At last: first rehearsal week

Wow, what a whirlwind the past 2 weeks have been.  The ensemble had two big hurdles to deal with: casting and shadows.  Let's deal with shadows first since that was fun.  I had a grant from a local fund, the Berkeley Public Education Foundation, that has given me 12 hours with a shadow artist, Christine Marie.  She came about a month ago to introduce us to the shadow world and what might be possible in terms of shadow creation that we could use in this play.  She did this before I actually wrote the play and so as I wrote it I could think in terms of shadows.  And boy did I...there are shadow possibilites everywhere.  So, now she comes in (we are down to 7 hours with her) and actually helps us create scenes.  Attached is a video of our first creation--the opening of the play, where we are trying to create the impression that the outside world is threatening the Hagia Sophia:  it is, after all, May of 1453 and the Ottoman Army is about to crash through the walls of Constantinople.  I wanted to do this in shadow (mostly because it is cool, but also because it creates a whole different feel, than if I had a mass stage combat scene--which I did last year for Macbeth and just wanted to learn something new).  It was a blast and even though we did it quickly without costume, I think it gives us the basis for which to grow.
The second thing was casting which proved, as it always does, both rewarding and difficult.  It is great to think about kids and match them to roles that suit them and stretch them.  This would be a great play for a smaller cast of say 20, or even 25, possibly even 30.  But with 37 vying for key roles (it seems they all wanted to be a few characters), some were bound to get what they wanted and others not.  The details and specifics will be familiar to all who teach young people theatre.  As I say in my storytelling: it was long in the doing, but I'll make it short in the telling:  the play was cast.
And this week, what fun--rehearsal.  On Monday, Christine helped us with shadows, with nearly the entire cast present.  Tuesday I met just with the kids who get trapped in the Hagia Sophia (they provide the audience with one of the through lines for the entire play).  We talked character, purpose and split up lines.  I also met with the Byzantine Artist and Ottoman Artist who open the play feeling the pressure of the "shadow" army that is approaching.  They are creating a new work, a blending of Islamic and Christian styles into something very exciting--but it is dangerous and against both their religions.  The two actors cast are very excited about their roles and in the first rehearsal they really established a good relationship on stage.  Which is key, as this is the audiences other through line for the play.  And their relationship, if it is real and believable will really go a long way to letting the audience invest in everything else.  I am very excited about these two students and their potential.
Wed, no rehearsal for a staff party.  Yes.
Thursday, we had the tour guides and ensemble members to create student tour groups.  What a great rehearsal.  This could be a dead scene.  3 or 4 pages of facts about the Hagia Sophia, but the 3 tour guides totally invested in the enthusiasm and vocal play that was necessary, and the ensemble created fantastic pictures in tableux and through movement that complemented the story.  I didn't have to choreograph or block in a traditional way--I just told them all to use the viewpoints we trained in for the first month and the listen to the tour guides and use that to motivate their movement responses.
The details aren't as important as the reminder that if one is to do ensemble based work, it is crucial that a common vocabulary  and aesthetic is established through training and not through rehearsal.  All that 6 weeks of training allowed them to fully create a scene in a 90 minute session, with me serving as an eye and nudger. 
We are heading into a much needed 2 week vacation.  But this week has reminded me, yes, of all the work ahead of us, but also, of the fact that I think we have an awesome play, and an awesome group of students to build it.

Student reaction

Last week we read the  draft of the play and discussed it.  In general the students liked it, some scenes more than others, nothing different than any other project I have devised with students,  but I also picked up from one student who I trust,  that some students felt the draft didn't necessarily reflect the particular work the students had done.  This lead to an overall discussion and my further reflection on the devising process.  There are as many ways to create devised theatre as there are people involved in it.  Similarly there are as many forms that devised work can take as there are people involved.  In summary, the particular form I used for this project was to tell the story/history of the Hagia Sophia to my students and express why it had such a strong impact on me.  I told them that since my particular art form was theatre I felt compelled to try and create a theatrical response to all I saw, thought about and felt.  And further, that since I worked with young people, I wanted them to be part of the project.  We then worked with themes and they built scenes and movement pieces based on those themes.  We then met for a month and discussed story ideas.  Then, I took all of that, plus mixed with my own research, I wrote a draft of a play, which they then had before them.  I expressed that if I sat down and wrote a play about the Hagia Sophia without their input it would have looked very, very different.  That indeed this play was the way it was because of their input and involvement.  They seemed satisfied with this.  But they were happy that I kept things open for additions as we continue our rehearsal process.
We then continued this week with casting the play.  In some devised pieces in the past, casting was natural in that kids performed in scenes they created.  But because this was not a scene by scene creation, but rather was conceived as a complete play, there were no scenes fully developed by students.  I decided to use a more traditional casting process (which I use for already written plays). I asked students to indicate their schedule (available days for rehearsal),  and the parts they were interested in.  Then we moved to actual auditions.  I had sides from the script available and had the students read from those sides in groups or individually depending on the parts they were interested in.  The nice thing is I already have seen them in their scene creations through the past few months and have some indication of how they move, (which is crucial and often difficult to ascertain in an audition settinging) but I wanted to hear their voices on the large stage. Our auditorium holds 950 seats and can swallow young voices, so it is essential key roles have strong voices.  I will cast the play this weekend and we will spend the last week before the winter break rehearsing what we can. 
The shadow expert I got a grant for (courtesy of the Berkeley Public Education Foundation), Christine Marie, is also starting this week.  I am anxious to see how we can incorporate shadow work into this project.  We have her for a total of 10 hours.

