Good look for Phyllis

IGNITE! READING

DAY 17 JUNE 10th

Yesterday and last night were very productive and I feel relatively calm about our reading. I think we are in pretty good shape. We took time separately during the day and then came together at night to look over the script and work on our clown turn. Meg's good buddy Nickey came over to offer an outside eye to our clown work. It's funny, I think I figured because we did a similar turn together 3 years ago, we could just jump right into it. God, no wonder it felt frantic and all over the place! So we worked it out beat by beat, looking at all the wonderful details we could bring to it. It was like everything was at either impulse .5 or 6 and nothing really in between. Now we have a whole lot more to play around with, and a much tighter turn.
As for today, I sent Meg the draft of the scene I was working on and she's writing now too. So once we get together later this afternoon we should be just about ready to hand in our draft. HOLY CRAP!

DAY 16 JUNE 9th

It's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster this week, but there is light at the end of the tunnel! Our draft has to be sent to Amy Lynn by tomorrow afternoon...YIKES! I think we are in amazing standing, considering how little time we've had to throw this thing together. I find it difficult to not stress over the fact that we will be reading a draft. I guess I'm more of a perfectionist than I let on. I just need to trust that what we do have is great. It is just a very vulnerable place to be- to show something that has a lot of promise, but that is unfinished. I guess all we can do at this point is polish what we can and have fun. It is a play! I want to play!

DAY 11 RECAP ON DAY 12

Holy moly, day 12!! We are taking a much needed day off today.

But YESTERDAY. What a day! We tried to do work and did a bit...but realized we were pretty wiped out. So we took it easy with trashy TV before our meeting with our dramaturge Amy Lynn Strilchuk and designer Jed Tomlinson.

I'm not going to lie, I had not only never met either of them before, I've also never had a dramaturgical meeting before, so I really had no idea what to expect. It was incredibly helpful. They both gave us really solid input. For me, the read helped to illuminate where in the script I felt really comfortable and where I got lost, which is a great thing to discover. We also generated a ton of possible ideas/themes/metaphors to play around with. To be honest, there were points in the meeting where I began to feel incredibly overwhelmed by how much work we still need to do and how little time we have left before the read for Ignite. Thank God for Amy Lynn reminding us that we are not seeking to have a polished script by next Saturday, but instead are opening up our sketchbooks to an audience to show our process, to show where we are. She encouraged us to show what ever we like- if we need to omit scenes, do it. If we want to read things out of order, fine. If we have things that we are unsure of where they fit, but we like them, that's great too. So that encouragement and advice not only relieves the pressure, it also permits us to continue at the pace we have been working at without feeling a mad dash for a finish line. I hope to remember this when the stress of knowing we will be reading for a larger audience kicks in next week!

DAY 10 JUNE 3rd

Today felt not only productive but also educational. I wish I could summarize, or write word for word the advice that Meg's amazing twin Jen gave her regarding working in groups. Meg, you can fully elaborate on this if you like.

What I got out of the conversation was this: know your strengths and trust your partner.

As much as we all want to contribute to everything in collective work, we can't. Wait, rephrase: everyone can contribute, but everyone can't DO everything. It is best to identify what your strengths are and work accordingly. It was so effective today to reassess our roles, our tasks and our strengths. Because at the end of the day, we want to create a beautiful story. To help propel this plan, and this piece of art forward, we need to capitalize and benefit from each others strengths.

It's funny when you realize you are older, or more mature. If we would have done this project years ago when we first came up with the idea, I don't know if I would have been able to clearly identify and embrace my strengths.

So, after an incredibly helpful talk, we relaxed over a coffee, then approached the work afresh. Afresh? Anew? C'est quoi l'expression? ANYWAYS. Meg printed out all our scenes and we read them. We have a skeleton! A really weird surreal skeletal story!

Then, because Meg's strength is writing, she went to work (feel free to elaborate Meg) and I stayed in the living room to do some character development, which is where my strengths lie. We were both feeling that Jim the landlord needs more. So I explored Jim as I would explore a mask. I found a gesture, a sound and a rhythm for him, then began to walk around in his world. I took him through all the steps of discovering his experience and innocence. Once I was satisfied with this exploration, I wrote out everything I saw and felt. I put it all on a big sheet of newsprint, then brought it into the kitchen to Meg. Now she was a ton of ideas to draw from when looking at all the scenes with Jim. I did the same for two other characters. Now that we have the action of the play down, this will help us create a deeper world. By working in this way I am using my skills to their fullest, and so is she. This is now our way of blending Pochinko clown with play writing. My ideas are generated from clown exploration and Meg is using them to inspire her writing.

I am excited to see what happens tomorrow!

DAY 9 JUNE 2nd

I need a break from writing, so figured I'd do a recap of today's events!
We started with a great walk along the river...which one I have no idea, but it was lovely. The sun is finally out, so we took advantage to get our blood and ideas flowing.

