NOTE: Lab 7 is delayed, for the moment…

Challenge: Create a short, theatrical performance which attempts to hold the audience in suspense.

While the last challenge, (Shared Imagination,) began by considering what theater did better than film or TV, I’ve recently been thinking that live performance is perhaps less equipped to hold an audience in SUSPENSE.  (Prove me wrong!)  SO, let’s explore this:

• How do you create suspense in a live performance environment?
• What various methods can be used (plot, or abstract movement? Realism?  Expressionism?  Melodrama?  Absurdity?)
• How does performing in a live setting enhance or diminish a sense or suspense.

Create a short piece that explores some of these questions.  Use any methods, tactics, or tricks up you sleeve in attempt to instill a sense of suspense into the live audience the night of the lab.

Specifics:

Work quick:  Spend roughly 4 hours on creation and rehearsal.

Work small: create a performance that lasts 3-5 minutes.

Contact David (david@buildingstage.com) with questions or interest.

David created this challenge for this upcoming lab at a really opportune moment for me, as this idea of shared imagination is at the forefront of my mind.
I’m currently reading a book by British director Mike Alfreds, entitled Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor. Alfreds is best known for his company, Shared Experience, which toured the world, and many I know saw his work and was blown away back when Chicago had an international theater festival. (Side note: why don’t we have that anymore?) This book is an incredibly detailed account of how he directs and the process he created for actors. But that’s not the important part here, the important part are the ideas that correspond with the lab next week.
He writes that he was trying to articulate what it is that theater does that is different from the other arts. I believe that many of us have tackled this question since the dawn of movies with sound. How are we special? Well, we are doing something live. How is that different from something recorded? And how is theater different from other live events like a concert, lecture, sporting event, political rally, and so on? What it comes down to, Alfreds realized, is that in the theater, “one of the groups of people transformed themselves into yet another group of people before the very eyes of their audiences… creating the amazing double reality of being themselves in this performance space at this moment and simultaneously other people in another place at another time; being both here now and there then.” Therefore, he concludes, “The audience and actors shared an act of imagination” (Alfreds 13).
It is this sharing of imagination that actually makes the theater special. Any piece of theater, even the most “realistic” play, requires the audience to participate in that act of imagination. The actors in front of you are both the actors in present time (as a theater production is always in the now), and they are the characters in the time their theatrical world dictates.
He then goes on to tell an inspiring story of the first show Shared Experience created. It was a ten-hour four-part adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House (which, by the way, makes The Ring Cycle sound like a sitcom.) They performed this in their own clothes, without set, and in basic white lights shared with the audience the entire time. The results (according to Alfreds) were astounding. The audience members were forced to stretch their imaginations, and in a way more akin to reading a novel, were able to bring their own visual worlds to the play. Afterwards, audience members actually complemented the lights, and when Alfreds assured them that there were no light cues, they insisted they had memories of candlelight, chandeliers, fires, gas lamps. This is the power of the imagination.
Alfreds’ story is so inspirational, it is so exciting. I wonder if we could create something like that for our lab? I still haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to tackle this in the lab, but the challenge is incredibly thrilling.

Challenge: Make the audience see something, not with their eyes, but in their imagination.

Step One: Choose a specific visual image (the seashore, a camel, a bloodstain, etc.)

Step two: Create a short performance with the goal of injecting this image into the imagination of the audience.

Notes:

I think one of the things theater has over other art forms/media is that it allows  a group of people, in the same room, the opportunity to use their various imaginations together.

While TV or the Talkies can cut from an apartment complex to a ship at sea, we are limited by what we can actually bring into a theater space.  I think this limiting factor can also be  our greatest challenge and inspiration.

Without showing the audience the thing you want them to see, how close can you get to making them think they’ve seen it?  How do you play on all of their senses to paint a potent picture in their imagination?

Go for it.

Specifics:

Work quick:  Spend roughly 4 hours on creation and rehearsal.

Work small: create a performance that lasts 3-5 minutes.

NEW TO THE LAB- announcing the Micro-Challenge!

Open to all! Show up 30 minutes early for our version of a “Quick Fire” challenge.   30 minutes to create a 1 minute response to a challenge, on the same theme,  announced at 7pm.

LAB 6

March 2

7pm- Micro-Challenge Announced!

7:30- Showing begins!  Discussion follows.

@ the building stage

For those of you who missed it, and those of you who want to relive the magic of the first ever Building Stage lab, below are videos of four of the pieces created for the evening.  Enjoy!

1: Created by Max Wirt

2: Created by Fannie Hungerford

3: Created by David Amaral, Eddie Bennett, Daiva Bhandari, and Pamela Maurer

4: Created by Blake Montgomery and Joanie Schutlz

With just several hours before our fifth Lab, I find myself juggling a chaotic handful of emotions about the event, the project, and its future.  I’m eagerly anticipating what we will see tonight, but also dismayed at how many artists, though excited and interested in the project, and specifically the “Ritual” challenge, will not be participating.

