Maestro Show Pictures

Impro Show

We had our show! My first ever acting improvisation show! And there were PEOPLE there! And it went really well! And in the very last scene I started hyperventilating and couldn't calm my heart rate down until 20 minutes later!

12 of us from the class ended up being able to make it to the show. Our teacher, Tom, told us that since only 12 tickets had been pre-ordered he expected about 25 people and due do the small audience size and relatively small size of our class he'd decided to do the show without an interval. This was definitely the right decision because there wasn't an unnecessary break in the energy in the middle, but we did a much more kick ass job pulling people into the show than Tom was expecting - 50 people showed up to be our audience.

The performance was set up as a "Maestro Show" which means that ostensibly it is a competition. Really it's just a good way of having a bunch of improvisers on stage together with some sort of structure. We all got little vests with numbers on them (1-12) and our two directors (our teachers Claire and Tom) would pick numbers from a hat, call those people on to the stage, and give them a scene/scenario/or game. At the end of the scene/scenario/game then the audience would be asked if that was worth 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 points and everyone in the scene would get as many points as the audience clapped for. (It's in your favour to have your friends in the audience...boosts your applause!) As the show progressed people with lower scores got dropped from the running until there were only two improvisers left - then there was an elimination round and one was crowned MAESTRO! And they won £5, that's the end. Go home.

Make sense?

I got called up for four scenes- I ended up in six because other people kept having scenes where they needed a token lady to show up and I kept being the only female in an aisle seat. (also? I'm way super volunteery) (Yes, that's a word.)

Everyone did a really great job, it was a lot of fun, and we're going to be EVEN better next time. That being said, because this is MY blog and it's all about ME- here's what I did:

The first scene I was in was a parent teacher conference. The set up is designed to have both a battle over status and also as much leaping and justifying as you can shovel in. We kind of lost the plot in the middle but I gather that I, as the head teacher, had called the parents in to talk about their son's eating habits because as a rule we don't prefer the children to eat the furniture and then they were talking about their son like he was a horse and then he had been eating all of the sports equipment and was I sure the school was feeding him adequately and shouldn't that be their responsibility? And MAN that got absurd and confusing quickly. In spite of that we got 5 points! (or 4, I don't actually remember) Woo!

Next I had gibberish scene with Anne Marie. (She's wonderful and Irish.) In gibberish scenes you switch between gibberish and English whenever the directors ding their bell. It's meant to be as fluid as possible going from one to the other in the middle of sentences or even halfway through a word and is excellent for upping the emotional content of a scene because when you're speaking gibberish the only thing you really have to work with is strong emotional and physical states- not so much with the content. Anne Marie had to fire me. As it transpired we worked at a zoo and I had opened the lion enclosure door because I felt that they needed to be free, but 18 people had been killed in the ensuing chaos and really? what choice did she have? Anne Marie was brilliant in closing the scene using the same phrasing I had used about freeing the lions to send me out of the office. 5 points again.

About half the group had been culled at this point and Chris and I got called up to do the final scene of a long running television soap opera in which as many reversals and big reveals as possible happen in the final 60 seconds. This was like taking candy from a baby (a sleeping baby who doesn't know they have any candy) since really all we had to do was cliche after cliche after cliche. I was his mother, I was dying of cancer, he was actually his evil twin, my brain was exploding, I wasn't dying of cancer, blah blah blah and then- (man this would have been cool if we'd actually managed to do it in unison) it was all a dream. 5 points.



You might notice at this point that I've got quite a lot of points.



Anne Marie and I were the final two standing and so as a tie breaker were given the task of filling 60 seconds with neurosis. I went first and freaked out about everyone watching me (inside I was like "what on EARTH am I supposed to be talking about?" First time I'd ever done anything like that.) and then started hyperventilating. This was in character, mind you, I was supposed to be being neurotic; but at that point in the show? Blinded by the spot light? Yeah, important thing to remember: Don't Pretend To Hyperventilate- you'll start doing it for real.

