I got lost.

And its one life, and its this life, and its beautiful.

Don't really know where I am, where I came from, and especially where I'm going.

And to be honest, it's pretty scary.
Is it hypocritical to berate and challenge the fear in others when you discover there is just as much of the icky substance in yourself?

Or is that just a passive-aggressive tactic in trying to fight.

I really toy with the idea of being a fighter. Defending and protecting my inner truths and ideals.

I can't help it, you're so beautiful.

Music wise check out: First Aid Kit, Cecille Corbel, and Sarah Blasko.

This Video is consuming me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJHdT1j6hH8

There's a new world out there, and all we have to do is shape it.
Subvert. And always love.

Wow.

There are a lotta hotties in the library.
Ohemgee delicious.

Distraction.

No more analysis for five minutes.

I miss acting, placing my body and mind into another person. Being outside of myself. There's a relief that I am grateful for and really deeply miss.


My theory these days: all the problems with the human condition can be linked to efforts to subdue, subvert, and starve loneliness. How we perceive ourselves; the walls we create; the ideas that we throw into the world; and the people we fall in love with.
I need to learn how to be alone. The internet hinders that completely.

Will powah and die cycle pline! "Your Mind is a safe place."


Working and creating. It's not just flamboyancy and fun. If you want to change things, effect things, give all your love and be vulnerable, you have to work for it. It is hard. Be a tree and bear some fruit.



I can see your disconnection. Your isolation.
I feel it from over here. Take this ribbon and we'll be entwined forever.

Rude Boy

All I've got- all I've got- all I've got...
Are these photographs.
All I've got- all I've got- all I've got...
It's nothing without you... you... you.
I'm nothing without you... you... you.
Got nothing without you.

G4L.

Stream of Consciousness Peptalks

There's a world in slumber.
Waiting. On my own ideals.

Worlds. Reflections.
See me and gasp. See me and love.
Don't defend. Merely state. Merely be.

If you choose to believe in something, stand by it.
Even fight for it. It will challenge you and give you growth.

But, I cannot admit defeat. I don't know what it looks like.
I am not challenged for who I am, but by the ones that I love.
Always. I can't lay down and wait. The ones who stand above all others are a choice; a choice that was made for me. A choice by passion.

And to live passionately enriches all.


Back to Directing.

OY VAY

Emotional. Wreck. Stress. Love. Forlorn.
KERR WORK KERR WORK DEATH.

Sleep is required. Sleep is need. Sleep allows you to live with happiness.

RAGE UNTIL THE DAWN.



Stream of consciousness. Where do we go from here?
New chapter. How does our novel end?

Sometimes

all you feel like is that you don't really matter.

What Else Is There?

I'm not forgetting you.
Come back.

Conversations with the Sea

Physical theatre event.

COMING SOON to a James Bay rock near you!


Photo by Jessica Wong.

Love this love.

Being present is hindered by memories.
I want to let them go, but if they stay at least I'll have a part of something.

I find it easy to have an optimistic future, and believe that things will come around.

But memories bring the anger.

Direct experience. Being here. Feeling now.

So challenging.

Anger comes so easily to me.

An Aversion.

A fear.

I don't want to write. It is the advice given to me, but I don't want to.

Maybe, it's just too out of my body. Moving and feeling. That's where I am.



Yet, I've never been at more peace with who I am. I see so much power, maturity, and love within myself.
The irony! Oh my passion.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”

–Unknown

http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/2010/04/Quotes-on-Patience.aspx?p=4

Life isn't about being afraid.

Fear is there, but I have a courage that I haven't had before.

Classes' Over.

I'm going to keep this going, or at least say I will (the future is unpredictable).

I have been working on creativity a bunch lately.
I'll put some up.

Creative Act #9: Dear Alex

This act was a mix tape.

It was my friend's birthday, and I owed him a cd of my most important tuneskies, SOOO - TADAH!

Here is the list of my dearest sounds:

1. California - Sarah Slean

I fell in love with her a couple of years ago. She has influenced my life so much.

2. Jøga - Bjørk

Conrad has probably played you this song. We wrung to it.
It makes me really emotional in a good way.

