REHEARSAL JOURNAL
AUG/SEP 2008
Aug 11
After 2 months of travel and anecdotal considerations, flights of fancy and non-intentional attention to the project – images, thoughts and feelings ARISE.
Now reading primer on post-structuralism and refreshing on Foucault (Discipline and Punish).
Genealogies of the other broken histories of who we separate ourselves from – who we define ourselves against. We are not them. We are not animals, are not women or fags.
Leper – ship of fools – confinement of madness & hysterical women – criminal – terrorist
Savage – slave – criminal – terrorist
Christians/Europeans are not savages. Culture not nature. Tame not wild. White is not black (nor Irish, African, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Muslim…) Democrats are not communists.
Who gets locked up? Who gets to lock up? In – Out ¥
Potential images
Build a room around someone
- are the walls flat or bric a brac/found wood?
- does s/he get out?
- do we use video to see her, light & surveillance, control her, separate ourselves from her
- a room and someone inside – no doors or windows – building and debuilding or breaking out
A cheer – inmate or classmate?
- interrupted by some kind of Proclamation: whereas, whereas, therefore…
A chorus of noise/non words
Dance – what kind of dances besides camp (the cheer), task (building, climbing, writing), speaking (body talking)
Touch – isolation means not touching
- a hug wearing contact mic
- the awkwardness of bodies approaching and holding each other
Role of Confinement/Prison
- separation (not us)
- silence (what??)
- invisibility (who??)
- threaten (who’s next, y’all better behave!)
How to work abstractly without silencing the local/real/particular experience?
Statistics: comparative prison stats, youth & adult
- California to other states
- US to other countries
- Now to 1990s, 80s, 60s, 30s…
Cage – the cage is for the animal, the not-human, the insane, savage or poor
Contrast room (a box, invisible prisoner) with cage (exhibit, visible inmate)
“Parole” means word
The language of prison imposes a silence on the language of crime, race, power, difference…
Foucault: this book is an archeology of that silence (Madness & Civ)
Delinquent – this performance is an archeology of the silence imposed by cops, courts, prisons AND the psychosocial & prison-industrial structures which sustain and promote them.
TO DO:
Contact David Solnit about making room.
Reach out to more people working with Afr/Am youth: Allan Frias, Brava, Jo Kreiter, Oasis.
The Beat Within – Delinquent is happening. Confirm dates for comp tickets and stacks of zines.
PHOTO SHOOT
Photogs: Phyllis Christopher with LissaIvy Tiegel ($125 each)
Doing the shoot outside Youth Guidance Center, we meet Omar Khalif, ombudsman. He is enthusiastic about the project and agrees to come to rehearsal. The site was both obvious and strange. We had no permission to be there and were using the architecture of the jail as a kind of abstract presence, as shapes, walls, as surfaces for light and shadow.
We had to do the photo shoot for a marketing deadline before we had a complete cast. Missing were the three cast members with the most direct experience in jails and other state institutions for juveniles, including the two black males in the cast. This absence only highlighted the difficulty of negotiating the vision of the project with the work of bridging cultural divides. It also meant that all visual promotional materials were less ‘of color’ than the actual cast, and didn’t show the people most impacted by the prison industrial complex. This tragic irony was noted by all, including each of the three young men, as they became a part of the group.
Director’s Notes (late Aug, anticipating first rehearsals)
This project intends to frustrate expectations and disturb clichÈs of art for social change. We offer no transformational narratives about surviving poverty, degradation, violence, or cruelty. The cast will not represent the static identities of urban youth held hostage by most Hollywood, courts, social justice activists, and ipods. The change that might be inspired from our work might not be what you’re looking for. We will not take important steps towards ending institutional racism nor abolishing the prison industrial complex.
Delinquent attempts an archeology of the silence that the language of prison has imposed on the language of the body, both personal and social. What is not said, not-yet said? Who is the delinquent? How do we speak? This performance is a poetic confrontation with delinquency, a reviewing of crime, a focus on what Foucault refers to as “the other form of crime” in which “men confine their neighbors.” Contrasting solitary confinement with collective play, Delinquent is an experiment in solidarity, an attempt to feel-speak-act together.
