Big party

Hello!
Alex and David and I are throwing a party - it will also be the debut performance for our improvisation based rock/noise group -Chotto Matte !!!

Please come. Bring friends. It will be fun. There will be lots of music. We will have some beer, but to make sure you don't get thirsty, bring some more. Please donate a gold coin if you can, to help cover the cost of the PA equipment.

The location - 1321 Bourke Rd, Kew. Enter via side gate - Maitland Avenue.

I hope to meet you there. Please come and dance to our fun music!

Stay tuned for other future experiments and indulgence. I am working on another script right now. The theatre is taking a rest, but please peruse the pages of entries. Bye bye!

bitten by winter

A while since my last post, and not for want of something to write. It has been an age, and not of reason. We have moved the rehearsals into the Northcote Townhall, fleeing the cold and loving the spring loaded wooden floors. So we move "up" in the world, but transcend sideways also. At the very last minute i decided to not submit the project for Fringe. The reasons for this are extensive, but suffice to say it was a bad feeling that tipped the balance. Now i am in a state of questioning - the time, the venue, the work itself. It would be a lie to say that a firm hand graps this vessel in the storm. I am constantly plagued by issues of self doubt - why and for what am i doing this? Am i just wasting everybody else's time? Some days this hovers in the background, other days it brings a goat who kicks my fence.

An inspection of an alternative venue is in the pipe. I will not get to see it until next week (Monday, i hope), but i have all but made up my mind. It has nothing to do with Dante's, but is perhaps a sort of letting go, an Jobian release and giving oneself over to the night. The prospective space is an old barracks garage in Fitzroy. It needs a solid clean and would demand certain leg work a professional space brings, but i am attracted by these 'shortcomings'. I also feel an urge to abandon the use of artificial light - a couple of specials might be essential, but candles (hand held and fixed loci) may do the trick. We have gone more and more lo-fi, yet the special effects get more and more difficult to make. Rice may fall from the rafters. A psychlorama is now a required set element. I am exhausted today - sleep and dreams only make it colder. I should go. Adieu.

New friends!

And another thing! We must pay homage to our new friends at Room40 and I Like Things. If you have been checking the blog you will notice that we recently added a company logo to the top right corner of the page. This logo was designed for us by Gene and Illy at I Like Things. Thanks guys! Nice work. And a big thank you to Lawrence English from Room40, who has recommended and supplied some new music for the current project. Room40 is an experimental/soundscape record label based in Brisbane. They're responsible for some excellent gigs coming up in Melbourne, however, so check them out.

Disruptions

Recent events have made life difficult. The rehearsal schedule has been compromised by struggles with illness and surgical procedures. I know this has little to do with the actual performance project, but this forum is about the making of the show - not just the show itself. I had my wisdom teeth removed a week ago. This has been a major shock to the system and i have had to cancel the last two rehearsals. I really hate having to do that, especially at this critical period. I may have mentioned in earlier postings that it is common to a workshop process that (around the middle) it becomes easy to lose sight of the end product, to become depressed and disillusioned. I used to think this was just my projects, until Philippe Genty acknowledged it as a natural part of the process during a workshop last year, that i was fortunate enough to be a part of. It has occured to me that this is where we find ourselves currently. And ill health has not been the only disruption. David moved house recently, Dani has had teaching rounds and Kimmi has been working very hard also. This will not be the last period of disruption. Further madness lurks on yonder horizon.

Everyone continues to contribute, however. There is very little muck around time during rehearsals (when they happen), and we have no trouble picking up where we left off. The ideas are developing well, but i fear i shall have to kull some favourites as we start to get a sense of the show, as a holistic entity. Cassandra's dance sequence sits beautifully now. The chorus move like new-born gulls, their broken wings quiver and spasm - Dani builds the speech until it crashes like a wave to the rocks. When the ritualistic atmosphere disintegrates, Cassandra shrinks to the floor, huddles her knees and barks at visions swarming about her. I was a little troubled about this moment - Cassandra was written off as mad by her family and others. But the stage image is a representation of what manifests in Priam's imagination, not a realistic representation of character. Cassandra undergoes three very distinct transformations, tho remains somehow consistent throughout. Divine priestess - delusional hysteric - broken victim. It paves the way nicely for Priam's collapse, as the horrific weight of all his collective bodily possessions collapse in on him.

