Lucia, "a very, very small, obscure, semi-literate island in the Caribbean," and was not the least bit embarrassed by it. Since it was far from the world's cultural centres, he was able to resist assumptions of the dominant esthetic, which can be trite and suffocating, he said, resulting in the production of what he calls "bright trash."
If the standard of the centre were the only possible measure, "you would not have (Gabriel Garcia) Marquez writing about his little town in Colombia," he said. "You would not have (William) Faulkner writing about an absolutely obscure hamlet in Mississippi."
The unstated bias of mainstream culture is that nothing of value can come from a "backward origin, that you can't have genius in obscure places," said Walcott.
But nothing could be further from the truth, he said. "Genius is found in the most contradictory places...You cannot predict who will speak for their country."
Walcott also admitted that he was "a little horrified" to learn of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's dismissive view of the arts during the recent election campaign. "It's profoundly scary when the leader of a country can be so ridiculous in terms of thinking of his artists as people who are not needed.
"People who presume to speak for the common man demean him - they do not help him. It's insulting to the ordinary person to be told, 'we'll create an art that will get down to your level.'"
Also on the panel were U of A writer-in-residence Lynn Coady, playwright-in-residence Kevin Kerr and Edmonton's writer-in-exile Rita Espeschit. All spent time attacking Harper for his remarks on the arts, but they also discussed what makes their work worth doing.
Coady, for instance, elaborated on Walcott's description of that lonely, silent place where the artist dwells and why it's important to seek it out.
"Something I struggle with more and more these days is the notion that every time I sit down to write a new novel, I'm making a choice to distance myself even further from normal life as most people know it," said Coady. "I'm choosing to embark on a project that will keep me indoors and alone for large swaths of time, while my bank account dwindles.
"So why does writing that novel matter so much, to the extent that I would put myself off from a world I desperately want to connect and engage with? I guess the paradox is I do it to accomplish the very thing it simultaneously prevents me from accomplishing - to connect and engage with the world. It's the best way I know how to do that."
Ending a two-week visit to the U of A, Walcott will teach a three-hour master class in poetry for graduate students on Saturday. He has also led master classes for undergraduate English and drama students.
The Writing: What Matters forum was hosted by the departments of english and film studies, drama and political science. A podcast and audio recording will be made available by the Arts Resource Centre for teaching and learning purposes.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Directing Existing Work...
These were the guidelines Scott gave us for our final project in Directing Existing Work...but it's also a good list of "ways in" when given a script to direct...
Directing Existing Work – Final Project Guidelines. Use what’s useful.
1. First response: What was your initial response to this play/script? Gut-level. Love it? Hate it? Indifferent? Why? What did it do or not do for you? What specifically engaged you—viscerally, intellectually, emotionally, Did you see images? Hear music? Did you easily visualize it in your mind, see it clearly on stage in any way? Where did it live in your imagination as you read it or saw it? What kind of emotional journey does the play evoke for you. What moods and tonalities does this play suggest to you?
2. Summarize the story briefly, defining it in terms of its key events.
3. Text: theme, language and structure: What kind of play is it? Can you characterize it by genre or not? Is it a translation or adaptation? What themes does it examine? What broad questions does it raise? In what ways are its time and setting operative? What sort of reality does it suggest? What’s the nature of its language? Its musicality? In what ways is language operative? How are character voices differentiated? (as in Shakespeare, for example: prose vs verse) Is the language lyrical? Heightened? Stylized? How “self-conscious” is the language (as in Marisol, where the diction always implies a kind of awareness of itself and thereby plays a critical role in establishing the the play’s fractured universe). What is the play’s sense of urgency?
What is the play’s central event? How is it introduced, developed, defined? As with a scene, is there a significant initiating event or action? A series of rising actions? Complications, turning point? Are these of sufficient urgency to compel a clear trajectory of action (or story line) for each character? Consider the ways structure works to generate and support the emotional arc. Break down the scenes or components of the play and visualize what must happen as a series of events. If each event has a title, can you tell the story by listing the events in sequence? This will help you to see the play as a framework of actions, and determine how it must move in space or on stage. This leads to crucial storytelling awareness, and is also a good step in developing a ground plan and other basic scenic ideas.
4. Character breakdown. 1) Describe each character as you see her/him imaginatively : physical characteristics, behaviors, etc. Get all the adjectives out of your system, and then 2) describe each character by how she/he behaves: Pick a scene or episode that you think is defining for each character, and describe what the character does. State the facts in the simplest way you can. By defining character through a paradigm of action, you invited the kind of inference that is open-ended and useful (to an actor, a casting person, etc) rather than asking to see certain emotional qualities played or imitated. This process also gives you a jump into a framework of objectives and actions.
5. Audition sides: Choose one or two scenes for each character. Will you be looking for a range of behavior? Then choose accordingly. Choose acive, climactic scenes with strong events and clear, playable objectives. How do you see the character’s essential demeanor? Can you find an audition scene that will elicit that, and then another that will ask the actor to make more urgent choices? Think about scenes with contrasting objectives rather than different emotional qualities. What will you want to see in a first audition vs a callback?
