Class 9/24

What really hit home about this class' presentations was the game that Sarah led. I consider myself to be a geek. A reformed geek. I don't know every little thing about every series of Star Trek, but I do love it. There was a time when all I wanted was for my letter from Hogwarts to have just been accidentally delayed. I knew already that I would send back a correspondence that would say, "It's okay! I'll just be the oldest in my class--I'm alright with that!" I knew that I would sell all of my earthly possessions to shop for school robes and nifty secondhand books that would try to bite my hands. I knew that I would study and go to Quidditch matches and scream my lungs out!

So moving through that culture is a familiar thing. I've never been to a Con, but I've been invited by friends. I've seen photos, I know what the experience is. The label I got was Geek Guy. I felt disturbingly powerful. I knew who I was better than, and I knew that people were treating me well. I even tried to pick up a couple of women. I felt kind of infallible. I felt powerful. Nobody was neglecting me, nobody was rude to me. I started to strut. I clapped other people on the shoulders and helped other people avoid the Fake Geek Girl. I sat down to try to help a Geek Girl, but she wouldn't communicate with me, so I left. And I didn't feel bad about leaving. I just thought, "Well, fuck her. I'm gonna go hang out with Nimoy."

When the game stopped, I felt kind of sick. I realized that none of my friends try to accuse me of not being a geek, but they have in the past. I lived with four guys--all geeks in their own rite. Rick and James, who are brothers, were sci-fi geeks who could just be totally absorbed in a new world watching TV or movies. They loved video games. Tristan was a film geek who obsessed over Buffy the Vampire Slayer and could name directors and screenwriters of movies quicker than actors in them. And Adam was a sort of fluid geek. He was up for playing video games or watching sci-fi or geeking out over articles on Huffington Post. And then me. I thought that I was on par with Adam. I hated video games, but I watched TV with the guys and watched movies with Tristan. I even sat around and just hung out doing my own thing while they played video games.

And looking back on it...I'm kind of remembering things. I'm remembering a power dynamic that I perceived. Tristan was very popular and kind of mysterious for a while, but I became quite socially popular in my undergrad theatre department. I didn't fight with anyone and was good at making people laugh or making them feel loved, so they wanted me around. So I became the social one in the house. A kind of socially-capable ruler who passed judgment on what was clean enough and what behavior was unacceptable. But now, looking back, I remember how comfortable my roommates were with me and how sometimes they would joke around, quizzing me about sci-fi. They took the tone of agreeing that things like quizzing girls were ridiculous and joked that I was a girl, so I couldn't play video games with them even if I wanted to. It was funny--they were funny jokes. But now...I wonder if that's how they felt--the way that I did walking around that fake Convention. Maybe they're just good people, like too good to make me feel degraded or shitty and too good to be totally unaware of the inequities in Geek Culture. But they still don't know any other way. There's still a lack of other-shoe-filling. And it makes me wonder if I would have been more of a Geek if I hadn't had to evolve in order to claim my own space and power in the household.

Babbage Chapter 4

Today is the first day of an ITT performance for me. I'm excited and nervous, and there's a tiny little piece of me that doesn't quite trust the process yet, even though I've seen it unfold flawlessly before. Reading the final chapter in Babbage helped a lot to allay some of those insecurities.

I like her compressed version of image theatre moving into forum theatre, and I admire that she includes her own experiences. It makes me feel comfortable as a scholar being in her "presence". As a side note, I will say that most of the class has been referring to Frances Babbage automatically as "he," which is somehow bothersome to me. Not in a hurtful way, just in a kind of sad way. Like...even young women in the class have called Babbage "he". How strange! A highly critical analysis of Boal's work is assigned and we consent to assuming the author of any such book is male. It's sad to think that we've been taught, as women, that these are the things men write. That men write with forceful, opinionated, educated voices. Or just that men write and we don't. It's such a sneaky paradox, because most of our graduate program here is made up of women. Brad, Joshua, Chris, Will, Lawrence. I think that might be all. All the men in our department. There are EASILY triple that amount of women in our grad program, and yet we are all still unknowingly consenting to the idea that men are the ones who write books and men are the ones who can be critical of an established form of theatre. How subversive. How suspect. On some level, that's degrading, and it's not something we even realize.

Sorry. That was a tangent. A useful one, but still a tangent.