3. Mykonos - Fleet Foxes

It's about an island in Greece!

4. Collect Call - Metric

Metric is one of my big ones. The "If somebody's got soul," part makes me orgasm every time. I want more.

5. Inside a Boy - My Brightest Diamond

One of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.

6. Wine Red - The Hush Sound

The Hush Sound is tres good.

7. Flawed Design - Stabilo

I used to know all the words to this song off by heart.

8. Dobbin's Flowery Vale - Rajaton

Goddamn, this song is beautiful. I saw them sing this live in the middle of the summer. It was one of those lasting experiences.

9. Shankill Butchers - Sarah Jarosz

A cover of a Decemberists' song. She gives the creepy song, such a haunting beauty.

10. The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid - The Decemberists

That's right! A cover of a band, followed by the actual band! Crazy turn of events. I love how so many of the Decemberists albums are narratives. This is from their lastest. Its a love story. Not this song, its more of a desire, and then retribution song.

11. Corner of Your Heart - Ingrid Michaelson

Check our her stuff.

12. Now's the Only Time I Know - Fever Ray

She has informed all of my work this semester. Her imagery and music are so powerful.

13. Pass This On - The Knife

Okay, so this is original band of Fever Ray. What a good song.

14. Flavor - Tori Amos

The physical movement of this song is something to listen for.

15. Listen (Listen, Listen) - Wintersleep

My turn to give you some Wintersleep. This is from their second(?) album. It's my favourite album of theirs. Wintersleep is definitely the band I put on when I ever I need to be creatively productive, like paint, or write.

16. Blinding - Florence + the Machine

Please. Please, listen to her. She's important to me.

17. Looking for Someone - Sarah Slean

I had to include another, and please, ask me to tell you the story behind this one.

Creative Act #8: Cooking Chicken!

So I've never cooked chicken before. The joys of being a student.
I decided to test it out.

I started with chicken fillets, covered them in spices and flour, and then fried them (as my mother instructed).


I did not like the taste by itself, so I threw it in a stir-fry (ANOTHER food item I had never created on my own...).


And it turned out this way.

Academic Blog Response #2

I will be looking at Creative Act #7 and the article, "Who's afraid of a cognitive neuroscience?"

The painting has been on the back burner of my mind for a long time. Finally getting down to getting her out has taken a while as life distracts us so easily from some of our dearest goals.

That said, I will compare my work the article's outdated idea number 3: Creativity occurs in a state of defocused attention. The article goes on to say that this is true, but it does so in a state of focus. I have tested this to be true, through previous live improvisations, and this painting.

I like to think that when I perform certain creative acts, I am in a trance-like state. I am over-exaggerating, but I am relaxed and letting things flow. I am an improviser. I've learned how to accept and to return/make an offer. I've gone places onstage I've never considered, and I believe that building off of offers is what I do in my other creative genres. The painting itself is an example of this as I just started with one brush stroke and went from there. I discovered what I wanted to paint and where I could go with it with each stroke. I was focused enough to notice these painted offers and to accept them. Three behind the girl was one of those examples, I had no idea that I was going to outline it, but when my brushstroke ended right at its trunk I continued to do it again and again til it was outlined.

This proves what the article meant in its description of focus and defocused creativity. There is an active balance with the two. You need to be able to let the creativity to come out without any large analytical thought (which might plugged the process) and you must be focused enough to find the offers.

To discover where your creativity might take you.

Creative Act #7: Just A Start

This week I started a painting I've been planning for a long time.

I've been listening to a lot of Fever Ray (feverray.com) for the past couple of months. It has been informing so much of my work, and now it takes a foray into the visual arts.

I like finding the meanings in my work. Discovering it as I go along. This is no exception.
I haven't even found a meaning yet. The painting isn't done, but I have a corner, and that's all I usually do. I always have months between different paintings becoming finished. It's gradual.

Creative Act #6: The Wheel of Jack

This piece is written for the context of a larger conglomeration of others' works.
I have a thing for powerful beginnings and endings, and just started writing one.
Here you go:

(All this writing is ridiculously new for me).

