Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt, Remembered

"I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. If such determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man." 

– Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, playwright, actor and activist, died on Christmas Eve. Pinter's art of dialogue touches realism in a way conventionally handled dialogue does not: language as a haphazard cloak to cover our nakedness, thrown together in utter disregard for clarity, "the real truth" or intellectual precision. I remember his infuriating No Man's Land in London, with its slippery truths, playing a role he'd written, and being shocked that the play was no more clear in performance. I learned something important about his intentions, his strategy. I remember working on The Dumb Waiter with Willi Gudlat and Carlos Stockhausen at the Friedenauer Kinderheim, and discovering its raw power and terrifying questions. I remember reading the haunting Mountain Language, borrowed form the British Council library, and missing the Berliner Grundtheater production. And I remember watching The Birthday Party with my Mum, her eruptive laughter at a breakfast of "fried toast", fascinated and horrified by its bathroom mirror truth. 

Eartha Kitt, performer, died Christmas Day. I remember seeing her performance in the Sondheim musical Follies in Berlin at the Theater des Westens. She sang the unforgettable "I'm Still Here". I saw the production, and studied her performance, several times. I noticed she reinterpreted the song each performance. One night she was trailing measures behind the conductor for the verse, deliberately, easily manoeuvring the descending stairway, only to catch up in time for the chorus; another time, she spoke the song as patter for almost the entire performance; another night she sang with strict adherence to rhythm and pitch. I learned something about interpretation and artistic process, the play between control and risk, structure and freedom. I remember her signature growl, her striking features and geometric contortions. 

I salute both of these artists for their courageous contributions to the theatre, the art of performance, and the way we can imagine the world. Each generation finds its language, in art and politics, and writes its credo. Both Pinter and Kitt participated defiantly and gloriously in that process. I will remember them. 

Christmas

I'd just like to wish everyone a Happy christmas!

I hope the holidays find everyone well and creative.

My Icarus

During our original creation of Apocalypse 2006, 

I was struck by Herbert James Draper's Lament for Icarus from 1898: Icarus, semi-nude, his wings vast, thick and powerful, the beautiful youth draped across a rock, held up by angelic sea-nymphs, the Nereids. 

This image implies a collusion of mythologies. It is, in its Hellenic context, the inescapable destiny of those who challenge the gods, disturb the social order, to become the instruments of their own destruction; whereas, in this image, there resonates a loss of innocence, the death of the Christ. 

In our revisiting of this myth during our work with Sarah Stanley, I find my Icarus wants to live, wants to fall in love and wants to soar. He is, however, overshadowed by his crafty father, Deadalus – a murderer! –, incarcerated by the Cretan king Minos and hunted after their initial escape as a criminal. He is pushed, literally, into flight. 

A modern Icarus: a child soldier, carried on a stretcher by medics. 

Post-Script Development Workshop

Four actors. Three days. Two scripts. Sarah Stanley - with Jenny Munday sitting in. Talk and exploration. Discoveries, dead ends - or are they - more questions. More talk. More investigation. Some on the floor, some around the table. Bruised knees, but no bruised egos. Yay!

In the end? A group of actors who have started to find their groove together. One script in need of a bit of work, clearly ready to get ready. One with the guts still hanging out, redrafting in progress and exciting possibilities for the show held within our ensemble, like the potential energy of a physical system (ref: physics).

Thank you to Sarah (and Jenny) for opening doors, asking questions and being awesome.

Annie, Eric, Kim, Garry, Sarah

"Your spine is an alive thing."