I like how Babbage details the warm-up games and tends to qualify her chosen games or activities based on a flexibility of space and bodies and abilities. She kind of hit all of the bases for me--"this can be done with a LOT of people" or "this can be done with people who are physically or mentally disabled" or "this can be done with very few people". Stuff like that. It's a very good resource as it stands for us moving forward into our community workshops. Very exciting and a very quick reference should things function differently. There would be no use in saying, "Oh. We only have five people. Nevermind." I think the spirit of TO dictates that we instead react with, "Excellent! We have a nice, cozy group of five people! Let's do something we'll get more out of as a small group!"

Daily Life Entry

At ITT training on Sunday, we did a step-forward/step-back game. Brad read off a list of statements which seemed to be statements about privilege. I was aware that I stepped backward a little more frequently than I stepped forward. Sometimes I didn't get to move at all. I was aware of a lot of shuffling around me as well--my eyes were closed so I wasn't sure. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised at the number of people in front of me. Astonished, actually. I thought that probably everyone had experienced at least some of the things that I had. Surely everyone has been laughed at or ridiculed because of their body, right? Surely everyone has had to skip a meal or two when money was tight, right? Surely it took everyone a moment or two to decide if their parents really told them that they could be anything they wanted. Right?

Wrong. I don't consider myself an unhappy person. I don't consider myself to be a person who has led an unfortunate sort of life. I didn't expect so many people to be so far out in front of me. I didn't expect to see the pain in Emily's face when we locked eyes from opposite ends of the room. I didn't expect her to cry and to apologize. I didn't expect to have to hold her and tell her that she has no reason to apologize but many reasons to be aware. I've never been aware that so many people had so many more benefits and privileges than myself because I consider myself to be pretty damn privileged.

It blew my mind. It was painful to see Emily so hurt. I saw it, felt it, heard it emanating off of her and out of her. This scared little girl voice that just said, "I'm sorry that people like me have hurt people like you." I wanted to hold her forever and pet her hair and tell her that I don't mind. I wanted time enough to empower her to use her privilege for good--to keep herself healthy and happy enough to give some of her light to others when they need it. I didn't want her to feel so hurt or so ashamed of her privilege. It can be a painful thing to realize for the first time that you have access to more resources and opportunities than the people you love and the people you view as peers and the people you respect and look up to. It can be devastating. I hope that the experience was valuable and that I was able to help her process some of that shock and frame it in a healthy way. She's never abused her privilege and is nothing but generous--I hope she doesn't still feel called out or ashamed.

I'm still trying to process my position in that room. I take such ownership of my size and my appearance that I rarely notice any of it as an "abnormality" or "outlier" position. I don't feel much of anything other than a distanced curiosity. A kind of, "Huh. How 'bout that." I feel the lack of feeling. I wonder if that's healthy? That detachment?

Class 9/19

Some of the images we constructed today really spun some gears around in my head. Particularly the one that I was involved in. I think that being a child victim of sex trafficking is a rough role to fill, but it was very revealing, particularly when Joshua's hand was on my face. As we discussed it afterward, I couldn't really find a way to express the dualities I was thinking of. I hope that this entry is acceptable--I'd like to write a piece. A monologue. There's a lot of duality and a lot of guilt and a lot of misuse of power that can't transform people's thinking patterns, especially if they're young. So here's this.


(A young girl--maybe sixteen? In a safe space some years after being extracted from a sex trafficking scenario. Addressing God or a very talented therapist.)

I know that he's...bad. Evil? I know that I should probably hate him. Want him dead or some shit, y'know. I know that. Like, up here in the front of my head. I know it up front, and I can say the words and tell everyone around me that I'm a new person or whatever--that I'm turning my life around and "just don't want him to hurt any other little girls" or something. I know that. The thing is, though, like--well, look. He was my mom's boyf--no. He was like...probably just a friend or a sure thing or something. Not a boyfriend. So he was like always around, y'know? And it was kind of like he was an uncle or my new dad or some shit like that. And, like. He took me in. Mom left. She just took off one day, and there was like half a package of hotdogs in the fridge and all of the lights were shut off. And water too, and heat. So it was like fuckin' freezing or whatever and I'm like...this nine year old kid living off of some bullshit hotdogs. So when he came by, I let him in. I mean, why the fuck not? Right? He comes in and is like crying and telling me he's sorry and shit. It was scary, y'know? 'Cause I was a little kid, right? And, like, I knew something was wrong. I mean--that I was not in a good situation. I knew something bad was gonna happen. It felt like...whaddayacallit? Yeah. Ominous. And, um. And he just kept saying he was sorry. And he was crying. And he started taking off his pants, y'know? And I just told him how my mom wasn't there. And he kept crying and told me to take off my panties. I felt bad for him. I mean, I was scared out of my mind, y'know? And like, I knew he was carrying a piece, y'know? Everybody did in that part of town. So I took them off and just stood there with my panties around my feet. And he picked me up and set me on his lap--not, like, on his dick, or whatever. Just on his knees. And he set his hands on my thighs, and--like. Okay, it was freezing, right? So his hands felt really warm. And there was this part of me--I guess this really fucked up part of me--that was happy. I mean, I wasn't fuckin' retarded--I knew I was about to get raped or whatever the fuck. But he was so warm and safe-feeling. And like...I felt powerful. Y'know? Like I knew that I was pretty enough to make him stop crying. And, um. Like I know that a kid can't give consent or whatever, but I think I did. That first time, I think I did. So I guess-- (she clears her throat) I guess what I'm saying. (A pause. A trembling lip.) I know I'm supposed to know that it's not my fault, but I think it was that time.