The Wheel of Jack

Group: Ticks (Sporadically, like the counting game) as Audience enters. Group is sitting in a circle with their backs to each other. One has its armed raised in front of them. When the Audience is ready, the ticking stops. There is a communal breath, and then the One with its arm raised drops it as if to spin a while. Ticks start to travel clockwise around the group. Faster and Faster. Then slows down, and comes to a stop gradually. The member of the group who ends it says: Jack.

Beat. Group breathes in again, then the group rises. The three take a step into the circle. The One who began the wheel exits with the group following in sync and in tow.

1. Luck.

2. Chance.

3. Destiny

2. I’m not lucky. I don’t ever win anything. I have a dead end job, no one loves me. I work so hard. I never get ahead. I don’t have luck. But I work hard.

1. I got this magic rabbit’s foot from my papa. He killed the buggah himself.

2. Did I miss my chance?

3. I saw his heart through his eyes when I first saw him. He saw mine through mine, too. My heart was completely uncovered, which is strange for a person like me.

2. Luck doesn’t exist.

3. It really was one of those perfect moments when everything lines up. It was the perfect moment to fall in love.

1. My foot brings me so much luck and women. Oh, I get so lucky if you know what I mean.

3. It was destiny, really. I dropped my book, and BAM. There he was.

2. You don’t deserve that! You both didn’t even try.

1. Excuse me?

2. I’ve worked so hard for everything, and nothing falls in to my lap. You blame it on a foot, and you on destiny. Things like that never happen to regular people

3. But that’s what made us so special, we were never really that different.

1. You’re a bitter bugger, aren’t you?

2. You don’t deserve anything!

3. We talked for a good long time that night. His eyes were a deep blue, that sparkled like diamonds. It was mesmerizing.

1. Why are you judging me so hardcore man? I am what I am.

2. C’mon, really? I’m a better person than you. I work hard!

1. So what? That doesn’t make a difference. You just have to be born lucky, like me! And you’re lucky if you have a little faith.

3. He and I walked home that night, and we both knew then that we were going to be together forever.

2. Faith? FAITH? My life sucks because I don’t have faith?

1. You have to believe in something once and a while.

3. We did get married. We loved each other more than anyone could have loved each other. It was ridiculous in retrospect, but hey? Destiny…

2. What do you believe?

1. In horoscopes and this lucky charm.

2. The fucking stars and an amputated foot?

3. I guess he was meant to die.

1. Duh.

2. Die?

3. He died. And then it all went away.

2. I’m sorry to hear that.

3. It wasn’t meant to be. Wasn’t meant to be. Wasn’t meant to be.

1. Hey, it’s just unlucky, friend.

3. I’m just unlucky?

1. Isn’t that the truth of it?

3. It’s not that simple.

2. You can’t just shrug death off as being unlucky.

3. He died. That’s all there is. The way things go. It’s nobody’s fault.

1. Whatever lady. Look at it like that.

2. Shut up!

3. Its all I can believe.

2. You need to believe in something?

1. Then why not Luck?

2. Or that one Chance?

3. Or Destiny?

1. You know, maybe I’ll put it all in perspective for yah.

One becomes Scotty’s storyteller. Tells his story. At the end of his story the Two and Three return to the stage, stand in the triad.

2. So that was it?

3. Destiny.

1. You didn’t like the perspectives?

3. You throw us a curveball. He was everywhere.

2. Perspectives aren’t everything.

1. Just a rabbit’s foot and horoscopes. I’m a Pisces.

3. He was a lionhearted man.

2. What am I to you?

1. You’re just unlucky.

2. But I don’t believe in luck.

3. Its all in perspective. Maybe your luck is somewhere else, and you’re just waiting for her.

1. You put too much into love, lady.

3,. I’m just an unlucky, Lady Luck then?

2. Ye of too much faith.

1. It’s all perspective.

The tik-ing begins again. The group returns in three lines and converges behind each number. Then a resounding dinging begins (like winning the lottery), and they all return to the wheel, spin it again. And it lands on: Perspective. Everyone exits.

