Day 1 Notes

Day 1 - August 13th, 2007
Linda Putnam Workshop

OVERVIEW

Morning Curriculum

30 Minute led Plastiques
Song "Amazing Grace"
LUNCH

Afternoon Curriculum

Intro to Haiku / Sourcework
Topeka Bodega
Countoffs
Show Haiku's / One ups
Tom High / Tom Low

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Morning Notes

This class is a study in IMPULSE
- its a study of impulse and @ this point literature is second
- the haiku form is our starting point
- originally you write 5 in a day - 3 and 2 floaters
- you can edit two Haiku's for source but at first do them freestyle meaning don't edit them

Question: Why do we censor Impulse?

- we have an urge to express - that is the most important at first - get it out and then look at the process of where and how we got the material - we do this in the workroom so we can figure out expression without an audience and all of they're formalitites

Afternoon Notes

Ran Haiku's in a group
Called out numbers so we can get order in which to show - this is our order for the entire week

- We're going to use the Haiku as a working source
- you've created the Haiku out of an impulse and a breath
- single breath= single impulse
- this is a working source

Question: What is the nature of a single, uncensored impulse?

- you can put 17 syllables all in one breath
- if you are censoring, have "Shoulds", resistance you can't do a haiku or any working source in one breath / impulse - it takes all the bodies to process resistance

- we are trying for one impulse top express a state of being
-Westeners have trouble with Haiku because they have problems with states of being - we feel we are human doings not human beings
-we identify ourselves by names and not states

- a state of being is like a tree - we don't go around identifying trees - we experience the state of tree - we are experiencing a response to a state of being

- whether we ever accomplish a 17 syllable haiku isn't the point - we use it to try and explore single impulses / states of being

- there are forms that ask us to consider states of being (mediation etc) but we're artists so we're exploring a state of being through IMAGE.

Haiku Performance

1. Recite or Perform the haiku

Walk up
Small Bow
inhale and Recite or perform
small bow
inhale and Recite or perform
small bow

2. Ask yourself silently in one breath I feel ____________ (fill in the blank)

3. Before you sit see your performances in your minds eye and pick 1 / either:
a WORD, GESTURE or IMAGE

just one of these not all three
this is like a Hunker Review

- we're training ourselves in the sourceroom to see our work - not judgements or standards
- we're trying to learn YOUR WORK and therefore the excersises are often purposely vague

- there are many ways to reduce source:

I need____
I feel_____
I am _____
I want_____

- answer any of these on a single breath

TOPEKA BODEGA
1. Say Topeka Bodega on each step, as you step forward 7 steps
2. say Bodega Topeka on each step, stepping backwards 7 steps
3. Say Topeka Bodega on each step, as you step left 7 steps
4. Say Bodega Topeka on each step, as you step right 7 steps.

Repeat as necassary.

Show Haiku's / Performances

Part 2 of Haiku Assignment

Divide the room into three groups:

The Image Group (the ?? people)
The Word Group (The thinking people)
The Gesture Group (the close to the spine people)

Tom High / Tom Low

Take the source (Image, word or Gesture)
- get to know your source / material / terrain
Gesture - has beggining, middle and end
Word - has clarity in pronouciation, vowels, constanants, resonators etc.
Image - set the image, get the image to stay (not slip, no scrubbing)

Image is...
I see the image = Action
I say the Image = Re-action

- a gesture can encompass a corporal and a plastique can encompass an image
- the bodies for passion are usually in Corporals / Images
- What gives tragedy illusion is a corporal image that is then puts within a plastique - thats tragedy in action because you take a passion and contain it
- we all have to portray passions we are not comfortable with
- we are all prepearing to show the BREATHE of human experience - so we learn source in order to create the illusion for real - a technique is what gives us the ability to create art

Question: How does one contain a passion within tragedy?

Tom High / Tom Low

Take the Source (image, gesture, word)

Ask - What is the nature of _____?
- words - consanants carry meaning

Ask - What is my state of being when I explore this source?

Ask - Where do I feel this state in my body? Then use EXTENSIONS - extend your state into that body part and extend that body part
- once it starts its like a Zebra - you can't stop it

- if you're off voice in your cource try again - its a judgement
- in the work touch is not done with appetite - no one has desire or hunger for anyone - its about the work

- in extensions - use any body part to match the extension of the state- don't forget your anus, your underarms in your extensions
- you have the use of 7 resonators

- test the lie - don't hold onto the lie.
- once you have the extension, pick the peek of that extension - than put a song etc. overtop of the peek, something other than the word / image or gesture

- can take the extension and internalize the voice while you corporal the peek of the extension
take the extension - internalize the voice and body - than put that into a plastique

- be friendly in the work - but don't trust

- take that extension and put it into plastiques, crossings, blocking for scenes etc.

- - follow the breath of the technique
- breath naturally
-feel the extension from head to toe
- follow the extension from head to toe

- take a corporal and put it into a plastique
-put it into a gross motor source (I want to kill you, love you, eat you)

Tom High / Tom Low

1. Get to know your Source AS YOU SAW IT

2. Practice it a few times until you have a respeatable source. Call this Tom Neutral or Tom 50%

3. take this Neutral or 50% and Lift it up
From Neutral to Tom 3/4 (75%) and eventually from Tom 3/4 (75%) to Tom High / Tom Full

- play this up - whatever it means to you
-lift the source up - may have to add gestures, words, images etc.

