Etudes: Resting on the Stage

When the word "etude" is used, the first thing I think of is the time I spent practicing etudes for piano performance and study with my piano teachers: 

More interesting than scales, but still just for practice

Etudes are practice songs which are not necessarily meant for uber performative means. They are meant to encourage skills in much the way a scale is, but they can sometimes be beautiful, haunting, or just particularly wonderful. Some of my etude pieces on the piano are still very special to me. The simplicity and complexity of skill and expression inherent in the notes and available through expressive playing are exhilarating to play. [Note to self: when settled in Seattle, keep an eye out for a free craigslist piano]

Songs with names like Etude no. 5 or Lullaby were on my top list.

When I studied at the Stanislavsky Summer School, in Boston, I was introduced to the idea of etude as acting study. I did not understand at first. Lost in translation I thought that moment was the operative idea behind an etude. The first one I presented was the image of a woman, a tired, middle-aged mother in an American Apparel Isle. Along with many other misunderstanding students, received quite a lecture. That no, it was not a feeling or an emotion, it was more like a journey of doing something. A practice piece of showing a story. I confess that, while I continued to present etudes which improved immensely, I don't believe that I really understood what I was trying to accomplish. The only thing I can think is that I was trying to make it fun or right. Not that there was an objective right that I or anyone else could know before hand, but, as Mischa explained, [Here I paraphrase horrendously] "You know when it's done right but you can't really say how. When it's wrong, we can figure out what's keeping it from being right." 

The method was almost via negativa (like Grotowski). I remember more the two etudes that I did really right than any of the tons that were not right [I don't like the word wrong for this as it doesn't really describe what happens with an etude that misses the mark. There really isn't a good/bad in this method of work, which is a hard thing to understand in American acting]. The first was Nina in the Seagull, getting ready to see Trigorin and sneaking out of her second story bedroom to say goodbye. It wasn't the most adventurous, but I remember doing my makeup checking. Listening for parents, and then figuring out, awkwardly, difficultly, how to get out the window without mussing my dress or my makeup so that I wouldn't be caught and would still be pretty to see him. The second was my animal etude in which I was a sloth. A last minute addition of nuts, which I was attempted to get to, turned out to be exactly what was needed. In each of these, I don't remember specific moments so much as I remember the feeling of flow that happened. I was both completely free and knew exactly what needed to be done. I did it. 

"These studies of life, as we can see, are neither exercises nor scales. 

They are filled with the meaning of life, with life vibrations.

They are ETUDES." 

-Veniamin Filshtinsky

In his article on the use of etudes in acting class, Filshtinsky discusses how etudes, studies, differ from exercises or scales because there is something full of life in them. I think this relates to the via negativa in the metaphor "full of life" as if life were some kind of substance with which we could fill the vessel of the etude if only we could remove the blocks that are keeping it out. The blocks are like impurities in the metal of a tuning fork or the stones that damn up a creek. You can still achieve something, but the difficulty is immense and the sense of being off is palpable and disheartening. Like when string is out of tune on an instrument. I hate that feeling so much. 

Filshtinsky further suggests that "As it has been noted repeatedly, when an etude is presented for the second time it often fails, becoming a lifeless, cold and formal “work of art”." When asking my Russian professors about repeating an etude, they always said no. They said that something died when you did the etude again, unless it was a totally new etude that was just related to the other. This is also a strange way to move the brain. It is at once an intense valuing of the artistic creative moment and also an affirmation of the Zen knowledge of ephemeral nature of life--and by extension performance. This is not to say that repetition is wrong, but rather, as I think I've discovered, to rest in the activity, rather than in the knowledge--like so many theatrical productions--that you can try again tomorrow, in the next take, at the next rehearsal, at the next performance, the next time you perform the role etc. It comes to me as a way that actor's can practice living in the moment and really seeing what they are doing and the given circumstances in which they practice. If we perform etude after etude after etude, our failures begin to lose power with the strength of the technique of performing action in the moment with the given circumstances. It's a form of technique.

Annnnd I'm back with Ben Spatz and what the body can do. The practice of etudes is a technique of refining what the body can do. 

