I've moved...

Minor Expletives has moved - it lives now at http://www.smallwoodenshoe.org/blog

come visit there.

After cooking and fire

The agit prop is about stories – so simple to become parables. Brechts “Simpler, with more laughter” is proof of his intent and understanding of the form. The successful agit prop allows anything to be said – to install the Diggers, unknown, into the childs brain, while keeping her content with singing and funny faces.
Agit prop must succeed despite destraction, able to survive the pub and the outdoor theatre.
So simple that it cannot contain contridiction, complexity. This is it’s fatal flaw for me. Agit prop contains Marx well, basic anarchism – but can it fit Foucault, Cixous, D&G?

Proposal for Canadian Theatre Review

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 Public Recordings’ Manual for Incidence (conceived and directed by Ame Henderson) 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, Henderson 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.
----------------

Early we talked about location. About how where you were affected what you did. Am I a different person in Halifax than I am in Toronto? I have different social habits, I talk about different things – but there are as many if not more similarities. I am not quite the same, not quite different.
We talked about these problems and how a piece might be about that space – the space created when we travel, when we move. We would be rehearsing and performing in 2 cities with performers from 7 cities, 2 contintants. (It struck us midway through rehearsal that the show would be performed in no ones home town)

When we move, how do we adapt? How do we both stay the same and change. First moving Vancouver from Halifax I tried to find the replacement café’s. Not being able to find Café Mokka, I found Commercial Drive. Moving to Toronto, I found Little Italy, moving back to Halifax I tried to find Little Italy.

Toronto, montreal, TAC

and more I can't possibly all write about.

The toronto run went better (audience reaction-wise) then we expected, which is nice.
moving the show montreal was stressfull but good - a much more aesthetic show there - but I'm going to write about site /venue stuff.


CS got $2000 for a workshop of PHY (on appeal), so guess I don't need to euthenize the show. Which is good.

STO union has been getting awful houses for the best show in Toronto all year. wtf? it's denting the possibility of toronto that I felt after MFI.

Things I'm working on - writer-wise: Deleuze's Minor Literature formulation for Kafka and how it might be used as a liberating force for performance.

promotional material for MFI

site specificity and MFI - I hope for Canadian Theatre Review, but haven't heard anything from them.

got a little depressed and lonely, need to find work - but getting a grant (though by no means a large one) does wonders for the mood, at least today.

more soon

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.

Collapsing time / mystic math

i think i've mentioned the mystic math of performance before (re: comedy) - it's really an odd thing - and i think applies to number of people and time.

I've become very much into the idea that Time is actually the central ontology of dance (articulated well by André Lepecki in Live). Reading his article, an aspect of AH's project (that I'm dramaturging) was made clear (a feeling on the edge of language crystalizing) - a the solo's suddenly becoming about that as much as space or movement.

In the solo's we found 20 minutes to be the only time that worked. Longer was too long, shorter too short. The feeling (for lack of better word) that we wanted existed at 20 minutes. And that feeling had to do with a treatment of time, relating to the prior notes about anxiety in away - length was needed to aclimatize us to the space.

The moment we added another performer - CD and IS running their solo's simultaneously, this quality disappeared. The option to look somewhere else meant that we (as audience) no longer had to in time with the performer. When CD falls ten times, I could watch what IS was doing, thereby stopping the duration of CD's falls.

This was less true in a larger space, which adds another factor.

also music as keeper of time.

incomplete

Post disc manifesto, for the record

because I mentioned it:

"Post-disciplinary" being mostly a joke, but one that keeps coming up. Tried to leave it open enough that it's not exclusive to performance. Very much a first draft. Would love to hear comments, amendments etc...
I think I need to add one for curiousity, but not tonight.


A Post-Disciplinary Manifesto
draft 1. Jacob Zimmer. 04/06/05

1. All categorization is marketing. Including this.

2. Nothing is ruled out. Nothing ruled in.

3. Rigour is required. Not everything goes.

4. Waking up is evidence of hope. Artwork even more so.

5. There is good and bad fun. Good fun is essential.

6. Separation between emotion, body and intellect is destroying the world. It’s also resulting in bad art.

7. When doing something strange, it is best to be relaxed. A willingness to approach strangeness is worth more then knowing the terrain, since the latter is a lie.

