Call for Submissions

Freak Show Coordinator

Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre is seeking a coordinator for Freak Show, running January 6-15, 2011 at the High Performance Rodeo, Calgary’s International Festival of the Arts.

Freak Show is a series of site-specific tours that put a wide variety of freakish multidisciplinary performances in unusual spaces – stairwells, rooftops, storage rooms, parking lots and more. 2011 marks the fourth edition of Freak Show, which debuted at the High Performance Rodeo in 2008.

The successful candidate will oversee two Freak Show tours, one in the EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts and one in another downtown venue. Each tour will involve approximately 15-20 artists, performing in 5 different sites throughout the buildings.

The coordinator’s responsibilities will include:

• assisting Swallow-a-Bicycle staff with the curation of Freak Show tours;
• coordination of rehearsal schedules and venue access with Freak Show artists;
• liaison between Freak Show artists and Swallow-a-Bicycle staff;
• coordination of box office volunteers and ushers; and
• oversight and troubleshooting of Freak Show performances.

The successful applicant will:

• have a passion for site-specific performance and artistic experimentation;
• have an interest in theatre production and arts management;
• be self-sufficient, organized and capable of multi-tasking; and
• have excellent communication skills.

The successful candidate will receive a small honorarium.

To be considered, please send a CV and cover letter to info@swallowabicycle.com (Subject line: “Freak Show Coordinator”)

Call 403.698.3088 or e-mail info@swallowabicycle.com for more info.

I just completed a 5 day workshop with SITI Company members Ellen Lauren and J. Ed Araiza. SITI Company uses two separate trainings, Suzuki and viewpoints. For those unfamiliar with either I have short definitions at the end or check out:

http://www.siti.org/Templates/New_Index.html?/whoweare.htm

thoughts:
discipline and rigour. discipline and rigour. i have never heard the word rigour used as much as i did during my suzuki training. rightfully so, the work is incredibly precise and challenging, it demands rigour.

The Suzuki process was incredibly challenging for me. I am very lazy when it comes to precision and body awareness as a performer. I understand its importance… I just get fidgety. It’s like some version of rebelling against authority, like the second I tell myself to do something I want to do the exact opposite. I hold a glass and tell my hand not to shake it shakes. I tell my body to stay still it gets restless, well I get restless. I am not good at stillness, I create my world in action. It probably works into my inner psychology to as I am a believer in working externally to take steps in improving my mood and getting through things.

I learned a lot from this process. by challenging myself in suzuki i think i am better prepared to help and challenge the performers i work with. i hope anyway. We will see, it’s always easy to be immersed in something and then only when you try to explain it or replicate it does it become much more difficult.

My understanding of viewpoints has evolved during this process as well. The way I view it now, a way that will undoubtedly change as I learn more and perhaps attempt to incorporate some viewpoints into my own work even, is a way to approach theatre. All theatre. It is a way for an ensemble to work together to create both as a group and individually. It forces the performer to be very external, to be aware of the ensemble, the architecture and themselves in space. I feel like it forces the performer to be more aware and to take ownership for the work that is being presented, not just their own lines and blocking but the performance as a whole.

Unlike a lot of contemporary actor training both viewpoints and Suzuki really force an actor to think about their performance externally. It encourages them to be aware of the whole performance and encourages them to look for impulses and motivations that come externally or from the state of the performer’s physical body rather than looking for motivation from character psychology.

This is of course something that can benefit everyone working in theatre but it seems to be especially useful in much of the work that I and S-A-B do. That is bringing a group of artists together as an ensemble that is responsible for the project as a whole.

It is incredibly exciting for me. Also lots of fun.

I am excited to try and incorporate some viewpoints exercises and philosophy with my work going forward. I will try to use what I have learned about myself as a performer to help my own performers with their work. This will be incredibly challenging no doubt and I hope I have just enough grasp that this does not become a complete failure.

I was also inspired by the professionalism, dedication and humility that Ellen and J. Ed approach the work with. As teachers they led by example in the way they taught as much what they taught us. This was no kumbaye singing hold everyone’s hand and cry kind of workshop. Don’t get me wrong I’ve done those workshops too, they can be great and inspirational, but I appreciated the focus and determination that both J. Ed and Ellen work by. They demanded a lot from us and they were not hesitant at all to tell us if we were not meeting their expectations. In a summer in which I found myself losing focus and motivation it was very necessary.

this week was a blur in many ways. just a drop in the bucket for each of these processes. As J. Ed said (super paraphrase here) it was more about a week of them sharing what they do, letting us into their world. A week is not really enough time to teach us. That must be especially true when it is something you have been working on and developing for 18 years, as the members of SITI company have been doing.

