REHEARSAL JOURNAL
MAR/JUN 2008
March or April
Meetings with YBCA staff.
Jose Navarette – performance arts educator, wants me to guest teach the YBCA youth, and preferably to come with some of the cast.
Isaias – interactive media manager, will be making in-process videos to use on the blog and in the lobby and perhaps a podcast too
Cicily – community life manager, wants to talk about outreach strategies and plan some panel discussions leading up to the performance. Deadline: early June.
Aide – YBCA grant writer, wants copy!
Angela – Performing Arts Curator, says I can have $5000 of the fee now.
April 2008
Youth Speaks Grand Slam at the Opera House
I watch this extraordinary teen poetry contest and write down all my favorites. I give a few of them the call for performers but I never hear from any of them. Then I write, repeatedly, to the director of Youth Speaks, but it takes him months to take action. I do end up casting 2 poets affiliated with YS, Nestor 16, and Constance 17.
Themes: wings clipped, slit wrists, phoenix from flames, rise!
May 2008
In response to emailing the call to everyone I know who works with youth, in schools, universities, and art programs (SF Circus Center, Youth Speaks, Destiny Arts, The Beat Within and more), I pick the first five cast members:
Jorge Rodolfo de Hoyos Jr., Jeremie Chetrit, Tracy Piper, Meghan Milam, Nestor Reyes.
May 9 2008
First meeting with Sonya Smith, production manager. I had worked with Sonya on both runs of Sol niger and she’s excellent with schedules, tech planning, and maintaining the budget. Yes.
We make a big list of what she will do and what my assistant Julie or I will do:
Sonya: assist with promo production, arrange reh space and informing the cast about reh, tech & prod liaison with YBCA including scheduling and budgeting (do not go over the $12,000 allotted!), maintain payroll, coordinate any other production stuff including set construction, light rental, sound equipment.
Keith/Julie: schedule prod mtg with YBCA to intro Sonya, update mail list, assist on reh space research with people I know (Karl, Xeno, Zaccho), stay focused on casting (contact more friends who aren’t white – Pamela Z, David Molina…), get a stage manager and tech intern, email budget so far to Sonya.
May 2008
Situationist – Mai 68 slideshow by Hugh D'Andrade
“not art in the service of revolution but revolution in the service of art”
Cougar Cadet Corps
Chipman Middle School, Alameda
picture a drum corps invading the space
With the first 5 cast members I schedule a series of three meetings that I call pre-rehearsals. I had made contact with a 6th person, Dawon Davis, but he never made it to any of the pre-rehearsals. Somehow we re-established contact after the summer and he joined the project.
May 31
PreReh #1, 10am-noon, Dance Mission, SF
Jorge, Jeremie, Tracy, Meghan, Nestor
Chat about the project.
Warm up – on the floor, walking, hanging over (stretching).
Make a short solo performance that includes your name. Show.
Free write: Delinquent. Read selections in pairs, 3x, shifting partners.
Chat more.
Jun 1
PreReh #2, 1-4:30pm, CUE Space, West Oakland
Jorge, Jeremie, Tracy, Meghan
Ahhh why no Nestor, no Dawon?
Warm up – hang, walk (Halprin)
Make a short duo performance without talking. Show.
Make a short duo (new partners) with minimal talking. Show.
Chat – what did you see? Gender, ideology, representation…
Make a quartet.
Chat
Storytelling – Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do? (from Anna Deveare Smith). All share. 2-3 minutes talking.
Chat – blame, race, fluid identity, Anna Deveare Smith
Make a solo with content, considering identity, blame…
Prep for PreReh #3
Contact Dawon, Nestor, Omar
Contact David I at The Beat Within – any female recommendations
Follow up with Sara Crowell at Destiny, musician Kevin Carnes and other African Americans
Books – bring a collection of books on prison, race, art & politics
Sonya – contact Museum of African Diaspora, YGC re: offering a performance or workshop at Juvenile Hall, confirm reh space, connect with Rebecca about set construction (confirm late Aug or Sep, and confirm budget).
Jun 4
PreReh #3, 6-9pm, CUE Space
Jorge, Tracy, Meghan, Jeremie, Nestor
Where is Dawon, Omar?
Books – share
Discuss Fall schedule, money (2 installments of $350 + commute $), contract, phone numbers
Personal project – everyone responsible to work on something, research and make something to share at the end of Summer Brenner
Warm up – Follow the leader, walking speeds 1 2 3 4 5, remembering positions 1-6
Free Write – read to all
(Breathing, body, words, not amazing but yes it’s practice, they are beginning to reveal)
Solitary exercise – Talk briefly about solitary confinement, 23 hours alone in a cell. Talk about prison as a metaphor. Discuss: what is a way to protect each other, protect the vulnerable among us? If not confinement of bad or mad ones, then what?
Action - everyone tape off an area 6’x8’, spend 10 minutes (or was it 20 or even 30?) in your space. Make something.
Jorge – twitch, fidget, breath. Imagine only impulse, no arrival, no gesture.
Tracy – stand, walk, pace, disrobe to bra, repeat walkovers – back fwd back fwd…
Nestor – touch body, look in mirror, push ups, collapse, talk in Spanish
Jeremie – eat hand, inhabit the space (what did I mean by inhabit?)
Meghan – “I don’t know the experience of solitary confinement in a US prison & I don’t think that sitting inside a tape rectangle in a circus space can give me any insight into that experience. So you can watch me sit here but I’m just sitting.”
Immediately I know that this text is in the show. We have begun.
Other imaginings prompted by this rehearsal:
Meghan gets enclosed in a cell the size of her taped area.
Audience gets handed Go Directly to Jail and Get Out of Jail Free cards.
A pre-show installation of incarceration solos & duos in limited spaces of their own constriction.
Microphones – with cords, coming from a single source, a hanging mic, one mic that could swing to reach each “cell”
June ?
Production Mtg at YBCA
Angela Mattox– discuss contract, residency ideas
Ysabel Irigoyen– all production stuff, schedule & budget & implementation
Jodi Fedder & Jose Maria Francos – tech staff
Decide on seating, & whether or not I want to define the space with curtains.
Program copy deadline: Sep 1
Photos by late August.
Kimberly Harding – PR – what’s the heart of the project? Get cast bios, and Meghan quote.