It was clear that we needed some solo work space time, so before parting we delegated tasks. In the process of doing so, I brought up a point in the script that I was having trouble with. And here began a (somewhat)tense (but great) conversation that led to an amazing solution. Or ideas for a solution.

So we are trying to incorporate Pochinko methods into a script, a script that is not conventionally 'clown'. Although one could argue that nothing is conventional when it come to clown...that being said, we are not creating a piece to be performed in red nose. The red nose being the clown's final mask. But are there other ways to interpret what a mask is? If it's not the nose, could it be a prop or costume piece? Slowly each character that we are creating through our six clown masks and through discussion and God poems each have a distinctive gesture, sound, prop, etc. Are these their masks and can these masks be passed between either of us without losing the character?

A pretty exciting convo to have, raising questions that will be addressed once the script is put together and we begin to see what is really working, what still needs a bit of love, and how to put the whole thing on it's feet. Meg gave the metaphor of 'sewing it all together'.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself, because before we can start adding all those layers, we'd like to have all the components of the script written. That being said, time for me to get back to work!

The green gob of inspiration!

This green goo made my day! I was so happy to discover frozen edmame at SUPERSTORE yesterday and picked up a package. I also threw in a bunch of fresh mint because I was dreaming of this weird minty mushed edamame that they sell at one of the fish and chip joints in Victoria (Beth and I's old haunting ground.) Today we had set ourselves a few hours to pound out some scenes at the keys but instead of working on the show I ploughed through my cook books looking for a minty pea recipe that I could tamper with. I ended up just screwing around with putting different things in the blender. Bethy asked what I was doing and I said i was making mushy edamame...she starting saying mushy edamame in a strange voice and soon a new character for the show had been borm. "Muschi Edamame, Mayor of Vancouver. Born of the famed Edamame family responsible for the creation and design of the 2010 Olympic mascot "Quatchi." So really the moral is...you should always play with your food! P.S The Recipe turned out too! A very fresh vancouver flavor! Just what I would serve if I lived in a crisp condo with Blonde hardwood and loads of natural light over looking False Creek.
Edamame
Fresh Mint
Salt and Pepper
Bit of Balsamic
Blend and laugh until Muschi!

Inspiration comes from the strangest places

Research

DAY 8 JUNE 1st

Meg is at her desk writing about Mushi Edamamae, the mayor of Vancouver, and his wife Tammi Tempura. We discovered these two characters by messing around in the kitchen. I was laughing so hard I almost peed. I need to take a break, but have a good start on the Chinatown Miss Honey Bun Beauty Pageant. It's been a great day.

We started it off with a big walk to get fresh air and our bodies moving. When we got back, we went to our masks to get into the right frame of mind. I find that I can move through them quite quickly, but listen to each one individually, so with certain masks I stay a bit longer, and some make me so excited that I jump into writing ideas right away. Like the feeling I get is enough. I think when that happens though I need to stay with it a little longer to see where it takes me.

I struggled with feeling Phyllis through one of my masks, but found a way today for her to feel it's emotions. With another mask, I discovered a great gesture for her when she smokes her Popeye cigarettes. So weather it's something huge and deep, or just a simple gesture, the mask exploration every day is providing a ton of material to play around with.

Our creation laboratory

Our masks!

Week 2 DAY 7 MAY 31st

Ok, so that first post was a doozy and now I'd like to post on a day to day basis, covering in detail what went on in rehearsal.
We hit the ground running this morning, it was awesome. I picked up some large newsprint before arriving at Meg's, we had a cup of coffee then got right to work.
We spent an hour or so going through our masks. This warm up is incredibly effective to get into the mindset of not only our characters, but also the world they live in. It's funny, I don't discover something new with each mask (even though I really want to) but I definitely find new emotional connections, character connections and plot ideas every time I put them on. It also allows your impulses to start flying and be heard. This is invaluable once we sat down to start working things out. What are your thoughts Meggie?

Once we both took enough time with our masks, we rolled out the newsprint and began plotting out the plot of the story. Meg was really good at pulling out the key points of action. We knew where we were starting, and we knew where we wanted to end up, but there was still a ton of grey in the middle. So we began to discuss ideas we had had the week before and slowly by process of trial and error began to discuss what was working and what wasn't. Which characters made sense and which did not.

For example, we had a neighbour whom we named Blow Job Betty that comes by to ask for a cup of sugar. Although we both liked the idea of her, we were in agreement that there was something a little too obvious, a little too trashy. Neither of us want this to come across as a judgement on people who actually live in the real world that our surreal world is based on. We don't want to slum it, we want to get to the heart of the lives of Phyllis and LeSucre and all the people who surround them. Long story short, we scrapped her, and replaced her with ShyBlush, a character we were previously having trouble fitting into the arc of the play. Exciting!