Daily Life Entry

Today I referred to myself as "fat" while talking with a friend.

For me, body type is an issue of identity the same way that sexuality and gender pronouns are issues of identity. So I identify as "fat", as "straight", as "female". "Fat" is part of my identity. It's something that was used against me when I was younger, something I felt ashamed of, something I hated about myself. The most powerful form of subversion is reclaiming, and that's what I've done. I don't waste my time sitting around wishing that I were slender anymore. I don't cry in dressing rooms anymore. I don't hate my body or fantasize about a magic knife that I could use to lob off pieces of my arms or my stomach or my ass. Not anymore. So, for me, the word "fat" is a war cry. It's a power ballad. It's a call to arms--be they slender or juicy. I don't stand behind euphemisms anymore. I identify my body as "fat" to challenge the perceptions of others. I stand and say, "I'm fat," and look fabulous, and I hope it makes people angry. I hope they get riled up and flustered and register for once that they are afraid that my body might be acceptable and that they have just lost their power over me.

Today I referred to myself as "fat" while talking with a friend. We were laughing. She stopped laughing. She stared at me as though I had slapped her or disparaged my own beauty. She said, "You know I don't like that word. I hate that word. Don't ever say that word around me."

I felt hurt. Hadn't she heard the triumph in it? Hadn't she seen my war-paint stretch marks and heard my battle cry? Hadn't she vibrated with the radiation of my self-love?

No.

And I felt hurt. And then sad. And then ashamed. And then angry. And then hurt. It's only just now that I've realized that she doesn't like that word because she's scared of it. She fears it. It's only ever been used against her and never to praise her. It still sounds like a gunshot to her, like anguished screeching--not a battle cry. Stretch marks still look like slashes in the skin of a vulnerable child from the cutting eyes of others. She wears no war paint, makes no battle cry, and furthermore does not want my protection.

Today I referred to myself as "fat" while talking with a friend. She's in a different place on her journey, and I hope she can become her own army one day.

Class 9/17

Today's class felt sort of jilted. Sort of stop-and-go. Like a video that kept stopping to buffer. Or like when a storm makes the cable go all laggy. I think we were sort of disconnected, not incorporated. I wonder if it was because there was no warm-up game? I wonder if maybe I'm the only one who felt this way? Something didn't click--didn't settle. There were unassuaged insecurities leaking out of classmates and coating the room with anxiety.

I think, in short, that it's a good time to start our independent projects. I think it's a good time for us to play around and figure out by leading and facilitating what works versus what doesn't work for us personally. It's also the first hurdle of the semester workload-wise. While TO is a consistent class, many others are ramping up for midterms or papers. Maybe today we all just needed some decompression time. The rain should have helped, but maybe other people don't react to rain the way that I do.

Image theatre can frazzle people. It seems that it needs to be very all-or-nothing. The alternating back and forth between speech and silence can be dizzying and disconcerting. I think that when I lead an Image Theatre exercise, I will probably have it done completely silently. I think I trust our class to "riff off of" each other the way that Peter talked about. Energetically. I think we can all radiate and receive quite well, and I think we can feel out who would be next to stand up and alter an image. After we arrive at the anti-model that nobody wants to change, we can discuss it. If we don't arrive at that anti-model, I think we can discuss WHY it's difficult to arrive at an anti-image. There seems to be no throwing the baby out with the bath water in Image Theatre. I think any conversation generated through the activity will be fruitful and engaging and can get wheels turning and stimulate individual and possibly group growth.