6. RESEARCH
With what aspect of the play are you inclined to begin your research? Its setting? Its time? Its literal subject? (i.e. marriage, liberation, infanticide, war, etc.) Are you drawn first to critical texts? To visual imagery? Music? Does the play exist in a natural world, a city, a dreamed world, a historical world? What would it look like? Can you Trust what engages you, let the research lead you, but ask at some point in the proceedings, preferably before you have become completely overwhelmed, if you see any relationships among the items you are most drawn to? Do they begin to suggest patterns of ideas, thoughts, etc? Do they spring discoveries, “eureka” moments? Do they propel you back to the text in any way? Do they begin to arrange themselves, juxtapose themselves? If they don’t, you are having a good time anyway; maybe go back to the text for more inspiration. Show this stuff to a designer, or an empathic relative. Better still, take a nap, listen to some music or clean your house. Hokey as it sounds, trust your unconscious; it’s all in there, and when you least expect it something will emerge. Even if not, you have a lot of stuff to share. And at least you’ve begun the process of elimination. You guys know how to do this stuff. Think about kinds of spaces, sounds, light, movement, dress . . .
7. DESIGN
Depending on your proclivities, you may or may not want to take a stab at developing rough designs for your projects. You might want to track one character’s clothes, for example; or arrange a series of images of different spaces, or even moods, or examples of light or music, in ways that suggest a sequence determined by the play (not literal images of the play). For our purposes, I am less interested in ideas about specific sets, costumes or lights than in how you begin to pull the research together to suggest a world of spaces, moods, tones and relative values that can guide you and form a basis for discussions with all your collaborators.
8. SUMMARY: Look at where you started. Look at where you are after all this. How has your thinking developed? Is your gut response to the play enhanced? Altered? Do you still want to work on it sometime? What’s the next step?
Directing Existing Work – Final Project Guidelines. Use what’s useful.
1. First response: What was your initial response to this play/script? Gut-level. Love it? Hate it? Indifferent? Why? What did it do or not do for you? What specifically engaged you—viscerally, intellectually, emotionally, Did you see images? Hear music? Did you easily visualize it in your mind, see it clearly on stage in any way? Where did it live in your imagination as you read it or saw it? What kind of emotional journey does the play evoke for you. What moods and tonalities does this play suggest to you?
2. Summarize the story briefly, defining it in terms of its key events.
3. Text: theme, language and structure: What kind of play is it? Can you characterize it by genre or not? Is it a translation or adaptation? What themes does it examine? What broad questions does it raise? In what ways are its time and setting operative? What sort of reality does it suggest? What’s the nature of its language? Its musicality? In what ways is language operative? How are character voices differentiated? (as in Shakespeare, for example: prose vs verse) Is the language lyrical? Heightened? Stylized? How “self-conscious” is the language (as in Marisol, where the diction always implies a kind of awareness of itself and thereby plays a critical role in establishing the the play’s fractured universe). What is the play’s sense of urgency?
What is the play’s central event? How is it introduced, developed, defined? As with a scene, is there a significant initiating event or action? A series of rising actions? Complications, turning point? Are these of sufficient urgency to compel a clear trajectory of action (or story line) for each character? Consider the ways structure works to generate and support the emotional arc. Break down the scenes or components of the play and visualize what must happen as a series of events. If each event has a title, can you tell the story by listing the events in sequence? This will help you to see the play as a framework of actions, and determine how it must move in space or on stage. This leads to crucial storytelling awareness, and is also a good step in developing a ground plan and other basic scenic ideas.
4. Character breakdown. 1) Describe each character as you see her/him imaginatively : physical characteristics, behaviors, etc. Get all the adjectives out of your system, and then 2) describe each character by how she/he behaves: Pick a scene or episode that you think is defining for each character, and describe what the character does. State the facts in the simplest way you can. By defining character through a paradigm of action, you invited the kind of inference that is open-ended and useful (to an actor, a casting person, etc) rather than asking to see certain emotional qualities played or imitated. This process also gives you a jump into a framework of objectives and actions.
5. Audition sides: Choose one or two scenes for each character. Will you be looking for a range of behavior? Then choose accordingly. Choose acive, climactic scenes with strong events and clear, playable objectives. How do you see the character’s essential demeanor? Can you find an audition scene that will elicit that, and then another that will ask the actor to make more urgent choices? Think about scenes with contrasting objectives rather than different emotional qualities. What will you want to see in a first audition vs a callback?