We somehow managed to work through the entire outline of the play, solving almost all of the problems we came across last week. It is amazing what a little space and rest can do! So looking at our plot map, we each picked an area that really spoke to us to write about.

This is where a big challenge presents itself to me: I am really good on my feet, but do not have much experience writing things down. So I did what I could, and as soon as I became stuck, I did another God poem. It is amazing- they take a lot of time and energy, and by the end of my poem there was only one image that I really liked. But I think that image will help my scene immensely. Not only by helping me move it forward, but by adding some weird richness that was missing before. John talked last summer about how with your masks and with God poems you never have an excuse for writers block. I really believe he is right.

Week 1

Ok, so I know we are already on our second week, but I'd like to recap week one just so we can be aware of how the process started, then keep journaling from there. Can I use the term 'journal' when writing on a blog? Who cares, right? So week 1 started off really well.

DAY 1 MAY 25th
I arrived in Calgary in the am and we more or less got right to work. Meg, being amazingly practical and straightforward, sat down and asked some pretty tough/heavy/important questions about the project before we started. Meg, please add to this if I am forgetting any of them!

Why do we want to do this project?
What are our goals/aims?
How do we make sure that working together does not affect our friendship in a negative way?
What strengths are we bringing to this project?

I really appreciated this talk, because it shed light on issues I was concerned with and forced us to have an open dialogue right off the bat. Straight off the bat? What is the proper expression?? Oh well, you hopefully get what I mean!

For me the most important thing to come out of the discussion was an agreement to approach this project with professionalism in our work ethic in hopes of preserving our friendship. Also, our conversation of why we want to do this in the first place was incredibly exciting, reminding me of how much I love this idea, love Pochinko clown, and love working with my good buddy Meg. I feel that putting all of our thoughts and concerns on the table right away will also help maintain a flow of dialogue when we do start to run into problems.

Following the discussion we decided on a daily schedule of 10am-5pm with an hour for lunch. We also gave ourselves homework to come back the next morning with God poems. Am I forgetting anything Meg?


DAY 2 MAY 26th
We had an incredible day where ideas were flowing out non stop. We dove right into our God poems and generated a ton of material. Slowly the outline of our story began to take shape. We read what we had down as far as script...and...I just remember being incredibly pumped. Sorry I can't elaborate any further!

DAY 3 MAY 27th
Did we start mask work here? Oh yeah! I started mask work, while Meg worked on the script. It was the beginning of incorporating the Pochinko method into our writing process. I went through 3 masks.
Before putting on the masks, I put them aside and but Phyllis through my body. I treated her like a mask, so once I breathed her in, I walked through my world, waved good bye to my love, and found my impulse 6 situation for both experience and innocence. Once I felt like I had a firm grasp on her, I revisited each mask individually. I put the mask's experience and innocence through my body, familiarizing myself with their sounds and gestures. I then asked the mask how Phyllis would feel the same emotions, sounds and gestures. I asked where in her world, in what situation (weather Meg and I had created it already or not) the emotions from the mask's experience and innocence would affect her. It not only helped to better understand Phyllis, it also generated a ton of ideas and solutions.

DAY 4 MAY 28th
mmmmm...I went through my last 3 masks the same way as the day before. Then I am pretty sure I guided Meg through her first two. It was amazing to watch from the outside while she went through the same process as detailed above. By the end of the day, I'd say we were pretty exhausted. We had generated a ton A TON of ideas, but were beginning to recognize that there were some pretty massive holes in the arc of the story. We brain stormed for a while, and decided it was best not to force things. It was really hard to not feel a bit of anxiety- knowing that there are problems and not being able to solve them right away is a difficult thing to walk away from. I am really glad we did looking back, but at the time it made things feel a bit stressful. At times I really feel our deadline looming over our heads, but I have to say we've been really good at reminding ourselves that we are working on a draft and not a polished finished piece.

DAY 5 MAY 29th
So because we were beginning to feel as if we were coming up against a wall, we decided it would be best to allow our minds to rest and take the day off. Good call!

DAY 6 MAY 30th
I think we were both feeling on the same page that day, because we didn't push or force anything. We had a good discussion in the morning, but didn't go too deep or push too hard. In the afternoon Meg went through the last of her masks and I went through mine at the same time. It felt great to get into my body and trust that the mask work can generate a lot of ideas. I also made a God poem. I think Meg did too, but she didn't read it to me, so I am not positive if she did or not.
We also recognized that our initial schedule needed to be revised, so we did that and set out a plan for the next few days to come. I think we were feeling better, but there was still a bit of anxiety in the air. That being said, it was really great to have an open dialogue when ever either of us began to worry. Lots of support, lots of good ideas.


That recaps week 1. Meg please add/go into detail on anything you want.