1st audience

so, it's more an issue of my own relaxation really.

that we want to the audience to be relaxed (not the perfect word), and when there's an audience, I'm anything but relaxed.

but the feedback was good - people falling in love with performers, which is nice - that they are so present they can be seen (and see) in that way... different audience members following different performers but still relating to whole.

structurally I felt, during the show, we needed some rock earlier, but in retrospect think that's just my own nervousness about "entertaining" (always start with a joke stuff)

on the whole it was a bit fast, but that's hardly surprise with the kick of have a couple dozen new people there.

Tonight is official opening, and there's a Star reviewer coming - which I wonder about.

Montreal

Quelques précisions avant de commencer,

Les manuels sont insuffisants. Certains facteurs en sont absents.
Toronto est à 5 heures d'ici. Amsterdam, 12. Mon appartement, 20 minutes.

Tout manuel doit tenir compte d'un décalage, d'une étrangeté.
Les gens se réunissent, certains pour la première fois, d'autres, non.

On m'a conseillé de sourire quand je rencontrais une nouvelle personne.
Mieux vaut être détendu quand on fait quelque chose d'étrange.

Merci d'être venus.
Nous aimons vous entendre, au bar ou au infoATpublicrecordings.org.


-----
With thanks to CH for the translation

A and B Sides

We have our first audience tomorrow night - and I'm a bit torn about it.

Side A: I think it's a great show, even an important show that lots should see and that should effect all work after it in this city (perhaps in other cities or countries this would simply be a good show, but we are not of those places) - so I want desperately for there to an audience (because if there is no audience for this, then why are we here?) - but have fears that none will materialize ("oh sorry, I really meant to come but..." and why we have pre-press in Montreal, where we bring it in to do it twice and none in Toronto where we create and premiere it?)... but doubts aside, lets call Side A: "Want lots of audience."

Side B I'll call "Scared they'll ruin it". The work we (and even more the performers) are doing is so delicate. (in the early days of our collaboration, AH and I debated the terms "frail" and "fragile" - and while we don't talk about it anymore it's still present) The systems are set but so easily swung out of balance. If the audience doesn't want to see it, it will not be there, it's really that simple ("For this to succeed on any level, you all have to be thinking the same thing at the same time") - that because of poor reception we might doubt that it is an important show.
This impulse in myself (to not show) reminds me of Grotwoski and I don't really like that. But the fear lingers.

final toronto

Some things before we start,

Manuals are insufficient. There are factors left out.
Montreal is 5 hours away. Amsterdam is 12. My apartment is 20 minutes.

Any manual must assume strangeness, unfamiliarity.
People come together, some for the first time, others not.

When meeting someone new, I've been advised to smile.
When doing something strange, it's best to be relaxed.

Thank you for coming,
We'd love to hear from you - at the bar or at infoATpublicrecordings.org

unknown knowns

I remember this quote because it got mocked. Spoken by a man I couldn't agree with less on matters of policy, the quote below is, however, true, and possibly important.


"As we know,there are known knowns. There are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."
—Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002

Perhaps also we could add unknown knowns. Things we do not know we know.

Thank you for coming.
We'd love to hear from you again, either at the bar after or at

Needn't follow

One move needn't follow the next...

brecht
ame (phrase making - dropping)


but a move will always come next, but it needn't be - not normal, common

bit stoned. more later if it worthies in clear headed ness

program notes draft ?

All manuals are insufficient. There are many things illustrations leave out. Like time, for one example.
Time is also distance.
Montreal is 5 hours away. Croatia is 12. My apartment is twenty minutes.
Is this also true of the distance between people? Is it too dependant on the mode of travel?

Any manual must assume strangeness, unfamiliarity.
How do we meet?
People come together, some for the first time, others not.
How much time is required? Or maybe - what kind of time?
When meeting someone new, remember to smile.
When doing something strange, it's best to be relaxed.

final 808

for the record
Good evening. my name is Jacob Zimmer. I am the dramaturge for Public Recording’s Manual for Incidence, the full length work that informs and will be informed by what you'll see tonight. The full length show will be presented at X Space Gallery at the end of May. Uh, May 26-29. There are fliers.
Manual for Incidence is conceived and directed by Ame Henderson.
Tonights performers are Inari Salmivaara, Chad Dembski and Matija Ferlin, with new music by Eric Craven. We'd like to thank the Canada Council, Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Via Rail, and all the folks at 808.

Some things before we start:

One: When doing something strange it is best to be relaxed.

Two: If time is equal to or greater than shape and movement, is ten minutes enough to get to know someone well?

Three: Would you be kind enough to tell us what it is all about?

Four: People come together, more or less for the first time, what happens next?

Five: He he. Smile.

