Story, story, story.

This has been a week entirely focused on story.  And in three different ways:  the main ensemble; a smaller group of students that were interested in helping flesh out the "frame story"; and conversations with theatre director Amy Sass, and a colleague that I had traveled with this summer to Turkey with our Fulbright program.
  The main ensemble presented their pieces to us on Wednesday.  They were very fine pieces, reminding me of the intelligence and commitment that is within this group of 40 middle school students.  If nothing else the  different approaches groups took were fascinating.  Some were purely physical, almost dance pieces, some rooted in some sort of quasi mystic/religious realm, and some rooted in modern experience--similar to sketch comedy.  But, as always, the question is what do you do with these fragments?  The approach I took was one I adapted  from Will Weigler's excellent book:  Strategies for Playbuilding.  Something he called the unpacking process.  It's a handy way at focusing on the details that stand out in a story or moment.   Basically it is a way of viewing a piece (and it can be done with fictional texts, personal stories, non fictional magazine/newspaper articles, etc) and finding what resonates and interpreting what the piece reveals. 
Here is the unpacking process I used:  After each group presented, I divided a large piece of chart paper into 3 categories:  Phrases, Gestures and Sounds.  I asked the audience to tell me phrases that struck them from the piece they just witnessed.  I wrote them down.  Then I asked for gestures that resonated, and wrote those down.  Here we used Weigler's definition of gestures:  simply what people did; physical phrases/movements with hands/arms/body/eyes.  A gesture could be the way someone covered his/her mouth, or the way someone looks at you, or looks away from you...basically anything on the physical plane.  Then we wrote down sounds from the piece that resonated for us as audience:  maybe the sound of whispering, or clapping, or shuffling of feet, basically anything that you would have noticed if your eyes were closed and sound was the only stimulus you could respond to.
We wrote all this down, one chart paper for each group.  This will be used on Monday, our next session (although it is Halloween so I'm not certain it will really be a focused session, so maybe it will have to wait until Wednesday: yipes), groups will have the choice of working with one of these things highlighted (say when someone yelled: "stop", or the way someone walked, or the sudden stopping of the drumming) and create a new scene based on that gesture, or phrase or sound, or creating a new scene based on one of the 30 or more themes we have generated, or continuing to refine on one of the scenes already created.  Next week will be our last week of developing material.  After that, a 2 week break until the week before Thanksgiving,  time for me to compile all the notes I have been taking and attempt a draft of a play. Goal to read through some rough draft right before Thanksgiving break, so I can revise over the holiday.   Reminder to self:  Rehearsal draft (meaning enough that we can cast and begin blocking and rehearsing it as a play) due first week of December!
The other part of "story" development I will share in the next posting:  conversations with colleagues, friends, and the contributions of the smaller group of students that have been discussing the frame story.  I will leave with this teaser:  our frame story is beginning to take significant shape and is constantly shifting to reflect our ensemble's and my own deeper understanding of what the significance of the Hagia Sophia is to our own lives 5,000 miles away. I am beginning to get very excited about our story.

Introducing the frame and episode creation

I introduced the frame story to the ensemble today.  For the full idea, see the last posting, but here is a summary:  a group of students from different cultures are touring the Hagia Sofia and eventually get trapped in it (one idea is through an earthquake-- historically accurate as earthquakes have wracked the building over its 1500 years, and it resonates now given the devastating earthquake in Turkey a few days ago) and encounter shadows from the Hagia Sophia's past (both historic and of our own invention).  

 This frame leaves room for scenes/episdoes/pieces that are specific to the Hagia Sophia, as well as those more related to the lives of the students.

I asked the ensemble to re look at our themes that we posted all around the room and to break into groups of their choice to create movement sequences, tableuxs, stories, songs, chants, scenes, whatever, inspired by one of the themes.  I also gave them the following as a worksheet to get them thinking about it in a way that I find a bit more useful than just: "go create something"...