This $$^@# does not write itself

Last night I finished what I am calling a rehearsal draft of the play.  Most of it is complete, but a few scenes remain to be worked out in rehearsal.  I like to leave some things open so the kids continue to feel as if the play is theirs.  In truth it is part them part me.  Throughout the writing process, which entailed me locking myself in my house for 5 days during the Thanksgiving break, doing nothing but writing, reading and thinking about the project, I was  deeply influenced by the work the ensemble had done over the 2 months of our devising work  (recalling movement sequences they had created)  but would also forget it and let the play develop naturally as I wrote it.  Some scenes were based on their devising, but some of it grew entirely from the writing process.
Today I will get to school early, make about 15 copies of the 40 page script, and we will read it aloud.  It should take 2 days of reading.  After that I will spend a few days revising based on what I hear and the students input and we will begin casting and rehearsals next week.
Two things about the title of this blog entry. One:  I have a colleague, a drama teacher at another school, who told me that writing plays was easy:  once you have  character's and their wants decided on you place an obstacle in their path, and the play just develops.  Two: I saw a t-shirt in a local shop:  a picture of Shakespeare, with the words:  This shit writes itself.   Well, after many weeks of sweating through the ideas of the play and a solid 5 days of nothing but writing I have to say:  it ain't true.  This was hard.  Maybe my friend and Shakespeare know something I don't, but from my experience trying to take ideas created and developed by young people, and meld it into a coherent, enjoyable, funny and meaningful theatrical piece known as a play, took a hell of a lot of time and focus.  It was far from easy, and it sure didn't write itself.  I'm just sayin'.
Let's hope the kids like it today.

Sleep No More and Islamic Art: Occupy the Hagia Sophia

I have been working on the script for a week now.  Mostly writing ideas.  Some might call it procrastinating.  Maybe, maybe not.  A student emailed me some basic thoughts that were intriguing--he wanted some new character introduced one that represented an outsider religion into what was essentially a Christian/Islamic conflict.  It got me thinking how odd it was to be developing a play about religion, religious conflict, and religious art.  He proposed a Jewish artist.  I thought, great, if it isn't complicated enough I have to now placate all religious views....

So this is in my thoughts when I went to NYC this past week.  3 events there, mixed in with this students thoughts, influenced the way the play is taking shape.  One:  I went to visit the Occupy Wall Street site, and then on my way back to the subway, I walked by the site of the world trade center.  Then took the subway uptown to the recently reopened Islamic art exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, and then, in the evening saw the most spectacular theatre I have seen in years:  Punchdrunk's adaptation/meditation on Macbeth:  "Sleep No More".  

These 3 seemingly unrelated events really did a number on my subconscious.  What I discovered at the Islamic art exhibit was how Ottoman art in particular, and Islamic art in general, were greatly influenced by art movements and artists that lived throughout their empire.  For the Ottomans, and this has direct bearing on the work that is in the Hagia Sophia, it is quite possible that Sephardic Jewish influences were present.  The Ottomans, for all their other faults, were very tolerant and in fact encouraging, of different religions and cultural influences.  Indeed the Jews and the Muslims had a lot in common in this region of the world, both being kicked out of Spain during the Inquisition, just before the fall of Constantinople.  In fact the Ottoman's invited the jews to repopulate the cities of Salonika and Istanbul after the fall of the Byzantine empire decimated these cities populations.  So, for our play, it is quite possible to include characters from all over the Ottoman empire who were brought to the court because of their artistic talent.  