I'm nervous, but I think it will turn out well. I think I'm going to do a heads down sort of situation. We'll see how things go. I hope I'm not the cause of a breakdown, but if I am, then I hope we come to view it as a breakTHROUGH. And I hope that there's time to wind love around that person and help them know that they are safe and loved and beautiful.

Fingers crossed. Dive in, Davis.

Daily Life Entry: Fast Food

On Saturday, I agreed to help Will as an actor for his group playwriting project. I rolled out of bed less than 45 minutes before I was supposed to be at the rehearsal. I was probably a little bit hung over. I didn't eat breakfast. I showed up to the rehearsal with half a can of Diet Coke, in flip-flops and jeans.

The rehearsal process was trying to say the least. There are five playwrights all trying to work together, several of whom know absolutely nothing about the world of theatre. They elected Will to direct the piece. Then they tried to jump in and take over. As an actor, this was confusing. As a fellow director, infuriating. Actors already have another person's thoughts and movements swimming around inside their heads--they don't need four or five external voices, too. It was, in a word, a clusterfuck.

After the rehearsal, I realized how hungry I was. I drove Will and Shannon to Burger King with me and finished the second half of my Diet Coke. Caffeine addiction is a bitch, but it's the path I've chosen, so...so be it. We get to the drive-through and the person taking our order is talking very loudly, which is not helping the hangover or the caffeine withdrawal headache. I ask her very clearly for two separate orders. The voice that comes back through the speaker belongs to a new person, a different person than the one before. I give this second person the orders. She says, "One moment please." Okay. No big.

A third voice comes out of the speaker. A man's voice. He reads the order back to me. "Those are separate orders," I say. I'm never rude to people who are getting paid minimum wage--it's very important to me to ask how servers are doing, ask their names, tell them to have a good day, and just generally give them a piece of light. On Saturday, however, my rope was fraying. Fast. The man asks me to specify which order is which, and I do. My voice and my smile are tight, twitchy, and a little sardonic in that Southern bless-your-heart way. By the time I got around to the window, I was happy to pay and be on my way.

As I drove Will and Shannon home, I apologized for being cranky, and we all began to dissect the systems of oppression at work. I know that there's a corporate somewhere that oppresses the purchaser of the franchise who oppresses the general manager who oppresses the shift managers who oppress the long-term employees who oppress the new employees who are told right there at the bottom of the food chain to smile and be a shining example of customer service. I felt oppressed, but was I actually the oppressor? The one paying for services rendered by employees. After all, didn't I have the power?

Shannon ultimately decided that money was the Great Oppressor, which I agreed with (probably because I'm walking the line to broke). I think that bottom rung is tricky, though. There are lots of trade secrets and corporate hush-hush that happen at that lower level. Things like up charging and up selling and secret back-room stock. I think it depends not only on who has the power, but how the power that is possessed by either party is being used.

Babbage Ch. 3

I found this chapter EXTREMELY intriguing. It's interesting to read about how seamless Forum Theatre can be if the Joker is willing to go with the flow and if the actors are good at playing along with the ideas of others. It's hard to imagine situations in which Forum Theatre would go poorly, but I'm sure there are some. It seems that it can be a very empowering experience at a grass-roots kind of level. I'm amazed that Boal did these activities with whole towns full of people--it seems as though it would become crowded or too hectic. I think the Joker or facilitator has to be a very specific kind of person--a person with both organizational skills and interpersonal skills.

I'm very excited to begin my own journey through Forum Theatre. I'm so eager to get started with ITT, particularly after the performance I saw over the summer. It was extremely invigorating and made me feel passionate in a way I didn't expect to. Reading the stories in this chapter about homeless or de-homed activism and learning disability activism was inspiring and refreshing in the same way. It makes me want to explore Forum Theatre with middle or high school students in New Orleans--to go back to the confusion from Katrina. They would have all been eight years younger then, and I think it's important to re-visit and unpack highly emotional events like that.

For example, every few years, I take a few nights to retreat into myself very quietly and remember everything I can about the events surrounding my parents' divorce and my kidnapping. I relax myself, meditate, and allow myself to remember and to feel vulnerable the way I did when I was seven or eight years old. Every year, I remember some brief image or some dialogue I'd forgotten. I incorporate them and try to make sense of them. I let myself cry, and I let myself acknowledge that I probably should have had more careful supervision at that age and during those proceedings. I find it very helpful to re-visit and to try to piece everything back together.

That's what makes me wonder if it might be helpful for young teens and high school students to sort of time travel and to re-discover Katrina not through the eyes of the media or of their parents, but rather through their own eyes at the time. Forum theatre, I think, could be a very useful and integral piece of that process--being able to step into a role with given, common circumstances and being able to acknowledge and realize your own power or your own helplessness. Do you know of any similar work currently being done in such a way? Is there an additional component to "group trauma" type situations?