Devising our play influenced by the Hagia Sophia

In your group choose one of the themes we have worked on or find a new theme. Fill out this form together and then use it to create either a tableux, a movement piece, a monologue, a story, a rhyme, a song, or a complete scene that you can share with the whole ensemble.  Don’t forget the pieces don’t necessarily have to be rooted in the Hagia Sophia but they should share some of the themes that are brought to life by this ancient building.  Your stories can be modern and based on your own experiences. 

How does___________________________ start?

              Theme

What makes it _____________________ continue?

What leads people to let _______________ continue?

What gets people to do something about_____________ ?

What changes people’s minds about _________________?

What makes people see  ____________________ in a different way?

What stops _______________________ cold?

What divides people over ___________________?

What unites people over ____________________?

What else do we need to know about _____________?

 They broke into groups of about 3-5 students and they each, by luck chose different themes:

Swagger

Secrecy

Hate

Survival

Silence

People enjoy status and values….

Mystery

Sacred death

I circulated and watched--we will present them on Wednesday.  They still are working abstractly, so I am hoping that once they are presented we can work more on how to ground them into something that can take place on the stage.   I can see how each of these themes will work within our larger frame story (for example with swagger:  I think of the emperor Justinian's remarks when first walking through the completed Hagia Sophia "Solomon, I have surpassed you", as a form of swagger.  Perhaps in the play when a tour guide brings this up, or if Justinian himself appears from the shadows and utters these lines, it will prompt whatever scene or piece is created by these students on swagger.) 

Some students came up with some ideas on the frame idea, to add a sense of urgency to it.

1.  If the trapped kids don't find a way out by morning they will become "shadows" as well.

2.  One of the trapped kids must become a shadow to keep all of them from becoming one

3.  Through the night sometimes the trapped kids get separated from each other, leading to a heightened sense of urgency.

All in all a good session:  I look forward to seeing their work on Wednesday and building from there, as well as furthering my own thinking about the frame idea.  In general the students seemed interested in the frame idea.  Hopefully interested will soon turn into excitement.  We will see.

Inspiration is where you find it when you need it

I was not feeling so great about this project during the week.  It seemed that the ensemble was stuck in our explorations.  I felt the inspiration that we had a month ago was vanishing.  Perhaps it was the hiatus to learn about shadows, or something else, but whatever the cause it didn't feel as if we were getting any closer to a story that we could begin working with. And I was worrying, for in two weeks, I am taking a week away from school for family reasons and I hoped to use some of that time to write. This is a tough part of Devising work for me, for I am a storyteller and I believe that theatre should only exist because there is no other way to tell a particular story.  I was beginning to feel that the Hagia Sophia was holding us back, and ready to simply explore themes of sacredness.  But, something happened today that I am seemed to unlock a narrative well.  I took one of my regular drama classes to a special student showing of films that will be part of the upcoming Arab Film Festival in Berkeley and San Francisco later this month.  There was a program of 5 short films representing different Arab countries--films that hopefully would blow our American students stereotypes of the Arab world out of the water. And they did. They were fantastic films in their own right, but one, opened up a whole idea for our own project.  

It was a film called Habibti.The blurb attached to the film describes it as such: "Iman, a woman steeped in tradition, journeys to London to visit her estranged daughter Amira only to find her living with her artist boyfriend. Iman tries her best to bite her tongue but she has no idea how to handle Marlon and soon they end up clashing. As the dust settles an unlikely friendship develops between them, and we discover Iman’s reasons for visiting are more than they seem".  What struck me was the image at the end, an image of reconciliation and possibilities:  Iman, who had previously upset the artist by ruining a piece of art he had created, and by cleaning his art studio without his permission, and by taking over his cooking, comes to him with a blank canvas, and then she sits.  It is clear she wants him to paint her portrait.  And that was it.  And it conveyed so much.

I wrote many notes as the film was showing but here are a few:  how different cultures, and people in them miscommunicate, even when they are trying to help each other; and that there are possibilities of communication even if we don't speak the same language.  

Just these ideas, with the particular image of Iman handing a blank canvas to Marlon, and sitting down prompted a story idea:  

The simplest way to understand it is as a “Night in the Museum” concept, where a group of young people who are touring the Hagia Sophia, get locked inside.  During that night, shadows and historical episodes unfold.  