All this is to preface or maybe to understand or contextualize the etude that our cast of Jane Eyre performed on Friday night. After a bunch of ensemble games and warmups and discussion. Our director asked if we could do one more movement experiment.  She asked if we could explore the moment of birth or fusion of Jane/Bertha as a single girl. The only requirements were that we start separate, fuse, and find an ending. There was no music playing, only our bodies and voices in the space. There was  no lighting. There were no costumes. There were no lines. There wasn't even really a script. Just an event and the Beginning, Middle, End structure. 

I preface this with these descriptions because the etude happened and we did the play. 

I remember feeling as if there were music, though there was none. I remember feeling as if I was in the story and not a rehearsal hall. 

Bertha (Sarah) and Jane (I) started at opposite ends of the room and interacted with the ensemble in different ways, she played leapfrog and I skipped with the other girls. Then the ensemble slowly put us together, which we resisted at first, then explored within the ensemble before breaking away together in a joyous fit of giggles. Then the ensemble helped to tear us apart. It was physical and distressing. At the climax of it, Rochester (Johnny) let out a scream that was so in my heart that it felt like my own scream. I remember so many ensemble members sitting with me holding my hands as I was really alone for the first time. I remember trying to get to Bertha who was laid out on the floor and held down. I remember being eyeballed back away by Helen (Aubrey). I remember being placed together with Rochester, who looked at me and I knew I was wild and only half there and I knew why he said I looked like a fairy. I remember little else between but that I was finally brought back to Bertha and Rochester who curled against me finally together, their heads on my shoulders. I remember sitting and seeing everyone arranged around us where we held each other, crying and so glad to be back together. 

It's not the actual story of Jane Eyre, but it was filled with the meaning of that life, the vibrations of the story, which we explored. There was something right about it, something that couldn't be repeated by trying to do that particular etude again, but which now lives inside each of us as we continue the process of building this play together. 

I think the etude explorations have been particularly freeing and trusting. I think at the heart, they are the skill technique of resting in action. Instead of judging ourselves, we act, instead of fearing each other, we trust.  If it misses the mark we learn what we could and move on. If it hits the mark, we hold it in our hearts and rejoice. 

Resting in action; Resting on the stage. 

Also this, because it makes me laugh and that's good ;)

Practice and Technique

This week I'm reading What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research by Ben Spatz:

This book talks about embodied knowledge through the vehicle of technique as repeated actions which create and communicate knowledge. It's specific instances with when/where/who, Spatz calls practice.

The most interesting idea so far: "what we know becomes who we are" (56).  
When I shared this one Facebook a friend fired back "No, what we DO is who we are"

The cool thing about Spatz' assertion is that those are both true. What we do is what we know--we add knowledge to our lives through repeated action, and new actions create new knowledge.

This means that repeated social actions learned growing up through culture and authority figures become knowledge--every behavior has lessons attached to it and the lessons aren't always the ones intended--meaning is multiple. I think about the cultural actions of allowing "boys to be boys" it's a repeated action of allowance for behavior which leads to many understandings of meaning which the affectionate repeated allowance may or may not intend. Boys learn that they can do what they want--even if others don't like it, an allowance will be made. Sometimes this is really awesome, it means that for a lot of young men courage to pursue their dreams is built in because allowances will be made. It also means that for some, harmful behavior can be easily repeated because allowances will be made. There's a whole host of other knowledges that come from repeated social technique--how to interview, how to meet people, how to go on a date, how to show care for people you don't know, how to respect other humans, how to save people, how to walk, how to present as male/female.

I think about cycles of behavior that people go to therapy (or not) to break, deal with, and learn new behaviors that will help them pursue happiness more effectively.

Specifically, I think about myself and technique of practice that hurt a lot. One was the religious activity of thanking God for loving me. The flip side of this was that God loves us in spite of our undeserving nature and actions--the repeated technique was reminding myself that God loved me in spite of all of my terrible failings. I was consistently told by my family growing up that They loved me, that I was brilliant, beautiful, and wonderful--how to square that with the knowledge that if all that was true I couldn't possibly need God's love which meant that I really needed God's love because only truly wicked people think that they're good enough not to need God's love which means I must be really wicked because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God--love more self abase more. It became a practice of making caring more and more for others and less and less for myself, because of course, God would be caring for me. I don't always recall thinking deliberately through each of these progressive thoughts, but the lack of care for my emotions and my well-being in favor of caring for others was pervasive. I remember agonizing about it. I remember emotionally flagellating myself for not caring for someone enough when they felt hurt or upset. I remember while dating, agonizing and emotionally punishing myself because I felt that I looked into a future in which I would leave them, doing all kinds of damage. Just caring about them became a practice of self-harm.