TO, Chapters 2 & 3

I feel like Boal's writing style fluctuates between being matter-of-fact and being jargon-heavy. I feel as though I frequently frown and squint at pages and pages only to have a concept explained very simply shortly afterwards. Maybe it's just how I'm perceiving things, though.

Boal gives one of the clearest definitions I've ever heard for Romanticism, which I found wonderfully useful. It's a movement/genre I've never quite been able to wrap my head around no matter who taught it to me. What struck me most was the phrasing and generalizing. Typically, I think generalizations are not in a student's best interests, but sometimes they complete a learning web--especially when they fall right into the center of one. He says, "It was an attempt to solve in the field of the spirit the problems facing men in society. Everyone, without distinction, could aspire to spiritual perfection, even if he were poor like Jean Valjean, deformed like Rigoletto, or a pariah like Hernani. Men, even though hungry, must preserve that marvelous thing called spiritual freedom."

I mean, what a concise and brilliant definition. I've been shown examples of Romanticism, but have never been quite able to get at the source or feel honestly confident about the aesthetic elements of using Romanticism on stage. Though perhaps not the most TO-ish realization, this was very helpful to me.

Another instance in which Boal makes himself very clear after unpacking jargon-laden concepts is when he describes the difference between epic poetry and dramatic poetry. He says, "Epic poetry 'recalls'; dramatic poetry 'relives'." Genius. Seriously. Honestly. Genius. It's like there are little nuggets of information spread throughout this discussion of large-scope storytelling. He not only concerns himself with works of theatre but also of literature and film. At one point, he even discusses Sesame Street. So while his scope is seriously intimidating, he also has some wicked insightful tidbits!

Brecht's theatre hinges on greater forces acting on individual characters. I don't think this means that a particular character "stands for" or "is representative of" a certain type of evil or ill-intent. I think that it approaches its characters rather as people battling their own separate oppressive forces, which is contrary to everything I've been taught about "epic theatre," I think. I feel like I've always been told that the characters are shallow and symbolic, but I think now--after reading all Boal has to say--that they are characters who are helpless (more or less) against their oppressors or the larger systems that oppress them.

Class 9/12

We continued our foray into image theatre, and it clicked a lot better today. We started with an activity that Pam led which was the embassy ball. It was about releasing inhibitions via cake. I think we all treated the "cake" like shots or mixed drinks. My loss of inhibitions included me telling off Chee for saying that he doesn't like cake. Uninhibited me thought that what he said was very rude because Pam obviously made this delicious cake for her guests and invited us all, so how rude of him to talk poorly of her cake! Lynett came over to help me yell at him until ultimately I got tired of that and went to stand in the middle of a group of people. Alex came over to sleep on me, so I picked her up to dance.

What struck me about this activity was that I actually willed myself into drunkenness. I don't remember the in-between moments so much. I remember trying to soak in what people were saying but being mostly deaf to it in favor of trying to listen inwardly to the desires of my self. It was VERY strange to feel drunk sans booze. It was also interesting to discover how difficult it can be to dig through our own self-oppression and hear the truth of our desires underneath.

We moved on from this to image theatre. For whatever reason, I have a very difficult time with the idea of not speaking AT ALL. I think there are certain exercises that I'd like as warm-ups to image theatre. Exercises that employ silence and help me feel that words are not necessary to communicate my ideas. I think that there are "fire" people and there are "earth" people--and this might get a little Wiccan. But I think that people like Joshua are fire people in that they are very decisive very quickly. It takes next to no time to decide what needs to be done about a situation and then act on it. For people like me--"earth people"--it's different. I need to plant myself in a problem and slowly examine everything around me until I can come up with a list of possibilities and then begin to sift through the probable outcomes until I find the most appropriate and set it slowly into motion. Image theatre is probably easier for people like Joshua than for people like me, but I do appreciate the idea of moving the energy of the room into a different fixture. I think it's probably possible to imbue your model with certain energy patterns as well as body positions.

By the end of class, I understood it, felt the rhythm of it, and enjoyed it. I'm excited to continue work on this form and in others--I just might take a little longer to understand the rhythms of it.