Some other details emerged as I was thinking-- The kids that get locked into the museum are of different cultures and languages (I am blessed by having native Russian, French, Spanish, a dialect from India, and an African language speakers in the ensemble) and don’t trust each other.  They have, in fact hostile views of each other based on prejudices of race/national origin/language and religion.  In the museum they are met by two shadows from the past:  a young Christian artist, responsible for some of the mosaics of the Hagia Sophia, and a young Islamic artist, responsible for some of the beautiful calligraphy in the museum.  These two artists, who have inhabited the Hagia Sophia for hundreds of years, in the shadows, have a great mistrust for each other as well—a relationship that mirrors the modern kids that are trapped in the museum. In fact this strained relationship is what finally bonds our modern kids, as they try to help these two realize they will never get peace until they reconcile and understand each other.(perhaps without those two reconciling our modern kids can't ever get out)   Through a variety of interactions (and this is where the ensemble will come in over the next few weeks developing these ideas)—with episodes that are both historic (i.e. a re-inaction of the covering of the mosaics by order of Leo III)  and more abstract ideas influenced by the museum’s past (i.e. stories of ours like the death of silence), our modern kids realize how much they actually have in common (they can save each other now and again from disaster if needed….) and grow to appreciate and respect each other.  In the process they also help the two “shadows” come to terms.  As a final showing of this, the Christian artist will paint the Islamic artists portrait (the Islamic child will give him a canvas like the scene from the movie) and the Islamic artist will create a beautiful Caligraphic design based on the name of the Other artists.

I discussed this idea with a few students today who were hanging around after school and they seemed to like it enough for us to move forward.  I will present it to the ensemble Monday and the kids will break up into  groups to create these episodes and others that might interest them.

I think the key here is that if you are always thinking of the project, something you'll see or hear or read, like the film I saw today, can open up what has been buried in your subconscious.

