#ida2016

On Thursday, we mostly worked on some of the dialogue piece while incorporating some of the movement we’ve worked on into the text. Matt worked a lot with Dorothy, a performer in the show who mostly has monologues. He had a realization while working with her: that we work in the opposite of what normal society portrays women in terms of power. “Let’s make Jimmy your bitch” was what he said that caused the epiphany. He had somebody fill in for Jimmy, since he was working on a wrestling piece (that’s right, we have wrestling in the show). The blocking is that Dorothy speaks sone monologue to the audience while dragging Jimmy on her arm. Dorothy said the monologues were difficult to grasp at first due to the language. After a long time with Matt, however, she gained clarity and a great sense of direction for almost all of the pieces.

A student from SCC sat in on the rehearsal and enjoyed watching the process. “It’s similar to the process of collaboratively writing a piece, it just seems very visual instead of verbal. I was very surprised at how quickly everyone analyzed the text.” I was as well since they only spent about fifteen to twenty minutes on each monologue, seeing how it was their first time working on these pieces and how far they got.

- Zachariah

Scottsdale Community College School of Film + Theatre and Orange Theatre present “Ida."

Ida–a woman who is well known for being well known–is the figure at the center of this new work of contemporary theatre based on the novel by Gertrude Stein. Featuring a live band led by Mario Yniguez, the show combines original music, movement, video, and text from Stein’s novel.

This production is the result of a collaboration between professional ensemble Orange Theatre and Scottsdale Community College theatre students.

Joya and Matt had a meeting on Sunday to figure out where all of the material that he and the cast generated should go. Because of this, the entire structure of the show is different. Instead of running on a two-act structure with each act containing roughly eight short scenes (in accordance with the structure of the book) the play is now in a three-act structure with each act containing about two scenes. We spent almost all night figuring out exactly how we are going to start off the piece. The director had each performer act out 5 masculine or feminine gestures, depending on their gender. With one performer in front repeating their gestures, the rest of the cast interacted with each other silently upstage while keeping a very “sophisticated” demeanor.

Of course when the director comes in half way through the rehearsal process to propose  whole new organization, the actors (and technicians) all tend to panic. But seeing as this structure shift wasn’t totally major and how this is a scriptless show, there was no panic. We all just took this as a new perspective, and the actors kept their minds open in order to create the best material they could. Watching everybody form individual and unique ideas is always something that gets me genuinely excited. Of course, getting to photograph and record the performers during the generation of content is a definite bonus. This allows me to capture the small moments in the production that truly make it unique.

- Zachariah

Scottsdale Community College School of Film + Theatre and Orange Theatre present “Ida.“Ida–a woman who is well known for being well known–is the figure at the center of this new work of contemporary theatre based on the novel by Gertrude Stein. Featuring a live band led by Mario Yniguez, the show combines original music, movement, video, and text from Stein’s novel.

This production is the result of a collaboration between professional ensemble Orange Theatre and Scottsdale Community College theatre students.

Tickets available here.

To officially start off the rehearsal  process, the director gave the actors a set of exercises to create a skeleton for the movement in the piece. He mapped off a section of the stage into 9 boxes. Essentially, the idea of this exercise is to set a base emotion for each box which the actor has to jump into, and immediately assume the emotion corresponding with the box. The actor must take up an original pose, then let the emotion carry them into a breath. After that they add a sound and then a fluid, repetitive motion, all while keeping in mind what the tempo, duration and topography is that influences the actor’s choices in the box. This exercise is a variation of what is known as Rasaboxes (If you desire more education on this subject, please visit this link).

The set designer created a rough sketch of a floor plan in a design challenge made to get the creative juices flowing. The challenges all gave the designer a limited amount of stageable objects and a few artists for her to draw inspiration off of. For instance: “Hell has frozen over and time is running backwards because Robert Wilson has decided to let somebody other than himself design his production of Ida. Please choose one of the ‘Places Where Ida Can Be Found’ and create 5-7 concept sketches for this production, setting it at one of those places in the style of Robert Wilson”. One of the locations was a movie premiere. Of course, it was not a replica of one of Robert Wilson’s sets, but simply what the designer thought a red carpet premiere would look like if it were influenced by Robert Wilson. We mapped this floor plan out onstage and incorporated the boxes over it. This way, the performers could get a feel for what mood or emotion would take place in a certain spot of the set for the character. We decided that this set-while being an amazing set- would not work for the production. However, we saw many ideas that came from this rough outline that could be (and have been) used in the creation of our set.

Later in the week, the actors worked on an exercise where they paired up, and each person in the pair would run at each other then collide. The collision started a very close embrace between the actors, which would be ended by one member of the pair attempting to slowly back away. While this happened the other performer would continue holding the one backing away while not moving, and would slide down until their hands smacked against the floor. They slowly rolled onto their backs, then pushed themselves offstage using their legs. 

