What I learned from Tim last week is...

Dave again. =)

Ed gave us an assignment to reflect on our experience with Tim. I just thought I'd share my responses to the questions on here so maybe you could grasp some idea of how amazing working with Tim was for me.

Questions:

Tim Miller response

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.

Body Maps

Yesterday night, a spectacular performance happened in OWU's studio theatre space. Body Maps, a wonderfully passionate performance piece was allowed (for the first and most likely only time) to breath and exist on a stage in front of an audience The power and collective soul in the studio during the performance was unbelievable. The audience was so engaged in what was happening onstage that I couldn't imagine doing with a different audience; it was so (to quote from EDT) "in the moment." It would've been a completely different show with a different audience.

Working alongside Tim has been a wonderful experience and I really hope I get the chance to work with him again.

Cough it up, America!

Don't make me perform a tracheotomy!

Hi it's Dave again. I'm starting to wonder if I gave out the wrong password to the rest of the group cause it seems as though I'm the only one writing here lol.

Tim Miller performed his wonderfully energetic and politically charged passionate work "Lay of the Land" yesterday here at OWU. Words cannot describe how much I was affected by his performance or the amount of Tim's spit that the audience got covered in (boy, can that man enunciate!) while he declared his sentiments about Prop Hate, John McCain, the Frequent Homo point system (much similar to Frequent Flier miles), and, most importantly, the plight of the American Homosexual.

His passion for performance is just amazing. We were so blessed to get the chance to work with Tim.

An Orgasmic Tidal Wave

Hi. It's Dave.

Today was the first workshop with Tim Miller and it. was. AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To give those who were not there a little glimpse of how awesome the workshops were, they began with move like you're walking on broken glass while faking an orgasm and ended with a moving presentation of everyone telling the story of one of their body parts; mine was my legs.

Tim's view on performance and artists is so unique. He sees everything through stories people tell and how everyone has their own story and it is POWERFUL! Everyone can find something about themselves and then "Do shit for a period of time." The depth that asks us to explore these body stories is incredibly moving.

Throughout the workshop, Tim kept mentioning a term "charged spaces" to describe the energy that is felt in a performance. I really like this term for the energy of theatre because when there is a collection of performers in any space it gains a certain energy that vibrates within the people and even the space itself. I really felt this tonight working with Tim and on other performances I have worked on in theatre. The feeling of a group of people who have imaginations that they have, as Jonathan Larson said, "the need to express to communicate." This is what I think "charged spaces" means.

I cannot wait for more workshops with Tim!

A Facebook Post That Gave Me Passion.

Hi everyone, it's Dave.

First off I'd just like to say you should join the group "I Constantly Thank God for Making Me GLBTIQA" cause it's a good group.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7881832663&ref=nf

Okay, now for the reason for this post. Originally the group was lacking the "I" in the title so I was talking with the founder because he is a high school friend and I suggested that he should add the I to title to include everyone in the fight for equal rights. He did it and everything was good until this post came up:

"Intersex?! What a load of BS! Questioning?! Figure it out or say Bisexual. That "Q" does not exist. This is ridiculous! Transexual isn't even related to the GLB issue! God i'm so sick of people tacking that onto our movement and our group! Yes they need representation and deserve rights and respect, but they are completely unrelated!!!!!!

[In response to another post, the same person wrote]

Well all five intersex people on the planet can fall into T if they want a group title, especially considering that most of them don't want people to know. When that happens, it's a genetic mutation. There are only two sexes. You don't get a third option. You are what you are. Nature makes two genders. If a person has both, they are still one gender, just a genetic mutation. They are of course still people and deserve equal protection, respect, and dignity, but sexuality of all three types occur naturally in nature (same sex oriented, opposite sex oriented, and both sex oriented)."

Now I'm very new to GLBTIQA issues (I grew up in a very sheltered environment and my mom is a complete right wing by the bible catholic) but this really pissed me off. How ignorant can a person be to say that transexuals and homosexuals are exclusive in the fight for equal rights and then to say that intersex is a super rare genetic mutation when really it happens to approximately 1 in 2,000 people (152,029 intersexed people in the US)?

After being flustered and pissed about this and starting to write a response comment to him, I started thinking about our cabaret. Situations like this are why we are doing this cabaret. I could post a really well written response to the author and maybe it will change his mind, maybe it won't; maybe it will get him thinking or maybe he'll just blow it off. I can't tell you what effect my comment will have on him; however, I took a stand. I took a stand for something I believe in and this is why we have our cabaret. We are taking a stand for what we believe in. We're not just standing by and saying this or that is unfair or unjust; We are making a clear stance and saying that the unfair thing is wrong and it needs to change. Whether we get people to change their minds, start thinking, or get them to do nothing at all but come see our show; what we do is still a noble effort because we are putting our viewpoints out into the public sphere and attempting to create a dialogue about what is going on in the world and if it is right or wrong. In this way we are continuing Democracy.

I hope everyone is as stoked for the cabarets as I am. =)

Hello.

Hi,

We are a group of students at Ohio Wesleyan University. For the past few weeks we have been studying the history of cabaret theatre and how it has been used to promote social and political change. In a few weeks we will be performing our own cabarets on the OWU campus every Monday night starting March 29th 2010 until the conclusion of the school year.

Here is where the class will be posting different things that have struck us as interesting in and outside of class, random thoughts, and other things.

Hopefully you enjoy! =)

-Dave

"An unjust law is no law at all."