Summation and next steps

For my own sake I want to give a summary of where we are and what we will do next.
We have done a lot of training, and this is essential. The students are trained and share a
common vocabulary of both movement and devising technique. I can now say to a
group: create a movement piece that focuses on the idea of covering up a sacred place,
and within 15 minutes the group will create something that I feel can go on stage. This
helps enormously in the final stages of story creation and rehearsal. We are now learning
about the possibilities that shadow will bring to our show. Christine Marie will be coming tomorrow for another instructional session with the ensemble.  Then, we have to do the hard
work of actually creating a story line. I will be adding two days of work time each week for those
students who are interested in helping build what I call a frame story. The simplest way
to understand a frame story is that it is the narrative by which the entire play hangs. A
frame story employs a narrative technique whereby an introductory main story is
composed, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage for a fictitious narrative or
organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story. The frame story
leads readers from the first story into the smaller one within it. The Arabian Nights
employs this quite well. In order to present all the disconnected folktales that comprises
this work, we have the frame story that connects it: Scheherazade's need to keep herself
alive. It is also present in the Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and countless other
works.
I will work with students on ideas: One that we I am  thinking about is having the Hagia
Sophia itself as a narrator, telling his/her story through journal entries. Another possibility employs the
use of a group of children that get locked into the Hagia Sophia and encounter it’s past
through a night in the museum. Either will allow us to use much of the material we
developed in the first stages, outlined above, and hang it together.
After the frame story is agreed on and developed we will create scenes in small groups.
The process will look something like this: I will outline all the things we have done and
ask if anyone sees anything that they worked on earlier in our process that they would
now like to more fully develop into a scene with characters and words. The ensemble
will thus break into smaller independent groups that will further develop scenes or, seek
to create new ones. It is essential here, for your own sanity as the director/playwrite to
have students perform these undertakings for each other at least once a week if not devote
the last half hour of each session to it. Also, telling students that they are responsible for
writing down dialogue and movement sequences—in a sense they write out their scenes
fully and submit them to you. One technique I began using last year that is effective is
after students present works that seemingly have no relation to each other I ask two
members from one group to meet with two members of the other group to find ways of
linking the two. Let’s say there are five groups presenting, groups 1-5. Then I’d say:
two members from group 1 meet with two members of group 2 link their work:
specifically they are to find a way that the end of group 1’s piece leads to the beginning
of group 2’s work. At the same time group 2 will send two members to group 3 to link
the end of group two with the beginning of group 3…and so on and so on until the end of
one group links to the beginning of another and all the groups are linked. Then we
present our finished product.
I also will ask students that wish to do so to create monologues for characters they think
might exist in our play (for example at this stage I could see a monologue of one of the
first architects, or of Justinian, or of Mehmet II, the moment he walks into the Hagia
Sophia after conquering Constantinople, or of an Islamic Artist who is adding script to
the building, or of a Crusader who is stripping the Hagia Sophia of it’s gold artifiact, or
of Leo III who pronounced the Icons blasphemous….I will ask the students what
historical characters might be in our piece and have them write monologues for them. I
will also ask them what fictional characters might inhabit our play and to create
monologues for them. One character I am interested in would be an Islamic artists
apprentice (in this way the character gets to be someone the age of our students) who is
ordered by Sultan to cover up some of the murals depicting the prophet Jesus. And
perhaps a Christian apprentice under the court of Leo III who is ordered to do the same
thing. Both because the art is considered against the principles of the religious teachings
of. Yet, to this young artist, even though the work is against the religious teachings and
he is obligated to follow the rules both of his/her religion and his/her leader, the work is
beautiful, as a work of art. What conflict can this create for our character? As I think on
this it might be a good thing for both characters to exist.
Not all the monologues will make their way into the final script, but what is essential in
this next phase is for lots of material to be created—all types: scenes, monologues,
tableuxs, movement pieces, and of course our new ideas: shadows.
The next step is to take all the material and write. I give the ensemble
2-3 weeks off and I write. Sometimes, depending on the quality of the material the
students give me, I use some of their work in its entirety. Other times I find I have to
write a play, beginning to end, without any of their work within. But always it is inspired
and influenced by the work we did as an ensemble. Other devising artists do not take on
this role and leave the responsibility up to the students. This is your call. I find,
however, with middle school students it is best for me to take their work as inspiration
and do the best I can as an experience playwrite and theatre director to create a piece of
theatre that reflects both their ideas and my knowledge of theatre.
And then, the final stage. You have a play written and now it needs to be treated as a
play. We cast it, rehearse it and finally perform it. Books are written about casting and
rehearsing a play, but I will add this: as a devised piece the rehearsal process goes much
more quickly the closer the students are to the material. I try and give parts to the
students that created them (i.e. if a student wrote a compelling monologue for Justinian, it
is best if that student gets to perform it). However, I ask for input from the students on
how they want to proceed with the casting process. The more invested they are in it the
smoother it goes. Not all students are as invested in performing as they are in the
creation. Each group is different.
I am excited by where we are and anxious to know what we will create.

Shadows

Today Christine Marie, a teaching artist with the San Francisco based Shadowlight theatre came to give the ensemble an orientation into the world of shadow theatre/puppetry.   The goal is for the students to learn what possibilities exist with shadow as a storytelling device and theatrical form before we get to committed to story.  It was a fantastic 90 minute session.  She showed us a video of a Shadowlight production, including behind the scenes footage.  Then we went into the auditorium where with just two overheads and a projection screen and a few puppets we could see the possibilities:  backgrounds, monsters, characters all coming to life, indeed even larger than life.  Then it was a simple question and answer session and all sorts of ideas were generated:  using our bodies to create the Hagia Sophia in shadow, showing the thoughts of the original architects, showing the riots and burning of the original church all were brought up.  The kids ideas were creative and innovative (how would we show a decapitation?  Can you show someone falling?).  Our next session will also be with Christine Marie but this time we will be on our feet creating shadows.  The idea is a good one, to give a background for a theatrical possibility before creating our script.  In an ideal universe we will use this information to create something we wouldn't have without her instruction, and then, when it comes time to actually staging it, rehire her as a consultant.
It reminds me to mention that if you are creating a devised piece with your students you should not limit yourself to just your knowledge of theatre.  It's important to seek out theatre artists in your community who for a small fee can help you and your students expand your theatrical vocabulary.  I think of it in two ways:  one, it models for my students the idea that theatre is a collaborative art form and that we should seek out ideas from other people and get help when needed.  Two, I think of it as staff development for me.  Too often I see theatre teachers relying on technique that they learned in graduate school, or in their acting careers.  Teaching theatre is the best excuse for learning new theatrical technique yourself and then teaching it to your students is the best way to really learn it.