Finally a huge thanks to Stephen Atkins of Human Theatre and Capilano University. Stephen was responsible for a great workshop that was really well organized and very affordable.

Some definitions:
Suzuki – A rigorous physical discipline drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, traditional Japanese and Greek theater and martial arts, the training seeks to heighten the actor’s emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on the stage. Attention is on the lower body and a vocabulary of footwork, sharpening the actor’s breath control and concentration.

The Viewpoints allows a group of actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work quickly. It develops flexibility, articulation, and strength in movement and makes ensemble playing really possible.

Suzuki training and Viewpoints are two DIFFERENT things. For SITI company through the dialogue between Suzuki and Viewpoints, these two, very distinct, yet complimentary approaches to the art of acting that the philosophy and technique of SITI Company is continually explored, revitalized, and articulated.

i am very lucky to be doing this workshop with Tom Scholte. I got to know Tom during the OYR summer intensive. The reason i feel lucky is not due to having a familiar face, though that’s nice, but because Tom is a smart, hardworking teacher and actor whose opinion i really value.

Tom teaches at UBC a couple classes on performance creation, and he tries to learn numerous techniques to pass on to his students. I have found his questions in this process really insightful. tom struggles with a lot of the work as it’s very different than his own process as an actor. viewpoints and suzuki are all about the external world (huge oversimplification of couse). they encourage you to engage with the outside to be aware of your surroundings, your fellow performers. tom comes from a more stanislavsky approach of figuring out what he is doing and what is going on . (again crude oversimplification) Why i value his insight is not that he disagrees with their methods he is simply looking at it critically, asking questions of their process and of his process. sometimes at workshops you get a lot of people their just to worship at the altar of whoever is teaching it.

Tom also asks good questions. today he started a ball rolling that i continued. i talked with J. Ed about SITI company’s process. I am really trying to understand how they go about incorporating the viewpoints process into eventually creating theatre for an audience. It’s a tough balance because in some ways i want them to explain their process to me but of course that is what the workshop is intended to be. also it’s probably not fair to ask people who have dedicated their lives to creating and using a process to just give me the cheat sheet. However it’s a balance, as Tom pointed out, because you don’t want the experience of the workshop to be a hermetically sealed experience. sometimes you do workshops that are wonderful experiences but it’s difficult to use or implement what you were taught/shown.

My challenge from this is to try to take what i am learning and put it in my own director/creator tool belt. i need and very much *want* to be able to use these tools. my challenge is going to be in being able to explain the process to others, to use them with my next ensemble, and to layer it in with the exploration or process that will exist. as i get into this i don’t feel viewpoints is a totally spearate process to be learned and then used. rather i need to take parts of it and use it with the process myself and swallow-a-bicycle has already begun to use.

what is helping me a lot is to read the viewpoints book at the same time. the viewpoints book is really a workbook for how to do viewpoints. it has all the same things but of course comes at things slight differently (inevitable as different authors than teachers). we were told this from the beginning but more and more it becomes clear that a lot of viewpoints is breaking down elements (of theatre) we already know exist but just making us become much more aware of each one, in some ways enhancing our specificity as a performer (which of course is always a good thing). it can be used to create material that is inspiration for a story or it can be used to approach text (you could use viewpoints for a production of hamlet). it is the second way i am less clear though that is beginning to change.

I think sometimes viewpoints is thought of as a style of movement. (i think though don’t have much more than anecdotal evidence of that). however it is not a style, it is a more of a system that encourages the performer to engage creation or text more fully. fully = their whole body, the other performers, the architecture of the room.

Ellen hates the term ‘physical theatre’. i understand why. all theatre should engage the body fully. a production of ‘who’s afraid of virginia wolf’ or ‘death of salesman’. the actors should be fully connected making full body choices, aware of their other actors and their surroundings.

my understanding of viewpoints is evolving. suzuki is basically just david barnet throwing water bottles at actors. not saying it isn’t effective mind you.

it’s something i think i inherently do when i am challenged by work, i fidget. i am not general very rigorous, certainly not physically. perhaps a reason that i am attracted to viewpoints is the balance of rigorous rules that create total freedom. However suzuki seems to be all rigour.

today we said who we were, where we were from and why we were there: why this workshop at this time. a lot of the group is performers either refreshing their practice, refocusing and rechallening or learning for the first time. not all but a lot. i am one of the few non-performers. i explained the reason i took the workshop was that i am very interested in viewpoints as tool for performance creation and also as a tool in more “traditional” text based work that i do. I come to it as a director and a creator.

i am still very interested in spring-boarding my viewpoints experience into more of my work. I do not think i will get there in this workshop. it’s too short. we most likely will not get to text. i already see many practical applications to viewpoints. After all viewpoints really just puts a structure to what already exists when it comes to form on stage. this is always invaluable to a director.