Trying to break or change or challenge this knowledge has been a huge struggle. My knowledge of caring for another person is deeply embedded in techniques of self-denial. To admit and learn/be told that care for others can effectively start with care for yourself is difficult because it flies in the face of my repeated technical knowledge. To take care of me first is selfish and wrong and worthy of emotional punishment... the struggle is really like swimming up river when you've never done it before. Often my emotional muscles fail and a find myself a ways down stream before I can get back to practicing the technique of self-care and valuing my feelings, impulses, thoughts and opinions.

The power of embodied knowledge is so strong. I also think about classrooms and, in re to a previous blog post, that teachers don't teach content they teach methods of learning: they teach you how to be a student. I remember in high school that the secret to good grades really was to discover exactly what they teacher expected and rewarded in order to get the best grade possible. Even when I taught in the writing center, I remember teaching students how to go through an assignment and identify what the teacher created as a measure for success--this is how you can make sure that all of your work is recognized and acknowledged--conform to his/her expectations for excellent work. On the one hand, the experiential knowledge of the call/response student/teacher roles can be extremely helpful in navigating school, work, and relationships. On the other hand, to simply teach this hack does not necessarily foster a desire to learn and pursue material the student finds fascinating.

I'll be teaching a THR 1010 class online in the fall. I'm currently wrestling with how to structure it #1 so that my expectations of engagement are clear for assignments and #2 so that the structure fosters student creativity and learning rather than simply a meeting of criteria for passing said class.

Hmmm...

Jane Eyre: the Beginning

This week I started rehearsals for Jane Eyre with Out Loud Theatre and I'm playing Jane!

She's a sassy wench!

So far they've been really fun! We're doing ensemble games mixed in with honest and enthusiastic discussion of theatre, the show, the ideas and themes, and ourselves. Kira--the artistic director and show director--likes to use the term "mind-hive" to describe the ensemble attention and acting that she feels is vital to theatrical life and specifically for her theatre. It's a fun way to hook in--of course, every time she says "mind-hive" I hear "Mai Thai" I don't know if that's just my brain or her accent but it's a fun little flip to do in my head. ;)

The play is an adaptation of the novel by Charlotte Bronte by Shared Experience and written by Polly Teale. The adaptation looks at Bertha--the mad-wife in the attic--and Jane--the eponymous protagonist--are the same woman. Two halves, Bertha the passionate sensual active side and Jane the sensible scared desirous of love side. Too often, especially in Charlotte Bronte's society, women are expected to be a certain way and ostracized for not conforming. This adaptation looks at not only the societal ostracizing but the self ostracizing that people experience and create.

Me and David discussing--Yay!

So far my favorite line that I say in the play is in response to a question about how I will avoid going to hell, to which I reply:

"I must keep in good health and not die"

Incidentally, this is said to David (pictured above). Each actor, besides myself and Sarah (who plays Bertha), plays multiple characters. For example, David will be playing Brocklehurst, Pilot (the dog), Lord Ingrahm, and Saint John. The multiple roles are enriched by having the same actor playing them. Every time I see them onstage I see the threat and the comfort of the different roles. It gives me so much to respond to.

I really appreciate having this rich tapestry of characters in each actor because, frankly, Jane Eyre is a challenging character for me. I have so often associated Jane with virtue and quietness, self-denial and the positiveness of that, but the more I read the play and talk about it with this wonderful cast and director, the more I realize just how passionate, creative, and unconventional Jane really is. Her grown-up self struggles acutely with fear and the desire for love, which she didn't get as a child. Her education was one of self-denial and godly love over human love which leads her to run from and deny the things that make her most happy in the hope and prayer (so many Our Fathers) that this is the path to happiness. When she deny's Saint John's marriage proposal towards the end of the story, she is really denying this narrative of self-denial. Her realization is that self-denial is a personal hell. And she reclaims herself on the journey back to the life that made her happy--at Thornfield, talking with Rochester every night, spending time with Mrs. Fairfax, and drawing. 