Spolia: Stories in Stones

Story.  The immersion in information when one is devising a play does eventually have to lead to story. It has to, it always does, even if it isn't apparent at first. At least that is how I conceive it.  And I find myself daydreaming, reading, doodling and playing with story ideas.  This is the part of devising that I love and loathe.  It is an indulgent process in that all I think about is a story that can support this project. I love it because of this very indulgence--how cannot it not be a good thing to lose oneself in a project such as this.  I loathe it because  every other creative thing goes away--I cannot think about the other projects I am doing with my daytime drama classes (for this theatre project is only 20% of my job--the rest of the day sees me teaching a drama elective to 32 7/8th graders, a drama/language class for 22 students with limited English proficiency, and 2 sixth grade wheel classes in drama); I cannot think about my own writing and storytelling projects. (It's also a great excuse for not thinking about the plumbing in my house that needs fixing and things like that) For story to emerge I have to keep on this to make connections with things that are going on in my life with this project.  Two case in points.  Two nights ago I saw a dress rehearsal of a play that will be performed at the Berkeley Repertory theatre.  While watching I noticed a device the playwright used that I thought might be useful for this play of ours.  Journals.  The main character in the play addressed the audience by reading from his journal that he kept while his mother was dying.  He'd read to us an entry and then he, and other actors, would bring that entry to life.  Sometimes he would emerge from the scene and say something to the effect that: "That wasn't exactly how it happened, from now on I have to stick to the Journal".   I thought how some journals could be uncovered by archeologists working around the Hagia Sophia, and that our "play" is based on the reading of these journals.  Perhaps there would be contradictory elements in these found journals, presenting history from two or even more divergent points of view.
The second thing is an article I found on the internet entitled:  

