Color

We’ve been integrating a healthy dose of talk about color schemes lately, including an exploration of the invention of color TV, and a specific 1950s technicolor palette juxtaposed with black and white imagery.  Here are some inspirational materials of which we’ve taken note:

I have a preoccupation with the use of drenched and saturated color-schemes,
especially as used in early television broadcasts. The documentary “Radio Bikini” is a good example of this.

Jenn was drawn to the reds and blues in the above two images.

Photo Call

A couple of photos from today’s rehearsal:

Jenn Dees as a Nevada Woman and Gabe Levey as John C. Clark,
in a theatrical moment entitled “Morning Coffee”

Jenn Dees, in a theatrical moment entitled “Street Walker”

Triptych

Our rehearsals are birthing material faster than I anticipated. We come together with more research each session, and the greatest challenge will eventually become distilling it all into cohesive context. Earlier last week, I began to fear that a speedy commencement would lead to a burn-out, but my wariness of this has since been squelched as the pile of inspirational material grows ever higher.

Drew shared some great research with the group this week, leading us to begin focusing on a triptych-based structure of interweaving narrative devices. This is exciting for me because it will encourage us to explore ways in which the sequenced narratives can “touch” one another in theatrical ways. What will begin to happen when simultaneously unrelated and interrelated lines permeate, bisect, and influence one another? I think we are on the path to creating a very exciting way of navigating this piece, without falling into the always dangerously-lurking threat of a naturalistic play – “sofa theatre”, a term I love, which Jenn coined.

We continue to return to a potentially beautiful design scheme focusing on saturation v. desolation. I am looking forward to delving into this further as I spend the next week immersing myself in visual art that speaks to the feeling we are looking for this piece to emanate. One of my favorite characteristicsof collective creation – of writing in space instead of on paper – is the way in which design becomes immediately interwoven into the process from the beginning. Instead of imposing design – set, lighting, costume, sound, etc. – on an already completed textual piece, the elements inform one another, creating a tightly woven entity. Following suit, we’ve also been playing with miniatures, and ideas of macro vs. micro – placing worlds inside of one another and watching what happens when the micro and macro coexist in one space.

A couple of photos to enjoy from the rehearsal room this week, featuring Jenn Dees and Gabe Levey:

More to come.

First Rehearsal

Today was our first generative rehearsal for what we are currently calling the untitled Nevada project. This piece is a unique experience for me because it is the first of the company’s projects that has not had its genesis in my own mind. In the past, I’ve been inspired by or become preoccupied with an event, an image, or a person and have allowed myself time to distill the root of my obsession into a question before bringing it into a rehearsal room.

This project was initiated by my good friend and a very intelligent playwright, Drew Larimore, who I invited to develop an idea under the auspices of the company. The idea for the Nevada project came from a photograph of Nevada residents in the desert in the 1940s and ‘50s watching nuclear tests. The explosions become unique forms of popular entertainment, reminding Drew of public hangings inKentucky, his home state. Drew became interested in charting the deterioration of a relationship in this context.

For me, this idea was immediately engaging because of its place in a grand historical narrative. How did this moment in time – the creation of nuclear weapons – begin to change humankind’s relationship to itself? In hindsight, knowing our history with the use of atomic warfare, have we come any closer to understanding if we made the “right” choice? Is there a right choice in this particular arena? Is there a moment when scientific advancement begins to transform into humanist degeneration?

We started today by discussing our search for the one collective question that would fuel our generative activity. Because the impetus of this project is not of my own discovery, I am in the new position of not having that distilled question prepared in the earliest stages. I broke this search down into two components: structure and content, in anticipation that they will fuel one another as we construct material and, eventually, context.

Our first exercises focused on exploring content. The next time we meet, we will look at structure.

As the afternoon came to a close, I began thinking of the piece more as the atom project, as I discover within myself a growing interest in the notion of fracture. Jenn Dees, a member of our ensemble, shared with the group that the etymological origin of the word “atom” is Greek, and translates into “uncuttable”. I’ve begun asking myself the following questions:

What happens when the “uncuttable” is actually fractured?
Is there somehow a truly “uncuttable” or “unsplitable” being, element, or relationship?
How far down can anything ever be broken?
Where do the particles lost in the fracture go?
Can we create a metaphor for the splitting of a relationship thought “uncuttable” and the splitting of the atom, also thought “uncuttable”?
Will the two resulting forms of violence mirror one another?

More to come.