Anne Marie was confused at the beginning of her minute because she had thought she was doing a different word which played in *perfectly* to being neurotic because she kept asking for reassurance that what she was doing was indeed what she was supposed to be doing. It was great fun and Anne Marie won and I'm totally already signed up for the next course in September.

Improv Class! Characters

Today my favourite of the teachers we've had so far taught and it was an abnormally small group, only twelve of us, so there was a lot of time to try things and really get into things- which is always a treat.

We played a game called "hot seat" where you come into the space as a character and then everyone else gets to ask you whatever questions they want. A good way of doing this for anyone, but especially as beginners, is to base your character on someone that you know. Because there was no impetus to work on setting a scene or develop a plot or anything like that, it meant that all of your energy as an improviser could go directly to fleshing out who your character was.

It was riveting.

The bar was set frighteningly high by the first few people to go- the characters were heartbreaking and breathtaking, fully fleshed out and interesting. Because we weren't sharing *our* stories but instead our *character's* stories it meant that everyone felt very free to hand out secrets, to be open, revelatory, and honest. It was incredibly intimate; it was an honour to be entrusted with these characters' stories. At the break we were actually hugging each other- it had been such an intense experience.

I chose a friend of mine and was shaking before my turn. "I don't know how she's going to answer these questions!" I thought, certain that I wouldn't be able to give as authentic (it wasn't really a performance... an experience?) as everyone else had. And then there she was. Or someone rather like her in any case. I had about 12 minutes of answering questions and she didn't even pause. Best of all, she was internally consistent and her motivations were clear with later statements making references to earlier statements and everything making sense. One of my classmates later said that he got so angry with her. Not me, her: such strong opinions about everything. She really rubbed him the wrong way.

Man, that was exciting.

Improv Class!

I've signed myself up for an 8 week acting improvisation class! It is the follow on from the two weekends that I've done and the first class was last night. There are about 15 of us and each class is three hours long. I gather that a number of different people from The Spontaneity Shop will be teaching us. Last night we had Claire, a lovely woman from Chicago. (There were 3 American women in the group, we had some USA love.)

Because it is level 2, it means that the group has self selected to be even more awesome. Level 2 is one that you can just hang out in for as long as you want, continuing to work on skills and playing and practising. It's a class but it's also a lab, if that makes sense. I think about 50% of the group has already done level 2 at least once before. Of the two weekends that I did only three of us managed to persevere this far. You do level 1 if you're curious or want to work on breaking out of your shell or whatever. You do level 2 if you secretly love this stuff. (Oh wait. Is that just my reason? Not so secret now.)

At one point I was telling someone about the improv choir that I did this weekend, and I think was also drawing parallels between what we were doing and contact improvisation. They asked if I had had an abnormally structured childhood...

ps. Yoga brag: I hung out in a head stand today. Just 'cause, you know, I can. Whee!

Improvisation Choir

Ella’s mum Jilly is running an improvisation choir in London and they had their second rehearsal/meet up on Sunday so I went along. It’s been a while since I’ve done free improv with people and it was a lot of fun to do it again. Especially since I figured out how to belt in my lesson with Jilly on Wednesday so I can get LOUD now. Whee!

There were about 8 of us there, and I gather that there was only about a 50% overlap between this week and last time so the full group is a bit bigger than that. We spent the beginning playing with a lot of different sorts of sounds starting with things like growling and then moving that into pitched sound while keeping the same level of energy and tone colour. We did one free improvisation and discussed it afterwards, noticing that we felt like we wanted to move more. So that was the next aspect we added to it- each sound had to be associated with a movement. We then continued to do improvisations and change the parameters a bit each time to see what came out.

Once we relaxed into it and started playing with what we were doing it was really fun. One woman, a puppeteer, and I ended up trading places a bunch and the whole group was doing a great job of listening and joining in with what was being offered. At one point we were clearly in a jungle with a number of monkeys, some birds, and wind blowing through trees. At another point one woman crouched down into the middle of the circle and started intensely speaking the words “Once upon a time” and the group immediately hushed and created this spooky, magical soundscape.