Hagia Sophia: Political and Religious Symbolism in Stones and Spolia

By Michele Stopera Freyhauf   Wed, May 04, 2011
 The article itself is a worthwhile for anyone that wants to read it.  For the rest of you I will try and summarize.   After a wonderful introduction that captures the reason the Hagia Sophia is important, and reminds me of why I am trying to create a theatre project out of this building, the author introduces an architectural/historical concept I was unfamiliar with:  Spolia
  Hagia Sophia contains artifacts that memorialize Turkey’s vast and rich history that date back before the time of Constantine.  These artifacts and fragments came from all over the Empire and beyond.  Fragments and artifacts from pagan temples, allied countries, and conquered nations were incorporated into the building with purpose and intent.  Historians call the artifacts and fragments incorporated into the structure spolia.  The Roman's and later the Byzantine's used spolia in the construction of their buildings throughout the Empire.  Spolia relates meaning in the way the stones and artifacts are incorporated into the structure.  It was a way of telling a visual story.  Spolia is the fragments, columns, and stones from buildings, religious medallions, and statues taken from conquered or allied nations.  It is not re-use or recycling in the way a person living in the twenty-first century would understand; the intentional reducing of one’s carbon footprint.  This notion has no place in antiquity.  While examples exist that show the reuse of stones in buildings because of convenience and fit, the use of stones and columns from foreign temples or churches were used with the intention of making a statement of domination or political legitimization.  Each of the major player's in the history of the Hagia Sophia can be understood through spolia.  While there is no lasting ruins from the original Hagia Sophia, build by Constantine,  some of the other structures built under his authority, in particular The Arch of Constantinople showed his use of spolia--incorporating the sculptural adornments of the great second century emperors into “his own arch” served as a public affirmation and political validation that Constantine was the Empire’s embodiment of the past rulers and legitimate successor. For Justinian, the Hagia Sophia was rebuilt with the grandeur to make a statement to the world; Christianity trumps paganism.  All this through his using materials from past pagan temples pieces of which were incorporated into the Hagia Sophia as a means of incorporating cultural memory of its past and showing it now under the control and authority of the Christians; “a political statement of Christian hegemony."  And with Mehmet  II, the Ottoman Sultan who succeeded in conquering Constantinople in 1453, the reshaping the Hagia Sophia into the Ayasophia as a mosque  was symbolic as well.  It stood as the principal mosque of Istanbul for five hundred years and became the model for many of the Ottoman Mosques built after the conquest. He wanted to perform an act that would be a “symbolic refounding of the city” and would establish himself as a great and powerful Byzantine leader, like Constantine and Justinian. Mehmet even tried to mimic Alexander the Great and took great pains to “compare symbolic acts in his history of conquest.” With the conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a Mosque, the covering of Christian icons and the desecration of crosses, he made a statement to the world.   Hagia Sophia became a “symbolic monument of conquest and domination. In Christian eyes, Hagia Sophia became a standing monument of “Christian defeat, the sense of which is perpetuated and embittered by the preservation of its ancient but desecrated name.”
And even in it's modern incarnation, as a museum, the building continues to build its narrative.   With the rise of secularism in Turkey, in 1935, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern-day Turkey, made a symbolic statement by making the Hagia Sophia a museum and restoring the Christian Murals that stood side-by-side with the Koranic verses.  The existence of the mosaics were known, thanks to the records the Fossati brothers who discovered them when recording and cleaning (in the 1800s).  Plaster stayed over the mosaics for quite sometime and the building was allowed to stand in disrepair.   The slowness of the restoration and the disrepair the structure has fallen into is controversial.  Visitors today, some seventy-five years after its secularization, see a work in progress that seems almost frozen in time and incomplete.  And so the story continues.  For what happens next will have a great impact on the story that is told.   The restorers have a difficult job in trying to balance the Christian and Muslim features in the Hagia Sophia so that it stands as a museum that testifies to its entire history.  As Christian icons are uncovered and restored, it is done at the expense of destroying Islamic Art.  And that is a narrative that is difficult to imagine.  So, it seems as if nothing is done.  It is my thought that doing nothing indicates our current time's dilemma with how to reconcile what is a 1500 year struggle between two competing world views.  And is this not the story of the world today? All this through a building and it's stones.   I was struck, in reading this, how the building materials are placed and used tell a story. A story that would be full and clear if we knew how to listen.   It brought me to the idea that the pieces of the building can speak to us.  Why not?  If we can make a play out of a building it certainly would make sense that the building can speak.   Even if none of this ends up as our device (either the journal idea or the Spolia idea) I write about them to serve as a point.  That when you are immersed in a devising project, you have to take everything into account.  For you don't know what will inspire a story.   