Six: The familiar, in a different place, might be strange. We also wonder about the inverse.

Seven: Do you too feel the pressure of expectation?

Eight: [10 sec of silence]

And Last: When doing something strange, it is best to be relaxed. To be able to approach it as if familiar.

Thank you.

time/movement/shape

Time marks movement.
Movement marks time.
Stop them both and you have shape.

Dinner party

draft 1

There is little as fine as a dinner party. People, none more then one step removed, come together to share something. It starts with introductions and hugs of reunion. There is the catching up of those who have been absent. The uncomfort of the one or two who know only the host, who, due to decorem must share her time. The uncomfort brings them together though, to find what they might speak of together. The reunions break up as the drinks get poured and the conversations spread. Some envelop the group - a single anicdote told for the amusement of all, a topic hot enough that everyone must touch it. Some are localized - the two uncomfortable with large groups find themselves in a corner discussing the intricasies of a topic neither one knew anyone else cared about. The dinner brings everyone back. The seating has been planned (this is an old fashioned dinner party with old fashioned curtisies) so that everyone sits beside one person a little more familiar and one a little more strange. The food is presented and little more then compliments may be discussed for some time. As the courses and the bottles pass, time changes. It has ceased to be noticed, and not being the centre of attention it has left. Plans for the morning are forgotten....

ack still not working
trying to create a parallel metaphor for MfI for the program notes. something to introduce, to bring the audience into the world of the piece without laying down any laws.

CTR proposal

Trying to find outlets for writing about the current project. Site specificity isn't the most interesting part of work, but is involved, and provides a decent frame to talk about a third option in the treatment of space-


Working title: Where you’re at.

My, admittedly personal, definition of site-specific places the site first: I find a site that excites me and I wonder what performance it would create. Learning what the site requires comes first – it points toward content, shapes the structure and is the design.

For the moment, let’s place that work on the one extreme of a line.

On the other end, let’s put the box set for the show rehearsed in a hall that shares no architecture with the final venue and is built to fit in the back of a truck.
A huge space exists between these two extremes, but little language to talk about it. What is between “normal” and site specific? What borders on them both, not quite either?

It is this space that I wish to investigate in this piece, using my recent (and on-going) work as a dramaturge on PR’ MfI (conceived and directed by AH) which will be performed at the end of May at X Space Gallery in Toronto and the beginning of June in Montreal at Quartier Éphémère (an old Foundry.)

When I became involved, H referred to the project as site specific, yet didn’t have a space in mind. Certain ideas were clear to her – she didn’t want to use a theatre, she wanted to be in residency at the performance venue for as long as possible, she talked about small people in a big space. Many of our initial discussions revolved around our differing language about site-specificity.

We have worked since February on solos with each dancer/performer, presenting open rehearsals in Montreal and Toronto – each on engaged with the physical space (Studio 303 in Montreal and Hub 14 in Toronto.) We are now creating the group piece in rehearsals that frequently move between our studio and the gallery. We are at the crux of finding what our relationship (not quite site specific, definitely no box set) with space is, and it’s this crux I want to examine in this article for Canadian Theatre Review.

A different Verfremdung

The bourgeois theatre's performances always aim at smoothing over contradictions, at creating false harmony, at idealization. Conditions are reported as if they could not be otherwise; characters as individuals, incapable by definition of being divided, cast in one block, manifesting themselves in the most various situations, likewise for that matter existing without any situation at all. If there is any development it is always steady, never by jerks; the developments always take place within a definite framework which cannot be broken through.

None of this is like reality, so a realistic theatre must give it up. - B. Brecht

I have recently come back to the word distancing (which, while insufficiant still, is my prefered translation to "alienation"). We talk of necessary distance of the performer in the CW - something that wasn't there this week, much to the performances demise. We talk about the distance in the stories and the actions of the performers in MfI - of stealing material - not to imititate (the sign of ironic distance, which is not what we want) - but to do as if - a dance equivilant of "he said, she said" - marking also provides a similar response ("I said")

More later

weekend all starting

just a quick little thing - recovering a bit from the night before.

we showed the trio with CD, IS, and MF Sat. It went well, though can't say the rest of the program did much for me. We joked about dreaming for the night we're not the "weird" ones on the bill. I always get confused because I see these other pieces that I think are much "weirder" - essentially meaning I don't get why one would choose to do that, when what we're doing makes perfect sense to me.

this probably goes with the desire not to be called a "snob" or variations there of by my so called peers. It happens with fair regularity, and if I were to move to Europe that would be a reason. maybe I am a snob, and I just need to find the peer group that's the same kind of snob.

still working on a draft about time. have to give myself more of it - figure out what the sched is as we get into the madness.

we show everything (except involving EF who arrives never week) today - should be fun. It's raining which isn't fun.