8. Lying is another word for imagination. The pursuit of the truth does not exclude lying, it requires it.

9. Have something to say. It’s possible to change your mind later.

10. Not being able to do something is no excuse not to. How else will we learn?

playing for real

there was a recent post at Culturebot from a dance company the included "it's time to start playing for real" (not "playing to win"as I've been misquoting)

this call triggered a bunch of thoughts in me... it resonates, despite being very unclear about what that would actually look like.

or perhaps that's not true. That I do know what that might look like, and I am unsure of my capability of doing it.

that playing for real would involve dropping the chronic self doubt and hemming and hawing that surrounds much contemporary work (or maybe just my personal life porjecting large). that instead of meekly asking for a little corner, that we take space (even if that is just corner that we want) and make someone kick us out ( at which point would we be surprised to find that nobody actually could be bother to try)...

solid opinions and an aggressive stance have been so (importantly) problemitized that, for me at least, it has ended up resulting in a kind of paralysis and depression that just isn't interesting or useful anymore - though is, at this point very hard to drag myself out of, no matter how much I hear and intellectually understand the need to just go for what turns me on and screw the rest.

The CW's are important for this, as was (is) the TT - two projects that I've actually moved from chronic thoughts to reality. And while they are not successes in terms of numbers, they hold that space for me. they establish precident. And some very important things have come out of the TT especially - thoughts and friendships both.

the "playing for real" also ties to the idea of proposals (which we've been taking about since feb., and now I read all this Bourriaud where he talks about it. that common occurance - idea's occuring in the same time yet independly really should be the subject of some kind of study - if it is [oh hypothetical reader] let me know).
that it's not just making proposals in a conversational tone (hey, wouldn't it be neat if...) but in an active, realized way (we are doing this, care to join?)

a way in, for me is rock 'n roll (he says listening to Paradise City) - that a kind of strut and attitude. but how to get there personally continues to be the problem.

what for?

"The question we might raise today is, Connecting people, creating interactive, communicative experience: What for? What does the new kind of contact produce? If you forget the "what for?" I'm afraid you're left with simple Nokia art--producing interpersonal relations for their own sake and never addressing their political aspects."

another Bourriaud interview

quick note

for reference, had a much much better day with the music today.

post-disciplinary / post production

Nicolas Bourriaud and Karen Moss

"It is also interesting how few of the artists in this exhibition are involved with technology. While their work may somehow comment on the technological, they are not much involved with technology, which is refreshing.

NB: They just use it.

KM: They use it, but they're not commenting on it."

possible thread to post disc.

also, same article for a relation to history:

"NB: I think the most important thing is you don't have to be intimidated by knowledge and by history. Most people's relation to history can be summed up by this image of somebody trying to walk into a room with a lot of porcelain and fragile things and not wanting to break any of them. It's super-precious and it has to be kept exactly like it is. I think all these artists do exactly the opposite. Which is they don't care about any historical object, they just use it and try to understand what's in it. And these are two different ways of seeing history – first as a commodified history, doing nothing to change it - or revisiting it all the time and feeling totally free."

future reference

what does it mean to "play to win"?

anxiety and songs

today we talked about how the new music added a clear sense of the anxiety that exists in the work. while I can't deny that existence - anything we make in these times about ourselves is likely to be anxious, but what I love(d) about the work is that there was a feeling of peace with anxiety... or at least it didn't make me anxious, it made me feel good - not in any easy way but in terms of the proposals it made about how to be. CD mentioned the other day that comfort and discomfort are on a spectrum and there is actually some beautiful spaces that live in the in-between. Not quite uncomfortable, not quite comfortable. The show really lives in that space for me (as do most shows I really like). I bring this up only in relation to the pleasure I feel with the work around anxiety. That it's not a simple pleasure.

So all of this is to say that bringing in an element that fore-grounds the anxiety of the piece makes me feel more anxious (go figure) and that this isn't the most satisfying choice for me (of course, it's not my show, so I may just have to deal) -

this all relates to the p.s. from yesterday. Prior to today (the composer arrived) we'd been working with music the performers brought in, with it being explicit that it should be stuff they wanted to listen to. Mostly, then, it was pleasurable music, sometimes guilty pleasure pop music, sometimes more indie, but still in the "not art music" category. This music I enjoyed immensely. I enjoyed watching the performers listening to it, dancing to it. Even, especially, when the choices were guilty nostalgia choices.

these preferences are not exclusive to the current work - it's true of my own practice as well and to the shows I see. I used to work exclusively with new music made especially for the work. Practical issues made this impossible (I moved away from my composer friends and didn't have any money or know anyone in my new town - and grew fatigued by cross country collaborations) and now I don't know if I would could go back. I like needle drop, and pop-ish, non art music needle drop in particular.

