changes, progressions, process: what has emerged as a result of our weekend of landscaping

This weekend was my first ImpulseTraining workshop for the year. ImpulseTraining is a postmodern acting/life training that I have devised over the last ten years. This year I  teach on Sundays at Pullenvale, a leafy acreage suburb in Brisbane.  We work 10am  till 1pm, followed by lunch and then a 'by-invitation'  complimentary generative writing/performance session 1-5pm for emerging writers/contemporary performers.

Yesterday, as a direct result of our (PP) generative session last weekend,  we used the garden to perform.  This was something we had talked about, however because of heat, rain etc had always remained inside (except some evenings).

Each participant was invited to find a space anywhere on the 4.5 acres, either inside or out, to perform their improvisation, based on scores created earlier in the day.  They were invited to allow the space to impact on the work.  They had 30 minutes to create the work.

The results were very strong and made clear to me how important space is, and how space can actually dictate hugely the content as well as process of the work.  I think that this was deeply emphasized in the Process Project when the three of us went to three different spaces to create a reflection on the day with Peter (landscape gardener) and we came up with such different products.  Space influenced us enormously.

Because of this, i was encouraged to commit to a changed emphasis on space in ImpulseTraining.  This idea has been growing for several years, yet it obviously needed a stimuli to get it going. We have been talking about open performance spaces here in Pullenvale, yet this was the first time we had actually used the various 'outside rooms'.  Jung would call this syncronicity.

We will continue to develop these ideas, and we are now planning to have a Pullenvale Performance in June.  I want to deeply thank all four of you: Liz, Dan, Nikki and Brian for being such a vibrant team.  The Process Project is having a direct impact on my work.

Reflections on February 20, 2011, our second day for Intensive No. 1.

Sunday was a rich and challenging day, with things happening for all of us.
10 am we meet at Metro Arts.  Dan goes to sit in the meeting room ready to move us into the studios. We suggest the Board Room (air conditioning its 34 degrees and its only morning) so we plonk ourselves in the Board Room and drink water and 'check in'.  We reflect on yesterday, our time with Peter, and what stood out for us today. We all retained different images, different experiences, and all of us will be blogging individually, but to get the ball rolling I will reflect on what I recalled...it was the paths. they were built up, so they were there to last. I call the park "The Park of Paths".  The other thing that sticks out for me is the talking circle, the stones too far away to really talk (unlike the talking circle at the State Library) but it is a shrine, rather than a practical place to sit...and it is a shrine because i call it a shrine.  For Nikki (and she will talk about this I am sure) it was the body of water, which reminded her of the insides of the body...and for Brian, it was that moment of disappearance.  You are there, and then you are gone.  These primary responses came across quite strongly in our three performative pieces that we pulled together in 1 hour or so...Brian inhabited the Basement, Nikki went to 4.2 on the fourth floor, and I stayed in the Board Room.

I decided to pull out my things that i had brought (books that i had put in my trolley, art supplies and my large black book) and allow them to talk to me.  I wrote (no planning, no thinking as such, just writing.  This is what I wrote:

TALKING PIECE ABOUT MBA'S EXPERIENCE.

This piece is called 

"The Park of Paths".  

Throughout the delivery MBA moves through the landscape of Performative Character to Pedestrian Character.  She is playing with Breath, her relationship to breath, her breath's relationship to audience, the audience's breath. This is her new direction in research: what is her relationship to breath in her work, her life?''

SHE BEGINS:

"We're finding energy for the future in the strangest place" (source from SMH Magazine. 19th Feb. 2011)

we are sitting in a talking circle

and the table is too large

and we are spread out, 

spreading out

and

we are  almost white blank sheets

fill-me-up blank sheets

our comfort zones are large

around this table of glassness

it swims around us

cushions of billowing white Egyptian cotton

cover our limbs and our torsos

protecting us from the Australian Sun

that knocks on the glass windows

the beast of plenty

that gives and takes according to its whim

and its relationship with Cloud and Wind.

We are white blank sheets

fill-me-up almost white blank sheets

and we are dreaming

and we am not

SHIFT of breath

There are many dreams and many paths to becoming a writer

i could keep a diary

i could keep a blog

i could write poems

i could hold fast to a cause and want to write about it

i could do all these things.

one think is certain.

writer's write. 

and so i reach for my pen. its blue. 

I need black

"Dan, do you have a black felt pen?"

"I don't like writing with blue"

"i don't either" says Dan "amaze"

and I start to write despite the lack of pen supplies, 

for i am a writer and i should be able to write

anywhere

anytime

anyhow

but i need to tell you this: i do not know how to write. 

the words they do not spill from my tongue, or through my fingertips. 

they do not.

who shall tell the stories

and what stories shall we tell

and i gently place my first finger and thumb into my mouth and remove a small book "How to Write on the Path to Somewhere"

and I gently, and oh so quietly place on my thickening glasses that can read everything

and i begin to read my book about the path to somewhere, for without instruction I do not know which path to take:

It says.