The next step too in this is to figure out what from viewpoints and suzuki i can use in the upcoming year. i don’t think i can commit a show fully to a viewpoints method, for one i won’t know it well enough. hopefully i can incorporate some exercises and ways of thinking about things that will be helpful. especially for the new freak show.

yup that’s a lot of rambling saying the same thing.

also i have been to cap campus two days and each time i have taken a different way there and back in regards to transit. hopefully by the end of the week i will have figured out the best way to get there.

also erika walter does not have salt and pepper. just seasoning salt. weird.

Day 1

“I am not qualified to teach movement. I am somewhat qualified to teach viewpoints” –J. Ed Araiza, SITI company viewpoints instructor

some notes in no particular order

- I am incredibly tired. The work is absorbing and draining. Mentally and physically exhausting due to the total focus necessary. Of course getting up earlier than i have lately part of that too.
- I am reminded how much I love doing viewpoints. There is a beautiful freedom in the restrictions and instructions that are given
- I find it funny being in these classes where I am clearly not a performer but the instructors don’t realize it. Then I usually catch on later and they often look at me like I’m a retard who finally learned how to clap (sorry not pc. Sorry). The whole thing kind of makes me laugh.
- Our instructors Ellen Lauren and J. Ed Araiza are incredible. they waste nothing and are not afraid to kick ass. Their intensity is awesome though it manifests itself in different ways. Ellen is more of the drill sergeant while J. Ed is gentler. Yet both are still intense, precise and focused. I can’t explain why but their super dedication and precise focus kind of makes me laugh. I can’t explain why, it’s not a bad thing.
- Am doing a bad job of memorizing lines from Macbeth, but it makes me think about the play as the terrible nightmare of a child killer who’s own ego tells him what he wants to hear (i.e. the witches). “ But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? I had the most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ stuck in my throat’
- It is an amazing group of people I am working with. I have never done a workshop with a group who seems at least to be so willing and committed. There is relatively very little hesitancy. It helps that almost everyone has some exposure to at least viewpoints if not both. Still it is almost competitive when it comes to volunteers.

“I felt as though the Viewpoints format allowed me the opportunity to express beyond my habits and shields. However, more than the format that is Viewpoints, I felt that Rita’s direction that enabled me to notice what was making me limit myself, and encouraged me to move beyond those limits to a place of purpose and openness. I feel as though in the workshop I saw moments of my potential as an artist, moments I haven’t seen in myself in quite some time.”
- leda davies S-A-B workshop #2, viewpoints

“These Deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad.” – Lady MacB

I have had the fortune of working with The Old Trout Puppet Workshop for the past 4 weeks on their show The Tooth Fairy which opened last week at the Vertigo Theatre Y-Stage.  I have had so much fun working in this collaborative setting.  It has challenged my ideas on how movement can be utilized and interpreted in many ways on stage.  Pete Balkwill, our director on this process, as well as an original member of the OPW, refers to this on stage movement as the “ballet” of the show.  You begin to move and sense the other puppeteers, as well as the puppets, on stage with you the same way you would being a core member in any ballet company.  Their is a constant dance on stage.  It’s a sort of epic adagio exercise.

I began working on this project while simultaneously opening Lhasa: Land of the Gods, which was my first ever aerial theatre performance.  The performance was an exploration of integrating circus aerial with live music, theatre and dance.  It was a resounding success as well as an incredible learning opportunity.  It was the first time I had really created and produced my own show.  I’m looking forward to having the chance to use circus aerials in my work again in the future, although I’m not sure I will use the same performance structure.  Sometimes, simplicity is best…  I would like to thank everyone who came out to support the show, as well as FFWD and the Calgary Herald for helping me get the word out.

Because things have been so busy I just finished putting together the video from SaB’s 3rd workshop on Puppets.  You can check out the video on our workshop page or by following the link bellow.  Thank you to everyone who attended the workshop.  Your creative energies were a gift to be around.

Léda

#3 Swallow-a-Bicycle Workshop Series: Puppet Theater

one of the great things about theatre, certainly one of the reasons i love it, is the immediacy of it. The performance one witnesses can only exist then and there in that moment in time with that group of people watching. Every show exists unto itself. That is probably one of the reasons i am so attracted to found space theatre, it becomes that much more immediate, especially if the show is tailored to and inspired by the place in which it occurs.

when Swallow-a-Bicycle does found space theatre we invade that space. We make it our own, live and breathe it. With the seafood market in the east village for our show i-Robot Theatre it was no different. In fact the first weekend in the space Mark and I slept over in the space to really get to know it and have it inspire and shape the material we were bringing in.

