"I know this man."

After a long week of creating and receiving stimuli, I spent Friday picking up my first day of work in this country. The school was holding an expo on "Documenting Practices," and I was able to usher for a few hours for a little cash (I am a slave to the GBP). The exhibit showcased several examples of documentation of theatre practice--not only taped performance, but pages from sketchbooks of designers, models, photographs, audio renderings of specific performances, taped rehearsals, and journals from Central students from past shows. The larger discussion surrounding all of these "artefacts" was how can one actually document a thing while not actually documenting the thing. No matter how many play texts, production notes, production histories, video recordings, and personal narrative we have surrounding any one piece of theatre, you cannot fully capture any one theatrical performance--it happens live, to and with the people surrounding it in the moment, and then never again. Part of its ephemeral nature is what makes it theatre and not another medium. So while there were different forms of documentation--some of it produced to submit for grants, some the result of the production/artistic process, and some made for the sake of marketing--these things still have some distance from whatever piece they are associated with simply because they are but fragments of a much greater whole.

Some of the notable pieces were:
1) Sketches from Rae Smith's sketchbooks for her scenic design for War Horse.
2) Theatrical models (of people, furniture) placed in various wooden boxes that you were permitted to move and arrange and then photograph. The camera available was hooked up to a computer that would save and display the image on a nearby monitor.
3) Very charming photographs from a clown workshop in Barcelona.
4) The journals of various dramaturgs from the Central/Complicite production of The Boy From Centreville.

It's this last piece that prompted this blog entry. I had remembered seeing the piece mentioned in brief on one of the several flat screen televisions mounted around school, noting past productions and alumni news, but I had somehow forgotten what it had been about. Upon rediscovering the documentation, I realized it was about school shootings, focusing mainly on the Virginia Tech massacre. Flipping through the journals, I found a couple biographies printed off the Internet about some of the victims, and suddenly I was searching desperately through all of the books attached to the shelf with fishing line. I knew Mike Pohle, he was a classmate of mine in middle and high school, and was one of the victims shot and killed that day. I finally found mention of him, but when I did, it was only on a list of names of the 32 victims. It said simply:

"Mike Pohle--23 yr.s old, Flemington, NJ"

I was so offended. There was somebody I knew, somebody who had shared part of my past in a very specific way, reduced to somebody else's stimulus. Now, I must say: Mike and I were not friends, we were acquaintances. We had a lot of mutual friends, but I was not close to him, did not know him intimately. To say otherwise would be a lie. But I knew him to be a really good guy and a great friend to the ones we shared. But I can't claim any great attachment to him, simply because I never knew him that well. But I am certain he was more of a reality to me than any of the people that actually made this piece of theatre, as was "Flemington, NJ," and I was offended. These people, these British people, they had never seen him play lacrosse, they hadn't gone to prom with him, they hadn't had class with him, they hadn't walked at graduation with him, they hadn't gone to his wake and had to tell the media they didn't think their cameras and questions were appropriate outside the funeral home on Main Street. I did that. They didn't. They didn't see his mother that day, or the pictures of him dressed up for the Halloween parade in grade school, amongst all the others of him in his youth that led up to his casket. How dare they think that they could possibly grasp what happened, what had been lost, what this human life had meant. How dare he be reduced to a statistic.

This reaction really shook me. I usually address instances of trauma as an open minded theatre practitioner. It's just where my instincts lie now. And here was a response that had nothing to do with that. Now, we can say that creating a piece of theatre about what happened to Mike allows us to reach out to others who know that kind of violence, or need to understand that kind of event, or need to know what kind of repercussions those kind of acts taken would have on people. And again, I only knew him so well. But still, I reacted completely possessively: You didn't see what his face looked in his casket, so fuck you. That was my reaction. I think I'd doubt my humanity had it been otherwise.

This is the trouble with verbatim work. We take text from a specific place or interview, and we recreate it, and try to give it a greater validation because it is "true." We say, "Well, this is Really what they said, so it is entirely accurate." But it's only ever an approximation of what that person said and what they meant. It's not the whole story, it's just an instance--especially as the text gets further and further away from the original practitioners. Such it is with The Laramie Project. Okay, we can associate with this story in that we're gay, that we've been persecuted for being gay, that we've known persecution, that we've had friends who've been persecuted for being gay. We can connect to that piece of theatre through empathy or shared experience, and it affects us. But that is very different than being Matthew Shepard's mother, or than being Matthew Shepard's best friend. It is a different experience to understand something and to know something. These British theatre makers understand what I went through but don't know. And by the same token, I understand what Mike Pohle's mom went through, but I don't know, could never know, because that life was unique to her experience and it would be a lie to say "I know."