The following reprieve moves similarly to the original production, at the moment. The chorus close in and lift Priam/Hecuba, who then recounts the deaths of his sons in the darkness. I have yet to find the right music for this scene, but am hopeful that something by Lawrence English will suit the moment. It must be beautiful. A melancholic break from the brutal dementia of the previous scene. What follows is the "machine gun" scene. I shall talk more of this when it has been composed properly. Until then, adieu.

rogue rehearsals

An amusing detail came to mind this morning - something that hadn't ever actually occurred to me until, while monitoring the pour on a ristretto, somebody asked me where we are conducting our weekly workshops. Until recently we had been exploiting the availability of Alex's studio space in Kew. However, recent changes in circumstance have opened the divide between Kew and Brunswick, rendering the journey a logisitical nightmare. This forced a scouring of local studios and dance training spaces. A searched that produced not a single available space. David only recently moved to a new place in Thornbury, but had been living in a block of units in Fitzroy. They had a pool and (!!!) a small studio space, with proper wooden floors even. So, every Monday and Thursday we sneak in via the side entry and use the space. It isn't exactly breaking and entering, nor a breach of anyone's personal space - but i like the feeling that we are like rogue artists, stealing into abandoned studios where we can put together our weird little productions. We have to bring our own lanterns to illuminate the space, as there is no power available to the space. There is, indeed, something Dead Poets about the situation.

What else to share at this point? I try to be as 'free' in my musings here; it is difficult to completely forget the fact that this blog is publicly available. The journal tends to the performative. I am a little concerned at the moment about a few impending distractions - David is having a baby in July, and Daniella is going to Las Vegas for the duration of the same month. The work seems to be developing very nicely, with everybody contributing at workshops and the "fuck around" time at a minimum. There has been less time dedicated to 'exercises' and 'warm ups' this time around, which is interesting. My patience with the repetitive task of improvisations and visualisations seems to have waned. The emphasis is on the building of scenes, with extended breaks to explore body postures and gestural landscapes as need presents itself. How this will affect the product, only time can reveal. But we have reached the point where i must utter those three terrifying little words - the choreography needs it and very soon: "Learn your lines." This has the potential to completely disrupt the work we have produced thus far - but it could also be the missing ingredient for allowing the performers to become completely immersed in the work. Some other edits will need to be made, but that is luxury of having started developing so far in advance - there is room to think, plan and make decisions.

a pulse from distant shores

Bonjour artfarmers,
It feels like a while since i last posted here, but that may just be because of the overwhelming intensity of the past week. I've been sick with a gastric virus (nasty stuff), and the weight of working so much for weeks on end is starting to bear down. I cancelled tonight's rehearsal due to sheer exhaustion. There is no other excuse. But we do have a lot of time up our sleeves (famous error of judgement), and the choreography is shaping up very nicely.
Recently i have staged a return to the works of Samuel Beckett - a writer who i can identify with. I had not before read the play Happy Days, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the play's main speaker, Winnie, is half submerged in a mound of soil in the center of the stage and does not escape from this position. This image bears a striking similarity to one of the key images in The Women of Troy. Priam awakes at the beginning, to find himself stranded on a tiny island of rice. The implication being that Troy, a beach fronted city, has shrunk down to only a tiny piece of earth, surrounded by nothingess. His kingdom extends only as far as the place he stands.
To discover a similar image in Beckett's Happy Days is a very reassuring experience. I remember a little while ago i downloaded a podcast by a band from New Zealand called "Over the Atlantic." I was excited by the band's performance and wanted to tell a colleague at work about them, but couldn't quite remember the name. Compiling the sound bytes i could recall, i came up with "something like 'Atlantis over the Sea'." We agreed that this was a beautiful title - you wouldn't believe my disappointment when i discovered that i was mistaken. There is, however, something very reassuring in this. Though there may be "no original ideas left", in our flawed efforts to remember the past, maybe we shall stumble and fall upon something new and exciting. You might have noticed that this little trip provides the title for my new email address. Anyway, the whole point of this diatribe is that although i might have liked my idea to be exclusively MINE, i am more than happy to share it with Mr Beckett. To think that we came up with something that can be likened to something from one of his plays is a very encouraging thought.
The choreography has found itself rubbing against the point of Cassandra's dance sequence. After playing with several ideas, Daniella pushed me to move on, as we cannot begin to manufacture movements until we can work with the music. The music i have, but a soundsystem we have not had. Something to secure for next week's sessions.
The body and walk of Talthybius has been discovered! And some very creepy hand gestures to accommodate the sequence with Andromache. But at the moment we are wading up to Hecuba's lament for her sons - a scene that happens in the dark, fades to black, then erupts in machinegun fire. I guess i'd better find some sound effects to work with before we get to that!
Until next time.

a week in the asylum

It is unclear to me at this point exactly how often these postings will appear. Weekly seems too little. Daily way too often. I write now because i am on my break at work and we have wireless at A Minor Place (now you know where you can find me!). The recent workshop on Thursday evening, though only 2 hours in duration, was particularly productive. We played with the expressivity of faces for a while, then played a "face dialogue" game i recall from training with Yumi Umiumare. I am still obsessed with core strength, so suspensions made a tidy conclusion to the warm up.