1.  Look deeply into the faces that sit before you...

(move towards Nikki. look into her face for 1 and 1/2 minutes, or until there is a shift in perception. then move to Brian. look into Brian's eyes and stay until there is a shift in perception. Keep one hand on Nikki's shoulder as I do this)

and I do.

i look.

i see

i feel

i tumble 

like Alice

into her tunnel. 

I tumble into their storied levels...I find the story of love, of mothers holding their children, year after year and singing 

I love you forever i love you for always as long as I'm living my baby you'll be

when the child is young and putting watches down the toilet, 

when the adolescent and rude and playing loud music and slamming doors, 

when the independent youth lives out of home, independent at last...

this last development requires a ladder.  She waits and waits, and when he is asleep she creeps up the ladder into his flat, holds her child and rocks him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and sings 

I love you forever i love you for always as long as I'm living my baby you'll be

Until the time comes when the son is called to his mother's bedside.  

He bends down over his dying mother, holds her for a long time, and sings softly 

I love you forever I love you for always as long as I'm living my mummy you'll be  (source children's book "I love you forever)

some stories are so rich and thick and

I am tumbling so fast

there is no time

and there is time

2. go and collect any item you find in abundance. and i do. i collect books upon books.  My house is made up of stalactites of books from floor to ceiling.  They are my walls. Books other people have written. Books like "What we may be. Techniques for Psychological and Spiritual Growth through Psychosynthesis by Piero Ferrucci. 

And in these books are pathways to follow.

1. take time

2. prepare

3 persist

4 connect

5. work in silence

6. keep a workbook

7. write

[adapted from What we May be. by Piero Ferrucci)

Go and collect any item you find in abundance.  

"Earth Angels: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things by Shaun McNiff. Shambhala: Boston. 1995.

and I learn another pathway. 

I read:

"the path[way] of the creative spirit is not clearly marked.  When it does appear, it emanates in instants, fragments and insights". (page 7). 

"yet somehow the pieces find a way to form a whole..."

"the creator follows the unchartered [path] of the angel, always a step ahead of the reflecting mind" (7?).

and i am thinking of the pathway to the talking circle we walked...it seemed so large...in that park of paths...it seemed too large and too far apart to chat...

yet it is a shrine

it has made itself into a shrine

just because we have labeled it as such.

I reach for Peggy Rubin's book "To be and How to Be" (Quest Books. Inninois. 2010).

Message One:

to be fully in the body

Message Two:

discern what you are here to do

Message Three:

stay open to greater possibilities

And I decide to write about three sacred paths of being and doing.

I write "Spanish Fire" (source SMH Magazine. Feb. 19, 2011) and I find myself holding A Diary of Fire...

(source Fire Diary by Mark Tredinnick. N.S.W.:Puncher & Wattmann. 2010)

and i read:

"you've had moments like these, too.  I envy

the hens the steady circle of their days

but this is not how mine go; i am strung from stars

that once were gods and cannot seem to forget" (p29)

the hens steady circle throws me to the steady circle in the path of parks 

the steady circle of the talking circle here in the Board Room at Metro Arts

the steady circle of thoughts that move into and out of my head at a steady rate

the weather is about to change. 

i can smell it

i can feel it

it falls on my skin so softly so unobtrusively that if i did not stop i would not know it was there

i can hear it

just as i hear my breathing,

"breathe out"

"breathe out"

"breathe out".

and i open my eyes and there is no one here

they have left me

to explore their own stars that once were gods.

The Tree of Stars

Landscape architect + four artists= a day in city of Logan/Brisbane

Yesterday all four of us (Nikki, Brian, Dan and Margi) met up with Peter to journey with him through two of his projects. We hired a red bullet, piled in and tore down to Logan, to a wetland/parkland that had been planned and built by Peter's landscape company. some of the photos are below.  we walked these walks, crossed these bridges, heat rising, children's voices, silver eagle keeping a safe eye over the theatrical space, neat, tidy and new. but not so new: "how did you find out about this park" I say to one of the little girls playing on the path "i've come here since i was a baby" was the reply...it has always been and always will be it seems:

wide paths took us through the wet lands 

The paths were wide, enough to accommodate multiple users (bikes, prams, skateboards, joggers) and they wound around, very organic, reflecting the round edge of the body of water (is it called a lake, a pond, a dam, a river...)

we stop and look below on each bridge we cross, and looked below. brian insisted it was cooler standing on the bridge

Peter was very happy to talk about everything, and we noticed he liked to weed along the pathway when the weeds were of an outrageous size...what impacted me on this show and tell was the paths, so wide and solid made of concrete...Peter added that 1km of path had to be dug up and re done because the workers messed up...1km of track is a long way, and there are about 8.5km of paths throughout this place...it is almost a study of paths, and i am thrown to Robert Frost's poem:

Two roads diverge in a yellow wood
and sorry i could not travel both
and be one traveller, long i stood
and looked down one as far as i could
to where it bent in the undergrowth.

the tree that heals itself

Paths, healing...lead me to Buddhist philosophy...paths lead to choices...paths lead to adventure and not knowing. as we walked the paths, we did not know where they would take us but we did know that such an expensive path could not take us too many places!

we are working together again today at Metroarts...