I’m realizing how much my musical and theatrical training influence one another. I am flattered as hell to say, Nancy called my performance on Tuesday, “master level clowning.” It was a vocal improv piece with random objects passed along to me from Tony labeled “Onward to Heredom.” All the musical work I have done with phrasing, repetition, timing, and delivery has directly fed into my theatrical practice. I’ve devoted many hours to working with time, which is essentially the deepest element of performance art. That's why it was called "approach the sacred," the sacred being this moment. It takes place, then it is over.
The most important part about this is what it says about noticing. Awakened awareness is at the heart of performance art. Sensitivity is the heart of moving through time with presence and intuition. Anyone has access to these centering and grounding practices from varying angles.
Monday August 29th
Title: “A SONG FOR MARGRIT feat. Batya Macadam Somer”
Instructions: pdf Batya interpreted this score with the street as a whole being the audience.
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Tuesday August 30th
Title: “approach the sacred”
Instructions: Open Tony's Altoid box of items labeled "Onward to Heredom." Vocally improvise with each item in any interactive way.
Why? Tony gave me this box and said, "Take this. Use this, then pass it onto someone else." the sacred being this moment in time. Performance art and experiencing a single object at a time being the pricelessness of focused presence.
Rehearsal discoveries: n/a
Performance write up: As mentioned above, Nancy found this performance high level clowning, and I love the concept of being a musical clown. There was a moment with the die where a fun ear training game came out. Lucy's favorite part was the pencil. I'm glad clowns came to this one. :) Unfortunately, I forgot to set the camera on wide view, and much of the play with the objects was not captured because I wanted to place myself without obstruction of the white center pole in the middle of the sliding glass doors.
An artist acquaintance, who I admire for their authenticity of expression named Kyler, passed through later in the day, and destiny chose him as the new keeper of the altoid box. "Onward to Heredom." In case you weren't thinking it, Onward to Heredom is a manifesto for this sacred moment.
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Wednesday Aug 31
Title: “to be in a soup”
Instructions: Caterpillar costume. Tape lettuce to ceiling. Eat and wrap self in fitted sheet that was on stage. Grand reveal butterfly.
Why? Was hanging out with some friends and describing the insanity of chrysalises and how they are like being in a soup of oneself. For the sake of meditation on transformation and the act of changing into something new.
Rehearsal discoveries: I pretty much just kept hyping myself up. Put on a funny caterpillar voice as character work to describe my vibe and movements. Hot glued the butterfly wings, forgot the lettuce I was going to bring, and put some paper leaves hanging from the ceiling instead. Discovered the folding technique for the paper leaves, and these are the great moments of joyous “aha!”
Performance write up: There was a lot of intuitive improv, and I’m glad I did some character work ahead of time. You can hear me in the video hyping myself up behind the curtain before I did the big butterfly reveal. I had a fun time, and it definitely felt awkwardly funny. Munching on paper leaves and spitting them out was so ridiculous. I wasnt sure if the blue tape was coming down with the leaves or not, and this hesitance played a large role in how I decided to pull the leaves down. I hope it still appeared reasonably caterpillar-like. Either way, the butt wiggles were an important element to me as a caterpillar embodiment practitioner. Had an audience of two kind folk who attend the shows regularly. It’s wonderful to be part of the force that brings people to a point in space and time. I really appreciate how one of them, Larry, was asking me about my experience getting into performance art. I can’t believe how much divine intervention shapes us.
Something Lia/leah/lea said was how this performance was so much more literal than others. I said to her the conceptual relationship exists between the performance and its title. Who’dathunk “to be in a soup” would be about caterpillars metamorphosing?
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View on Youtube------> https://youtu.be/_6-D72xlVMI
Thursday September 1
Title: “It’s on or it’s honor”
Instructions: "On" is the first character, a sassy, flirtatious, night-life loving woman with a sun hat. She flirts, caresses her body, and sits down to smoke an imaginary cigarette. "Honor" is the second character, an elitist gym rat with a whip. He does burpees, stands strong, and uses his whip to thrash at anything less than perfection. Backstage crew serves to introduce them by drawing an arrow from on to honor. The backing tracks are made of letter shapes on guitar. "On" is an "o." "Honor" is an "H."
Why: Went to my friend Shelbi's birthday party, and a man told the most hilarious, drunken tale of a night out including moments at a bar with a couple, a gas station with a homeless man, and a desert trailer with a human skull. The echoing question of excitement was posed tenfold, "Is it on?"
Rehearsal discoveries: Imagining the costume scenario, decided to put the "On" and "Honor" costumes over the backstage crew. This is the first time I would be changing, so I set the clothing out in the most organized way possible. I didn't have time to make a "switch" cardboard prop like I had initially wanted, so I just used the white board to draw On and honor.
Performance write up: I got surprisingly nervous when I saw everyone outside waiting for me to start. These things strike you. I was nervous because the concept was so rushed. I was back and forth about what I should do the entire day before, and the realization for these instructions didn't fully come until the morning. I had concepts, but I adapted them because of the time crunch. I felt more awkward being sexy woman than the tough man character. I put the sexy woman character on more in real life. It's revealing to simply become it as a performance on a stage rather than amongst $15 cocktails and lipstick in public.
Definitely an interesting piece to analyze. Especially having messed up and worn the honor shirt out when I meant to take it off and become the backstage crew. This is very interesting if it were to be read as intentional with the most obvious interpretation being that the most honorable have faults. Another interpretation could be that these are all part of the same person. I, being a queer woman, experience this as a dialogue of my own psychology and/or relationship dynamics with men and women. We all have personal relationships with the push and pull of decadence and discipline. We also have a person turning the switch on and off.
I completely improvised the concept at the end to write "off" because I didn't have an ending written for myself. It seemed like it needed some way of ending, and this was the one that came to mind.
I selected the three repeated actions for each character pretty quickly and without too much thought. I've always been into the idea of utilizing more repetition based performance in motion reminiscent of Gurdjieff/the OA. There is symbolism in cigarettes and decay. The stereotype of applauding the athlete, and the whip as the brutality of shame. Shame is good for the prevention of destruction, so.... :P
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Friday September 2
Title: “Piano Event"
Feat. Sean Francis Conway
Sean and I moved the piano. Sean described the piano and our dialogue surrounding it. Sean told the story of a dream where he witnessed someone play a horn, but unlike any instrument of this world, the horn produced multitudes of overtones. He then played the piano to produce a ballpark concept of what he heard in his dream. In case you're wondering, the go pro battery went from 23% to 7% in 2 min, so I changed over to Natasha's iphone.
View on Youtube ------> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM5dw2YLqpc