After a couple days to ruminate on it, I guess I come to the same conclusion we do when we come to documenting practices: just as we cannot fully encompass a theatrical experience in its documentation, we cannot fully encompass a whole human life in a piece of theatre. Something will always be missed out, an accuracy that you lose in the action of re-production. It's a rock and a hard place. On one hand, you seek to speak to the universality of whatever topic you are addressing, and by the same token, you can't get the specifics 100%, ever. It's a trade off.

In any regard, it was strange, a sea away, to find that Mike had permeated that far. I'd go on, but the bottle of Shiraz I've drunk in this process tells me not to.

"Well I was tossin' and turnin'/Turnin' and tossin'/Tossin' and turnin' all night"

This week we're working with Toby Jones, a great British actor, comedian, and writer, though he will be best known to most of my readers as the voice of this little guy:


Oh that's right, ladies and gentlemen: I'm spending the week with Dobby the House Elf. Weep.

(Incidentally, I keep wondering if I should offer the man a sock at the end of the week. But no, no, probably not a good idea...)

(Still...)

(No, no...)

Our work this week has consisted of really wonderful, fun, engaging labs hosted by Toby, whose background in Lecoq training and prominent mainstream career gives me hope. Part of our assignment tomorrow will be working with another group, providing them with a stimulus of our own regarding the concept of, "What I can't get through the night without." Initially, I was thinking about the topic in terms of what my nightly ritual is, but I realized that none of those things were actions I was necessarily dependent on in order to get through the night. Then I tried producing some by finishing the statement: I can't get through the night without snacking, I can't get through the night without drinking copious amounts of tea, etc. Then I thought about things that had been happening to me, rather than things I did, which is where I came to, "I can't get through the night without having really crazy dreams." It may be something in the food, or just an indicator that I need a little more time off to settle my mental state, but I've found over the past couple weeks I've been having really vivid, really bizarre dreams that I can never remember upon waking. That last part is a bit confusing as I used to be a great rememberer of dreams, and now nothing, just a sense that they were definitely strange. In any case, I began thinking about sleep, what that was, and for part of my stimulus I created this piece of music. The actual music track is by Max Richter, a brilliant composer I've recently discovered (and I encourage you all to get into him, he's awesome), and the text I recorded is the tenth yoga sutra of Patanjali (this version here) and the Charles Bukowsi poem, Bluebird. I can't figure out how, if it's possible, to load strictly audio tracks onto Blogger, so I just shot some film behind a blue post-it and layered the audio on top.

I hope you like it, and I hope it's useful tomorrow. And I hope the US election turns out for the best back home (it's late there, VERY EARLY in the AM here). And I hope I get to sleep. Soon.

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."

I know I mentioned in my dialogue on identity that people in my program were doing projects on Narcissus and Echo. In an attempt to help one of them out with their work, everytime I saw a reflection of myself yesterday, I took a picture. Some are interesting, some are mundane, but I'm intrigued to know how this material will be used (for in truth, I do not know to what end this will supply the means). You can check out my day--and my killer new boots!!!--here.

"If we could walk like the animals"

This week's assignment was to discuss methods of devising work and create our own methodology from our findings. We actually present tomorrow, but I figured I'd post this now, as I've been really negligent lately (I have lots of blog drafts, but few posts, I know, I know). We chose a story from a book offered to us to find a topic for the piece. My group chose "How the Elephant Became." One section of the story talks about how the elephant attempts to imitate other animals. We latched onto this, and attempted to make our own elephant.

The assignment is really more about the process (which we will have to present) than the product, so I made a short film to help with our presentation of the former from footage we were able to get during the devising. Hope you enjoy it, while I toil over those other entries...

"That is a picutre of a person I don't know"

This is a little personal reaction to some work other members of my program have been focusing on lately that has brought up some questions in my mind.

I’ve been struggling a lot lately with the question of identity. Firstly, I have to say that many people told me I’d probably end up being a real patriot once I left America. I don’t know if I could have been categorized as either patriotic or unpatriotic before, and although I always bled a great streak of Anglophenia, I’d like to think I still came off caring about America in my way. “In my way” is the phrase that raises some eyebrows, I guess. Honestly, the idea of what composes identity has always been confusing to me. I remember an exercise for a once rehearsal where we had to think of terms or labels that we fell under, either all the time or in certain social settings, and I couldn’t think of anything past “actor.” I missed the obvious ones like, “daughter,” “woman,” “student”—they just never came to mind. I think the reason I’ve never been overly patriotic, religious, or generally extreme in any way (that last point is up for debate I suppose) is because I always felt it was part of my job as an actor to come at something from all sides, to always be available to see a situation I may otherwise find abhorrent in a positive light. If I ever get cast as an extreme, right-wing, racist politician, who is also exploitative, a coke addict, a mega-bitch, and a rapist, I better be able to not judge that character because that will diminish the honesty of playing her. Just saying. I guess that’s one reason I tend to stand on the fringes of political discussion, because one: I’m not totally aware of politics and usually have little idea what people are talking about; and two, I don’t know if I could completely identify wholly with any one party’s agenda. I like gun ownership (RESPONSIBLE gun ownership), but I also like the right to choose. What’s to be done? Often we shape our identity by knowing what we are not. But at this age, or perhaps at any age, how can we have a great enough understanding of the world to know all of the things we are not? Does our sense of identity grow over years of experience, or do having so many experiences open up the flood gates to so many options that it just muddies the water further?