The fun thing about voices is that there is nothing between you and the sound- so things can change instantly and you don’t need to worry about the right pitch or technique or anything like that. Voices are available and just there in a way that instruments are not necessarily.

People were being both bold and generous with their offerings to the group and it was a pleasure to work with them. Four of us went out for drinks and a snack after the rehearsal and chatted about the experience and what we were looking for/what Jilly was looking for out of the group. It was interesting and the sort of conversation that I haven’t had in a while.

Last week Meredith and I were discussing what it had been like to create my final project from last year and what we thought went well and how we would do things differently now. Again- I hadn’t talked like that in a long time, and it was nice. I miss talking analytically about artistic processes.

I need to make something soon...

LCDS: the second year

So the thing about walking through the wind tunnels that are the streets in the City, is that when you're carrying a bass it is kind of like para sailing.



That is neither here nor there- the London Contemporary Dance School project has begun again! I'm excited for this year, some of my favorite musicians from past projects (last year's LCDS and Globetown) are back again for this project and we're already having fun.



Interestingly, there is only one female choreographer, last year I think they were all female. The composers and choreographers have been having their initial meetings and showings of their work all this week. This afternoon they're deciding what the pairings will be for the collaboration. I'm happy to find that there is much more talk this year about how to use the instrumentalists in the dance space which would make us more visually integral to the performance. Last year there was only one piece that didn't involve the whole band playing in the back like it was a pit orchestra.



We warmed up together and moved about the space as an entire group to get the session started. Then the instrumentalists gradually picked up their instruments and began improvising. I moved diagonally across the room playing pizzicato on the bass (a not very subtle attempt to get the day started off with a "musicians can be dancers too" feeling) and then realized that what the music really called for at that moment was arco which meant that I had to walk all the way around the room back to the piano in order to get my bow. This I actually tried to do subtly, which didn't work as a couple of the dancers came and walked with me. So: success for the first thing I was trying to do!



We broke into three groups and were given half an hour to make a piece based on "boundaries" and the breaking of said boundaries. Since I had the largest instrument our group got to stay in the room we would be performing in. (The bass is actually fairly portable, but I'm not arguing.) We discussed briefly how many ways we could set up barriers to break such as having the audience sitting in a semi-circle and walking through them. There was a closet off to the side of the room that I really wanted to see if we could use since it was (I'm going to use the word indigenous even though that is sort of out of place, you know what I'm getting at though, right?) indigenous to the room and making things specifically for specific spaces is always fun to do.



Then the composer, Aaron asked me if I could play while the bass was in the air...so we tried that out and decided that it would be easiest if we just used open strings, but we wanted a different feeling than Tonic Dominant Tonic Dominant over and over again so we de tuned my A string so that we had a tri tone double stop in the middle which meant that when we made an ostinato there was this lovely, gritty, funereal air to it.



So. Closet, semi circle audience, hoisted up bass, ostinato.



We started in the closet with the door closed and me playing. This was very quiet through the door which was brilliant because it meant that the door squeaking open was audible. Then Louis (the choreographer) started processing out while I continued playing and Aaron began lifting up the bass, still behind the, now open, closet door so that the audience still couldn't really see what was happening. Then we began processing across the room, causing the audience to scramble out of the way when it became clear that we were headed straight for them. (The bass was at this point nearly parallel to the floor, my right shoulder got very tired from bowing at that angle- directly out in front of me) We walked through the rest of the room and then out into the hallway where we continued for another 10 seconds or so.



Barriers broken: physical barrier of the audience, barrier of the various doors, using a dancer as something other than a dancer, preconception of how the bass could be played, and if we're looking at the dramatic feeling of the piece- the barrier between life and death. So deep. Aren't we cool?



There was more, but I have errands to run so that is all you get for now.

