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: 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.