School’s finally out for Christmas, which means time to focus on DaPoPo work.
I just finished reading “Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)” (danke, Holly, for lending it to me). Now it’s time to memorize the wonderfully not-quite-romantic balcony scene between Juliet and Constance.
I started drafting some questions for interviews over the holidays, centered around the question “What does it mean to be Canadian?”. The challenge is finding interviewees. My family will all have similar views, so I will have to go beyond Christmas dinner to get some answers.
While I don’t miss being in class, I’m suffering from Improv withdrawal. Recently, my Improv team performed a story scene around the audience prompt: “YOUR SPINE IS AN ALIVE THING”. DaYouth will appreciate that one.
Currently, I’m reading Chekhov’s "The Seagull" in preparation for my audition for Concordia University's Theatre Program. So far so good, except the Russian names are tricky to keep straight.
In other news, my sister is home from Ontario for Christmas! It took a while to fill her in on all the DaPoPo activity. She’s become my test audience for German phrases...so far I’ve mastered: “Mir ist zu kalt!"...a handy phrase during a Canadian winter.

Stay warm everyone...Merry Christmas!

Script Development with Sarah Stanley Pre-1

In an hour, Garry-Eric-Annie-&-I will meet Sarah Stanley. Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre (PARC) has arranged a three-day Script Development Workshop for DaPoPo and we will bring Four Actors and Apocalypse to the table. Sarah is the invited dramaturge.

When we've mentioned, on occasion, that we will be working with her, the reactions have ranged from amazement ("How'd you get her?") to envy ("So jealous"). Indeed, this is a wonderful opportunity for us to improve our scripts and to work with a great dramaturge/ director/creator. Thanks to PARC for supporting us in this way and to Sarah for agreeing to come.

German Lesson #4

Ist das nötige Geld vorhanden, ist das Ende meistens gut. 

– BERTOLT BRECHT, Die Dreigroschenoper

(The Canada Council for the Arts awarded me a travel grant to attend the Theaterforum Kreuzberg and Fluxus-Museum in Potsdam!) 

nouns: das Geld - money; das Ende - the end

adjectives: nötig - necessary; vorhanden - available, 'at hand'

adverbs: meistens - usually, mostly

Delights

Last night, I had the pleasure of spending some time with Holly (and other DaPoPoli Kristi & Bonnie) as we made the 2-hour journey to the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts to hear/see the first public performance of Allen Cole's newest musical, Rockbound. Garry was one of the ensemble members in a 10-day workshop of the second act. We went both to support him and to be among the first people outside the composer, producers, actors and musicians to hear a new Canadian work. Art is born and we were there. Yes!

I also had the pleasure of meeting Holly's grandmother, Sharon. What a woman! So engaging and warm. I learned she had been enthusiastically fundraising on behalf of the Berlin project. I have no words to accurately describe it - but I almost cried at the sense of profound gratitude I felt/feel. It's good to have people in your corner. Thank you!

Language

Yesterday, DaYouth (yes, I know, another monniker) and I spent several joyful hours together. Annie came along at the beginning to try a few things from her workshop for Berlin, I followed with some of my workshop bits. We will both be using theatre exercises for warm-up and group building, our group had a laughter-filled time with some of the basics.

My workshop is based on Newspaper Theatre concepts and my challenge now, after trying a few things yesterday, will be limiting the blah blah blah (talk) and increasing the interest level for non-English speakers.

Language! This year I've dabbled in Italian for a visit there - becoming quite adept at ordering un bicchiero di vino rosso, per favore; I tried Latvian in prep for my month in Malpils, but I didn't get the hang of it. I did learn a few words in Russian! воображение (phonetically - veebrahjheena) was my favorite. It means imagination and when you hear it repeatedly from your Russian director, it lands.

Yesterday, I was trying to coax my mouth, tongue and throat into cooperating with the distinctive sounds of German, long dormant and rusty. The r that is there, but not-there. The soft ch, the harder but not-t-the-point-of-fur-balls ch. w=v, p=b, g=k, d=t and vice versa, most times. St or sp = sht or shp.