The passionate Jane who is frightened. I relate to her so deeply. It's sometimes a little frightening. I am working on consistent practice and self-care in order to help me deal with the fear and the negative self talk [Jane has some serious negative self-talk in the play]. I think Jane's imagination is her best and worst quality, because it both sets her free and terrorizes her. Bertha fills this space, she is the imagination the heart that Jane locks away, physically, in this version of the story. 

The physicalization is my favorite part of this adaptation! Jane Eyre has been adapted so many times and each time with a stoic Jane. Jane says she is plain, people who hate her say she is plain. I wonder now, if it isn't the horrid lie that she repeats to herself trying to make it true. I am reminded of The Witch of Blackbird Pond in which Kit, the protagonist who comes from the West Indies (like Bertha does), is described as a fairly average looking woman, but when she smiles her whole self is lit up like a candle and she is really very beautiful. I think Jane, like Kit, doesn't realize what her passion and imagination do and so many adaptations don't make that inner struggle and passion visible so we consistently see a plain, stoic Jane. Sadly, I have watched her and failed to understand why she's special. I think this is a unique failing of adaptations that this Shared Experience one does not share.

Our production is working with extra physicalization to visualize, visceralize the struggle in Jane. She says at one point that in order to gain human affection "I would willingly have the bone of my arm broken, or stand behind a kicking horse and let its hoof dash against my chest". Which, by locking up Bertha, guarding her every move, verbally abusing herself, and denying any impulse or desire, she does to herself. Ugh! Gah! I love that I get to tell this story and let the audience actually see and experience the inside of it and not just the outside!  Using abstraction we can share the inner life with the audience. =D

Anyway, to that end we've been working ensemble games, trust games, movement games, that involve all of us and our bodies in real activities. =D Like lava, where we cross the length of the room and out the door on just a couple chairs, moving together without speaking or telling people what to do, just physical offers.  We persevered like crazy and when we failed, no one got off the chairs. We just stood there needing to finish, needing to make it all the way because we could. We were heroes!  

Inspirational quote = incidental awesome

There was arm holding, hugging, hand holding, breathing, sharing space, sharing weight, sharing breath, hands and arms through legs and around waists, even a little boob grabbing. But we made it and it felt so good!  

I'm excited to get back to it tonight! We'll be working on the first 15 scenes of the show tonight.

I'll keep the updates coming!

Freedom, Panic, and Practice

Today I had a brunch/coffee hangout meeting--what do you call these?--with my favorite advisor. I was about 40 minutes late due to gps and multiple locations for this fabulous little coffee/pastry shop. We had about an hour of really wonderful discussion about life and art, the reflective process of education and behavior, and how we break the mold to really be creative. A lot to think about and a lot to process.

Several different things jump up in my mind to be considered--as it usually goes. First is how frightening real freedom looks at the beginning and second how exhilarating it is once you get the hang of it. Institution and instruction most of my life has been a structure in which one person (and their cohort of professors, administrators, and adjudicators) determine the merit and value of my choices. I have been extremely lucky to be very good and meeting and exceeding their demands, tests, and expectations. Many are not so lucky. The interesting thing is that this has left me a little adrift when I am asked to actually do my own thing. I wonder where the value determiners are--when I'm gently reminded that there are none, I often feel a twinge of panic. This is most evident to me in two areas--first my dissertation.

Dissertation Blues

I began my course of study towards PhD-ness because I wanted to write a dissertation. I wanted to spend a bunch of time writing and exploring my own topic and developing a body of writing on said topic. I can crank out pages like no one's business. Especially under a deadline. I enjoyed do it in class--final projects, research and analysis, literary criticism. These were totally jamming to me! Especially in grad school where the choice of topic was left exclusively up to me--provided my content and analysis dialogued in some way with our course material. Done! I enjoy the work and the pressure at the end of the semester to produce my thoughts in a communicable text document. I enjoyed especially reading professor's dialogue on the page when I received the graded document back.

As I moved through my PhD courses, I continued to experience this joy in the work and satisfaction in dialogue (where it was available, some professors don't really dialogue). But when I was released from coursework to do my own study. To work on the dissertation, I floundered.