Then there was "Sleep No More".  In simplest terms it was as if I was invited to participate in someone else's nightmare, both as a witness and a participant.  And what a nightmare it was: the Macbeths.  It was presented non linearly and mostly in dance/movement.  I could, as a masked observer/participant do anything in a five story "haunted house" environment--explore a room, follow non masked actors, whatever.  It reminded me of this basic idea while writing this script:  if you can say it with movement and sound and lighting there is no need for words.

This concept is reliving me of the burden of taking the deep work by our students, which was created through movement, and trying to put it into words.  I think that it this point I am writing a sketch: something that outlines movements and physical pictures and will let words come if necessary through the 6 week rehearsal process.  This is true for many episodes in the play.  There are some of course where words are coming as I work on it, but for most it is getting the picture in my head and writing it down.  What follows is an example, a draft of the opening, which places a high value on movement and sound but does include some necessary dialogue to move our story along.

Oh, before I include that I have to talk of the Occupy movement (Helicopters hover over Berkeley as I sit in a cafe near the UC campus, monitoring the student strike here).  It reminded me of the impetus behind this play in the first place.  The Hagia Sophia's history is relevant to today's world, as all history is.  It reminds us that human's have had the conflicts before that dominate the headlines today.  Being near the world trade center site reminded me of the news from a few months ago of the outrage by some at the proposal of building a mosque/islamic community center near this "sacred site".  So the outrage at the changing of the Hagia Sophia from a Christian church first built by a pagan emperor, then transformed into a different brand of Christian worship by invading armies from the West, then it's conversion into an Islamic mosque, and finally a secular museum plays itself out in today's world as well.

Ok so here's the opening as of now.

Opening/Prologue

1453 

There is music, of course.

One young artist runs out onto the stage from backstage—ending up downstage center.  It is a girl or a boy, carrying a blank canvas.  There is a sense that s/he has been running a long time, and is making certain no one is following.   Another comes, from a different place, perhaps from the audience area.  They embrace, but are clearly wary, looking about. One begins to speak, but the other stops them, so they won’t be heard.They set up the canvas and begin to work on it together.  A series of words appear on the backdrop: ‘ The Year: 1453.   The place: The Hagia Sophia, the great church of the Holy Wisdom, in Constantinople.  It is the last moments of the Byzantine Empire.’

They are working on the painting, and we hear the sounds of war in the background—canons, explosions, yelling.  The two artists are clearly fearful and painting with great urgency.  We can tell, through their clothing that the two artists are different.  One is an Ottoman Turk, one a Byzantine.  In the background we hear the progression of the battle that rages outside.  The artists move their work, closer and closer to the audience, in a zig/zag pattern across and down the stage, finally ending crouching below the stage, on the stage left side of the theatre, hiding, but still working.   It has to be clear, through movement if not in words,  that it is essential that they get the painting done, now!.  Armies clash behind them, in front of them, some in giant shadow behind, some in shadow on scrim (using as many walls as possible to create this battle, both in shadow and on stage)  Shouts:  The Turks have broken through the walls and other shouts we will develop.  Actors in black costume will be holding hand held lights and will cast  shadows of the battle.  There will be a rhythmic exchange of movement/tableux between the painters and the soldiers.  Only when the soldiers are in tableux should the artists speak.  At last  the Sultan Mehmet II Enters downstage center, a soldier is seen taking something of value.  Mehmet  II holds him by the neck:

Mehmet  II

Why are you destroying this floor, soldier?

Soldier

For the faith, my commander.

Mehmet  II

Did you not hear?  Leave the building alone.  The Hagia Sophia is mine.  Content yourselves with treasures from elsewhere.

This comes to a tableux (dead soldiers, Mehmet)

Our artists come to life here and are focus

Ottoman Artist

We have to hide this.  If the Sultan or any of his soldiers find it, he will surely destroy it, and kill us.

Byzantine Artists

But it’s not finished.

Ottoman Artist

We don’t have time to finish it.  It’s better like this, half done, then destroyed.  Destroyed it does no good.

Byzantine Artist

A few more strokes, with your pen, then, your Calligraphy is what makes it whole.

Ottoman Artist

And your portraits, I wish I could paint like you—you bring to life the very prophets themselves.

Byzantine Artist

I could teach you, and you could teach me.

Ottoman Artist

But it is forbidden

Byzantine Artist

So it is. For now.  I wish we could show this.  Even incomplete it is something the world has never seen.

Ottoman Artist

It is beautiful, yes, but they are not ready yet.  Maybe, someday.  But not now.