So my question is - is this just my hang-up? do I rely on this easy context, or is there something more to it? I justify it by thinking about it as counter to the "seriou

(oh for f*cks [why do I feel that I should make u=*?] sake, just lost a bunch that I wrote cause it wouldn't publish. I take back all the nice things I said about blogger. will try to recreate, but surely fail)

"seriousness" of the work. That it helps humanize the work by showing that us snobby avant gardists like a good pop tune with great hook. That it re-contextualizes both the work and the pop song itself.

And I like it. I like that they're songs not "music" that they have beginnings and middles and ends that I can recognize, that they have lyrics. I can and do appreciate serious art music (I realize I sound anti-art and reactionary, but you'll have to believe that I'm not, or maybe I am and I have to deal) but when I comes down to it, I don't want to listen to it. This kind of mainstream preference is also there in movies, in a slightly different form - I like serious films but am more likely to rent and especially to go to mainstream Hollywood flicks.

not really going anywhere, except to note this is one of the places I get in twists of doubt to whether my personal preferences are right and rigorous or lazy and counter-revolutionary (to make way too much out of it, but in bad moments, honest)

for future reference: the collapse of time when more than one person is on stage

for the record: I imagine the audience of this blog to be one person who I don't know and never reveals that they are reading (though if you are, feel free) - this feeling allows me to write in a different way and I appreciate that... so whoever you are, thanks.

when doing something strange

draft 1
(it is interesting that I prefer writing on this then say, oh a word processing program)


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 new?
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 may shape the course of history.
Five: Hehe. 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.

a couple things

1/ luddite?

2/ story/gesture meaningness


1/ on the radio last night there was a report about Newfoundland on Radio Netherlands (that very occurance worth a note) - essentially about the collapse of the fisheries, the resulting death of tradition, and tourism that results in the performance of those traditions after death. and while that cycle is interesting enough, and close to home for me since it is a similiar pattern in Cape Breton / NS - what I thought about as I fell asleep was various interviews with people, who, while sad about the loss, nervous about tourism ("we have become people fishers") said (in paraphrase): change happens, and, like the death of a loved one, is sad, but moving on is needed. To hold out and try to pretend that the change didn't happen would be close to death itself.

the impact of this thought was that I wondered about my quasi-ludditism that is evidenced in continuing to work in the theatre, or live performance in general - especially as I am resistant to technology as a key element. I've said that theatre is retro-grade activity before, and have an unsettled relationship to the idea "of going back." Arguably much of my aesthetic, political and formal interests involve some kind of stopping or returning (small groups of people meeting in person with as little mediation as possible, a way of engaging with each other that seems to be passing.) Are these idea's born from a desire to stop movement, to halt or even reverse change? And is this a bad thing? I can criticize and more to the point attempt to side step the modernist notion of progress, but is doing so responsible?

I have been discussing with various folks the difference between art that reflects contemporary life ("Oh, that's so true [and often bad]") and art that might offer some proposals towards a different life ("Oh, what if that were true!?") - this formulation feels right - BUT is the proposal I have to offer some going-backwards towards a romantized past that never existed? Or a future in which the recent past never happened?

That I hate cell phones and genetrification (though am fond of the internet and my palm pilot), prefer film to video and Guns 'n Roses to the Darkness.

Is it a constant that some will bemoan the death of a former authenticity, while the kids move ahead with or without me, creating their own definitions of authenticity?

Nothing really formed yet, and it's not going to change the work yet, but some questions (damn that Dutch radio about Canada.)

2/ We've been talking about different gestures holding the same importance - getting undressed being done with the same weight as adjusting a chair - a space where everything is both equally unimportant and therefore important. Wondering in the past few days (with World Stage and CD and IS's showings) whether and how stories might function the same way - after Chad's showing people talked about how the one piece of text weighed much more than everything else. I think on one level this was a result of it being the only story/text - that to create that level ground where the audience moves with little friction between possible meanings, one needs to do at least 2 things (to get the teeter totter level, 2 children of equal weight are needed) - don't know that this is anything mind blowing but speaks of the mystical math that is necessary to make work (something is funny once, three and 5 times only etc)


ps: is music a cheap way out or an important road sign?

again, a new start

been reading alot of blogs, which makes me feel that I should write more.
though I have multiple outlets for most of what I might write those actually feel like a fair amount of pressure... what I'm supposed to write is very smart and thought out... so maybe this can be a blog of less meaningful things, or rough notes towards other writings. Since I haven't actually told anyone about it. I guess it could be found through my comments on others blogs, but don't do that much.

going to go see "Punch and Judy" in a bit. don't know if I'll like the show but like Brad and Tannis very much, so I'll like that part.