Essay: The Ideas of My World

My Environment and My Creativity



As a self-identified artist, I made a choice that creativity was the centrepiece of my life. It’s a beast I find that I have to feed. I read, see, and absorb as much as I can. Through this consumption, I am gifted with distinct images, symbols and words that I can not attribute to one force or influence. Although this new images that I receive from my subconscious are directly connected to the ideas that I have absorbed, I can instinctively feel its similarities and deviations from the ideas around me. The environment is being regurgitated into my creative work. I can attest that my creative process and inspiration are directly connected to my current environment.

William Stafford’s article, “A Way of Writing,” illustrates my own creative process quite well. I am in the beginnings of discovering my own process, but I have successfully tested the approach Stafford has illustrated in:

“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have though of if he had not started to say them.” (Stafford 1)

In my writings, I have experimented and found that when I force a desired outcome to perpetuate itself on paper, it is bitter about it. It does not come out the way I intend or with any meaning. This is not the case when I take the Stafford approach. When I simply begin writing, the words flow and the world I create is stronger and deeper. I discover the metaphors and symbols within it, and know that I had not even considered them a possibility when I sat down to put them to the page. The words that have appeared also act as a mirror to the literature, dramatic, and other mediums I have absorbed within the past few weeks. Elements of graphic novella, television series, dance, and music all reveal themselves in my work, but they have been transformed.

My unconscious, or perhaps a collective unconscious, has rearranged and metamorphosed the ideas and meanings into a new conglomerate piece of art. Marie-Louise von Franz has elaborated on Jung’s theory of collective conscious versus the artist as it is the artist’s task to bring into form that which assaults him from the depths of the psyche, which is linked to the collective unconscious of the adjacent group of people to act as a healing effect on society (von Franz 122 + 125). I can apply this theory to my own work, and see links. A recent piece I wrote inadvertently explored a patriarchal figure’s loss of power, as his heir breaks a hole in the wall of their home and leaves, and soon a wife/servant figure regains her equality and leaves him decimated. Issues of parental control, patriarchal power, our society’s ideal of the house and home, and abuse of love were among the many issues explored as I read over it in retrospect. I had not intended to write about any of those issues. They are all relevant to the problems of society, so in this case I believe that my work had been influenced by the environment of the collective unconscious.

My art reflects society, but what of the self? James L. Tarrett has theorized through Jung a set of defining personalities that make up every artist. By Tarrett’s definitions I classify myself within the bounds of an introverted artists as, “… [I am] thought to be identified with [my] work and its creation” (Tarrett 23). This is classification is a weak one though, as on that same page he generalizes that extraverts write for themselves, and the introvert for himself. I do not write for anyone. This is all perspective work and on the limits of the environment. If you are required to write a paper, you are to write it your own argument; as literature is written for a variety of audiences. Generalizing who you are influencing, or who are you are healing. Art should reflect what needs to be said, and what needs to be said is not determined by you. It is a discovery. Your subconscious compiles everything you see and then directs you in the direction to put everything in the right order to reveal some kind of hidden truth.

My environment is made up of images, symbols, comedy, tragedy, love, and perspectives. My subconscious siphons these into my creativity. I can not work without any of these influences, yet I can work if I miss something. The beauty of this process that anything observed, actively or passing, is ripe for your work. Dreams are the subconscious expression of all of these, and art and dreams can not be separated. Dreams are said to be the process in which your body copes with the world around you, and the same is true for art. Art needs to reveal to the world its truths, and that makes being an artist so exciting. As long as you keep the barriers down, the possibilities for creation are endless.



Bibliography

von Franz, Marie-Louise. "Analytical Psychology and Literary Criticism". New Literary history, Vol. 12. no 1. Psychology and literature: Some contemporary Directions. August, 1980: 119-126.

Jarrett, James L.. "Personality and Creativity". Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 22, No. 4 Winter, 1988: 21-29.

Stafford, William. A Way of Writing.

Creative Act #5 - The Hole in the Wall

This week, I created a dramatic dialogue. It's a short scene that came out of nowhere for me. It is a symbol ridden piece, which I blame on The Ghost Sonata, a play by August Strindberg. The play is the go-to example of Symbolism for Theatre historians (thanks Theatre History Midterm!).