“Her work shows us a continuous reading of the world. Her performances, however do not represent documentary or narrative texts but utopian research as well as political poetry.”
- Helmut Ploebst discussing choreographer Vera Mantero (Lisbon)
Video: System Failure (13’ version), from Books Not Bars website
Image/choreography – six guards straddle body & start punching (he protects head with arms).
Solitary cells for youth: 4’ x 8’, 21 hours out of 24
21/24 = 7/8 – if performance is 75’ then we could ‘lock someone up’ for 66’
Youth prisoner naked with blanket. O how Beuysian (I like America, America likes me). Whoever is disappeared in the room could throw their clothes out and we throw blanket in.
Tue Sep 2
Reh #1, 4-6:30pm, Dance Mission
Tracy, Jorge, Nestor, Constance, Meghan, Jeremie
Youth incarceration: How is it part of a larger social structure, ideological structure? How is training or rehearsal for adult society? What are the differences between youth and adults – power dynamics, communication gaps?
Talk images so far.
Talk contract, money, commute $.
Talk marketing - who will design sticker and postcard, _ price tix, blog.
Tracy and Constance agree to work on designs.
We are not all the same. For Omar, Dawon and others, life’s demands make participation in this project more difficult than for others. Comments? Concerns?
We are still looking for one more stable ensemble member w/ experience “inside” the system.
I proposed that each cast member choose a mentor or hero or brother/sister in prison. Could be a historic figure. But this never manifests. Similarly, at the beginning of summer I proposed that each person make something but it didn’t happen in a concrete way. Clearly everyone has been thinking about the project and collecting stories, images, feelings.
Sep 4
Reh #2, Dance Mission
Meghan, Constance, Nestor, Tracy, Dawon, Jeremie, Jorge
Warm-up: walking awareness, run, stand, fall & rise 10x
Aerials: using the pulley, everyone go up (decide how high), and everyone take turns pulling/supporting
Read: Joseph Beam on writing a prisoner. Make a short piece in response.
West Side Story @ The Castro
The delinquent song (Officer Krupke) – we should use this!
Gather around a body, pick him up, carry off
Zizek @ Modern Times bookstore
The original post-dramatic subject – the living dead in concentration camp.
A subject without power, without empathy. The spark of light is missing when you look at them. Deprived of symbolic substance.
What is the political meaning of post-dramatic subject?
Doing nothing is not worse or more violent than doing things that maintain power dynamics that sustain the system. They system needs us, or much of what we do, so nothing can be a kind of intervention.
(KH – this echoes what Hillman used to say about indulging in depression as a resistance to culture of speed and productivity).
Negri – USA made a nation-state coup d’Ètat on the world. There are no other nation-states. Global capitalism is not a single entity, not universal and never will be.
Zizek speaks to US & Euro hypocrisy wrt to free market capitalism: social welfare for US markets, protective laws for US markets, while forcing everyone else to comply with free trade agreements, WTO protocol…
First step of critical thinking:
Do not accept the way the system describes itself.
Watch Chaplin: The Great Dictator
Rancière
The Abandonment of Democracy
Jacques Rancière & Christian Hˆller, 2007, Documenta Magazine No 3, Education, www.Taschen.com
also RanciËre, Hatred of Democracy, 2005, trans 2006 & Disagreement: Politics & Philosophy, 1995, trans 1998
Art has its own politics, distinct from attempts to politicize it.
Arts form of efficiency consists in blurring the boundaries in the redistribution of the relations between spaces and times (KH geographies & histories/futures?), between the real and the functional.
Godard proposes: epic theater for Israel, documentary for Palestine
No, confuse the genres, create room for play.
DELINQUENT – epic & documentary, real & fictional, create room (space, time) for play
A cheer
Gimme an I! I!
