#nancy keystone

This past Sunday’s PLABORATORY meeting was a really good time. It is continually exciting to witness self-permissioned liberation and pleasure.

We are now far enough into the year that expansion is noteworthy, easier to recognize, and trackable in hindsight.  PLAB members are more willing to risk sharing their own interpretation or impulse rather than waiting to determine what’s “right.” Challenge still exists within the proposals, yet the challenge is propelling, not paralyzing. One participant described her progress as now “living into or live inside” a proposal vs. trying to “live up to” a proposal.

The second half of this month’s session focused on a manipulation of an exercise I initially observed as led by Nancy Keystone of Critical Mass Performance Group. This exceptional multi-generational company based in California spends years developing new work. Over decades of practice they have refined a balance between provocations and proposals introduced by Nancy, the company’s founder and director, and interpretations and responses initiated by the ensemble members.

Nancy offered this exercise as one she often uses at the beginning of a process, when the ensemble is figuring out how to playfully investigate a particular material that might represent a theme or motif. Each participant was give 5 small pieces of paper and asked to interact with the paper through a series of prompts exploring its texture, flight and sound capacities, manipulability, and so on. The participants were then asked to create a short performance poem, given as a gift to the gathered, sharing aspects of the paper they had uniquely discovered.

I loved this exercise. It softens the brain into areas of pure exploration, elevates our receptivity for surprise, and allows a common object to transform with the performer into myriad different things, essences, characters and worlds.  Since observing Nancy years ago, I have developed my own series of prompts (there is no possible way to replicate her genius), allowing for playful exploration within the context of the PLABORATORY or a similar experience. The performative offering that concludes the exercise asks the participants to synthesize and edit an open-ended experience, paralleling many devising processes.

Last Sunday, we explored this paper exercise. I then asked everyone to place the short compositions made in response to the paper through one round of revision. This is when we got more magic than expected. The initial offerings were exciting and surprising, but what might happen when they were replicated, edited and enhanced?

PLAB members were asked to consider themselves experts in sharing the paper’s capabilities; to take stock in their personal sense of pleasure, pride and amazement at what they were sharing with us; to include the audience via some kind of check-in; to include sound; to title their compositions and share that title with the audience; and to mindfully edit their content into a presentation in which potentially everything was deliberate: the sound the paper made when it was folded, the complications of licking and sticking, how the paper tasted if licked, etc. No aspect was beyond consideration as an amazing component of their performance.

It is incredible how little it takes to be captivating on stage. Each PLAB member stood in her power and purpose, elevating her offering with pleasure and intentionality. We saw such gems as The Proposal, My Spooky Face, And Then There Was Paper, Stick, and La Chaise Dansant. All of these were ridiculous and beautiful, embodied and full.

In our closing discussion, people spoke about how this kind of revision gave them immediate license to be more theatrical; how instilling pride and expertise allowed for the performers to own their work without question and to follow impulses more clearly. There was universal fun and discovery between performer and audience. What if we operated from these directives all the time in our work? How might this transform our relationship to making and sharing in the moment and revising our compositions in real time, with an audience?

My poster for Portland Center Stage’s production of Venus in Fur is in The New York Times today.

Erik Piepenburg, the ArtsBeat journalist who interviewed me, was interested my choice of color and composition, as well as who influences me. The published version goes like this: 

Black, white and red never fail. They speak to something dark and shadowy. Adding the red gives a level of seductiveness. It says we’re discussing an adult topic, and it should titillate and tantalize. The collar symbolizes power. And anytime you show imagery of a big face, people automatically want to look at it. You can paint her expression how you want.

Our email discussion went a little further: 

You asked why black, white and red. More succinctly, I would say that black and white provide a level of formality and sophistication, and red adds the necessary sexuality and sensuality.

The typeface, Bodoni, reinforces that formality and elegance. Playing off the most seductive element, the lips, the title had to be red. 

The front-facing woman is very intentional. She is at once vulnerable and powerful, beautiful and imposing. A profile or three-quarters view is too fragile for Vanda [the female protagonist in the play]. 

As influences go, I have two examples for you that demonstrate what I try to achieve when making a poster. 

L'Atlantique by AM Cassandre

I wish every subject matter were as simple as this piece. Posters need to be brief and clear. I want to whittle down a play to just one or two main elements, and then leave it up to the viewer to imagine a story. L’Atlantique is just a boat, but I see myriad adventures on holiday in my mind. 

With Venus in Fur, I want the viewer to be transfixed by this mysterious muse and begin to imagine a very dark, sexual story. 

Peace by Robert Brownjohn

This sort of shrewdness is exemplary of Brownjohn’s work. It didn’t influence my process on Venus per se, but the clever solution is one worth pursuing. (Being able to realize that solution is another story.)