My sheet of about 15 phrases, including Ich comme aus Kanada and Wie vil costet das might have seemed impressive (Aaron asked incredulously, "you know all this?") but I recall the time I played the German boy in a scene from "13 Ways of Looking at a Madman" for Cafe. It was performed for a table of native German-speakers. They were very polite, but genuinely had to snicked when I fumbled Vor- und Rückwärtsbewegung and completely massacred sodas zwansig solcher. You try a German tongue twister!

Foreign languages aside, I'm also trying to master a Scottish accent for one of my monologues in Four Actors. One would thing that an accent on my first language might not be so difficult. ACH! It is! As foreign to my tongue as German, possibly.

PASSPORT

My passport arrived yesterday fresh off the print. I can touch it and know I'm not dreaming. (which is exciting.) 

I had fun this week thinking about the 'interview' process Kim was/is getting us to play with. A few friends of mine thinks it's a really awesome way of creation. 

In other news, I've been reading a lot of George F. Walker is a vague attempt to find cafe stuff but also just to read it. I must say he is an odd character. I think I like it. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I will remember to update y'all on my opinions as the reading progresses. 

On the german front (language, not the country) I am fascinated by german Grammar this week. A great friend of mine, Alex Sommerville, who is taking german at DAL is sharing his love for the language with me and it's so interesting. I like the sounds. Very foreign to my mouth.

That is all for now,

Auf Wiedersehen

Holly

Canadian Plays and German Lesson #3

Week two begins at Ross Creek for me, while rehearsals and planning continue in Halifax without me: I am preparing my workshop for the FEZ-Berlin, studying several plays I might use as examples of political theatre in Canada. I have re-read Passe Mureille's iconic collective creation 1837: The Farmers' Revolt, Herbert's Fortune and Men's Eyes, savoured Marie Clements' delicious and disturbing The Unnatural and Accidental Women and am now delving into John Coulter's Shakespearean Riel. Questions about process, subject, form, language, history, research and imagination abound...

ANJA: Ich habe zwei Fragen. 

MARKUS: Ja? 

ANJA: Gibt es in Kanada politisches Theater?
MARKUS: Ja, klar. Kennst du Guillermo Verdecchia?
ANJA: Nein.
MARKUS: Schade. Der ist richtig gut. Und deine zweite Frage?
ANJA: Ach so, ja. Willst du heute mit ins tfk? 

MARKUS: Klar. Da spielt doch DaPoPo.

ANJA: Sind die nicht aus Kanada?

MARKUS: Genau.

nouns: Die Frage - question
verbs: gibst es...? - are there...?; kennst du...? - do you know...?; spielen - to play
adjectives: politisch - political; zweite - second; schade - too bad; gut - good
adverbs: heute - today
'Klar', 'richtig' and 'genau' are used frequently as 'sure', 'of course'; 'really'; and 'exactly', 'that's right'.

A Wing and a Prayer

Today, with the help of the lovely and talented Heather Niell at Flight Centre, Scotia Square, our flights to Germany were booked. That's the wing.

Although I fully intended to take photos of this marvellous experience, I neglected to pull out my camera in all the stress and excitement. So instead, a bad drawing:

And the tickets were booked on credit. That's the prayer!

Donations are coming in dribs and drabs. I continue to contact people and businesses. Sher is organizing a raffle on an Ipod Touch. Let us know if you want to buy a ticket: $2 each or 3 for $5. Draw is at the January 29th Cafe DaPoPo. More initiatives coming up, but if you haven't joined the Flight Club yet, pitter patter!

Ross Creek bound

I am down at Ross Creek, taking an unplanned break from Berlin Project planning, participating in a 10-day workshop of Allen Cole's musical theatre adaptation of Frank Parker Day's novel Rockbound with Two Planks and a Passion.

The view from the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts is refreshingly pristine. Although on this, my day off, it is raining, and I am somewhat stranded here with my volume of Canadian plays and Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels With Herodotus.

A surpise: finding German popping up in the libretto for Rockbound in Uriah's Fish House Groove: "Aukduleba" being a South Shore variant of "Ach, du lieber...". My thoughts are with Aaron, Sophie, Ali and Holly, as they begin creating their original FEZ-show with Kim.

