There are so many moving pieces.
When I’m a performer, most of the moving pieces are internal and personal, with my own body. Those are the only ones I have control over: my process, my work, the care and preparation and recovery of my body. The external pieces will move as they will—my scene partner, the state of the audience, etc. It is this dance of listening, noticing, responding.
When I’m directing or painting or writing music—I have control of the medium in a different way. There are a lot more choices to make. With directing, the moving pieces are people. And space needs to be made for all the people. But I need to build a structure for the performers to move within. I’m directing right now—and it is kind of a loose project. I can point to the structure and hold the vision and bring the performers into the structure. And then I just have to trust them. Which should be easy with this project because it is clown—-and it is more like a loose collection of bits that follow a story —- open to many different outcomes. Clown is so much about the audience. They’re a chaotic external circumstance each of us must dance with.
I’m approaching my process and the world building and character creation through mini films first. Each character has their own little textural vignette. It’s been a fun way to have some control over the world, to give this interesting feedback loop of transmedia. I’m excited about it. My plan is to send out the mini videos to the mailing list over the weeks leading to the show.
Right now the whole administrative part of the show is kind of alluding me. I don’t feel comfortable pitching to venues until we have a couple of more rehearsals. The whole admin part is torture for me lol.
Directing and structuring while also being the main character is a lot. I definitely want to bring in a few outside voices to view and some trial audiences. It’s a character I’ve done so many times and he’s really easy for me—-I could do an hour of him alone and it would be no problem. I think I’ll be able to lace it together through the character himself and create structure with him for other people to feel safe with. It was hard at our first rehearsal to bring it all performance-wise and then pop out into directing the others. But I think we have a good idea of the shape now so I’ll be able to bring full power to rehearsing as the character.
It’s kind of crazy, too, because I’ve been helping some of the performers with costume pieces. I’m more of a stylist and arranger of garments than I am a costume construction person. I have basic skills and I’m pretty good at coming up with concepts. But my spouse is the one with actual practical sewing and construction skills—-and he’s busy finishing a degree at the moment. So I’m mostly cobbling things together. I think it’s cool, though. I think it’ll be cool. Here’s some of my vibe drawings for a few characters:
