Things found in my office

The theater building at Los Angeles City College has a lot of history. It often feels like I unearth that history on a daily basis. My office has been many peoples places before it was my place. So much so that every time I am in there, I find something new / old. Each of these things can quickly set off my investigator vibe and I will be pulled into disparate directions of research and awe. This week I decide to share my unearthing so that it felt a bit more purposeful. Of course, just the exercise of curiosity is a fine thing. But instead of blabbing about it to my students, my kiddos, or my husband, I thought I would create a bit of a pocket for it here.

On Monday. my eyes rested on this fairly innocuous book…

The Great American Life Show: 9 Plays from the Avant-Garde Theater

On the surface, it looks like many a book that has been left behind in my office, but it also contained a treasure trove of plays that I had not read, and careers of artists that I had not really spent time thinking on. It was just the beginning of me pulling a thread that spread in many directions. My first “oh yay” moment was that there was a piece by Julian Beck and Judith Malina. I have found myself with quite the collection of The Living Theatre artifacts, but seeing this text in this book was the reason that I opened the book in the first place. The intro to the piece, by John Lahr, starts by writing, Nobody wants to accept The Living Theatre; but nobody can forget them. Wow. I would be perfectly happy with this on my tombstone. The intro is actually so full of insight on theatre, as well as the nuanced world of this very famous company of artists. Just finding this chapter made the book intriguing. But there was so much more in the book!
Who knew Claes Oldenburg, mostly known for his visual art, wrote a play? I didn’t. And really, I appreciate this little book because the play was a “happening” which should always be considered a play anyway. and anyway… my little dive into Oldenberg and the “happening” led me to Patty Mucha. I did not know Patty Mucha. She is all kinds of awesome.

As is mentioned, this is just beginning of the thread. There were many more layers to my discovery. I will finish with the one that is still brewing in my mind. There is a play in the book by Jean-Claude van Itallie called “The Serpent”, and that play was good, but it made me wonder about other works by Itallie which led me to “America Hurrah”, and this play is my new obsession. There is a piece in it with very large puppet heads. For me, that’s pretty much gold.

A scene from “Motel,” the third of three segments in “America Hurrah,” in an undated photo. The script described “Motel” as “a masque for three dolls”; one critic called it “a short but stunning masterpiece.”Credit...Lilian Bolvinkel

David Lynch.

my daughter is a junior in high school. she is the same age that I was when I watched twin peaks with my mom in our den on 33rd street. I would sit next to the tv as close as I could get. my mom sat on the couch. every so often she would say, '“well, this is so interesting”. My daughter texts me today “can we finally watch Twin Peaks: Season 2?”… why had we been putting it off? I wanted her to have longer with Twin Peaks than I did. To cherish the fact that she had something to look forward to a bit longer. When the series ended, I was so bereft. Much like how I feel today. But today is worse.

Every year I ask my students “what does the light look like in your home town. Describe it.” This is my selfish way of entering into a lecture about Lynch and his thoughts about the light in Los Angeles. Today that light was on full display as I tried not to cry at the smog shop while hearing the news about the man that taught me the world is always a poem and always not a poem. I took some pictures of the moment of loss and the moment of hope. You know, the donut and the hole.

here is something i have been working on ...

It is available for purchase August 11. 2022. You can purchase it here or here. and read more about it here.

Things have me thinking...

This quote from this book… keeps haunting me. It’s no surprise that it is a Yoko Ono statement… but yeah.

Choosing careers over families may seem fine, but by choosing career, people are choosing the corporation. Their heart is not anywhere but with the company. The more devoted workers are promoted. They’re really turning into more efficient components.

We have basic human feelings, right? The body. Women have the womb. But to compete we deny those feelings. A woman has to deny what she has, her womb, if she wants to make it. It’s a deception: the Madison Avenue slick woman as the “free” woman.

The book is actually full of complicated thoughts that feel very relevant. At the core of the interview is a conversation about John Lennon and his desire to be the house-husband, and to make bread (a lot of talking about making bread). It feels very contemporary, and yet it was an interview from a year before he was shot. The embracing of the feminine feels very primary in the interview. And I am just sort of letting my mind rest there.

Also. here are some other books that I really love lately:

The intro to this book is particularly insightful.

The artist, Simone Gad, recently passed away. I remember having a studio visit with her that was beyond influential. This video says so much about her.
And the book below is a play that she wrote & performed: Molested at the Movies … there is a lot that is raw and open and of an era.

no words

http://www.evelynpatriciaterry.com

Big Telly...