Although, It was interesting how it started. I wrote down a sentence, and then wrote a response to it, and it grew and grew. The hole metaphor was added the day after during the transfer to an electronic format. I was quite pleased with it, as my writing is usually not my favourite. It was nice to see I could do it.

The Hole in the Wall
Draft 1


L is sitting in a room awaiting for Daria, his servant.

L – Daria. Daria. Daria! Explain this hole. Daria enters through the audience

D – It’s bigger than I expected.

L – Daria. It’s chilly. Who broke through my wall?

D – Your son.

L – He would never disrespect me like this.

D – He needed to get out. He’s been inside for 18 years.

L – I don’t believe you.

D – He’s out there now.

L – He can’t go outside! He’ll ruin everything. He’s trying to break my back. leave me for dead.

D – You don’t get it. He wasn’t trying to hurt you.

L – No. I’ve lost it all I believed. All of it is crushed and burned.

D – Stop being overdramatic. Just let it go. Don’t you see anything? He needed to go. He still loves you.

L – By showing me how? By driving a stake –

D – Shut up! You put him in that position. You put him in a place where he had no future. You made him to fight for you. His life has been waiting around for you to show him his future. He only wanted to succeed in a world, in YOUR world. It was the most important thing for him. He chose to leave you. He had no choice. He couldn’t stay and remain yours. It’s impossible to not change. You gave him all your power.

L – I did, didn’t I? I need him back. Go get him.

D – No.

L – Don’t deny me this. Look how helpless I am. My power is seeping through that hole!

D – He’s gone. Jack took him.

L – Jack? But…

D - Jack came back, and he took him. They’re both gone. Your wall is rubble.

L – Daria. The bastard Jack took my son. That fucking disgusting Jack has stolen my boy?

D – Lord… please.

L – Jack! Daria, bring me my son!

D – It’s not that easy.

L – You won’t do it will you?

D – No. Lord.

L – It’s Jack, isn’t it? You can’t love him. You love me. I made you that way.

D – You’ve almost lost me entirely. The hole is getting larger.

L – I can’t feel you. Staggers to Daria slowly, methodically You are faint. You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me?

D – You forgot me. Jack loved me.

L – Bring me my son, Daria.

D – No. Be quiet. You are losing all of your masonry.

L - Pushes. Exerts strength on Daria You will not finish me. Jack has touched you, but I created your heart.

D – But I’m taking control. You put me in this place just like your son. Ow. Let me go.

L – This is all I have left.

D – Please… I’m…

L – Trapped. Daria struggles. Fights back. Starts stealing the Lord’s own power.

D – This is mine now.

L – I started this. I will end it. This cycle is mine. It doesn’t end through anyone but me. You don’t have choices.

D – You left me. I deviated. I grew. And now your part of me has grown and changed. I am different now.

L – Built from scratch. The effort. The life.

D – Your son has left you! I have left you! Now you have nothing, and feel nothing. What can I promise you? What can I give you?

L – Daria.

D – Feel your house crumble and fall.

L – Help me rebuild.

D – I am going through the wall. Daria looks back, then exits through the hole

Book Response: Philip Roth's Everyman

We’re All An Everyman

“I think this had better be all there is. Going on and on, remembering still more… but why not remember?” (11)

Everyman is a story of great pain and joy to me. Being so young was put into an eerie perspective by the end of the novel. My life is illustrated by such blessings and ease that Everyman brought my own future into a wider range of perceptible possibilities. I question(ed): mortality, death, life, pain, love, my health, and the point of everything.
I was able to comprehend one thing:
Don’t fuck up.


The novel serves the same purpose as the original medieval play. It acts as an instructional guide. The play’s goal was that of showing you how to better your own life. The book follows suit. You identify with the unnamed man, who is not really that different from you or I.
Who was he? Was he me or was he you?
Is this our lives?