Gimme an N! N!
Are you in or are you out?
Gimme an M! M!
Gimme an A T E, that’s MATE means pal
Are you my friend?
Are you out or are you in, mate?
Omar Khalif interview
Khalif is ombudsman at YGC, Juvenile Hall SF. He comes to rehearsal and talks a lot, very directly and generously and intensely laying out the racial dynamics and dead endedness, i.e., infinite loops where all roads lead back to Juvie.
This meeting was important to the group and became a point of reference for many of us.
See notes from Khalif in the RESEARCH section.
More Rehearsals
Tue: Work cheer.
Thu: Talk racial segregation in our lives. Work on the pulley. Duet sketches: Omar in box, Jeremie as guard. Constance in the air with pulley, Tracy contortion. Meghan & Dawon, dance & text.
Sat: Work cheer. It doesn’t ever get anywhere. Later I stop working on it.
Playing with mic and amp, feedback.
Talk safety, survival, killing. What is revenge? Macho, pride, identity. Let’s use juvenile crime and punishment, rights and opportunities, oppressions and assumptions as DOORWAY into personal & collective research – what needs to be said? done?
Body exercises – approach/retreat duos – no touch, test limits, improvise.
- improv balancing the space – 2 or 3 people as if on huge disc.
Group check-in
Jorge – As a youth I always felt like a 40-year-old man – never felt like a typical youth. We’re all young bodies & supposed to be representative? Masochism of young bodies manipulated by older persons’ rules, expectations, choreographies.
Jeremie – no concrete relationship to issue, gathering information. Father went to prison as a young man – transformative experience. What’s the prison? Who’s the cop in my head? The threat of punishment? What is freedom? It’s difficult. No obvious answer. Thinking about space, city space, confined and open spaces…
Tracy – relate more to “delinquent” even tho’ never been caught. Want to experiment with dirt & cleaning. Puberty – women’s body – burlesque. A delinquent experience. Good girl / bad girl.
Nestor – being as curious as possible. Questioning the process. Questioning freedom – everyone sees it differently. Being seen as criminals, belittled by government. Others feel like they’re getting the respect & resources they need. Be conscious – find similarities between life and prison system. Be socially aware.
Meghan – freedom, November, elections. What is freedom in the USA? Who gets to define it? USA democracy? Enter the work abstractly, theoretically. So difficult to find the body. Interdisciplinarity.
Trae – when inside, I couldn’t express myself. Then I repeat my actions and contexts but I want to change. Inside is freedom because you’re separated from your habits and problems.
Jeremie – engage the audience or start in the audience. Inspire them to disrupt roles.
Tracy – I went to Oakland Tech. 3 kids wearing the same color is a gang.
Rehearsal
Omar – pick 10 excerpts from The Beat Within. Arrange to make a collage portrait of unheard voices.
Skeleton dance.
Delinquent song from West Side Story
Tim Wise – white privilege and race systems. Read and talk about patterns of statistics.
Trio – dance without being able to get up – 2 people hold 1 down
Q: Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do? (from Anna Deveare Smith)
Work in pairs to respond, then with mic.
Games with mic, dragging, being held…
Interview Trae Greer, 17, cast member
Q: Where were in Juvie?
A: San Francisco & Alameda
Q: How many were in your unit?
A: 30.
Q: How many white?
A: 1 white. All the rest Black.
Q: Really, what about Latinos and Filipinos?
A: 1 white. 2 Filipinos. 1 Samoan. And the rest Black.
Q: How about in SF?
A: There were 20 in my unit. Half Black, half Latino.
Sep 20
Reh, Studio 210
Work on Krupke, rope climbing, walls & counting
Talk about imagination, the future
Remind everyone: CR 10 is Sep 29 in Oakland.
Sep 25
Reh, Studio 210
Meghan, Jorge, Tracy, Jeremie, Constance, Dawon, Omar
Work on opening text: Who we are
Work photos, cards – promo stuff
Krupke – add some choreography
Making time – Jorge & Meghan work duo, others work solo
Talk ideas – sewing to each other
- two poets or stories at the same time: Are you listening to me?