I have spent a lot of time in the past months trying to keep up with all the on-line theatre… for the most part it has been disappointing. But somehow my colleague stumbled upon this wonderful company, Big Telly, and they really made theatre- theatre that felt live. And ever since I watched their production of “The Tempest”, I have been made happy by the fact that we are engaging in a new artistic dialogue, and it is one that considers audience, and it considers design, and meaning. I proceeded to watch their next show, Operation Elsewhere, and was equally satisfied. They will have a new production coming in June. How are they working so fast, and still getting amazing results? How are they making work that is not about Covid, but it is? There is a lot that is stirring in the world. I am glad to be in touch with so many things… but it is the actual touch that I miss, and somehow, while watching the work from this company, I did not feel like I had to miss anything.

Missing my friends...

My very fabulous friend, Kirsten Hudson, brought us all together to make this little missive. It’s pretty sweet, and just makes me miss her all the more. It also speaks to simplicity. And right now, I am really interested in pursuing simplicity. I have spent a lot of time in the realm of the complicated.

Designing in Isolation

I wish that I could say that I am enjoying the “pandemic theatre aesthetic.” There are so many ways in which I love how theatre rises to the surface and challenges the notions of its own false proscenium. Indeed, much of the work that has come out in the past weeks is doing an amazing job of persevering and creating moments of togetherness and joy. However, for me, it feels empty. This may have something to do with the fact that I am scenic designer. As such, I am curious about the environments that surround the words and the connections (or even disconnections.) I am also a professor. This has meant that I have spent my recent days desperately trying to communicate with my students in a whole new way. I am wanting to quantify what it is we have learned together about producing theatre in this new landscape.

What is this new landscape? Well, it is moments when I am teaching postmodern theatre design while video conferencing and suddenly two pictures of me show up on the screen. It is other moments when I am discussing the lights dimming in a scene and my lights dim in my house (seemingly without anyone controlling them), and it is other moments when I am recording a lecture about Suzan-Lori Parks and the insecurities of language, and my recording won’t hold the audio. It is just silence with me moving my mouth. Or even today, as I discussed the design of “Venus” and I chose an image from The Signature Theatre Company’s production in 2017 for my virtual backdrop, but every time I pulled the image up, I was covering the picture of Venus. My white professorial presence obscuring the presence of this character could not sum up the play much better. These, to me, are designable moments. They point to the importance of designers in theatre, and I feel like this conversation has been neglected (and to be honest it may have been neglected before the pandemic.)

In our on-going search for what I have called “live-ness,” my students and I began to add sound design to Zoom video to see what that would provoke. It was astounding how quickly we were able to get in touch with the theatrical just by watching someone hit go on their Qlab through a shared screed. At once, we were united in our various backdrops, staring as the cues played through - wondering what that washing machine sound would add to the scene. These may seem like very small steps in this ever-quickening world of technological change, but it was enough to have me harken back to thoughts of Robert Edmond Jones and his revelations about bringing the moving picture into the theatre. He was so hopeful that the addition of such a thing would allow our theatres to speak to time and memory in a more profound way. This is akin to how I have been feeling in this new landscape. We just might be able to find a new way to tell a theatrical story, but it has to include the element of design. 

Gertrude Stein spoke about landscapes, and how a play is a landscape and a landscape is a play. If this is so, how can we encourage the landscape to live in our isolated boxes? What can we learn in this moment about the ways that theatre has been failing, and how it can take a step forward and confront the isolation that can ultimately happen when the proscenium arch becomes a barrier rather than an enveloper? I am still experimenting with all the ways that this pandemic can educate me as a designer and professor. I encourage the rest of us to do that as well. Try not to deny your background. It is telling you something, and what it is saying could make a difference in the message that is received and ultimately carried forth out into the world. The world, where hopefully, we will be moving out into again. 

Time is moving fast and slow

It is unbelievable to me the rate at which I am attaining new knowledge in isolation. I am almost out of breath from all of the discoveries I am having as I sit on the sidelines while also keeping score in a very present game of how in the now can you be. I spent years deciphering and fostering my notion of the postmodern, and it felt like a hobby. All of the sudden this hobby has become a tool for the ways in which my emotions can keep track of everything. Maybe it is a crutch. Maybe it is just something that is helping me to find the light in the dark, but whatever it is, it is keeping me awake so that I can support the weight of my students as we venture into new hallways passing each other through squares in our day. I mostly wonder… can I design the set for your square of space? and if the answer is yes, what story would you like me to tell.