Aus den Sieben Tagen

I went to a concert yesterday at Wilton's Music Hall which is this hidden, derelict hall right behind a primary school I did a workshop at. I hadn't realized it was still a usable building, but it is awfully pretty from the outside so I had taken a picture of it during the workshop. I was a bit surprised when I found the hall and realized that that was where the concert was. An organization called Cut and Splice (maybe it was a festival? Not sure) decided to perform all of the movements from Stockhausen's Aus den Sieben Tagen over the course of two days in that hall.


Do you know anything about Stockhausen? He died last year and is one of the most important figures in 20th/21st century Western Art music. My first encounters with his music happened at Peabody in my Music History IV course. We learned about his string quartet that includes four helicopters, which is pretty nuts.

As part of the History IV we could get extra credit for doing a performance of a 20th century piece in class. My friend Laura found the score for Aus den Sieben Tagen and decided that I should be part of the group that performed pieces from it. This was right up my alley as a couple of the pieces demand that you not practice or rehearse ahead of time- extra credit for making stuff up on the spot? You betcha! So that was my first encounter with Stockhausen and specifically playing Stockhausen.

The score is not particularly score like. There are no written notes, it is all text based and written with words. The instructions include things like- vibrate at the rhythm of your body. Vibrate at the rhythm of enlightenment. Vibrate at the rhythm of the universe. Alternate between them as quickly as you can. Imagine you have infinite time. So it's a little bit weird, and more than a little bit mystical. Stockhausen claimed that this music was not improvised, but rather intuited. In retrospect, performing a few movements from this work was actually my first experience with group improvisation (intuition. Whatever.) Which is pretty darn cool.

There is one movement in particular that has stuck with me since my first reading of the score and that is Gold Dust. In gold dust the ensemble has to be isolated in individual rooms for four days with the instructions to sleep as little as possible, eat nothing, drink as little as possible, and think as little as possible. The performance is meant to happen immediately after the ensemble emerge from their rooms. For obvious reasons this was not one of the movements that we performed for extra credit. However, since Cut & Splice were doing a complete performance they needed some people willing to perform it- which is where recently graduated composers come in handy...

I don't remember their names, but the two people who performed Gold Dust (on piano and guitar) are good friend's of Ella's. She had been worried about them for the entire four days they had been in isolation and so was on the edge of her seat when they arrived on stage.

I've never seen more a more bewildered performance or a sparser one. I think maybe only 12 notes were played over the course of five minutes. It was pretty extraordinary actually- because they were so present with what they were doing, and at the same time seemed to be almost wholly unaware of the audience. There was so much space but there was also so much happening in terms of their intensity in that space. When the lights came on again at the end of 5 minutes the pianist lifted his head (the first time either of them had looked up) and just looked so confused. They had to be helped off the stage. I saw them at the intermission and they seemed fine by that point though- so don't get too concerned on their behalfs. (behalves?)

The rest of the performance consisted of quite a lot of extended techniques and washes of mechanical sound. I had a headache after one movement performed by four bass clarinets and a tuba because it had been so high pitched and loud (think about that one for a second.) I think ultimately it was a very *interesting* performance, but not necessarily an enjoyable one. That being said I would certainly be up for seeing another ensemble's version.

I've been wondering if extended techniques are the fashionable vocabulary with which to realize these pieces. Because the thing is that I don't think the score really suggests extended techniques, though it does seem that straight forward jamming wouldn't really get to the heart of the matter either. Oh! You know what would be kind of a cool thing to try? Making a sample version where you find pieces that to you seem like they sound they vibrate at the rhythm of enlightenment or whatever and then stringing all of those together. I wonder what that would sound like...

"Fridays are Tough" or "Yay for Lunch!"

This morning was a struggle to get out of bed. I don't know if you've noticed this, but I've been quite busy recently and tired to the point of titling posts "tired." Also, I had lost my notebook, which was a great concern as it is full of important information, yet doesn't have my name on it. So I was worried, and tired, and *maybe* a bit cranky.

