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.

Over the past few months, we’ve traversed Wagner’s complicated landscape and have slowly pieced scenes together.  Today, we stumbled through (much of) Rhinegold.

The first opera in the Ring Cycle, Rhinegold, opens with one of the most enchanting scenes in any opera.  The three Rhinemaidens tease Alberich, who then renounces love and steals their precious gold.  The watery spirits in this scene have inspired directors in countless ways.  Joanie and Blake have decided to put our Rhinemaidens on aerial silks (which it turns out, are really made out of polyester) – a fantastic choice!

Our three wonderful Rhinemaidens worked on the silks yesterday while some company members were at the Plagiarists’ salon.  Today, we began to piece the scene together with Alberich. Naturally, everyone was enchanted to watch these three lovely ladies in the air!

The actors playing the Rhinemaidens, Lucy Carpatean, Sarah Scanlon, Lindsey Dorcus, have a vocabulary of movement (and technical terms) all their own.  This scene will take time to take shape, though is already quite thrilling to watch for those of us who are impaired by Newton’s laws and our own clumsiness. Rarely do directors get to block scenes in vertical space!

Even when they’re not in the air, the Rhinemaidens make fantastic shapes with the fabric to create a wonderfully watery world. Down on the ground, we worked through other difficult scenes in Rhinegold, including large sections which contain most of the cast.

Here’s another thought on posters (and taglines). The previous post on this topic can be found here.

Thought I’d put the two different versions next to each other. It may change things.

Perhaps two posters is enough. (I don’t know if we can afford the original four poster concept. Nor if I can come up with two more versions of this.)

Once again, I’d love to know what you think. Is this the direction?

Click on the image for larger size version.

Wagner is famous for his use of leitmotifs, or themes that represent characters, emotions, symbols, and themes. We are trying to preserve the ability to illuminate the story through musical accompaniment, pointing out themes, connecting ideas, guiding the audience through the piece. But we also don’t have to create 16 hours of music so we can be a bit more simple than Wagner was able. In working with Kevin O’Donnell our composer/band leader and working off some ideas from our dramaturg Stephen Raskauskas, I have whittled down the motifs into a handful of families that seem important to be able to call upon. These are the notes I made when preparing for our last meeting. I seem to have a hard time typing things up. My mind resists the ultimate categorization that demands. I get stuck putting things in a simple outlined order. I prefer to work on large pieces of paper, organizing thoughts spatially. Often scratching them out and moving them around in relationship to one another. In this case, I was debating how a couple of the motifs related to one another and how we could simplify wagner’s scheme.

Click on the image for a full size reproduction.

A few weeks back, I mentioned that I was going to start puting more effort into figuring out the actual mechanics of how I make theater pieces.  This, then, is my first report back.

I’m working with a group of 3 creative performers to build a short piece for this month’s Lab challenge.  As the Lab Director, I also create the challenge.  This certainly doesn’t mean the creation process is any easier for me.  I don’t have an idea of what I want to make when I design the challenge.  Instead, I think I’ve developed a split perspective.  As I create the challenge, I think: “I can’t wait to see what creators come up with!”  Then, when I get ready to create, I re-read the challenge, and think: “What the hell do I do with this?”

This leads me to what I have discovered to be my best creation tactic: I gather smart, curious, and creative artists to create WITH me.

So, for Lab 4, my first step was to have the 3 performers over for dinner, and to have a discussion about dreams.  We just talked for a few hours about dreams we’ve had, the logic of dreams, what the brain might be doing in dream state, etc.  Fortunately for me, my actors, James, Pamela and Ruth, all had great vivid memories of their past dreams (whereas I have an incredibly difficult time remembering any my dreams.)  We also looked at our source material for this challenge (a quote about a ‘nervous magic lantern,’ a video of dance instructions, and a hand saw.)

I guided the discussion a bit, but mostly, I just listened, fascinated, and scribbled down notes as quick as I could.  They look a bit like this:

From this point, I’m planning on selecting ideas and situations we discussed that night, and then arranging them into some sort of dynamic, stuctured whole.  Really, I feel a bit more like a designer.  The dinner discussion we had was like research.  Now I’m sorting through all the material to find the pieces that seen to fit well together.

I’ll come up with a rough ’script,’ which will be our starting point when we all meet to actually devise our piece.  I imagine, rather, eagerly anticipate drastic changes to occur while the four of us develop our piece together. Together, we’ll come up with a creation so much more nuanced and curious than what any of us would individually design.

I can’t wait to see what we come up with.

If you’ve never seen the Building Stage when it’s empty, it really is quite different. Here are some photos of the space in its current condition; you can see some tape marking out the proposed Ring Cycle set on the floor. And perhaps you didn’t know there was a cool brick wall or a big garage door. Well, there is.

We are narrowing in on a concept for poster design for the Ring Cycle. We’re looking to create a series of perhaps four different posters with strong colored backgrounds capturing aspects of the show, particularly nature and the elements: fire, water, forest, sky. Each poster would feature a unique set of text highlighting a different aspect of the piece.

But while we know what we’re doing in terms of design, we still have one big question about marketing this show: the tagline. We need something to clarify that “The Ring Cycle” is adapted from Wagner’s opera but is not sung. We are featuring Wagner’s text and treating it like a play. As far as we know, this is the first time that someone has done this. Music will still play a role in the production; we are creating with Kevin O’Donnell a score for the piece written for a rock band that quotes from the operas as well as maintains the structure of Wagner’s leitmotifs. Our goal is for the music to guide us through the world, driving the action, heightening emotion, and illuminating themes and ideas that bind the piece together.

What is the short, catchy version of this idea? If you have any ideas, please share them with us. Two of our ideas are included below. They feature a fire-inspired background and a list of the darker actions involved in the story.