Class 9/10

Sarah led us in a game where we had to hold perfectly still so that other players who were acting as bears couldn't detect any movement. It was a game of survival. Alex growled, Cat laughed. So Alex and Cat were prowling and their energy felt so ticklish that I started laughing without either of them touching me or making bear noises at me. I became a bear. Which, I have to say, was a hell of a lot more fun than lying on the ground being a human. I got to try tactics out on people like poking them, sniffing them, nudging them with my feet, tickling them. At one point, I got Kelsey out because I laughed at how much fun we were all having. My laugh made her laugh, and I got her out. Weaponized giggles!

I think the game could have gone much differently if we all took it quite seriously, but I think a lot of meaning was still conveyed through it playfully. Sarah led a very open-ended sort of discussion afterward, which I appreciated. It was so on point that Barbara jumped in and segued the game discussion into the class discussion. Excellently handled!

We worked again with image theatre. So we decided to develop images based on the idea of the "oppressive classroom" Alex called me forward and sat me on a chair, head slightly disinclined, hand out as through writing with a pencil. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her grab Chee from the front row to use him as another figure in the image. She put his hand on the back of my neck in a place that could have been easily mistaken for my shoulder. Then she had him stand quite close to my back, and put his face down quite close to mine but still higher to invoke a sense of power. I was immediately terrified. I couldn't look into his face because of the way we were positioned. All I knew was that I was being touched from a source standing behind me and that the other person was a male with a lot of power that I didn't have any of. I felt helpless and trapped and scared while everyone in the class sat and stared and murmured quiet appreciation of what Alex had done, congratulating her without words.

While I knew the whole time that I was in a safe space and that Chee would never do anything to hurt me or scare me or rob me of power, the role and context that I was dropped into were enough to make me tense. Later, when we talked it through, Pam mentioned that she thought it looked like Chee was helping me or guiding me. Chee hadn't seen anything inappropriate in the image. In fact, when I mentioned how inappropriate it was, the whole class had a bit of an "aha" moment. I was bewildered. Had nobody else noticed how close he was? Seen where his hand was? Seen the fear on my face when I could hear his breathing? No. It looked, from the outside, like assistance. Guidance. Like a well-intentioned man assisting a student. At worst, they thought, a man forcing his own ideas onto a student.

When we don't ask the oppressed person, we don't get the terror of the truth, perceived or real. Perception is just as important as reality. If what Chee intended was to help me write a paper but I perceived it as a sexual advance, there needs to be an open, EASILY accessible line of communication through which to debrief the situation. I don't have a history with sexual abuse, but I was terrified in that role and context.

We must learn to actively seek out the opinions and thoughts of oppressed identities in any given space. Allowing a place for them to speak freely is a step, but we must turn ACTIVE ATTENTION to them.

Daily Life

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the systems of oppression that I perceive in my environment versus the systems of oppression that are actually intact.

For example, during my preparations for the Irene Ryan acting scholarship auditions, I perceived that I existed in an environment in which my acting partner would have to work particularly hard to convincingly be in love with me--with my body--with a body that lies outside beauty norms. I wore makeup to all of my rehearsals and perfumed myself with apologies for my form. I did everything I could think of to make my body somehow easier (from my projections onto him) to love.

At one point, right before performing in Rhynsburger, I was reading him something I'd written from my character's point of view--saying things like, "I know you hate me secretly, I know you hate my body, hate my booming voice, hate the noise I make when I stomp around, hate my heaviness, hate my gracelessness." My acting partner took my phone (which I was reading off of) out of my hands and put his arms around me and let me cry on his chest. That was when I understood that by apologizing for myself in all of those subtle ways, I'd been hurting us both. How hurtful I was to him! To assume that he was shallow enough to lack the capacity to love me--to access that part of his self and act through it. How callous to assume that he couldn't do his job well enough so I had to cover myself in makeup and perfume and move in ways that I perceived to be "sexy" through the lens of the beauty industry.

Currently, I'm perceiving in my environment a system that holds me to the standards of high academia. My mind and heart know that the last year has been intense. That I've learned some of how to be an academic and how to be taken seriously. I will continue to learn through this year, but I feel like I'm being stretched in ways and places of my mind that aren't stretchy yet--that haven't stretched in a very long time and might break under the tension. How do you say, "Nevermind," after everything you've promised your family and your self? How do you admit to not being ready for something so fundamentally a part of the world you want to belong to?

I'm wondering, I suppose, whether I'm perceiving things accurately within the department or whether I'm perceiving them through fear. Fear acts like a funhouse mirror and distorts perceptions of opinions and positions and power. I wonder how we can really know if we're perceiving things accurately or through fear.