Shifting gear, onto the choreography of the piece, we ran the opening sequences, slotting Dave/ Talthybius in as we progressed. While by no means conclusive, some distance was travelled in regard to Dave's physicality. He wades, floating like a cuttlefish on the tide, then sinks into a semi squat before talking. It is an extremely difficult pose to hold - i am concerned it may prove too difficult for Dave to sustain for an extended period of time - so we will probably break it mid Cassandra's monologue. Ah! Cassandra! The dance, we all agreed, should be based on the movements of seagulls: their deliberate head movements and coiled scratchings. As this decays, it seems right that Cassandra should sink to the floor, wrap her knees in her arms and pulsate in the dark. With the relative stillness of Talthybius and Priam, and the slow walk of the chorus along the rear wall, her spasms will echo long outward.
Cassandra is often dismissed as psychotic. Her prophetic visions are confused for madness. But in this world, suspended within Priam's mind, it would seem appropriate that she appear as such - crazy. I worry a little, that it is incorrect to portray her as insane - but within the gilted memory of a man unhinged, it is interesting that he remains still while she screeches at the sky. I suppose, no matter how long we been doin' wrong, we can always turn around. I am reading Sartre at the moment. Perhaps this fuels my conviction that no decision is fixed.

Despite the good work produced by the group, other problems plague. Kim's knee is clearly much worse than i had initially thought - she can only waddle about, and has to rest every so often. This should be fine, but one waits to see. Teagan and Dave are taking the form into their bodies very quickly - this is most encouraging - but i feel we need more work on the technique. The problem is, i don't particularly want to run more butoh workshops - i no longer feel myself to be a butoh dancer, or choreographer for that matter. I'm more interested in the spatial dynamics these days, the mathematics of the stage. Where it fits seems the most critical concern - perhaps the internal states of the performers will become more relevant later. We can only build the skeleton before we hang the flesh from its corticles (is that even a word?). I suppose you understand my reasoning. But the maths stuff is cool - timing, spatial relationships and tempo. Thus, the stage appears to be like a chessboard, the pieces moving slowly or quickly, depending on the mechanisms in place. And i have discovered the wonderful ambient soundscapes of Lawrence English, who i think is from Queensland! His album, For Varying Degrees of Winter, provides several tracks which i think are excellent accompaniments to out work.

Enough for now - i must go home and think of gulls and lobsters. Benjamin

we are wolves

Despite the absence of a formal "rehearsal" over the past week, a lot has been happening, accumulated data orbiting our friendly production.
It would appear that we have confirmed a venue - Dante's on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy - and Alex and i spent a lot of time on Sunday afternoon discussing and experimenting with Priam's transformation into Hecuba. We used my old house in East Brunswick, deserted since our forced evacuation a week prior. We had some fantastic discoveries regarding the shift in facial content - drawing upon some ideas from the Kabuki theatre - and found that the metamorphosis really came to life when Al shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, to the brink of stumbling forward.
But Dante's is a very exciting possibility - they seemed very keen on booking us in for the Fringe season. Its white walls should threaten to wash out our white bodies - the chorus might melt out of the brooding fog of Priam's unhinged psyche. I see tenuously suspended hallucinations dangling in a thousand twisted strings. Now i must formulate a program for tomorrow's session in Kew.
Benjamin

diary of a madman

I've been reconsidering how exactly this "blog" might function in relation to the wider theatrical project. When i considered up loading my journal entries from the first few workshop sessions i felt compelled to edit the material - to siphon out the potentially incriminating admissions. This is possibly the most natural impulse - to edit or remove ideas that went nowhere (indeed, were just bad ideas) and to soften critical observations of the performance of the troupe members. It seems common amongst artists and philosophers, when they enact their own creative character to the public auditorium, to pretend they never have bad ideas - as if the material that appears on stage is the only material they have had to grapple with. While i do not profess to know creative processes, let alone the inner thoughts, of other performance artists - i assume that this self presentation is simply not true. In discovering the pulse and rhythm of a piece, we must all wade thru a miasmic fog of second rate images and functionless choreographies.

So. I have decided to harness this "blog" as an online journal - publicly viewable and as painfully honest as possible. I apologise to all offended parties in advance.