Then our tutor didn't show up. Which was terrible because it was supposed to be Pete Churchill who in addition to being one of the most amazing musicians in the world to work with, is also leaving the school after this term- so we were all really eager for his lesson. Alas, we suspect that he was never told that he had a lesson with us.

So this morning was crap. We sat like lumps in a windowless room and discussed an in house performance that we are going to do on Dec. 13th. I volunteered to play Poucha Dass because it is a great piece, and it will force me to actually practice (which is a good thing indeed.)

We thought that since we are supposed to be doing a performance, we might as well write something to perform rather than getting on stage and sitting like lumps the way we were doing. Nick and Jorge started up some samba rhythms and we practiced improvising over the chords that Nick was playing.

Man-oh-man was I not feeling it. Eventually I gave up and put the bass down and started doing some samba based body percussion with Jorge, but then my chest got all painful where I was slapping it so I tried singing along Kate and Caroline's little melody and yeah, still wasn't feeling it. Also, I was really worried about my notebook.

Lunch was a welcome, welcome break- since we had no tutor and were being good productive students anyway, we decided to take an hour and a half, which was perfect. (Okay, by the time we got back to work it was like two hours, but still.) A break and food and a bunch of emailing had made me feel much better so after lunch I bounded in to the room and played some riffs from Poucha Dass which spontaneously spouted a marvelous free improvisation that lasted over half an hour. It was totally clicking and grooving along and there is nothing better than that.

Emma had done some really neat electronics stuff during the free improv so we decided to record each of us to do some extended techniques on our instruments for her to sample. It was handy to hear what everyone else was coming up with too- since we had absolutely no guidance nor supervision we went a little nuts: playing the oboe into the tuba? Why not, it might sound cool! (It did, it was also LOUD)

When it was my turn I was thinking about doing some tapping on the side of the bass, but since we had a real live percussionist in the room I made Jorge come over and use the bass as a drum, and that sounded great so I tried to do a bass line at the same time.

I think we're on to something here. Kate got up and started dancing and that then was the starting point of our next free improvisation. (Um, the bass/drum- not the dancing. Though now that I think of it we could use her dancing....) Jorge and I need to work a bit more on it because as it is the bass is moving a bit too much for me to be able to be terribly in tune or accurate about what I'm doing- but I think with a little practice it could end up being kind of awesome. We could get Tara or Heather to do something with the bow as well...

So now we're all excited about our ideas for the Dec. 13 piece and hopefully we'll be able to convince Nathan to let us work on them and flesh them out into an actual structure during our creative ensemble classes on Thursdays.

I've been researching how to put audio files on to the blog, so if this all works out- I'll put the performance up online...nice, huh?

Tuesday lessons

I'm just on a blogwriting roll today, aren't I? For some reason spellcheck is refusing to work and I really don't feel like combing this to find typos, so please forgive them for now? Thanks.

Tuesday was our first lecture type class, which was a welcome change for me. I really enjoy the experiential practical things that we have been doing, but it was also so nice to be sitting there taking notes, reading things in academic jargon, and then debating what they really meant. Okay, so I was sitting on the floor with my legs crossed and at one point we spent a lot of time drawing cakes, but still- it was more academic than anything else we have done to this point.

The seminar was taught by Jan Hendrickse www.janhendrickse.com who conducted most of it with a handy dandy powerpoint presentation. He started out with three questions: what is creativity? what is music? and what is a workshop? I found this mildly obnoxious because they are the sort of questions that you can't actually answer and if you do give a definitive answer someone will come up with an example that expands the definition just to be contrary, and you know, all inclusive.

The rest of the presentation was much more fun. He talked about some of his research in to types of rolls that workshop leaders use. They were teacher, which is very didactic - here is a song, you learn it; facilitator, here is a beginning riff I want you to do a very specific task with it (harmonize, compose a counter melody, etc.) and bring it back to the group; and participant where the leader is just part of the group and allows the group to create in a democratic way.

Andreas thought that was all pretty self evident, but it was really helpful for me to have those roles verbalized. Now that they've been indentified I can pay attention to when our tutors (or the rest of us) are using the various roles.