Reading for 9/10

In chapter one of Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, he essentially takes Aristotle's ideas in The Poetics and shows his audience how those ideas about what makes good theatre actually transform into a manipulation of the audience's sense of virtue.

Given the chapter overview in Babbage, I hadn't realized that the format Boal uses in this first chapter would be so similar to that of Aristotle--short descriptions of what terms actually mean, explaining the process of how things are transmitted to and transformed in the minds of the audience, a look at which ideas are better than others and why--VERY reminiscent of that ranking system that Aristotle is so fond of in The Poetics.

I think the relation of Aristotelian theatre to Western films is the strongest analogy given--perhaps just because it comes after all of the unpacking of those heavier ideas of virtue and happiness, but it just seemed...simple. It seemed almost like that could have been the only paragraph there to make me understand why Aristotelian methods are manipulative and unjust.

One thing I really enjoyed was something I found in the section on happiness. It says, "...the superior level of happiness is that of the man who acts virtuously and asks no more. His happiness consists in acting in a virtuous manner, whether others recognize him or not. This is the highest degree of happiness: the virtuous exercise of the rational soul." It strikes me as something I would see on the twitter account of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (which I follow). And it's true. There's something about being happy enough and having enough of your needs fulfilled that your true happiness can come from doing kind things for others without making mention of them or needing recognition for them. It's--if we all took good enough care of ourselves, we might all be able to sustain the kind of happiness if would take to transform our society through random, simple, small acts of kindness and love.

Class 9/5

We did an appearance-observation activity where we were asked to study a partner while a partner studied us. We then turned back-to-back and changed two things about our appearance, turned back around, and had to spot the differences on our partner. Within two or three partners, I learned that I am very good at this game. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm good at it in everyday practice, but I think I'm relatively observant of others--of their habits and appearances. I understand, though, how small differences could make big changes in the composition of a person. I don't think I would have noticed someone's expression--I would in everyday life, but not in that activity. I suppose it all comes down to focus.

Another activity that we did was the glass cobra. I really enjoyed the glass cobra because it gave me an opportunity to identify a person based on a part of her that was typically unseen or not focused on. I also got to lead a swath of people into the line to re-form the cobra. I felt protective of them and moved in slow, gentle waves while searching for my partner so that the people at the back of my line wouldn't feel flung around. It was interesting to hear how everyone else found their partners. By feeling arm after arm, taking that as a sign that people were connected where they were supposed to be--it's intriguing because of the inherent trust in saying, "This person can't be mine because they have already found the right person and have already been found by the right person." It's as though nobody ever thought, "Perhaps this person is mistaken." Very interesting.

The statue garden was interesting. I like the idea of molding without touching, but I think all three techniques can be used interchangeably to great effect. Molding a person into a position was fun, but I was concerned about my partner's comfort, so I tried to give her something relatively easy to do. Once we were told that the statues were a gallery, the whole game took on a very different feeling. I wandered around careful not to abuse the power of my gaze. I studied my friends, appreciated them, performed my appreciation by nodding and smiling and going, "Hm." Then when I was molded, I felt this dreadful anticipation that I would ruin what Lynett had intended--that I would do it wrong and misrepresent my artist's vision. I don't frequently feel this way as an actor, so why as a sculpture? It may have had something to do with the position that she placed me in--one where I was crouching and looking up into the eyes of my audience. It was a little scary--made me feel a little anxious.

The image improv game that we played was a very fun one. Ben did a wonderful job finding places to fill in--I know it shouldn't be impressive, but seeing people who don't identify as "theatre people" doing well at theatre activities impresses me and almost makes me feel strangely proud of them. It's odd. It was a good game, though, to re-interpret and to re-calculate and re-calibrate. It was nice to push yourself into a different view of things and to know that individuals are capable of mentally occupying more than one interpretation of a thing at a time.

Dynamizing was good to learn. The most interesting part was trying to find people who I thought were responding the same way I was only by seeing them as a solid, single image. I was very nervous about finding the right group, hoping that my slender view of them told me what I needed to know and that our points of view would line up. It's like allying yourself with an organization or finding a spot within a school, church, or organization. Your first view is difficult to trust because you KNOW there's more under the surface, but you only get one quick glance the first time. Scary, but if a place advertises themselves truthfully and your interpretation follows their model, hopefully you can end up in the right place. Once others began moving, I realized I'd usually found the right group. It's a challenging concept, but I think a very important one to consider.

Class 9/3

In class, we first talked about what the word "oppression" means to us. The general consensus seems to be that it is a phenomena that occurs in non-consentual situations wherein one party wields power to its own advantage over another party which may be denied rights or benefits due to the actions of the party with the power. 