"My Arm" last night at world stage was great - so simple. a great basic system. really it's amazing to see a "bridge" work that works so well. by bridging i mean taking information from experimental/live art etc and more "popular" forms - stand-up, story telling. there is a scale, not absolutes. if there weren't people doing stand up and radical live art, that show couldn't exist. personally I would like a world where "my arm" and "peepshow" were just the standard, rather then exceptions, or seen as "weird"

in seeing two solo shows that mostly worked for me, I realize that solo shows are really just about story telling, that they succeed or fail on those grounds. group shows can be about other things but solos are about story telling. Spalding knew that. Probably most people do.

ok shower and show.
if anyone is reading, i'll see you later.

scripts?

Saw 3 summerwork shows on saturday - I'm realizing that I'm just not that interested in _plays_ . the barker for example: a writer I like a lot, very good performances and direction, and yet it didn't really do it for me. I wanted to see the performers in another way, to see their responses to the material. The idea of just doing a script is a mystery to me at this point.

another few great chats / lunch with a's friend.

a and i are looking at her production schedule and trying to make it work with our other interests...

it's a daunting looking that far ahead when I don't have any of the resources I need for the fall. or an idea what the show will look like... have to get on and cast the thing, then start...

also, and pressingly, have to find a place to live - the 2 I've looked at were no good... depressing and small - may have increase the amount of money I'm willing to spend.

that's better

sleep really helps.

feel again like something resembling a human being.

a lovely morning conversation with a friend of A's who's staying here for the weekend. A creator and dancer (with Meg Stuart's Damaged Goods among others) - talked about the work, about the frustrations at "the state of canadian theatre and dance"... which while on the whole very dire, I'm feeling a little better about these days - there's actually some folks I'm excited about, and maybe a small community can be formed...

Am going to see 3 summerworks shows today - the possibilities, the blue mouth inc show and the Volcano companies newest. also lots of hanging around hoping to run into people I know who might know of apartments.

The realities of the move have yet to sink in. When I say "here" in conversation I still mean H. I suppose that's not surpising.

Need to arrange to get stuff to this apartment from the back of the car.

arrived

ok... made it.
am still vwery tired, even though I slept for 4 hours after arriving at A's.

The drive was long. Mostly able to function as the DJ / awake guy, though did sleep some.
H to mid NB was great weather, lovely conditions - then we hit a rain storm that made us pull off the road for an hour, whcih was okay since we needed to eat.
From there to M it was a little rough going, but here we are.

now what?

waiting

so everything's packed - the house is cleaned. Just need to see if everything fits in the car. We're running a bit behind schedule, but should get into T in the morning.

The place I was going to move into isn't going to work - they gave it to a friend... which is unfortunate, they seemed nice (i'm sure they are, and plan to drink with them this weekend) - i'm not too stressed about finding a place... the job on the other hand.

Got my cheque (direct deposit really) for the week- is $1000 worth a week of near homicidal rage? i'm not sure, but it'll come in handy.

I was reading Chris Lloyd's letters to the PM - he has been writing the PM for years now - way before blogs and what he has that I'm badly missing, is someone who he writing to.

I'm big on specificity at the moment - in art, in life... and this is lacking a bit.

I think I should read some more blogs - try and make mine less boring.

One last pass...
Next from T

joining leaving

so i've jumped on the blog bandwagon.

i'm constantly failing at keeping journals, diaries etc... i have countless half filled notebooks. i make no promises that this will be any different - nor that i will tell anyone about it...

I leave for T thursday morning - which is a big enough move to warrent a blog start. the move is something I have very dialectical feelings about - on the one side it is a horribly tacky cliche to move from H to T. Especially as someone who works in theatre - the instant assumption is that I think I'm too big for H and am going to try and "make it" in T. on the other, there is an artistic infrastructure in T that just doesn't exist here, and more work that I'd like to see.

I didn't have a great time the last time I lived in T - actually, that's a lie... very often I had a very good time - lots of drinking and partying with the people who worked at SC (where I bartended, waited tables etc) but got very little theatre made and took no part in the theatre community. When I came to H I was able to work (write, direct) - but now I'm going to T because I cannot work in H - or, more percisely, there are two people who I want to work with who both live in T and I (or the company) don't have the money to bring them to H for 3 months, so i'm going to T.

there's an introduction. I don't know why people would read this...

going to return my dad and step moms OED - very disappointing, finish my taxes and have a little good bye dinner.