This character fights his death and his life. He loves and mistakes. And he feels so much pain. He is perceptible to jealousy; he is not a hero.
Our ages change everything. His experience seem foreign and impossible to me at first. I tell myself I will not demonstrate his weaknesses, I will live my life right, correctly, and happily go into the grave, a life well lived. But, as the novel comes to an end, no one dies happy for the grave. They all have their own circumstances and pain that surprised and saddened them and the world.
I want a happy ending.

“During the night, when he had awakened to see the forms behind the curtain, he couldn't help but think, The doctors are killing him.” (28)

“In that moment of terror when they lowered the ether mask over his face as though to smother him, he could have sworn the surgeon, whoever he was, had whispered, "Now I'm going to turn you into a girl."” (29)

I loved these paragraphs, and their ideas.
Idle fears, dismissed by our age; we learn that these aren’t possible. Doctor’s don’t kill or cut for sadistic reasons.
But what makes these quotes so beautiful is the fear. It’s pure, undiluted or weak fear. These thoughts are inhibited once you reach an age. The eyes of a child see differently. There are boogey-men. There is magic. And Death is just a monster. We can slay monsters, and this is a truth, too. We fight death, but as everyman searches for his own survival he brings into question his ideals. Why are you alive? What strength is required to actually go into death’s realm?

A world where everyone is the same.
He isn’t strong enough to die. Yet, when he’s ready to live and fight again with renewed vigour, he loses it all. His life ends so suddenly. It is a tragedy.

"’When am I going to get out of here? I'm missing the fall of 1967." The surgeon listened soberly, and then, with a smile, he said, "Don't you get it yet? you almost missed everything?"’(41)

I don’t think he was able to see the possibilities in his future or the blessings of his past, but maybe he suffers like all of us?
We’re preoccupied, and the book proves this, with normalcy and maintaining our routine. The quote above illustrates how the everyman did not see the blessing in front him, by his requirement to trudge on.
Is that my position?
Death, are you testing us?
DEATH
“…It’s because it is for her as it is for everyone. It’s because life’s most disturbing intensity is death. It’s because death is so unjust. It’s because once one has tasted life, death does not even seem natural.” (169)


There are so many different points of view.
Death is necessary and death is here. But, it isn’t natural anymore, is it? We want to fight it. We don’t believe death.

“In a matter of minutes, everybody had walked---wearily and tearfully walked away from our species’ least favourite activity—and he was left behind. Of course, as when anyone dies, though many were grief-stricken, others remained unperturbed or found themselves relieved, or, for reasons good or bad, were genuinely pleased.” (15)

We (don’t) want to say goodbye.
Or prove that we are (im)penetrable.
Or maybe, we want satisfaction.

I’d like to say goodbye to Everyman. He lived a life, albeit fictional. But all fiction comes from reality. We are meant to see ourselves in his struggle.

“He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing it. Just as he'd feared from the start.” (182)

Just when you’re ready, it all goes to shit.
Don’t just sit there, MOVE IT!




Bibliography:

Roth, Philip. "Everyman." Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006

Creative Act #4 - Binder

My act this week is:

I am currently an electrician for Problem Child at the Phoenix. I am in charge of making sure everything that needs electricity on the set has it, and of course, all of the lights.

When I am in my Lighting mode for shows, I am required/love creating a binder. Well, organizing one. I put a lot of effort into each section. I have a goal of beauty to, and cherish the binder and its information deeply. I feel this is creative because I choose what information is categorized and how it is presented, and find a joy that surpasses it being just work.

*Pictures to posted asap.

Creative Act #3 - GEEZ!

GEEZ! By Putu Wujiya, translated by Michael Bodden






I was recently involved with Bring Back Pluto Productions and the Student Alternative Theatre Company's production of the Indonesian, Geez! It's an hilarious play that melts the fourth wall and is based in the theatre of surprise.


This has been an extracurricular venture for the cast and me for the last four months, as we originally mounted at UVic's black box theatre at the beginning of November, and then won the best of SATCo 2009 and got the amazing chance to remount the production at the Metro.



Much was changed, and finessed for the remount, and I say that my creativity was exerted the greatest during the second run. As an actor I've had significant growth during the past year, and with this growth in ability and technique I was greatly able to express the character further and further.
It was an amazing learning experience, and I'll miss it very much.