The tricky part seems to be the "cops in the head" part. What happens when the party wielding the power is your extroverted self and the party that it neglects is the introspective self? It's harder to stop civil oppression within the self than to make an effort to assist with the oppression of others outside the self. Most people I've known seem to want to help others, but it's seen as shameful in our country and society to talk about helping ourselves. It's viewed as a luxury instead of a regular part of surviving as a human. We feed ourselves. We drink water. Why don't we feed ourselves positivity? Why don't we drink light? Why are THOSE things seen as selfish? It reminds me of an Alan Watts quote:

"Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.' "

After our discussion, we played the car game. We each got to drive around our partner and each got to be driven around, blindly. I got to parallel park Sarah, which was pretty cool. The instructions on backing up in a particular right or left direction weren't specifically given, but Sarah seemed to know what I meant. It became very easy and natural to move her--the only problem was when she seemed to not feel me let go or didn't feel me push her back to begin moving. I'm glad I don't have to communicate with my car in real life. I think things would be a lot more difficult--it might be why I get nervous driving a Segway. :P

We then played The Great Game of Power. The set took quite some time to establish. I think it would have been a lot easier to do with children, actually. Adults get into their own heads very much. It was a good way to demonstrate, though, that perceptions can be RADICALLY different from person to person, history to history. Once the set was established, we added our own bodies to the image to take power away from one another and apply focus to ourselves. I enjoyed everyone's interpretations of what it meant to take away power. My own involved removing Dylan's glasses and shielding his eyes. When one is denied sight, I find it very limiting and very oppressive in many situations.

Class 8/29

Thiago led a really good exercise. Everyone seemed kind of flustered that he hadn't thoroughly explained the directions, but it seems to me that there's a lot of limited explanation in TO games and exercises. I actually enjoy not having a very clear explanation--to an extent--because it offers an opportunity to get to understand how other people interpreted the same ideas in so many different ways.  I think that's part of the spirit of that particular exercise as well. And even when something doesn't go according to plan, it doesn't mean we can't learn anything from it. It just means that we have to take a step back and reframe our understanding. I think that "reframing" is a very valuable skill in both education and in life. I believe that it takes Westerners and particularly Americans quite a bit of time and patience to learn to not handle "reframing" aggressively.

We have a tendency to become frustrated, to struggle against the natural flow of things in favor of the path that we initially decided on and decided to control. When things are surprises (like multiple interpretations of an activity), we treat them as unwelcome guests in our lives instead of taking a few moments to fluff the pillows on the guest bed and rinse the china we use for good company. We hinder ourselves in this frustration--we spend so much time and energy trying to force and manipulate our way back into what is expected. Why not use that effort to reframe, recontextualize, and recognize that the moment we are in will never exist again? Long story short, I was proud of Chee for the confidence it took to lead a physical exercise without over explaining.

Cat blew my mind. I've never trusted anyone to hold my full weight. I mean, not since I was very young. I got a little misty-eyed, I'll admit. I was really glad that I got to work with you during that exercise. I'm confident in my abilities to hold others, but very skeptical of others holding me. Years upon years of body shaming and shopping with a mother who was shamed for her own body--it's difficult to imagine people holding me up. Sometimes it's difficult to imagine furniture holding me up. I'm always VERY hesitant to sit on unfamiliar furniture. Strange how much our own insecurities can impact our worldview. Either way, if there was anyone I felt comfortable with, it was you and Cat, so that worked out very nicely.

The machines were very interesting experiences. The war machine got everyone a bit riled, but perhaps that was more discussing the IDEA of war than the actual exercise. It was difficult for me to find a place to fit into the war machine. When we built the peace machine, however, I had a very clear idea of where I could go and how I could contribute to an atmosphere of betterment. I feel fortunate for that. During the discussion afterward, though, I hope I didn't sound like an aggressor. I realize that I didn't complete my thought about the passivity of our culture. What I meant was that we are often content to watch a brief news package about an issue and then change the channel. I felt that Jennie and Ben sort of took that out of context and responded as though I had tried to say that monetary gifts and messages of love were unwelcome in favor of actual hands-on work, which is not what I meant at all. I hope I didn't hurt them. I know my tongue can be sharp sometimes, especially about Katrina, especially on the eight-year anniversary of it.

French Telephone was a VERY welcome change afterward. It was nice to laugh recklessly and sort of cough up all of the pain we'd just ingested from one another. Very healthy. Thank you for that. It was wonderful and exactly what was needed.