I encountered real freedom for the first time in my academic career. Freedom that said, "Your work, your schedule, your trail, follow where it leads and bring it back when you're ready."

Maybe I missed something through my academic career, but I felt totally adrift. What? Where are the deadlines? Who will tell me when it's ready? Where is the end of this tunnel?

::crickets::

Then the paralysis set in. Grinding my work to a halt. The gaping hole of the future without structure without oversight beyond an advisor keeping the gate between me and my committee for efficiency and protection, this whole seemed insurmountable, not because I couldn't break it down, but because my own success depended on my practices instead of a professor's estimation of my ideas and expression. Work on your stuff and bring it when you're ready. How is this such a difficult task? It removes the barriers created by semesters, course restrictions, and syllabi.

Freedom. And it made my skin crawl. How was I supposed to judge when it was ready? Don't I just make it and had it in by said date? No, I am now my own professor in a way, my own project manager.

The second area I feel the fear of freedom is in Acting.

Acting Atrophy

For the first 3 years that I was in Michigan I acted minimally--performing perhaps one time over 1095 days. Over that time I was not practicing my performance. I lost the ability to tell if I was any good at it and feared that this lack of doing was detrimental, that I would never recover. [Catastrophic thinking patterns, btw are destructive] When I did have the opportunity, I frequently passed it up out of fear. I watched actors, directed actors, learned from directors for all this time, but I did not do it myself.

During this time, I went to Russia and studied acting at the MXAT. It was a mixed experience for me.  I had studied already with the MXAT through the Stanislavsky summer school program at Harvard, but this time, I found myself not taking chances, not jumping forward. After all, I was there "as a PhD scholar-director student, not an acting student"--these are the words that I would hear in my heart which held me back. At the end of the session in my meeting with my acting instructors, they pointed out that they wished I had been more assertive about doing exercises etc. They noticed me holding back, and I noticed me holding back.

My fourth year here, I decided that enough was enough. I missed acting in my bones and although I was terrified, I knew I had to do it. So I auditioned and joined an improv team with whom I rehearsed/performed every weekend. Every opportunity I had to work and perform with them, I took. I didn't know whether I was good at the beginning. But all that time in front of an audience was worth it. The performative practice helped immensely. It led to me auditioning for a fantastic little movement based company, learning mime and tumbling, creating a performance of 4.48 Psychosis, performing in an amazing all-female production of Hamlet, and (beginning next week) playing Jane Eyre in a really fantastic production of Polly Teale's adaptation in RI.

How does this relate to the fear and exhilaration of freedom?

The processes of each of these recent acting experiences have been exercises in freedom: whether through open ended creative processes, using building blocks to create and hone my own show on Reintegration, freeing my expressive body, working in a show with minimal hands off direction, and improv--where the rules are made up and the content doesn't matter. Each of these performance processes have been difficult because they required so much of my creative input without a lot of oversight or specific outside adjudication (read teacher/director approval). I need to put in work in the directions that were interesting to me and the only requirement I had was to share it with collaborators and audiences. To try things and build things and share them.

Writing and Acting

So why the dissertation paralysis and the acting exhilaration? Would it be fair of me to point to my isolation as an ABD PhD candidate vs the together-ness of theatrical creation? Probably. B/c that's definitely part of the reality of the process, but the real difference that I've noticed is the practice.

Practice. Consistent practices--crappy rehearsals, great rehearsals, rehearsals, experiments, short ones, long ones, shared ones. Thinking about it, writing about it, even a little bit at a time. The constant practice gave me confidence even when I failed, because I knew what I could do. I required myself, regardless of pre-feelings, to work on it and as a consequence I knew what I could do. I shared it, whether it was ready or not, I was ready to share it because I'd explored the terrain of it through practice. This meant that rather than staring at the void, I was actively bumping my way through, lighting matches until they burned my fingers and rubbing together the sticks I found until I could make a bonfire.

Where does this leave me today?

With the knowledge that my dissertation paralysis perpetuates itself through my lack of practice. Not working on it creates fear of working on it which leads me away from working on it: vicious cycle really.

So let the work begin--Trusting (through fear) that these terrifying fumbles through my academic freedom will eventually transform into exhilarating revels of freedom in the project that I have loved and hated for four years now.

Cheers! Here's to 1 more year to completion!