Let’s think about what we learned and what we want to keep with us for the rest of the semester.
So answer the following. Be specific and descriptive, but you don’t have to write a long essay. Four paragraphs (one for each question) that gets to the heart of your assessment (and describes it well enough so I can understand exactly how you feel) is fine. We’ll also use these as a jumping off point on Tuesday to discuss our experiences this past week and what we hope to experience in the future.
1.) Which parts of our Saturday show – function, structure, point-of-view, way it communicated with audiences, what it did to the audience, conventions, etc. – would you most like to see reflected in our cabaret work in late March/April? Let’s identify those elements so that we can keep reminding ourselves of what we found valuable.
2.) What did you learn about your own work that you’d like to keep with you for the rest of the semester? In other words, what part of the process, attitude, point-of-view, job responsibilities, fearlessness, etc. do you want to continue to cultivate as we move into creating five new works in late March/April?
3.) What did we learn about our ensemble (or “tribe” as Tim put it) that we should keep with us for the rest of the semester? In other words, what made it an effective group; what were you proud of in yourself and others?
4) Finally, what should I tell Rock if he asks me about the value of bringing Tim in to work with the class? (Both good and bad are welcome.) What will you take away from it – including things that won’t show up directly in our cabaret work in March/April?
As usual, graded on thought, specificity, completeness of your description.
Answers:
Dave Winnyk
Tim Miller Response
1. The aspects of Body Maps that I would like to put into our cabarets are: the function, structure, and audience participation. To me, the function of Body Maps was to challenge the ideas of the audience with our own opinions and what we believe needs to be challenged in the world. As far as structure, I really enjoyed the way the pieces flowed into one another because it really just kept hitting and hitting and driving home the point; the audience didn’t really have time to put a thought to the piece before the next one was hitting. This kept them from judging the individual pieces they were force to see the piece as a whole performance. I also enjoyed walking the audience in and getting personal with them. I definitely want that same level of community and intimacy with the audience that we felt during Body Maps.
2. The parts of my performance I’d like to keep are the depth, passion and self-discovery behind the issues; the process of stretching out beyond my comfort zone into those charged spaces. I want to keep stretching myself as a performer and discovery new things about myself as an artist as we venture into our month of cabarets. As Glen would say before performances of Radium Girls: “find one or two things in each act that you can make better or at least a little different to add different shades to your character”, I want to try and better or add different shades to myself as an artist to the cabaret. I want to bring my growth and self-discovery to the stage because I want the audience to grow through the performances so I think that if I bring myself growing to the stage the audience will have a better connection.
3. I finally feel connected to the group. Body Maps really got our issues out there and we really had some collectivity as far as our ideas about what we want our targets to be. I feel there is a new intimacy in the group and we really feel connected. Like soldiers who have gone through their first battle together and made it out alive, we have Body Maps and it is the common thread that now runs through us. I think this will help us with cabaret because I think we will have a lot more passion and drive to help each other succeed and get into the feeling of working with each other on stage.
4. Tell Rock that Tim brought life into the class and not only showed us what a big change one person’s art can have to spur on social change but gave us the ability to experience it. He gave us that hope and passion that one, two, or many people shouting their stories from a stage has social and political gravity. He also gave me, as a theatre major, a different view on preparation and methods of performance. He also gave me inspiration for a possible senior project idea. My only critique about Tim is that he didn’t stay long enough and I would have liked to have more out of classroom time to just listen to his experiences and share stories with him (maybe if everyone in the class and he got together for dinner to just discuss and chill that would be pretty cool.)
Ho Hope you enjoy.
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