There is a fear that by defining yourself by some leading characteristic, you close doors to other kinds of identity, to having opinions that differ from that main label you call yourself. People are meant to be the most interesting in their contradictions, so taught me Roger Danforth in my directing class oh so many years ago. In this time that is so ripe for personal construction, should I revel in my contradictions or try to change them? Do I throw out everything “un-useful,” or let myself hold onto some vices—everybody, in my opinion, needs one really good, solid vice to keep them human.

Sitting in the National Portrait Gallery, looking at all of these faces I’ve heard about: there’s Thomas Moore, there’s Cromwell, there’s Ben Johnson, there’s Richard III not looking murderous at all. There’s the lone supposed-Shakespeare portrait←for the record, they don’t have any historical fact to back up that’s him. There’s Elizabeth Regina, shown in so many phases of her life that by the time you see her in the Ditchley portrait, you can see history in her face, the age and wear in how the artist defined her features behind that eggshell white. Many portraits in the gallery (indeed, many portraits generally) were commissioned. The sitter wanted themselves painted at a specific time of their lives and portrayed in a specific way. You can see how aspects of their historical actions and personalities affected how they were portrayed or what pictorial elements are shown in the portrait. Nowadays people take pictures all the time and photo shop them till they get exactly what they want. It’s the same principle, even if the methods have changed. There is still a distortion of the actual subject. A photograph is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional figure (that’s why you look ten-twenty pounds heavier) and a digital image is really just a series of zeros and ones when you get right down to it. So what are we? Is there any answer to that question really?

When you look into a mirror, what are you seeing? Is that actually you or something constructed, something waiting to be constructed on and painted an inch thick? Or did something get lost in interpretation—anorexics see something vastly distorted from reality. Is a model only the image that is sold after hours of make up, lighting, lenses, airbrushing and color enhancement makes the person in the print ad unrecognizable from that person who stands in a room too frightened to eat?

These ponderings come from a discussion I had recently with a fellow classmate regarding a project she’s been working on with several other strands. The designers, the directors, and the lone visual media girl (LVMG), Connie, have been in talks about how to build a work concerning itself with the Narcissus-Echo myth. The project sounds like it will remain strictly theoretical, never actually culminating into a performance of theatrical piece—not right now, anyway. LVMG Connie was actually the person who brought up the project to me, and I instantly thought about the book House of Leaves. Within it is an entire chapter of the ‘Navidson Record’ that discusses the myth, as well as the concept of echo location. Connie recounted that identity had come up in preliminary talks—that, in terms of echo, you could never know what you were, who you were, only what you produced, said, sent out somehow whether in action, print, or blogation. (Am I my blog? God I hope the answer to that is a resounding “NO.”) In a sense, you only know what you are in how you are perceived or interpreted from those sources as well. A classmate calls me "Foreigner" every time he sees me. So am I American because I sound American? Or because I vote in American elections (yes, I have my absentee ballot, stop worrying)? Or is it because I was born there? Or is it because I like cheeseburgers and diners? And what is America anyway?

I no longer have those little touchstones that created my day to day identity so long, those basic things that made up a routine that was important in understanding who I was at a time--I don't have my job, I'm back in school, I don't take my subway route, I don't buy the Times, I don't read the New Yorker (I have found it here, but it's pricey), I don't see the same people (Heidi aside). What is it that still makes me Lea? My haircut? My sardonic sense of humor? My name? My body? Whatwhatwhat?!

Can anyone ever really know us if we can never really know ourselves? What does one have to do to be interpreted correctly, not only in terms of the context of their life and surroundings, but something that goes beyond all that? Is that even possible? I caught myself staring into the eyes of my second reflection on the tube the other day, in a window comprised of two pieces of glass creating two other visages, figures I don’t know who looked tired and transparent, and thought, “No matter what I do, I will never get close to that. I will never know who that person is, who that projection is meant to be.”

I know this rambling is a bit mad, some embodiment of the quarter-life crisis, and all these questions feed into themselves, and again we return to the idea that this has nothing to do with the topic of this blog and is far to personal for the purposes of this forum. But as someone who wants to explore American identity and existence in performance (it’s been bouncing around in my head for a bit, particularly the past few weeks appropriately), these questions also seem completely relevant. What do you kids got for me on this one? I’d love to hear your thoughts.