That Saturday the actors choreographed a robbery scene. To spare the details in order to keep this specific part a surprise (if we do indeed keep it) I will just say that it was a very intricately choreographed scene that involved the robber chasing the other actors around the stage while the actors tried to find ways to hide behind each other, and eventually break off from the clumps they made.

Throughout the process, the actors would start rehearsals with warm ups, then went back to Rasaoxes to keep in mind what emotions, gestures, shapes, tempos and topographies are present in the piece.

This is the first time I have ever worked as a dramaturg, as well as my first experience in the devising process. it is very interesting to watch as the piece progresses. Instead of following the “traditional theatrical process” of making a play, we are starting with the movement. This isn’t necessarily the finite “blocking” of the production, but merely a way for characters and possibly dialogue to organically develop in the piece. It is also different not having one direct influence in the making of the production. The director stated that for this production he would like influences to be drawn from three aspects: The novel we are using to devise a script, any possible outside artists or artistic pieces we can derive influences from, and our own life experiences. Due this particular process, the production is becoming a very unique piece of art that both challenges peoples’ perception on what “theatre” is or could be. This piece is very entertaining,  as well as a way to make people think about themes that are being represented. It is very intriguing to watch this piece as it is being created by every single cast member and technician.

- Zachariah

Scottsdale Community College School of Film + Theatre and Orange Theatre present “Ida."Ida–a woman who is well known for being well known–is the figure at the center of this new work of contemporary theatre based on the novel by Gertrude Stein. Featuring a live band led by Mario Yniguez, the show combines original music, movement, video, and text from Stein’s novel.

This production is the result of a collaboration between professional ensemble Orange Theatre and Scottsdale Community College theatre students.

Tickets available here.

After an hour break, the company returned and was divided into performers and designers. As the performers warmed up and began their exercises, the designers (in practice only our set designer Sabrina Reed and myself) were given specific design challenges throughout the week that both acclimated us to the devised way of working, and pushed a more spontaneous and evolving form of creativity.

On the first night of the workshop, we watched Lars Von Trier’s The Five Obstructions, a documentary in which Trier has his idol, Jørgen Leth, remake his groundbreaking short film The Perfect Human five times using various different challenges and obstructions provided by Trier (for instance, that no edit in the film could be longer than 12 frames). It’s a remarkable study on the process of creation, and the ways in which the harshest restrictions can yield the most prosperous results.

Once we finished the film, our scenic designer Sabrina Reed was presented with the challenge of taking a previous design (Reeling, presented during the summer conservatory) and redesigning it using only one scenic element. I was paired with Sabrina for this process for two reasons: first to provide a sort of sounding board to work off as she tackled the design challenges (as she was the only designer available for the workshop), and also (and more importantly) to highlight the ways in which dramaturgy is involved in the design process. The rest of the week functioned in the same way: Every night, Sabrina was given a design challenge to create a set for a particular show in the style of a particular director or set designer (for example: Little Red Riding Hood in the style of Rolf Borzik; 1984 in the style of Jay Scheib). 

Sabrina Reed - Little Red Riding Hood in the style of Rolf Borzik, concept sketches

From my perspective, it was a remarkable glimpse into the creative mind of an artist. Sabrina is, like almost every artist, blessed/cursed with what Martha Graham termed “divine dissatisfaction”--a drive to produce the best work she possibly can, never allowing herself to be truly satisfied with a piece. On some days she would be completely in her own head, turning out dozens of sketches. Other days she was in active conversation with me, frustrated with a mental block (naturally, still turning out sketch after sketch of ideas). Towards the end of the week, she was also asked to provide a ground plan and isometric for her design, and the set was taped out on the mainstage for the actors to work with for the evening.

Sabrina Reed - 1984 in the style of Jay Scheib, concept sketch, ground plan, and isometric.

Ultimately, the goal of these design challenges was to acclimate the student designers to the devised process. Whereas in traditional theatre (what Sabrina was previously accustomed to), the set design is usually determined by the beginning of rehearsals, in devised works the set will often morph throughout rehearsal to suit the needs of the ever-evolving show. The challenges helped to instill a quickfire style of working and creating, and the further implementation of them in the actors’ rehearsals helped the designers learn how sets could facilitate or hinder the actors in process. From my perspective, it was fascinating to watch Sabrina’s growth throughout the workshop as she initially struggled with grasping the new styles of working, but came to appreciate the unique opportunities provided by the devised process.

From there, it would then come time to observe the actors moving through a similar period of growth as they learned how to rehearse within the devised process.

- Thomas

Scottsdale Community College School of Film + Theatre and Orange Theatre present “Ida."

Ida–a woman who is well known for being well known–is the figure at the center of this new work of contemporary theatre based on the novel by Gertrude Stein. Featuring a live band led by Mario Yniguez, the show combines original music, movement, video, and text from Stein’s novel.

This production is the result of a collaboration between professional ensemble Orange Theatre and Scottsdale Community College theatre students.