The APA library

On Tuesday I often leave the house a bit earlier than I need to for work, and go to the APA (Academy for Performing Arts) library. It is a small, florescent lit affair on the ground floor of the APA building, but it contains a concentration of books on – surprise surprise – the performing arts.

If you are not a current student of faculty member, you need to apply for a card to use their library. For non-graduates, a reading card per year costs ($1000) and the privilege to take books out cost an additional. Which means that in the coming year I am doing to drink down as many books as I can.

With only the reader card, each visit becomes a little like a pilgrimage. I go there, armed with fountain-pen and notebook, find the book I want, and spend an hour or two there drinking it down. It is actually a bit like taking a shower – I read through the book, taking notes, and writing questions down. Yesterday I was reading a book of interviews by Peter Brook, about how he came to do the Mahabharata (in an epic nine hour show). The interviewer was asking how he chose this Indian epic, and he talked about how, you know, you have many ideas and then eventually they filter down into the one seems infinitely more important than the rest. He talked about the responsibility for choosing a play, in that it involves a lot of people's time (especially his plays.. the Mahabharata took ten years in making!)

What purpose does this scholarship serve? I'm not sure, but it feels great to be reading these books. And I really want to take the time and care before launching into the next production. If there was a place that went slightly wonky with Berzerk!, it was that the premise of the whole production was ill-defined (I mean, what do you mean, you're going to do "city-life"?)

Making the trip to the APA reminds me a bit of all those times in Paris where I would walk down to the Pompidou library. Sometimes you had to cue up to get in, and once you were in, again, you couldn't borrow any books. But I went there because it had a beautiful collection of English books, and I was hungry for English books. I copied down Ted Hughes' poems, I devoured Virginia Woolf and Michael Cunningham, and I was hungry.

There's something wonderfully clandestine about books that you can only touch in situ; books you can never own, not even for a day or a week, but can only touch and read and copy on the spot. Or to feel the hunger for books, and be quenched. Those times in Poland where an English bookstore was a gold mine, never mind that they had only classics and books that I might not have read in another context. I was hungry, and when you are hungry, the loaf of bread tastes like manna from the gods.

What's left? -- The acid test

"This is an acid test: ten years later, do we carry with us a trace in which we can reconstruct the play? This trace is an acid burn, it forms itself in a silhouette – not just a picture, an image with an emotional and intellectual charge. From this hard kernel the meanings of this whole work can be found again. Examples: Mother Courage drawing her cart, two tramps under a tree, a sergeant dancing."

-- Peter Brook, The Shifting Point

The other day I watched a production of Hamletmaxhine. I watched it only a week after our show, while I was still trying to make sense of what had happened. Watching Hamletmaxhine clarified a few things for me.

It was a pleasure for me to watch the production, to watch something well executed, and that had a coherence, or perhaps more precisely, has something to say.

It was fun for me to watch the ebb and flow of energy between the audience and the performers. To recognise how there are scenes in which draw the audience in. Bright, happy (I might be tempted to say, comic) scenes. The audience like these scenes, and to some extent, these scenes are necessary, really necessary, to open the audience up.

And yet what really haunts me is a single image: a woman in black, with a long semi transparent cloak, crosses a bridge. The slowness, the silence.
Why does this image haunt me? It doesn’t actually even make sense in the play. I don't know what it is trying to say. And perhaps, there lies the mystery – this is an image which makes no sense, and yet, as Peter Brook might say, it burns.

That's what I look for really, those moments, when energetically something leaps across the gap from stage to audience. A spark that leaps across a trench, to ignite a blazing forest.

