I agree with Ian Buruma of NYR Blog. Recreating the holocaust with tiny puppets made out of plasticine seems like a doomed enterprise. It seems unbelievable on paper and something that instinctively should not be attempted.
It’s funny, when you approach the ‘this should never be attempted” line one of two things happen. Disaster or Enlightenment. There isn’t often too much middle ground.
Kamp is a theatrical experience staged by the dutch company Hotel Modern. It shows the daily routine at Auschwitz prison camp. There is no dialogue. An individual carries out the task of moving the puppets about the camp. All aspects of the prisoners life are recreated. All.
I read this article first on my Google Reader and then switched over to actual site. The first thing that struck me was seeing the puppets themselves. Each puppet is frozen in horror. Buruma references ‘The Scream’ and that’s exactly what came to my mind before even reading it in the article. The puppets represent the prisoners in a way that no real actor could. Seeing humanity in this way, yes in plasticine puppet form, demonstrating the fragility of life is unique and heartbreaking.
Next, I watched a youtube video from the production which showed the set up for a hanging. It’s a slow and simple process. The ‘actor’ takes her time to place the puppets. To place the guards. To carefully hang each one.
We are often afraid of ‘the thing that should not be done’ in the theatre. With good reason I suppose – it could be a disaster. We could lose money. It’s easier to be safe. And of course, all this is subjective. What I find enlightening and full of heartbreak, the next person could find horribly offensive. We could lose money. Thus is the way of theatre.
I just admire theatrical experiences that move beyond the box. That work to be simple (which is vastly different than simplistic). That make me feel, that make me think without making me feel stupid.
One of the things I love most about being an actor is being backstage where few tread. I love how the artifice and mechanics of what happens backstage transforms into something so magical onstage. Paraphrasing Woody Allen paraphrasing Groucho Marx, it’s a club that would actually have someone like me as a member.
I’ve been having the darnest time trying to come up with a blog post for today. This isn’t usually the case – there’s always something happening in my immediate world, or the theatre world, or the world at large to talk about. I follow a number of theatre websites from which I often find inspiration. It’s rare that I come up empty.
The Tony’s were on Sunday, hey I should write about that! Except…. we had just arrived home from a day long drive after a week’s vacation and I was asleep by ten. I don’t remember too much aside from the influx of movie stars who may or may not have been in plays in the audience. Does it seem weird to anyone else to see movie stars at the Tony’s? I mean, Will Smith was there. For no reason. Oh right, except to promote his son’s movie opening right about now. Right.
Besides, talking about the Tony’s only get me riled up. Grandpa slippers and pants hiked up to the armpits get out of my darn yard riled up. I have such fond memories of the show from when I was a teenager. The Tony’s fueled the impossible dream of maybe, one day being on Broadway. Wouldn’t that be so neat? So keen?
The whole shebang is a much different animal now. I’m not going to get caught up in the ‘oh it was so much better way back when’ whine, nothing is so much better way back when. Then is then and now is now. Broadway has morphed and changed as all things do. I’m just not so hot on the changes. I’m not fond of the movie stars (which now seems to be the only way people will go to plays) and I’m really not fond of the reviews dressed up as musicals. They’re not nicely dressed up either, it’s veneers, polyester, and glass tiaras. I’m not losing any sleep over the thought that in this now era, I’ll never be on Broadway.
But what it really comes down to today is that I’m writing, writing, writing. Ideas swirling, pages moving forward in exciting ways. A freight train of creativity with words spinning the wheels and pouring out of the chimney stack. Billowing smoke clouds of characters desperate to get their stories down on paper, begging to have their voices heard. Whoo-hoo! All aboard! Whoo-hoo!
So…… I’m annoyed to have to stop that process to write something for the blog. To continue the analogy, once the train stops, it takes a long, long time to get things rolling again. And it’s never the same kind of momentum, the same kind of energy. I am derailed. I am annoyed.
Not intensely annoyed, not really annoyed, only mildly so. Baby shampoo annoyed. Because I know the blog is important which is why I did stop writing that, to write this. I derailed myself, so really there’s no one to blame, but myself. I blame myself. So there.
It doesn’t help that we’re inches away from our July break and I definitely could use a blog break. But that’s the purpose of the break. To get a break. To recharge. To stockpile. To be raring to go again come August. Which I will be. I just have to get to the end of the month.
Hey, look at that. A blog post! Ok, I’ll spare you further train metaphors. I’m out of here.
Welcome to Spread the Love. This week we are talking about Tick Talk where there actually isn’t that very much talking going on. The play explores the difficulties that teenagers, but really everybody on the planet, me totally, the difficulties we have with communication. Sometimes, we have so much going on inside of us, we can’t verbalize it, we can’t get it out. To that end, all the characters in Tick Talk have only a word or one phrase through the whole play to communicate their story. What do I mean? For example there are two characters a boy and a girl. And they like each other. But the only words they have to talk to each with, to communicate with, are the words ‘hi’ and ‘hey there.’ They have to find a way to tell each other that they like each other, and the only words they get to use are ‘hi’ and hey there.’ Craig what do you love about Tick Talk?
