Session 4

Attendees:
Lea
Mauro
Leslie
Maria
Ronan
Loukia
Ariana
Hugo

Activities of the Day:

Restrictions:
Lea started the day off by first sharing her artifact (a photograph of herself and her mother) and then showing a short film she made in response to last week's second and fourth sentences ("Create a story with a pencil," & "Find something extraordinary about something ordinary."). There it is, just below. It has no audio, but is still affective. At least Mauro thought so.

A discussion was prompted by the film about the "silly" sometimes having tragic qualities, and what it is to apply human attributes to inanimate objects. Ronan commented on the ability to impose feeling in the piece with just words: you didn't have to show the pencil moving to show that he was happy. The group touched on alienation for a moment, discussing how the audience is suddenly responsible for that part of the equation<--the inferring of the pencil's happiness, the pen's forlorn look, etc. There is an active engagement there that may not have happened if the photographic segments had actually been filmed action, and without that engagement the viewer may not have been as invested. The topic of audience participation in this manner came up again later in the session. The film Stranger Than Fiction was also referenced.

Hedva brought in a small elephant as her artifact, and he sadly lost his only remaining eye during the session. Ronan gave him new eyes with tape, as you can see.

Photo by Lea McKenna-Garcia

The little guy was from Thailand, and was quite cute up close, it must be said.

Development:
Hedva brought in a monologue dealing further with the experiment she had brought up last week. It was a piece of writing blending Brechtian style and themes with verbatim text, and incorporating as well as discussing a monologue by the character Agrado in Pedro Almodovar's film Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother). Various feedback was given regarding the structure and content of the monologue, and we hope that Hedva will bring in the next draft of this work next week for us to see its development. The content of the monologue has been kept out of this blog for copyright purposes. If you are interested in what could come of blending an Almodovar monologue, verbatim text, and Brechtian narrative style, please feel free to join us next week and discover it first-hand. (Assuming, of course, you practice Advanced Theatre.)

Leslie joined us this week, and first handed out business cards for her latest artwork.* Then she showed the beginning of the film Space is the Place, and discussed how she was attempting to develop a piece in the same spirit of the film (psychedelic scifi) for the theatre with some fellow MAers. She hopes to have a large emphasis on LoFi effects and equipment. Again we started talking about what an audience invests if they're asked to do a little work, and the difference between the journey they go on when they have to investigate or bridge a gap on their own instead of having everything fed to them. The proposal of this piece excited many, and we hope to hear more about it as it develops.

Leslie also briefly introduced a project she is helping with called "Society of Molecules ," and plans on discussing that more fully next week.

The idea of the similarity between the labels "theatre" and "live art" was touched on briefly as well, but not expanded on. Perhaps we'll delve into that next week also.

*(Please call 0800 756 6662 for more information.)

The Five Sentences for this week:

SENTENCES ASSIGNED TO BE SHARED FRIDAY, 20 FEBRUARY:

1. You can only use two feet of space (0.6 meters).
   
2. Incorporate a language that is not your native language.
   
3. “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”
   
4. Revisit a sentence from a previous week and re-examine it.
   
5. All art is personal and autobiographical.