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.