Hi! Hey there!
I love the challenge of it all. Now at first it seems like only having a single word or phrase to say is such a constraint on the actor. But I believe that it’s very freeing. It’s freeing because actors have so many other tools at their disposal apart from just dialogue. They have their body language, they have their voice, their tone and they have that Grand Poobah of the modern theatre: subtext. Working on a play like this really exercises all those tools that actors have in their toolbox that sometimes they forget about when they’re standing on stage reciting lines. Lindsay what do you love about Tick Talk?
This play was inspired by a movie called Elephant by Gus Van Sant. It looks at a high school where a where a Columbine like incident takes place. The dialogue in this move is very sparse and very spare. And it just makes me think: why is it when we have so much going on inside, why can’t we get it out, why can’t we verbalize it, until it reaches some kind of boiling point. I’m really proud of Tick Talk. I’m really glad it’s out there in the world not just as a wonderful technical exercise but as a starting point for discussion. That’s it for Spread the Love.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s disappointing storytelling at the Poe Museum, we spent today at some of the Smithsonian museums in Washington. There is no one who does storytelling better than the Smithsonian. We were immersed over and over again into different worlds: the world of a painting. The world in a scrap of paper. The world in a fragment of bone. The world in a historical event or figure. Absolutely fascinating.
Our favourite exhibit was at the American Art Museum. It was called “Lists To dos Illustrated Inventories Collected Thoughts and Other Artists’ Enumerations.” Big title for an exhibit that was decidedly focused on the small. The list.
Inventory lists. Lists of inspiration. List as art. Grocery lists. To-do Lists. Lists in letters. A list of things one person loves about another. It was an amazing microscopic look into the minds of artists, their absurd quirks and their ordinary lives. The profound. The mundane.
And our favourite favourite part of our favourite exhibit was three post-cards by Ad Reinhardt. In these post-cards he lists the words that describe art and language into three categories: more adequate words, undesirable words, and dualism.
Here are a sampling of those words. While Mr Reinhardt is focused on art, think about how you feel about these words to describe theatre. I don’t necessarily agree with all the ‘undesirable’ words. Do you?
Craig and I are on a little trip this week, visiting family. Today we’re in Virginia and conveniently close to the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Richmond. A perfect opportunity to do some research for my upcoming Poe adaption.
At first glance the museum looks very engaging. The museum is an enclave of old buildings that you walk in and out of on a guided tour. There are many artifacts: articles of clothing, furniture, busts, autographs, first editions.
But on closer inspection it’s all fools gold.
There are examples of old furniture that may or may not be from the era, that may or may not be from any of the houses Poe lived in. There seems to be more pictures of Poe’s sister (a decidedly dour looking woman) and pieces of her silverware and a piano that may or may not be hers.
There was a lot of glossing over when it came to the darker natures in Poe’s life. The drinking, the constant poverty, the constant begging for money to his adopted father.
And most disappointing, there was no real connection to Poe’s life and Poe’s work. It’s pretty clear that the darkness in his life was entwined into, around, above, and below his writing. It would have been so interesting to see someone make some kind of connection (I mean, really, there’s something to be said about the fact that many of the women he was attached to died young, died tragically, coughing up blood).
Poe wasn’t a nice guy. He was brilliant, but had many demons to contend with. Is it the job of a museum to address the demons as well as the brilliance?
So this is a post from the BBC. It’s sort of a description, certainly not a review, of the play All My Sons by Arthur Miller. And what struck me so forcefully about this piece, is really nothing to do with the play or Miller but that the author of the post, Will Gompertz, was in turn so vehemently struck by a turn of American writing. If you haven’t clicked through to the article yet try and guess what phrase Mr Gompertz is describing with this reaction:
Occasionally American-English does that; serves up a word or phrase that is so direct, so baldly descriptive that at once it destroys the elegance of the language while adding admirable elemental clarity…..It’s a vulgar expression but, like a drunk on a train, beguiles more than repulses. I wrote it down.
Isn’t that something? Do you have a guess? Wouldn’t you think that the words that evoked this reaction would be something really intense and vivid? I sure did. This description is the reason I clicked on to the article in the first place. And became totally perplexed by the answer. Give up? The expression being described is ‘Want Ads.’
That’s right. Want Ads. I have to feel in reading Mr Gomperz’s reaction that I am really missing something. I don’t find it vulgar. I don’t find that it destroys language, elegant or otherwise. I find it rather apt and to the point: Want. Ads. The ads of want. I want and I’m letting you know. Want is such a wonderful word. It’s so vivid filled with selfish undertones and four year old temper tantrums. Want creates a very specific picture. Such a different feeling than a word like ‘need.’ Can you imagine what a Need Ads would look like? What would people ask for if they were looking for needs instead of wants? (hmm sounds like a play….)
Sigh. I love words and how people react to them…..
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