From Our Director: Week Two

My Brain is Exploding

It has been one of those weeks (and maybe this is always how the
second week of a project goes) where soooooo much has happened
creatively that I am utterly overwhelmed, inspired, exhausted, can't
turn my brain off, nervous and excited. All at once. I had to look
back at my notes just to confirm that all of the feelings I'm
wrestling with were caused by the events of this week because it seems
like maybe it's been two weeks or a month. But, nope, just this one
little week. Here are the things we've done that have me a churning:

Monday: Everyone brought in their version of a map of the book The
Principles of Uncertainty. The results were stupendous. Such
beautiful works of art and such an interesting insight into how we all
see the book in different ways. Then we had a big ole discussion
about what an inter-active tour IS and why we are using this book as a
springboard to create one. I tried (as much as is possible) to keep
my mouth shut and listen to what the ensemble had to say. I could
have mediated on that alone for a week.












Tuesday: We did some composition work on characters from the book
we'd like to see come to life. We met The Humpty Dumpty Man, Sally at
the Lunch counter, Lolita with her British but Brooklyn accent,
Maira's father and two of her aunts and a grandmother, two Vita
Sackville-Wests, and one of my long time favorites, Megan Boyd. It was a hoot and we
made some great discoveries about different way to incorporate some of
these characters, but....it feels like it's just the tip of the
iceberg in terms of what is POSSIBLE to include in our tour.

Friday: I went and saw Liz Lerman's The Matter of Origins at the MCA.
Seeing evocative performance always rattles me a bit, but
particularly when I'm in the middle of creating something. The
second act of the dance performance everyone was invited upstairs for
tea, cake and conversation. And for a dancing scientist. We had tea
and cake in Between Now and Five Billion Years! We did not have a
dancing scientist.

Saturday: We did a writing workshop with the lovey Erika Schmidt. She
guided us through a number of prompts honing in on simple objects,
voice, and family/personal history. As a performance ensemble we
don't usually sit down and write for six hours and instead of being a
bit of a relaxing break from crazy on our feet compositions, it was
mentally exhausting. It did produce some excellent writing that will
give us a great foundation for further expansion on our feet but man
did it tucker me out! Erika did bring a big pot of leftover
Halloween candy so I ate a peanut-butter cup. It was delicious!

It was a tiring and hard week, but man, I really loved that peanut butter cup.


-Libby Hladik, Director