process
been trying to sit down and write this entry for days! and, of course, the mental version keeps getting longer and longer. last night i got this far: “ok, i am going to do this chronologically because i only have 20 minutes before dinner in which to write, and if i put this off”–and then someone came by and told me our dinner guests were beginning to arrive and let’s go over and greet them! right now i have a bit of downtime before my audition for the play. i’m not expecting or expected to be cast, but all the institute students are supposed to go through the (very quick and low-key) audition process ’cause we’re expected to basically go through EVERY PROCESS here, which is awesome, and that is what i want to write about: process. [have since auditioned; not done with this entry, of course.]
anyway, i am living in eureka, humboldt county, california, for the next month or so, to attend the cornerstone institute summer residency. cornerstone theatre is a company that’s been based in los angeles for the past seventeen years or so (before that, they traveled the country making theatre with rural communities). they make a lot of theatre with various communities within los angeles and they’re pretty much totally awesome. check out their website. anyway, every summer they travel to a small california town (or sometimes a community within a large city) and they put on a play. the institute director and the playwright started making trips up here like nine months ago to get to know the community, talk to people, collect stories, meet organizations, etc, and the playwright wrote a play based on those stories–and on the myth of jason and the golden fleece. the play we’re putting on this month is called jason in eureka: an epic adventure in search of golden fleece and other local treasures. we students get to come and learn about community-based theatre by taking classes together in the morning and working on this immense intense project in the afternoons and evenings. such divisions blur of course. so. yes.
before that i was in portland, of course, and i was feeling rough. gotta acknowledge that. felt rough here in eureka too. sort of overwhelmed and unengaged and i dunno. the other night i meditated for the first time in much too long and i saw flowers made of light growing and blossoming and dying and growing again. so there’s that. i mean, the growing again.
the institute has been great so far. amazing and scary and thought-provoking. on thursday night we sat in a circle (the first of many many many, everything is done in circles here) and shared our reasons for being here, and i said for the first time really that i don’t want to be a stage manager, i am not a stage manager, i think i’m done with that. felt weird to admit to it out loud.
on friday morning we did a “cultural mapping” exercise. we sort of assigned categories to corners of the room–like “love to win,” “hate to lose,” “just wanna play,” “don’t wanna play at all”–and then we each had to choose a corner to stand in. then each corner group had to come up with three things that everyone in that group had in common. some interesting stuff came out of that–then we were given a dichotomy, two extremes, and told to arrange ourselves in a spectrum line from one end to the other. a relative spectrum based on the people who were present, of course… the first (not necessarily real) dichotomy we were given was “mind” and “body.” we walked to where we expected to find ourselves on the spectrum and ended up with a clump of people in the middle and a similarly-sized clump at the “mind” end. i ended up at the extreme “body” end (of this particular group of people). goodness knows it’s a false dichotomy. i found it really interesting that “mind” was a more acceptable or common extreme than “body.” those of us at the body end found our position there sort of socially uncomfortable, i think. i have in my life elevated my “mind” at the expense of my “body” (and thus of my mind), but i haven’t ever elevated my body at the expense of my mind, really, because it’s much harder to do that in my cultural background, or something. but my rejection of the dichotomy made me feel closer to the body end than the mind end–as a sort of resistance to that elevation of the mind, i guess.
the next spectrum we created had “art” at one end and “social justice” at the other. my favorite part about creating these spectra was the conversations that broke out instantly as we tried to figure out our place in the line. here is part of the reason i am at the cornerstone theatre: oh you know all those venn diagrams, with your passion, your strengths/skills, and what is needed, and the “sweet spot” in the middle, what you should be doing? maybe i lived too long in my passions and then too long in my skills (?), and for months now i have been so focused on what is needed, and felt sort of useless in providing it. i felt burnt out on art! so instead of coming to this place from my theatre-making and art, i am trying to go back to theatre-making through what i see as needed. i guess. anyway, i was sorta in the middle of that spectrum.
then we added another dimension to that and made it into a sort of graph, with art and social justice on one axis and PRODUCT and PROCESS on the other axis. i walked all the way to the process end and i stopped. i talked with the people around me, and said, “product is only meaningful insofar as it comes out of process,” and “product is maybe a way of communicating process.” when people see my mandalas, they say, wow, i would never have the patience for that, and i say, i just start in the middle and work outward.
another thing that came up the first or second night, when we were talking about cornerstone’s history and mission etc etc, was some other group of theatre-makers and social-changers: a group of women who are way involved in support for women, shelters, education, etc etc. but their mission statement, or statement of purpose, or something along those lines, is very very simple: “our purpose is to make theatre.” and all the rest of their work comes out of that purpose–that PRACTICE. so i got to thinking about theatre as practice, and meditation as practice (so i went to my room and meditated), and this blog as a practice. i am all about the process and not the polished product–the product communicating the process… maybe this is something that will bounce back a little with time, but right now i am okay with the messy process of this writing.
there has also been lots of discussion about what “community-based theatre” is. i guess my conclusion for the time being is that it’s a process for which community is a product. i am thinking a lot about the role of artists in community, and what it means that we came here to this community of which we are not really a part to make this art–and, by my logic, to make this community!
i am cutting this entry a little short because it’s almost time for a meeting about our community auditions tonight. [hah! didn't actually finish it. am once again pressed for time, before the auditions themselves.] myself and another woman are trying to put together an additional little project for auditioners to participate in while they wait for their audition: answering (in words or images, on notecards) the questions “what brought you here?” and “why do you stay?” which are sort of fundamental questions asked and partially answered in the playscript. i will end with this–someone suggested the other day that one purpose of community-based theatre is community renewal–it’s a reminder and a reteller of old and new stories and issues. i just finished reading a book about mayan village culture, secrets of the talking jaguar by martin prechtel, which suggests that community is never permanent–it is in the creating itself. the process.
The secret of village togetherness and happiness has always been the generosity of its people, but the secret to that generosity was village inefficiency and decay. The House of the World, like our village huts and our human bodies, no matter how magnificent, is not built to last very long. Because of this, all life must be regularly renewed. To do this, the villagers come together once a year at least, to work on putting back together somebody’s hut, talking, laughing, feasting, and helping wherever they can in a gradual, graceful way. This way each family’s place in the village is reestablished and remembered.
If a house is built too well, so efficiently that it is permanent and refuses to fall apart, then people have no reason to come together. Though the house stays together, the people fall apart, and nothing gets renewed…
Generosity of soul and tangible effort in the face of the constant pressure of decay are what give people purpose, fertile imaginations, vitality, a feeling of usefulness, and self-worth. When decay is “cured” instead of communally addressed, a culture becomes decadent. Then generosity becomes an advertising ploy or a dirty word. Violence is close behind when people won’t come together to remake each other’s houses.
lots of love.
thanks for reading.
thanks for helping to build me up.
p.s. victor, one of the institute students and our documentarian, has been staying up late to blog, here.