What has happened of late? I just moved house and must admit that this has been extremely disruptive. The year of the golden fire pig has been a year in the sty thus far, and with all the recent 'personal' struggle, i've been finding it difficult to vest much creative energy in the production. And yet this is probably not a major problem. We do have approximately 6 months before we open - the appropriate production staff have been contacted and there is a lot of interest and excitement about the show. Despite difficulty in establishing contact, it would appear that we will almost definitely be performing at Dante's on Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, during the first or second week of October. It will be during the Melb Fringe Festival - a side matter in my opinion, though there is usually a lot of 'energy' about at that time, which may be a good thing... who knows.

The project itself is actually quite well established, all things considered. In our last session together we hop skip and jumped through the first ten minutes of the show, stringing together a seamless and very tight cascade of images. Similar to the original production, though deviating in some very interesting directions. Priam shall appear as if suspended from above, his ankle tied by a matted rope that disappears into the ceiling. This image is echoed by the presence of two lengths of rope hanging toward the rear of the stage (from the original production). This central image is an ode to the hanged man, Prometheus. After Poseidon's opening address to the audience, he shall sever the rope that seems to hold Priam in space - an appropriate display of gesture should suggest that he falls as the remainder of the rope disappears into the ceiling. Priam comes to rest on a bed of rice (some 30-40 kilos).

The final chorus member enters (the first two are on stage before the audience enter) - she holds a large black marble in her mouth. This refers to the Chinese tradition of placing a marble in the mouth of a Royal courtperson upon the moment of death. When the marble drops to the floor, it is the sound that wakes Priam. His opening speech commences. The chorus walk slowly across the stage, accumulating in a dark corner. They remain here until Cassandra emerges - her dance commences. This is where we are at. The map has been drawn, but it is still a large task, to discover exactly how each body shall move, what images and sensations the performers must visualise. Also, Talthybius enters during this sequence, bringing news of the Greek distribution of the women. A lot of work shall be required to compress and contain David's body into this twisted, impish figure.

I have just finished work and am exhausted - but Alex shall meet me here and we shall go to my abandoned old house and consider, for a while, how his transformation from Priam into Hecuba should travel. That's what is next - what follows i am yet to find. Hopefully the next post shall include some photos. Until next time - Ben

The original word

Hello all, i thought for nostalgic value it might be fun to record the cast list and director's notes from the original, 2004 program. Here tis:

Cast: Hecuba - Joanne Kian, Cassandra - Daniella Olea, Andromache - Kim Mitchell, Helen - Antonia Olthof, Talthybius - Piers Marsh, Poseidon - Benjamin Woods.

Notes - 'Euripides' dark tragedy, The Women of Troy has often been celebrated as one of the greatest anti-war plays ever written. For the purposes of this production, however, we have located the drama within the context of a mourning ritual. Alone, surrounded by the burning ruins of her once great city, Hecuba calls the dead to relive the loss of her family.

Drawing upon ideas from the Japanese dance form, butoh, this production explores questions about how we deal with the physical experience of grief.'

It is funny to look back on that particular moment, that audacious attempt at a theatrical project. Butoh was a huge influence on the aesthetic of the original design and physicalities, but it seems weird to have addressed this in the program. While we have continued to employ similar training methods,learned at workshops held by established 'butoh' practitioners, i would not make such a claim now. I do not feel any of us would feel compelled to make such statements about the aesthetic mood or physical style of the current attempt. Not yet, anyway. It might be suggested that it is very strange. Suffice to say, it is not realism.

external links of interest

I thouht a bit of info on the play, the playwright and ancient Greek mythology might be of interest to some, so i've posted some links on the right hand side of the page. I'll add more as we go along.

The blog is up

Ok. Its up now. I guess if this is supposed to be a record of the workshops and rehearsals, then we've got a little catching up to do. As a starting point, here are some points about the sort of work done thus far.

For this production we have taken some serious liberties with the original text. For example, the play's protagonist, Hecuba, has been replaced by a male figure, her husband, Priam. The motivating idea being that it is the king who has been left behind by the Greeks, after his wife, daughters and sons have been slaughtered before him. It is his punishment, that he should be left alone ammongst the burning ruins of his once great city. This may seem an odd decision to make, so i shall explain further. In ancient Greek social ritual it was the role of women to express grief on behalf of the community. Men, for the most part, did not participate. But what if there are no women left to enact the sacred rites? How is a king to grapple with the potentially self destructive excesses of grief? This question inspired the idea that Priam, in his traumatised delirium, dresses as Hecuba and assumes the role of the grieving mother. In order to give voice to his own painful losses, he channels his dead wife and summons the spirits of his fallen daughters.