Toronto Clown Festival

Hey all,

 we just played our first showing of TOOLS at the Toronto Clown festival.  We got a great response from the audience and hope to develop it further (later of course as now we have to get back in gear for I'm so close...)  

Tonight was good prep for our upcoming work on the show as we gear up for 5 weeks of rehearsals before we show at Summerworks.  It gave us a lot of ideas of how to start the process we are about to embark on, in terms of searching to develop characters and the need for objects in the room!

hope to see you all soon.

P.S- we've updates our website... take a look!  www.theatrewhynot.org 

projections...on the wall and for the next step

Wrapped up our last day here in Vancouver by planning how to use what we've discovered during the phase for the next step in our process. Going to have a bit of a mini-break, giving us all a little time to digest what we've been up to here. Then, we're looking forward to exploring some of the characters we've touched upon when we get back to work in Toronto.

We spent some time today exploring the projector. We have been considering using some simple projection in the piece. It is an area the company is very interested in... This is our first time working with this technology and it was a lot fun playing with live feed and computer fed images.

We're going to miss everyone from The Chop, Rumble and The Playwrights Theatre Center here in Vancouver and the beautiful, quiet space where we had so many energetic discussions.

mini-breakthroughs and drinks

Had some interesting discussions last night with The Choppers about clown, bouffoon and neo-bouffoon over tapas and margaritas. We talked about our days and it was exciting to hear about their breakthrough-- it sounds like they've hit upon something awesome. They talked about spending some time hitting the wall and then striking upon something that really interests them...which is exactly what we went through not even a day ago. And which we will no doubt go through multiple times. It is so so so incredible to have time like this to bang against the wall for a while, for all of us. And it's been really great to have this exchange because even over drinks we share ideas about our projects and about the theatre en general.

We've been discussing the project this morning over breakfast and we're narrowing in around the ideas of singularity and uncertainy. Going to go look at some clocks.

Possible breakthrough day

Anita and I hot-seated each other for a few hours today, asking a lot of questions, going tangengential, sometimes sitting and talking does work wonders. We got clear that we liked the concept of age. Interviewing 100 people from ages 1 through 100 but that it still wasn't quite right. We continued talking about relevancy and why why why make THIS play? Who's story do we want to hear? How do we isolate the initial idea further? Then we had a minor brain wave. What if we interviewed 100 100 year olds? This is a community of people, who in our culture are marginalized, silenced and forgotten. What do THEY want to see in a play? What do their voices sound like?

NEXT DAY

Now of course we are re-thinking the brain wave. hmmmmm. Research is imperative and exciting and yet so frustrating. So many questions. Dinner with Why Not was fun last night though. We ate Mexican and danced a bit. I'm in love with them. The most fulfilling part of this process has been connecting and allying to Why Not. It's a great match of vision and politics and creative process.

 

Great Couple Of Days

We started yesterday with a two hour session with Heidi. We sat staring at a wall of material taped to the wall-- we talked about mapping and linking from all of the piles of material we have gathered. We wondered out loud about form and content and talked about structure, form, and content. We discussed ways to take what we've been doing this week in Vancouver to the next stage-- what elements will be in the room to help us devise and make the leap from our ideas to the space. How do you juggle devising, which has it's own life, and the ideas you've been spewing on to paper? Is there a super-structure, are the ideas braided together? In keeping with the theme that seems to be running through this week, we came up with a lot of questions, especially Heidi, who posed some really great questions that we will surely be thinking about for the entire process (and future processes). After Heidi left, we continued to watch more science videos (on black holes) and pulled out some more material.

Today we started the morning by happening upon a fountain that someone had dumped soap into. Who knows why...but it looked almost like snow and we got really excited because one of our possible story lines takes place partially in the Arctic. We took a bunch of photos of Trina in the water (it was a bit cold and people were looking as she hiked up her pants and walked into the fountain) and got some more ideas. Then we saw some some film about string theory and the theory of everything. Followed by a physical warm-up and exercises to get the blood pumping and to focus our wits. That gave birth two a great two hour brainstorming session, on our feet, tossing ideas and picking up reviewing material from the beginning of the week.

Going to meet up with The Chop tonight!

Thursday session

We had a great dramaturgical session with Heidi Taylor yesterday. She helped us to specify and organize our game plan over the summer. Midge the chihuahua was helpful as well as she provided a few breaks of concentration with her shaking and cuddling. I have a feeling Midge may make it into the play. Every day we walk into the room we have gratitude for the time and space to think, create and research. Tonight is a dinner party at my house with Why Not Theatre and The Chop, we've become fast friends. 

More later.....

Plenty

July 19th, 2008

Woke up with food hang over and started the day stretching out my calves that are yelling at me after that warm-up yesterday. Man, I had no idea that I was so out of shape. Lame.

We met with Heidi today, which was so very useful. She was a great resource in terms of brainstorming names of possible playwrights and offering suggestions for setting up the right parameters in how they can be involved. I really don’t want to have someone coming on board feeling like a hired gun so I think it’s about finding the way that they can feel like a true collaborator in the conception of the piece. She also offered a lot of useful advice for setting up parameters and a timeline for the piece. Contractual stuff too. Thanks Heidi!

July 18th, 2008
Troels, Ravi and Katrina kicked my little out-of-shape bum bum Wednesday morning with a great warm up. Was a reminder of how the body moving helps the brain get going too as exemplified by the conversation that proceeded, talking about the two projects. Was great to get feedback and chat about the two projects. Much thanks to Craig and Franco for their feedback as well. The debate over whether asking people what they would most want to see on the stage vs. elements that they most want out of life is one that Emelia and I keep coming back to.

Thanks Franco for our lunch and for all the feedback about ‘Townsville’ and building new work.

The afternoon focused on material generation with both companies and I was struck by how terrifying that can be sometimes, especially at the beginning. Two moments in particular had that pang, like when The Chop put forth the exercise to write your ultimate play in 15 minutes and when we all got up to do an improvisation in Why Not’s time. Of course, both exercises were great and yielded some pretty interesting discoveries but it’s about getting over that hump. And I think Franco’s point of using the time as research instead of going “this is something that needs to be good enough to make it into the show” can open it up so that it can lead to more lateral places.

Oh. My. God.
Dinner was beautiful!
So plentiful and delicious!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!