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!