Academic Blog Response #1

In my second creative act, I presented a dramatic story. I call it so because I do not necessarily know how it will actually manifest in a theatrical context. In a way, I am concentrating on the process rather than a product, but as was mentioned by Jennifer Kingsley and Scott Amos in their own ways, the product is always looming overhead. This can be a challenge when creating a theatrical piece, one might become to intent on what the product is meant to look like and be like instead of making discoveries along the way and exploring the issues concerning the play.
I know for this piece of theatre I’d like to show humanity a brighter side to the darkness that we might have. In Twyla Tharp’s your creative DNA, she raises some wonderful points about how ingrained in yourself is your own creativity; for example, her example of Merce Cunningham’s chaotic creativity. I like to tell stories of larger-than-life beings with extraordinary power, like my Envy. I like deities, demons and gods. I have always had a deep love of mythology, and I always try to incorporate it into my personal creations regarding theatre. I love embodying something that cannot be seen or expressed, such as envy, or desire, or love, or pain, etc. It is a trend that isn’t seen in popular, contemporary theatre.
Continuing on the hardwired DNA, I find that my personal work is physically based. Movement-based theatre is where my passion and greatest joy comes from, but I am only at the beginning stages of my own understanding and development. I am sometimes hindered by my lack of technique. Richard Klein’s article brought up some fascinating points pertaining to being an artist. My anxiety because of my lack of technique and education halts me from realizing many of his points. I do not take risks. It is a negative orientation. And it is not action oriented. It is all about thinking things out.
But for this current project I find that I intend to expand these hesitations and to look outside of my box. I intend to find a process and commit to each action I take. And respond to each impulse and feeling. This was seen with the Envy monologue for I stepped into the shoes of the character and wrote from there. Improvisation is all about following your impulses and staying in the moment and ignoring the distractions of the past and future.

Creative Act #2 - ENVY

This week's creative act is a monologue/dramatic piece of writing. I have been playing with the idea of a play involving the characterization of some of humanity's greatest vices in a competition to show their greatest act of power.
I find it a challenge to write drama as i work best with improvisation and physical creation.
This is a depiction of Envy telling its story.

"[ENVY]: There was a man and a woman. Through a series of events they met and wed and lived together. Their life consisted of bliss and happiness.
And then the woman became pregnant.
There was a seed, my seed, inside the man. For nine months, it lay dormant in the man as the child did inside the woman.
The woman and man grew excited, and their love was tied tighter through her swollen stomach.
And then the baby came.
It was a boy, and they named him, Adam. The woman was thrilled with her child and took on her role of motherhood with the greatest of ease.
The man did not follow suit.
His love, his wife, had brought a new man into their very bed. Initially Adam was well received, but as my seed grew within the man, he grew irritable as my branches coursed through him.
His wife never heard him anymore. He spoke to her but she did not respond. She only heard the whimpers of Adam. This Adam had stolen everything from the man.
When my leaves finally bloomed, the man had just come home from work and found his wife and Adam asleep, him cradled in her arms. The man had not felt the heat of his wife's body in months. He could not remember when she had last cradled him. When she had actually spoke to him. When she had said she loved him. Adam. Oh, Adam had taken her away. She was gone, but right there in front of him. Adam was her love now. Adam with his sleeping, contemptuous smile.
The man took Adam then. The man took his own son, and killed him. Horrifically. It took a long time.
And when he was done, he stood over the remains. The woman found him and her Adam. And she left the man. She ran from him. And the man stood, and followed her. He went and ended their story.

The children of Envy are never aware of their lineage, but I find them. I show them. I release them into their birthright.
I'm the only lover they will ever have. "

Creative Act #1 - A Lion's Heart

My first creative act is a small painting. I took a piece of cardboard and pasted upon it a picture of a lion's head. I used acrylic paint to create the background, and made sure to touch only the edge of the lion. After the red background was the way I wished, I took indian ink and went over the defining features of the lions face, as seen with the mane and the eyes, in order to have him pop right out of the picture.
I created it as a present for a friend and he has always had a thing for lions.