Jan then moved on to a bunch of different theories on the origin of creativity as well as research done on the characteristics of creative people. The theories on origins that I thought were interesting/relevant enough to actually write down were transaction theory which holds that creativity is a natural human state and that the real question should be 'what is the origin of noncreativity?' and convergent/divergent thinking model, which actually I now notice I didn't write enough down to know what I meant by that.

Cake time! He gave us a task (we're big on tasks here in the leadership department): We had a cake and 3 cuts we could make to get 8 equal pieces. I love questions/exercises like that so I was totally thrilled and figured out an answer within 30 seconds and then snottily blurted out that I had done so.

After a couple of minutes Jan asked us not what answers we had come up with, but rather how we felt about it. I was the only one to have totally positive reactions which included "whee!" and "I won!" Oh, except that Jo had really enjoyed drawing circles.

The rest of the reactions were more along the lines of feeling pressure, like they wanted to cheat, feeling stupid, competitive, annoyed, or that they hated questions like this.

So then I felt embarrassed because I *love* those questions and also have done enough to know that you have to think a little differently so I immediately made the cake 3D. Anyhow- what suddenly dawned on me was that those are all reactions that people have in workshops especially with improvising. I've certainly felt all of the negative reactions with regard to improvising (okay, and the positive ones but less frequently and more recently).

So then we got to try again, but this time in a team and with the direction to question our assumptions. My favorite results from that included a cake that had 8 physically unequal pieces but that were still equal because they all tasted the same, and a cake that was made up of 8 cupcakes that all came from the same batter- the cuts were to open the flour, the sugar, and the frosting packet.

Then it got even more fun because I was raised by my mother. We started talking about models of creative processes and types of brainstorming. All of this is pretty hard to describe without diagrams but just for you I'm going to try.

We started with a western model from Russell and Evans from 1989 which was a cycle that went from preparation, to frustration, to incubation, to insight, to making it work, and back to preparation.

Then we looked at a Japanese model from Sheridan Tatsuno, also from 1989. This was also a cycle, but it had "core values" in the middle that had arrows to each portion of the cycle which was: recycling, search (have v. need), nurturing (playing/tinkering), breakthrough, refinement, and back to recycling.

I love the japanese model with the component of recycling- because you never have an idea that didn't come from something else you had already thought of or experienced. Also, isn't it interesting that the culture that has "frustration" in the model also has the figure of the tortured artist? Actually, I don't know that Japan doesn't have the figure of the tortured artist, but it would be handy for my argument if they didn't.

Anyhow, because I spent this summer with Mommy reading her little books about brainstoming activities, I'm much more used to thinking of creativity and brainstorming in the context of coming up with a new object or idea or concept as opposed to something musical. Now I get to figure out how all of this applies, because I'm sure it does.

Though maybe not- so much of the work that we've been doing has been very much on the spot and in the moment- 'think up a riff now', or 'make up a rhythm now' as opposed to 'Thanksgiving and the Holidays are coming up soon write down on cards what the things are that you want to make sure you don't miss' or 'write down all the activities that we do, group them together and name the catagory but move the activites around until everyone agrees and condense or expand definitions as necessary.'

So now I'm thinking and thinking, there's got to be a way to bring this all together. We talked about some other stuff too, but now I'm back to thinking about how all of this goes together so that means this is the end of this blog entry, bye now.

Okay, so the thing about a lot of the brainstoming ideas and 'thinking outside the box' aids is that they are trying to get you away from your internal critic/editor so that you can let everything come on out- particularly in a group evironment where collaborative ideas that are larger than the sum of their parts can show up because everything is being put on the table and you can more easily see where new connections can be made. So if the goal of all of this is to get yourself away from the internal critic- then speed, which is what we've been using in the programme a lot works, as does Peggy Zhering's technique of drawing behind your back with you eyes closed and with a tool. Handicapping yourself in some way so that what you're doing is alien enough that your mind doesn't immediately recognize what you're doing as something to criticize...