6. RESEARCH
With what aspect of the play are you inclined to begin your research? Its setting? Its time? Its literal subject? (i.e. marriage, liberation, infanticide, war, etc.) Are you drawn first to critical texts? To visual imagery? Music? Does the play exist in a natural world, a city, a dreamed world, a historical world? What would it look like? Can you Trust what engages you, let the research lead you, but ask at some point in the proceedings, preferably before you have become completely overwhelmed, if you see any relationships among the items you are most drawn to? Do they begin to suggest patterns of ideas, thoughts, etc? Do they spring discoveries, “eureka” moments? Do they propel you back to the text in any way? Do they begin to arrange themselves, juxtapose themselves? If they don’t, you are having a good time anyway; maybe go back to the text for more inspiration. Show this stuff to a designer, or an empathic relative. Better still, take a nap, listen to some music or clean your house. Hokey as it sounds, trust your unconscious; it’s all in there, and when you least expect it something will emerge. Even if not, you have a lot of stuff to share. And at least you’ve begun the process of elimination. You guys know how to do this stuff. Think about kinds of spaces, sounds, light, movement, dress . . .
7. DESIGN
Depending on your proclivities, you may or may not want to take a stab at developing rough designs for your projects. You might want to track one character’s clothes, for example; or arrange a series of images of different spaces, or even moods, or examples of light or music, in ways that suggest a sequence determined by the play (not literal images of the play). For our purposes, I am less interested in ideas about specific sets, costumes or lights than in how you begin to pull the research together to suggest a world of spaces, moods, tones and relative values that can guide you and form a basis for discussions with all your collaborators.
8. SUMMARY: Look at where you started. Look at where you are after all this. How has your thinking developed? Is your gut response to the play enhanced? Altered? Do you still want to work on it sometime? What’s the next step?
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Understanding: Art and Craft
We read an interesting article today in Kirk Lynn's class, "Who's Afraid of the Avant-Garde." The "garde" in this case, was the garde of classical music.
There was one passage that stuck out to me in the article; the author talked about "the hatred for an art that one does not understand -- or rather, for an art that one is UNWILLING to understand."
Forgive me for quoting out of context, and I DO suggest reading the whole article, if you can find it. But this fragment made me itch, and it was the focus of a whole morning of mulling. It seemed to me like the author was saying "with enough time and effort, an viewer/audience member should always be able to understand any piece of art...the involved effort might be herculean, but understanding is always possible."
It felt like the author was denying me permission to NEVER understand something.
Which, okay, I understand some art should and does require a LOT of effort on the part of receiver, and that I shouldn't "shut down" in the face of such effort.
But isn't it also possible that some things might be BEYOND our understanding? Isn't it also possible that part of what art does is express or make manifest or at least point to something that is BIGGER than our understanding?
So I circle back to my secretly strong belief in God. I'm not a churchgoer...my God is less burning bush, more force that exists within and between people. And theater -- a living art that happens on the bodies and in the minds and of people sharing time and space and breath -- theater is my church.
If that's true, then I hope there's always a part of every performance that is bigger and beyond what can be "understood." If you can understand it, you can take it apart and put it back together and measure it and claim it and reduce it to the sum of its parts. And yes, maybe you can still APPRECIATE it. But you're taking the God out of it. The God part is the slippery part, the part you can't quite nail down, the part you strain toward, the part you wonder at, the part that frustrates, uplifts, teaches, and flays you all at once.
Of course, when you're spending your days in a classroom, you get caught up in the "understanding." That's what we're here for; to break things down to its components, to take apart the engine so we know how to build it. In a very real (and very good) way, these three years are about CRAFT, not art. These three years are about the "how."
But the Art is the Why. Lose that, and you're lost.
So I respectfully insist on my right to try, and sometimes FAIL, to understand art.
There was one passage that stuck out to me in the article; the author talked about "the hatred for an art that one does not understand -- or rather, for an art that one is UNWILLING to understand."
Forgive me for quoting out of context, and I DO suggest reading the whole article, if you can find it. But this fragment made me itch, and it was the focus of a whole morning of mulling. It seemed to me like the author was saying "with enough time and effort, an viewer/audience member should always be able to understand any piece of art...the involved effort might be herculean, but understanding is always possible."
It felt like the author was denying me permission to NEVER understand something.
Which, okay, I understand some art should and does require a LOT of effort on the part of receiver, and that I shouldn't "shut down" in the face of such effort.
But isn't it also possible that some things might be BEYOND our understanding? Isn't it also possible that part of what art does is express or make manifest or at least point to something that is BIGGER than our understanding?
So I circle back to my secretly strong belief in God. I'm not a churchgoer...my God is less burning bush, more force that exists within and between people. And theater -- a living art that happens on the bodies and in the minds and of people sharing time and space and breath -- theater is my church.
If that's true, then I hope there's always a part of every performance that is bigger and beyond what can be "understood." If you can understand it, you can take it apart and put it back together and measure it and claim it and reduce it to the sum of its parts. And yes, maybe you can still APPRECIATE it. But you're taking the God out of it. The God part is the slippery part, the part you can't quite nail down, the part you strain toward, the part you wonder at, the part that frustrates, uplifts, teaches, and flays you all at once.
Of course, when you're spending your days in a classroom, you get caught up in the "understanding." That's what we're here for; to break things down to its components, to take apart the engine so we know how to build it. In a very real (and very good) way, these three years are about CRAFT, not art. These three years are about the "how."
But the Art is the Why. Lose that, and you're lost.
So I respectfully insist on my right to try, and sometimes FAIL, to understand art.
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