- take into account that at each lift you're addinh yo your story / soource - a continuation - source may change
-rythum may change, size, intensity etc.

Question: What is a Blindfall?

- its when you're eyes go blind, when you don't recognize where you are in space - if you go blind try the gesture while you say everything that you see and then keep practicing
- test the lie - make sure you're not hiding - take responsibility
- Blindfall is when you have no return for the audience - may be internal but no Return
-play the return

-Sourcework is hard - you show things that are inside you through form and form reveals
- sometimes you mistrust the container
-when you're in one source look for the other - if your in gessture look for word and/or image and vice versa

-when the image is around you, see the image roll past the face and eyes
- you can run Tom High / Tom Low From Tom 50 to 75 and back to 50 in one impulse.

Question: How do you know when a gesture is complete?

- - breath may be bigger than the body excecuted
- the source many be heldback - the body may not allow the source room - you may feel the source shaking or shimmering in the body

Question: How do you allow room in the body for your source?

- follow the breath - let the body follow the breath - when you feel the body shimmering, improvise to let the source in - the source will settle - and then the image is gone, and

When the Image is gone, the image is gone

Question: When you do an Image / Source where are you're eyes?

eyes in the body
eyes in the room
eyes outside the room
eyes on the horizon

- if the eyes carry death activate the feet bottoms - they can help the eyes to carry death

Ask yourself - Are you locking your joints?

- release the joints in order to find a more satisfying container for the source

-in source artists have a negotiation with vunerability - howpresent they are going to be in the form - we need to provide patience foe the artist to have this negotiation

-get your creature eye in the room

To keep balance: Focus eye on Image, Image eye on feet

-if you can't resolve an image and keep going off balance you may need to redirect or go backwards. in other words you may have a double image / you are working two images

- always do your balance structures right before you go onstage

Wild Horse Corporal (starts in the T posistion see an image one way, than the other, back and forth until you go off balance)

Question: Are you satisfied?

- there is no satisfaction only yearning

-use the breath
- this group has polite breathing - alot of Diminished Breath - this means we are lying - we want our performance to be admired without coming along with our audience

-Release inhibitions

Question: Why?

- inhibitions are not exactly wrong - only if its a lie
-as artists - we are the consciousness of our society - its not our fault if society doesn't want consciousness

What is the truth?

- when we don't search for truth, we live a lie.

example. If 10 people are starving and 1 person is eating, what do you want to say to the 1 person whose eating?

- if you inhibit what you want to say to that person than you're lying

-we're practicing source progression - one source to another source to another etc. etc.
-Tom Neutral is Tom 50
-its YOUR Tom 50
-when you lift whats the idea of lift?

-watch the trance - get to know the plastiques of the movement / source - ask yourself what is this doing to me?

- if your source has TORQUE - can=violence

-Hold onto the image

-Where you put your eyes thats about the size thats about the size of it

-Men have difficulty expressing fear, women intellect

-follow the image - the an inhale and push it out - push out the image - and let it produce a re-action to the image

-this is called the INSIDE/OUTSIDE Line
-you walk it

Inside / Outside Line

-if the source / work is all inside the body - no audience can go there unless the performer agrees to take them - and there are a multitude of ways to hide/escape/mpt worry about the form or the transformation that the image requires for expression.
-in this work the image is out, you must bring the image out.
-use breath and practice

Inside/Outside
Takes the source (image etc.)
inhale
drop into source
pull source outside

"where the hand goes
the eyes goes
where the eyes go
the heart goes
where the heart goes
so goes the way of the world"

-use plastiques / corporals / breathers to bring out source

- in kiss rivers you don't wait - you follow with the body until the kiss comes back and on and on

- How we explore imagry is a mystery

- the only score that you don't want to lose is the family of gestures etc - the order may disappear but you always have the family

- when one takes the image out it will be surprising to that artist what arrives

-as a group we need to organize our vunerability - these techniques are going to pull out things that aren't going to be polite - they may be raw

Question: The need for sanctuary - whats that like?
- in a source room - to find range, we must create a safe place to explore our resistance

- in this work a teacher can teach you how to strip down but will not strip you down

the Strip Down has to do with the 5 Bodies:

Physical - take off clothes / neutral
Political - values are put to the test
Social - understandings of society are tested
Emotional - rage, grief, joy, relief. We see our emotional range. We Q: Who are we?
Spirtual - body of Flight. Linda doesn't teach this one for money

- as theatre people we study the human condition

Question: If you want to take the audience with you when your working an internal image, how do you do it?

- take them in with your eyes
-your gestures

example. A backhand gesture life in an adult takes the images inside the body - work the gesture, go out with the eyes see them and them bring them into the world of the source with you.

HOMEWORK: For Tommorow.

Picture Yourself today
Find an image, word, gesture etc.
& hum
get some sound
if humming comes easy
try lalalala
if lalalala comes easy
try song.

Bring in a word, humming, song tommorow

Note: When we perform for one another we:

1 Do not insult each others person
2 Do not respond to each others performance
- breath your response through your nose
if something happens that is truly offensive then we stop and talk about it