Narrative Image

Today was time to move to story, to narrative.  This is a hard jump for me to make, but necessary.  Everyone that does devising work has different methods for doing this and if you are new to this type of theatre creation I suggest you read some of the things I mentioned in an earlier posting (resources) and talk to others that might have.  Having said that, my methods change each time.  For this project I decided to use image work, or rather image play.  A lot of this comes from Augosto Boal and his intererters.  I find the easiest to follow methodology is outlined in Chris Johnston's House of Games.  He makes a great distinction between working with movement and image.  In movement, he says:  the starting point is the physical impulse (this was our earlier work)--image work lends itself to a more discursive, polemical process--there's more to discuss and argue about.  It is time for our ensemble to discuss.
What we first did, to prepare for the work, was to randomly collect into groups of 4 or 5.  Each group had large pieces of butcher paper and markers.  They were to think back on all we have done in the past month and write words, ideas, images, fragments, themes, phrases, questions....anything that came to mind from our work.  They did this in 15 minutes.  Then the papers were posted throughout the room.  And we looked at them.  Some of the things that were written would be obvious to anyone following this process:  power, covering, synchronicity, death, sacredness, history, treachery, ritual, theft, myth, wisdom, recreation..
but a few stood out as new:  Grace, angels with dark shadows, intolerance, tradition, bitterness, blood.
These will remain on our walls and continue to be added to as we work.
After that students then broke up into new groups.  This time I let them choose groups (after a month of random grouping to build ensemble, I thought it might be nice to just see how they divided up).  In those groups they were to select on phrase or word from the list.  Then in silence (and this is key) they create a narrative image in this way:  the first member of the group will sculpt the first image of the story.  They have an idea in their head but they can't explain it, they just sculpt it, using the other participants as their clay.  They should aim toward a picture that has a certain momentum.  They sculpt all the members of the sub group into their picture, then they put themselves in it. Then the next person takes over and they sculpt the second picture in the story.  Again, no discussion and no consultation as to the content of the story.  But they should aim to portray what they think happens next. As before they put themselves in the picture last.  This continues for each member, with the last one ending the story.  Then the sequence is memorized and rehearsed.  When everyone is done they perform for the rest of the class. 
The audience then makes decisions as to what the story is--to say what is happening.   Interpretation has happened on two levels, the narrative and thematic--the thematic is already clear by what word has been selected.  The audience imposes the narrative. 
We only got to two groups.  I included video of them below.  I began a new procedure today that I think is useful.  When we talked about the "story" we saw, whoever presented their idea about what they saw, was given a clipboard with paper and a pencil and was told to write down what they said.  In that way we can keep these stories and see if we want to expand them.
They really enjoyed the activity and I think these will lend themselves to creating plot for our play.
Here are some videos and photos of todays work.  The next entry I'll include some of the story ideas that developed in this session.

Finishing training and some resources on the Hagia Sophia

 Today we finished our formal training and finished our presentations of movement pieces around the "personalizing" the Hagia Sophia.  The thing that struck the ensemble was some of the movement possibilities--one group in particular presented a compelling image.  The problem card was:  You are the new kid at school and your mom drops you off.  As you're walking up to the door, your mom says:  "I love you, honey!".  Everyone laughs.
The image they created was of a student walking in silence up a staircase that led to nowhere (they built it out of black stage blocks.) It was high, going up around 6 feet in the air, so when the student walked up it he towered over the others, who lined the staircase, there to greet the new student.  As he was walking, all was silent, while the students stood by watching the walking.  At the last moment, just when the new kid hit the top of the staircase his mom yelled: " I love you, Honey".  And then "drove" off.  All the students that had been lining the staircase pointed, while our student did a slow crumble.  A powerful image.  But of course the question is:  How will this, and any of the other images that we have grown attached to, fit into our play?
We didn't have much time left in our session so I decided it would be a good time for some background on the Hagia Sophia.  In this way they could begin doing what I am doing:  making connections between the work we have been doing and the Hagia Sophia itself.  I had collected a few videos from the internet (we can't get youtube in our school, so I went on a site called vimeo and found some short 5-8 minute videos (typing in Hagia Sophia) and found a short clip from national geographic that looked at the architecture of the Hagia Sophia.)   The session ended and we agreed that our work at our next session would be on how to connect the 3 things we have done:  pieces about sacred places, pieces about sacred places with a conflict or problem affecting the place, and pieces about things sacred to us, with problems with some of the history and architectural things we learned in the Video.  And  that we would begin looking at story ideas.
I am going to look at some of the things from Augosto Boal's games for actors and Michael Rohd's work to help me formulate a plan on how to get these linkages going.  This is an exciting but nerve racking part of the process of devising--the transition from training to story.

As we move into our next phase of devising, I am finding it useful to be doing lots of background reading. Here's the resources I used.

1453 by Roger Crowley published by Hyperion
Hagia Sophia:  quick guide info series
Hagia Sophia by Lord Kinross   published by Newsweek
Byzantium by Philip Sherrard, part of time life books great ages of man series
Hagia Sophia by Heinze Kahler and Cyril Mango published by Frederick Praeger
Constaninople by Jonathan Harris published by Hambledon Continum
Sea of Faith by Stephen O'Shea  published by Walker and company
And finally the guide I bought at the Ayasofia museum itself in Istanbul.  This I will make copies of and distribute to my students so they can have it as a reference.

There are, of course, thousands of websites with much information as well.  A google search will fill your evenings and weekends if you let it.