If you ask me what I remember out of the Berzerk! project, and perhaps, what I will remember after all this – they are those magical moments in rehearsal, when something leapt out. The first time we ran through, when Haruka's energy burst all seams and floored us. Those early days of improvising in the studio to late morning light. The feeling of sudden coherence in the Aphex dress run for the work in progress showing. It is those moments of magic that I would want to bring on to stage as a director… which somehow got muffled in the Fringe. (I have come to realise that the Fringe Theatre is spatially not helpful in establishing the rapport between audience and actor. The seats are too sloped – most of the audience literally, looks down, on the actors and even though it is a tiny theatre, gives the unfortunate feeling of distance)

If anything, I think the project gave me, as a director, an understanding of what Jacek was trying to tell me with his electrical circuit diagrams… the different types of rapport that one can have with the audience. Scenes which open up the audience: playfulness, joy, humour. Scenes which demand something of the audience: patience, reflection… even ones where you push their limits. Especially ones where you push their limits. That is the problem with proscenium arch theatres – the audience feels safe. Even when the huge 3, 4 metre high flats came crashing down in the final act of Hamletmaxhine, it was not as impressive as I imagine it must have been, on stage. We are safe in our seats from what is happening on stage.

Yes – when I watch a play, things affect me on different levels. What feels engaging to me initially is not necessarily what lingers afterwards. I sensed this most clearly when I watched Theatre du Pif's production of Blackbird. During the show, I was hooked by the dialogue; but weeks later, my strongest memory is that of Bonni's monologue.

For me then, the test of theatre is what lingers afterwards. What I am interested in creating is that which lingers afterwards. In a way, I want to talk to the audience not right after the show, but a few months later. Did anything stay? Did anything last?

Why do I ask for that which lasts? I tend to keep many other things – most notably, my relationships - in present tense. The bright, giddy present. What will last, will last, and what lingers in the memory is not necessarily a reflection of what was beautiful or important.

I suspect that it is the educator in me that asks for long term effect.
Or perhaps, a desire for immortality.

基本功: Fresh magic

With the production over and some more time on my hands, I have taken up one more class at Capstone. Tuesday afternoons, just before my tai chi.

I really enjoy teaching this class. There is a freshness in our encounter; I lay down the ground-rules: I am strict with them, pushing them in ways that my other students, being overfamilar with me, won't let me. And in turn, I give more of myself. I find myself really taking time with their marking, murmuring to myself the uniqueness of each person. Sarah, your writing is clear, but can you see how Janice or Aaron have all this detail that you can learn from? I am rigorous with them, and I think we all come out better for it.

And I think: what if I put the same dedication, love and attention I am doing with this class as in my others… perhaps it would be infectious. The thing is, over time, we have begun to take each other for granted. We have begun to take the work for granted. Homework gets handed in last minute. Marking happens last minute. We "get by", we have begun to expect less of each other, and more importantly, less of ourselves.

With this new class I am going back to the fundamentals. What makes good writing. In the end, it call comes down to 基本功. 只有不同層次的基本功. Whether in writing, or in tai chi, it all comes down to the basics. There is only the basic practices.

The truth is, my happiest times in tai chi these days is when 師傅takes time, really takes time to show me the 套路. Never mind that I've done this a squillion times before. When done with attentiveness and dedication, tai chi takes on a different quality. Very often, when we 縶拳, there is a lot of assumption. That's why it's really helpful for me to hear things explained to a beginner again.

Teaching, like learning; like directing, is a practice. The practice of staying alive and attentive. There is no magic.

In between

I woke to the sound of the sea this morning.
It was been a long time since I have listened to the sound of the sea. How can this be? I live by the sea. But it is like so: we are so busy; so focused with other things, we forget what is there right next to us.

It is difficult for me to write anything sustained. My thoughts appear in fragments; some bright and shiny, like pebbles underwater; others misty, like the omnipresent rainclouds these days. But I have accepted this as part of the process. Sometimes things do not need to be so clear.

I accept this period of in-betweeness. Allow myself to drift, like a unmoored boat.
Sometimes it is necessary to drift too.

I sleep. I sleep a lot. I read some, I watch some movies. Sometimes I think about the construction of the plot; or consider how I might turn a short story into an animation (outline, storyboards). But never too seriously. Like trailing my hand through the water: more for the sensation than to actually catch anything. I play chess with my brother; I puddle with the website. I teach class. Actually, I've taken on a new class on Tuesdays. It's nice to have a fresh batch of students. I get to be strict and push them in ways that my older students, who know me too well, won't be intimidated by.