I’m still quite excited about the enormously creative theatrical sketches the Lab has produced, but I find myself rather desperately seeking ways to help the lab “get legs.”  How can we get more artists involved?  How can the Lab be more of a tool and an arena for artistic experimentation?  And how do we share this?  How do we get people, artists and general audience, excited about attending the Lab?

I pose these questions to you, whoever you may be.

Artists: what do you want from Lab aimed at promoting theatrical experimentation.  If the Lab were [insert idea here] I would be so damn excited and inspired, I would yearn to be a part of it.

Audience types: If the Lab were [insert suggestion here] I would mark my calendar weeks in advace in order to witness the experimentation, and be part of the following discussion.

I always say it: the entire LAB series is an experiment in itself.  We’ve done some initial tests, and perhaps a few results to analyze.  But I want some more cooks in this kitchen.

How do we grow the Lab into something we need to do?  How does it become a ritual important enough to engage in monthly?

What do you think?

Here are some pictures taken during our recent Lab around the creation of Dream Sequences. Thanks to Milan for taking the pictures.

Challenge: create and perform an entirely original ritual.

Details: Each proposal scene must contain the follow 5 elements:

1. Something must be filled.
2. Something must be emptied.
3. Something must disappear.
4. Something must grow.
5. Something that is not a human must appear to move on its own.

Also, consider this:

The purposes of rituals are varied; they include compliance with religious obligations or ideals, satisfaction of spiritual or emotional needs of the practitioners, strengthening of social bonds, social and moral education, demonstration of respect or submission, stating one’s affiliation, obtaining social acceptance or approval for some event — or, sometimes, just for the pleasure of the ritual itself.

Specifics:

-Proposal scenes should be roughly 5 minutes long.

-Aim to spend about 4 hours creating and staging the scene.

LAB 5

Monday, January 25.  7:30-9ish.

Showing, then discussion.

@ the Building Stage.

I want to throw out this theory in advance of tonight’s Lab: in order to create a dream sequence, in order for that to mean anything, we must know what normal reality is. The dream is not interesting in and of itself. It must have something to play against.

We’ll see if this proves to be true or false.

8pm. At The Building Stage. Admission is free. No reservations needed.

I’m not very good at talking about how I make theater.  I realized this at our most recent Lab event.  For this Lab, I took a Billy Collins poem about seeing a “Wonder of the World,” and made a scene about a girl trying to bring her doll to life.  During the discussion, I was asked, “When did it turn into a piece about a doll?”  I had no idea how to answer this.

Even now, with the benefit of time and editing, I’m still not sure I could sufficiently explain how I tend to create for theater.  What are my tools, or my developed skills?  I don’t think I’m the only theater-maker who might have a tough time with this, especially if we were trying to explain our creation methods to a non-theater person.

Why do we have a hard time talking about how we create?  I find this an interesting and important topic of inquiry.

It got me thinking of a RadioLab podcast.  (We at the Building Stage love to use RadioLab as a jumping off point…)  Now, it isn’t one of the brilliantly produced, hour long episodes the boys at WNYC are famous for.  Instead, it’s Robert Krulwich’s commencemnt speech at Cal Tech.  In it, he tries to convince the future scientists to take the time and effort to explain their work to non-scientists.  Doing so, he says, will protect science, and promote free thinking.  (Have a listen, it’s a marvelous speech.)

Now, I would like to make a similar assertion about how we talk about making theater.  I assert that Theater desperately needs artists who are able to coherently explain how we create, and why our creations are important.

It seems to me there is a reluctance to really explain our creation process.  Are we afraid of giving away secrets?  Or that our creation tactics are too nuanced or intuitive to be able to explain?  Maybe we suspect even we don’t know how we do what we do.  Maybe, we don’t think audiences would be interested.  I bet they will be.

So much of our effort at the Building Stage is devoted not only to the product we create, but to the process of creating.  It’s one of our core values!  “Made, not written.”  I think making the effort to clearly explain our methods for making theater will prove really beneficial, especially in two ways:

1. A more informed audience will be able to further engage with our creations.
2. By forcing ourselves to pay close attention to how we create, and putting the effort into being able to explain this, I think we’ll further develop our creative abilities.

SO, I’m going to be working on this!  I think it’s a worthy venture, and I hope others might join in on it.  These thoughts also seem to be at the heart of our Lab series, and I’m looking forward to using that as a venue to further investigate this topic.

If you have thoughts on this, as either an artist or patron, I’d love to hear them.  Join the discussion.  Help us shape the way we talk about how we make theater!