- Borderlands – Meghan/Jorge
- Tracy – strip search, strip tease
- post show discussion on Friday
Tech Update
Tom Sepe – working on walls/room. Carpet for bottom edge to protect floor, make easy to slide.
Rigo – dimensions of banners. Up to 30’ but what is height?
Blog – director’s notes plus cast writing
Preshow announcement – Keith with cast or cast only
Get new info to Betsy and Kimberly (PR) at YBCA
Sep 30
4-hour lab reh at Keith’s apartment
Dawon & Jeremie – interview each other, teach each other dances
Writing – Nestor, Jorge, Meghan
Oct 2
Reh, Studio 210
Warmup
Work with wall falling
Learning vocabulary from The Beat Within, translations by Omar
labie – laptop
5.0 – cops
‘ro – robitussin
chop, choppa – AK47
primo – cousin (Spanish)
sparkie – spark plug
Q: what do you do with a spark plug?
A: break a window.
rocks - crack
Late September, Keith notes for Kimberly/PR
(sent all plus Director’s notes from late Aug)
Since mid-August when we began rehearsals for Delinquent, there have been (at least) 8 street murders in the Mission, most in the 24th St corridor where I live, and where we rehearse. Most of the victims have been youth and young adults in the same cohort as the Delinquent cast. Two of our team knew some of the deceased. The cold violence and desperation of the streets where some of us live, work, and go to school has become a point of focus and witness for this piece. How can the dead be honored and remembered? How can today’s young people disrupt or correct the media’s ongoing portrayal of the violence as personal and as normal, as if youth of color are always and already criminals?
In early September we invited Omar Khalif, ombudsman at SF’s youth jail, aka Juvie aka Youth Guidance Center, to speak with the cast. Omar is an amazing storyteller whose tales of work intersected with his own personal story, including raising four girls in the Bayview. When we asked him how many of his clients/contacts at YGC are African American he suggested that we rephrase the question to ask how many white youth he deals with. This has prompted much discussion around how we address institutional or systematic racism. Where should we focus? What are the questions to ask? Why does justice seem so distant?
Simultaneously the financial institutions that profited insanely from deregulation are now collapsing. The proposed bailout of 700 billion dollars is basically being stolen from today’s youth and future generations. Any good ideas that presidential candidates might have with respect to alternative energy, education or health care will be seriously compromised. How does this relate to a performance on juvenile justice, crime and punishment? How can youth influence the decisions that impact them so directly?
The other big conversation in our rehearsals is about art. What is it good for? How can a dance come from a statistic? What is the role of the imagination and creativity in the tough work of nurturing a world worth living in? How is the director, a middle aged and middle classed white male, influencing, limiting or empowering the voices of a cast less than half his age, a majority of whom are not white? How can a performance at Yerba Buena impact the society we live in?
We’ve been looking at how prison and juvenile justice gets portrayed in art and media. We’re building a scene that cites the delinquent song from West Side Story and today we looked at Piranesi’s prison drawings from the 1700’s, which critique machine-age dehumanization and isolation.
Training. Everyone is learning to climb a rope, to support themselves in the air. We applaud each other’s effort and take pride in each other’s accomplishments. We are learning to understand difference and cultivate respect. Today a dancer with extensive experience in hip hop and African dance learned a strange improv based on feeling sensations in the body and being distracted by dust particles in sunlight. His partner, an aerialist with extensive experience in contact improvisation learned a fierce rhythmic dance. These two young men, aged 17 and 23 respectively, born in Oakland and France, having been raised in foster care and a nuclear family, black and jewish, spent the previous half hour interviewing each other. The dancing followed the stories.
I could go on and on. We’re in rehearsal right now. As I type, 3 people are composing a dance, 2 are working on a poem that riffs off the US Constitution’s Preamble, and 2 others are sharing frustrations while performing circus tricks.