Casual

"I flew
With them in a plied exuberance of time,
My own malignance in their racy, beautiful gestures
Quick and lean: and in their riot too
I saw the stance of the artist's make,
The fixed form in the massive fluxion."

-- from Richard Eberhart's "The Cancer Cells"

--

Watched Ainadamar last night (for free). It's a new opera, only six years old, and it shows the passage of ideas and the passage of time. From the Spanish Civil War until now. It involves Lorca and the symbol of a statue, an actress swooning at memory in the wings of her final performance, and a pseudo-christic execution on a hill. Very moving. Innovative use of laptop sound effects synced with Flamenco patterns. An opera that was as much about theatre as it was about its story, which I was glad to see.

And it was only an hour and fifteen minutes long: shorter than most Disney films.

--

Learning their names is easy with pictures; hence, they smile for the camera before their monologues. Got through four today. Respectable progress, especially for a group of people whose time in theatre has mostly been spent watching.

I was so proud: Their criticisms were all constructive, their feedback pertinent. They do not know each other, but they have already grown enough with each other to give and take ideas with pleasure. They tied themselves in a knot today and had to unravel the blob of bodies. A girl on the tangle's edge kept trying to direct. It took a solid ten minutes of squealing at wrenching of twisting wrists, but they emerged, relieved, hand in hand, forming a giant circle, some facing in, some facing out, all smiling. I turned it into a living example of why performers need directors: because everyone is pulling in different directions, it helps to have an outside perspective.

They gazed into space and nodded. I'm going to assume it's because their paradigms were shifting.

--

I don't know what I would do in these sessions without college improv. What games we deemed inane and quickly abandoned they seize, and they enjoy the heck out of it.

There is an art to teaching, and a method. I feel the art comes naturally, and I know I do not know the method. But I learn as I go, as I hope they do, gleaning what lessons I can. Each session is a stairway and a single step at the same time.

--

Before I left, I was asked to go to the stage and watch another group while they waited for their instructor to return.

I went. They were settling into seats, gabbing about the cast list, giggling at unvoiced jokes. Some of them who did not know me came and asked who I was and what I was doing there, and when I told them, they lit up and asked, "Can you teach us a drama game?"

"Sure. Get up on stage and sit in a circle."

We played for fifteen minutes and when the teacher came back, I left with my head bowed, grateful. It's silly, but I feel like a professor half of the time.