Let’s hide it now, or we will die and it will be destroyed and nothing will change. 

Byzantine Artist

Even unfinished, it is a thing of beauty—a blend of our worlds.

There comes a point where the tableux’s begin to move in slow motion, while our artists continue to talk, at last they notice the movement and urgency again takes over.

They will find us…where can we hide it.

Ottoman Artist

The building itself will hold it.  Behind one of your mosaics.  Maybe the one of the prophet, Jesus, or the one of Mary.

Byzantine Artist

No.  Those are the first places  they’ll look. Let’s think. 

Ottoman Artist

No time.

Byzantine Artist

No, I have it…upstairs, on a railing, there’s some strange writing that no one knows anything about…It just looks like scratches, nothing of value or of danger to your faith.  They’ll leave that alone…Let’s roll it up and put it under there.  Quickly….

They roll up the unfinished painting, and make their way and we show them hiding it, as the shadows of the soldiers move around

End scene

November 1st: Last meeting before writing

Today was the last day of the ensemble before we take a break for almost 3 weeks (there will be one meeting for us to check in on Monday, November 21.)  It was an excellent final meeting and I used a process that I wish I had done at least a week before.  Rather than have the students continue their small group pieces, which were getting us no new ideas, and were getting us, in my opinion, further from things that could actually be used in a play, we worked together.  I first re-told the frame story, which I've recounted in past blogs but basically involves several tour groups of children in the modern Hagia Sophia, and an earthquake causes about 5 kids from all the groups getting stranded in the museum.  Over the course of their stay they encounter 2 main characters that live in the Hagia Sophia as shadows:  two artists, one responsible for the Christian art work, one responsible for the Islamic artwork.  Through the night, different shadows appear recreating different moments in the history of this great building, and recreating other things that reflect the themes inherent in the building.  Then, a secret is revealed:  a piece of artwork is hidden in the Hagia Sophia that has never been found.  It is something that these two shadow artists created together:  a piece that reflects an integration of Christian and Islamic art forms--it hasn't been revealed because these artists felt the world wasn't ready for it.  And the question is:  is the world ready for it now?
This is the basic frame story.  I then asked the ensemble to think of anything we have done over the past 2 months that they felt absolutely had to go into the play.  And to list other things they wanted in the piece as I began my writing.  Our list was large, but specific.

• Pulling people out of a hat in shadow (something our shadow artist, christine marie, showed us).
• A skit called:  "In the name of the conquistador" that a group presented based on themes.
• Cheese jokes (background:  every play I have written has a cheese joke in it--they wanted to make certain this one does as well)
• Transparent cars (again from our shadow introduction)
• A scene with people on shoulders (again from our work on themes)
• A prologue showing the Christian and Islamic artist painting together in secrecy, with great urgency, as we hear the sounds of the armies fighting in 1453.  The painting has to get done now, and hidden, before it is destroyed.
• Make it a musical
• Include a character of a drunk old man
•  Have the Hagia  Sophia as a character/narrator.
•  A commercial break in the middle of the play, at height of action.
•  How to choose the 5 that get left behind ideas:  tour guides ask questions that check them; have them be artists; they ate cheese last night...
• An arugement as to which cheese is better:  Italian or Turkish.
• Graffiti:  connect modern graffiti with viking graffiti that is in the Hagia Sophia
•  The shadow artists cannot rest until their work is revealed and accepted.
• Create background stories for the 5 chosen tourists that leads to conflicts.
• In shadow work include characters from a previous play which dealt with the dream world
• An earlier piece (from our first session where students imbuded an object with sacredness) that involved the clock representing time itself.
• The conflict the fossati bros and the sultan at the time Abdul Medjid must have had by uncovering and then covering some mosaics.
• Use tableuxs

Each item involved spirited discussion and thought.  Then, and this is the part I should have done earlier, and now in retrospect, should be an every other week activity through the devising process: after making our list students volunteered to take responsibility for one or more of the items, and writing anything from simple summaries, thoughts, all the way to full blown scenes, that they would email to me, so I could use them in my writing.  A few hours after the session ended I received an email from a student who wrote a biography of one of the 5 young tourists trapped in the museum.

The next two weeks is about writing for me.  I think this last session will be helpful, and I am anxious to see if any follow through and write up their ideas.  So, a note to those following along, and to myself for next years devising project:  Every few weeks have a session where we note what we have done that we feel must find its way into our piece, and get the students to take more responsibility for at least attempting to write it as a scene right then!

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.