Christmas?

A few nights ago I was driving up Quinpool road and noticed all of these... Christmas lights? I literally thought, "What are those doing there?" And then, of course, realized that Christmas is a mere three weeks away. I have to chuckle when people engage in the usual social discourse of these times "Are ya ready fer the holidays?" because, frankly, my time horizon only includes things related to the Berlin Project. The holidays? A mere illusion. I have Canadian identity issues to address, flights to book and unions to deal with.

Yesterday, Garry had a conversation with Michael K. at the FEZ. Things are looking good, they're helping us out a little more, they're excited to have us oldies and newbies on the program and by the way, the festival dates have changed so that our trip essentially has to extend by a week.

So, now we are mustering the troops to see who can go, for what period and how to manage an extra week away. The reality is that people have to take time off from school or jobs for Berlin and that's not a small consideration.

Mike also suggested we refer to the project as "The Canada Project" for all the Berlin materials, because it could be a little confusing. Mmmmm... right. So, we'll just bookmark that and figure out what's what, what? My aunt also found my description of the project confusing, I guess, because she thought we were raising funds to help kids from Berlin. Her question to me (after making a donation anyway) was, "Why didn't you consider helping youth from Nova Scotia or your own community." *sigh*

I'm about to go meet with the young four. I've been grappling with how to refer to the old four and the young four and in the absence of stumbling on anything fun or interesting... old and young it is. Anyway, I digress. Today we'll be revisiting some physical and vocal training from their workshop, playing with Shakesepeare, reading the script excerpts Josh MacDonald sent us for the Cafe and digging into methods to get the materials upon which they will base their new collective creation. I'm going to add in probably one of the least informed German lessons they will receive. But I do know how to say thank you, how much does it cost and my eggs are hot. All of which could be potentially critically important to know.

:)

Progressing...

I'm taking a break from muddling through the third draft of the project letter to potential business sponsors (it's SO close), investigating a so-called international fare sale from Air Canada (no deals), planning the first of many rehearsals for the DaPoPo Academy ensemble, wondering how to efficiently get tickets booked and medical consent forms for minors signed and notarized.

Yesterday I chatted with Andrew Terris at Arts Nova Cultural Research and Consulting to see if there were funding sources we hadn't considered (basically no). I emailed my MP in an attempt to get more support of Canada's presence at the Just Say It! festival - in the past our kiosk display has been distinctly awful compared to of the other countries' - but I'm sure she's a bit busy considering her party is trying to take over the government on my behalf. My city councillor, Jennifer Watts, however did take the time to write a quick note acknowledging my email and said she would get back to me. This, I have chosen to interpret positively.

I had happy conversations with Michael Melski and Jackie Torrens (via Facebook) about the Canadian-content Cafe in Berlin. Michael is letting us work up a scene from Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad and Jackie has offered selections from Georama and Live!Nude!Animal!

The support from the playwrights, the generous offer of rehearsal space for the DaPoPo Academy for the next several months (thank you Compass Commercial Realty), the donation from the fellow artist who can't afford it but does anyway or the one in the mail from the friend not seen in three years (thanks Krista!) ... it all adds up.

Thank you to everyone who so far has helped us keep on keeping on.

German Lesson # 2

Das Theater darf nicht danach beurteilt werden, ob es die Gewohnheiten seines Publikums befriedigt, sondern danach, ob es sie zu ändern vermag.

BERTOLT BRECHT, Politik auf dem Theater

nouns: das Theater - theatre; die Gewohnheit(en) - habits; das Publikum - audience

verbs: dürfen - to be allowed; beurteilen - to judge; befriedigen - to satisfy; ändern - to change; vermögen - to be able

adverbs: nicht - not; danach - literally: 'thereafter', fig.: 'on the basis of'

conjunctions: ob - if, whether; sondern - rather