For the next three and half weeks 7 performers, a writer, a stage manager, assistant stage manager, a designer/technician and myself put blood, sweat and tears into making i-Robot Theatre. The show was 90 minutes, taking place over 12,000 square feet including 4 major areas plus smaller office spaces. The show includes traditional theatre, movement, talking appliances and one hell of a puppet. For the last week i barely slept driven by fear and the desire to make it achieve the potential we collectively conceived.

then preview. then preview. then preview. then preview. then preview.

we got a call about 7 hours before preview telling us the space was unusable because of the fire system thingy. they were more specific but that will have to do for this. the point is the building would not and will not be safe for a large public group to be in. it is heartbreaking news and the timing is the one thing that i will probably not fully understand.

What needs to be stated here is that there is no bad guy.. The only real fault was perhaps in rushing the whole process. however I cannot stress enough how this came about from the desire to make something very good and special occur. Both CADA and CMLC were dedicated to giving artists both a working and performance space. Their intentions were good and they worked incredibly hard to make it happen. Ultimately this will also be a loss for CMLC, CADA and many artists in Calgary.

However right now the loss is most painfully felt by the members of i-Robot Theatre.  The group sacrificed so much and worked their asses off to get the behemoth of a show ready. To lose the show is a lot like breaking up with someone you love: at first there is an immediate rush of freedom but very soon you realize you are losing something special and beautiful that you will never have again. I know that i-Robot Theatre will happen. I know it will be better, we will trim the fat, push the themes, and the condense ideas further. We will use the time to refocus and take stock of what we can do to make the show better. However it will never be that show again, the one in the seafood market. As i mentioned it is like losing someone you love, and for me the healing process in that takes awhile. it is a day to day.

to the cast, crew and creative ensemble of i-robot theatre, i love you all

Assistant Director Notes – Woman in Black
by Charles Netto

On first glance it may seem strange that I am assistant directing Woman in Black at Vertigo Mystery Theatre. After all as the co-artistic director of theatre company Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre, a company dedicated to innovative and often inter-disciplinary new work, I have found myself creating and directing theatre in many diverse locations such as art galleries, boiler rooms, bars and church basements.

However while the locations may seem strange and the content I create may be different than a lot of traditional theatre, it is still theatre that I am dedicated to and passionate about. The fundamentals of what I am doing, working with actors, designers, and writers to tell stories does not change. Therefore I am incredibly honoured to have this mentorship oppourtunity at Vertigo Mystery Theatre to expand and hone my directing skills.

I have huge admiration for the work of director Kelly Reay. I love watching his shows. His use of space is masterful and the work is always clean, precise and engaging. It is therefore invaluable for me to be able to watch Kelly and the talented creative team of Woman in Black create a haunting ghost story here at Vertigo Mystery Thetare. It is exciting to watch them take the simplest of objects and create layers of tension and mystery, create an atmosphere that makes me shiver in my seat. There is something beautiful about creating stories with the simple objects we have around us. After all one of theatre’s gifts to us is the chance to engage our imaginations.

My sincerest thanks to Vertigo Mystery Theatre, Mark Bellamy and Kelly Reay for having me on board.

review is here:

http://www.pressplus1.com/theatre-reviews/10-minute-play-festival-ground-zero-theatre-calgary.html

it’s funny that mark and i thought we were mostly being silly but apparently we were “quietly heartbreaking”

With Freak Show, 10 Minute Play Festival and Woman in Black keeping me busy, I only really got to begin checking out the High Performance Rodeo this week. So this weekend i saw Pajama Men, White Cabin and Snowblower. It was a great weekend of art and community.

Pajama Men were hilarious as always, i swear i could watch those guys every day of my life and not get tired of them. every time i come out with my cheeks hurting from laughing.

Then there was white Cabin a truly HPR show. Russians doing crazy shit on stage. Their performance was extreme and dazzling, totally captivating. I have no clue what it was about. none. i am sure they do but i don’t, and to hazard a guess would be foolhardy. White Cabin is the kind of work the High Performance Rodeo is known for bringing in, work that will blow away, but also challenge, its audiences. It was a show that was engrossing and haunting laced with a feelings of danger and amazement.

Finally snowblower was just an awesome party with great djs and electronic music bands. It was wonderful to see so many people in downtown calgary just hanging out and dancing. It was a great collection of people and a ton of fun. DJs were super talented and there was a great sense of fun and community. I hope they are able to find money to continue and expand ‘snowblower’, i really feel it has the potential to Calgary’s nuit blanche.

The High Performance Rodeo was probably one of the reasons i ended up in Calgary, so it is great to be able  be a patron again and enjoy such a diverse and rocking weekend!