Things of comfort in sped up time:

david antin’s the theory and practice of postmodernism (a manifesto)

elif Batman’s the idiot

ana herruzo’s dynamic background for video conferencing (using your I-phone)

etel adman the sun on the tongue

When in doubt...

Yoko Ono. And, yesterday I listened to this podcast about her. It really lifted my day.

https://www.getty.edu/recordingartists/season-1/ono/

Being Uncomfortable

Sometimes I am just too too. My brother would definitely say that I have a knack for being just a little too open and emotional. I have a hard time calibrating and censoring my words and thoughts. This week I am teaching about censorship, pornography, and feminism. It is a real bundle of stuff, and usually I get to be in the room face to face with my students as I walk them through all the theories and movements and artists. But this week that is not the case. This week it will be told through a screen. I am trying to really master my way through it. I just don’t know how it will go. I wonder will it feel more uncomfortable or less. Maybe I am someone who should be edited. (probably)…

The thing is… I get to teach about the moment that I truly understood how important being uncomfortable in a theatre was… and it was uncomfortable because it was right in front of me… flesh to flesh. Live Theatre. karen finley

Tell me about an uncomfortable theatre experience.

Spaces.

Today my daughter redecorated her room. For the past couple of days she has really taken to cleaning and sprucing up her space. It makes total sense. She is trying to contain this large world of her brain, her heart, and her ideas into a small area. It is an area that she realizes is currently safe, and she also realizes that this is the world that has to be her bigger world for awhile. I have always been calmed by doing the same thing… regardless of whether I was stuck in a pandemic. I wonder if she has seen me cope through trying to control my visual surroundings. I wonder if of all the ways of dealing right now, this might be the healthiest. Of course, I wouldn’t mind if she just cried and cried and cried. But until she does… I am going to appreciate the world of beauty that she created…

I wonder about all the rooms that we are inhabiting… what do they look like?

Unfinished Designs

Of all of the things that flow through the mind currently, it seems silly to try to reckon with all the unfinished business … but there are things in the pipeline that just might have to exist in an unfinished form… that is just the state of things. I am wondering about all of your projects that have been put on hold in definitely, and whether we can create a space for those images and thoughts to gather. I have a wall that is waiting to be built but is probably only going to remain an imprecise drawing of my vision. this imprecise drawing also got me to thinking about a design I did many many years ago for a show by Tennessee Williams, “Masks Outrageous”. The play was unfinished when Williams died, but many people were eager to take up the gauntlet and try to get it its premiere. One of the first producers behind this idea came to me. and asked for a design. I (with my husband) remember designing a really elaborate and exciting set… but the show never went forward. Eventually, however, there was a production of it. The unfinished got finished… just without my design. I still have those designs on some old hard drive somewhere that I am hoping to unearth… Until then, send me your unfinished projects and maybe we can collectively move them into something else that is not exactly tangible but … collaborative.

Going on-line

Tomorrow I begin teaching on-line. I have no idea what this world will look like or feel like. I am so used to working in a room with immediate faces of recognition or disdain. Forging ahead… And with that in mind, I have to think of how to teach in a more enveloping way- I also have to do that with two kids who are out of school. The stage is therefore set. I will be conferencing into a world with virtual students while behind me are two kids who are touchable but I certainly hope they will remain on silent mode as I try to communicate with the world through a screen. I am truly teaching postmodern theatre in an insanely Wooster-Group(y) way. It does remind me of the hamlet that they did awhile back…

here is a link to their website.

http://thewoostergroup.org/blog/

I also wonder if you might want to post any postmodern theatre tips while you are at it… what does postmodern design look like to you?

I am thinking of creating a set based on this image made by my son. You can see the process and the product.

live theatre right now?

the past few days have been stirring the mind, the heart, and the cultural anxiety. I have always rested on the belief that I chose my career based on the knowledge that I should be doing it, and I should be doing it in front of live bodies that travel through a space reckoning with the concepts of time, language, and audience. the last few days have made me question how I do everything. including teaching and theatre. what does it matter, really? that is a my initial thought. it is all inconsequential. but then I think on my students and am empowered to step out of this thought. I want to raise voicees and visions to be heard as a singular body. I believe in that too deeply to not do what I do. so I rise early. against the desire to sleep it out, and I tell myself that this photo I took of the tire that has been sitting for too long in the lake bed means something. and I tell myself if I could I would do a performance next to it- or even ask someone else to. alone by themselves. with words I may or may not have written. it is still my “go-to”. how to create something amid destruction? that is my chosen career. and I will do it.

So today. Find a place of abandonment and create a new story.