Love's Labors Lost: Decisions, decisions

May 14, 2010

Decisions, decisions

I'm thinking about changing the title of Anne&Me to Tulpa (or perhaps using Tulpa as an alternative title or something like Tulpa, or Anne&Me).

(WTF is a tulpa? Glad you asked. Check out this [Western] personal account of a tulpa.

I've also updated my description of the piece to be more - shall we say, interesting? Thus far:

Tulpa, or Anne&Me is a full-length, semi-autobiographical play that confronts the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality through pop culture, womanism, and Tibetan mysticism.

When a tulpa in the form of Anne Hathaway crawls out of your television, what do you do? What do you talk about? What hopes, fears, desires, and resentments emerge? How would you change one other?

Tulpa, or Anne&Me explores the hidden inner life of a Black woman in order to expose how marginalization traumatizes the human psyche, thus taking the first steps toward healing it.

I'm looking for an early to mid July performance (I'm thinking Thurs-Sun July 8-18), so that means June has to be full of rehearsals. That means I only have to:

1. Find actors
2. Get a space*
3. Schedule rehearsals
4. Book performances
5. Fundraising*
6. Marketing, publicity, advertising

No sweat.

Regarding space, I'm a firm believer in Peter Brook's approach to theatrical space:

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. --Peter Brook, The Empty Space

Theatre is older than lights, sound systems, and proscenium stages. It's probably older than clothes and buildings. Not to mention, there's the fact that the play's set and prop needs are next to nil, so I can take a very minimalist approach.

For fundraising, I'm thinking about seeking fiscal sponsorship from an existing group. I pretty much just need the name and a place for people to send their money without the legal and ethical complications that can result from them giving cash or something directly to me. I'm looking for something like Fractured Atlas, but with fewer requisites since this is the very beginning of the project.

I'm also a huge believer in sweat equity, so if there's something where I can do boring yet necessary work in exchange for rehearsal and/or performance time, I'm open to that too.

What's the money for? To pay actors and (perhaps) rent space without having to come out of pocket. With a small stipend of $125 for each actor plus another $500 (for things that come up), we're talking a $1,000 budget for a very DIY show.

If you're interested in helping out, no matter how small an effort, respond here and/or send me an e-mail.

8 comments:

joshcon805/14/2010 4:13 PM
http://www.thetrinityprojectbk.org/

A couple of friends are heavily involved in this. Might be worth a look.
ReplyDelete
Replies
cgeye5/14/2010 4:28 PM
As for the name, there's the Whitechapel board on WarrenEllis.com; his DOKTOR SLEEPLESS series was the first place I encountered the concept of a tulpa, and they might be hep. Go to the Warren's Pub Table section, and if they have an open "What are you working on now?" item, talk about ANNE AND ME there.

Kickstarter might work, but then again, might not.
ReplyDelete
Replies
Unknown5/17/2010 4:21 PM
Sorry for the delay (I'm only just now catching up with things from the week I was graduating). Ways in which I may be able to help:

1) Finding actors. At least, if you're looking for younger folks, I can probably get you in touch with a huge swathe of folks who are used to being involved with rough-and-tumble production of original work. If you let me know what you're looking for, I can put my feelers out for it

2) Agreed that Kickstarter is a good way to collect a small run of funds without the obligations that Fractured Atlas puts on (which aren't all that major, btw, my company is am member). If you need an invite, I have a few I can spare.

3) Cheap rehearsal space: I highly recommend Space On White. That is all.
ReplyDelete
Replies
cgeye5/18/2010 2:57 AM
I'm gonna be the bitch here, and ask: Why not ask Anne Hathaway, to do the staged reading?

It could happen.
ReplyDelete
Replies
cgeye5/18/2010 2:59 AM
and if you want both, go classic: Anne & Me, or The Tulpa.
ReplyDelete
Replies
RVCBard5/18/2010 8:53 AM
cgeye:

Frankly, I'm too embarrassed. Secretly, I think that'd be awesome. But someone would have to sneak it up on me.
ReplyDelete
Replies
cgeye5/18/2010 4:32 PM
Pshaw. Just put the word out to People who know People who know People.

Surely there's a way of pointing Miss H. to your "My God but she did try her best in ALICE" post, so she'd know you're a fangirl, but an extremely cogent, sane and respectful one.
ReplyDelete
Replies
RVCBard5/18/2010 10:27 PM
@cgeye:

LOL! I'll consider it. :P
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Words, Words, Words

. . . a lot of it [fostering rather than smothering students' playwriting] has to do with finding a way to construct a dialogue about ongoing work that empowers the writer. A lot of it has to do with making sure there's a diversity of voices around you. A lot of it has to do with thinking of the writing program as a brain trust for writers, not as some infantilization in which the dramaturg gets the power. And basically trying to find a place where everyone's aesthetic in the room grows larger rather than smaller. There are many ways to do that. It's really not a hard thing to do.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Here is what seems to me an elementary truth that must precede any other: namely, that the theater, an independent and autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text, pure speech, literature, and all other fixed and written means.
--Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/15/1931

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
--Peter Brook, The Empty Space

My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'
--Howard Barker, interview

Women and writers of color are still seen as threats because, in essence, when a woman or writer of color is defining a play world, there's another definition of what our society is, and that's very threatening.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Through this experience [working on " . . . and last week it was a mountain"] I learned the importance of the life and the dynamics under the words, and began to see the power of working from the silent space within - the emotions, the images, the experience and the feelings - rather than relying on the words.
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

How does it happen that . . . the Occidental theater does not see theater under any other aspect than as a theater of dialogue?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

All conventions are imaginable, but they depend on the absence of rigid forms.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all.
--Howard Barker, interview

I think that form is content . . . I've always been more interested . . . in the formal devices and the structure rather than in the subject matter . . . I really am a follower of Viktor Shklovsky, who said that in some ways the subject matter doesn't even matter. It's whether or not we see the subject matter anew that matters.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

I am well aware that the language of gestures and postures, dance and music, is less capable of analyzing a character, revealing a man's thoughts, or elucidating states of consciousness clearly and precisely, than is verbal language, but who ever said the theater was created to analyze a character, to resolve conflicts of love and duty, to wrestle with all the problems of a typical and psychological nature that monopolize our contemporary stage?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he is conventional.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

"Transcendence became my life theme. I wanted to be lifted beyond everyday circumstances and everyday reality."
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

I actually think of writing for the stage as not writing . . . It's about structuring, about gaps between the language that are really filled in by the collaborators and the process. It's all about indirection rather than a direct statement . . . It's like a three-dimensional chess game in a way. If I say this, will the director go in this direction? If I say this, will the actor respond? And one of the delights of the process is actually not having your intention fulfilled, but finding out at times that other people's interpretation or intention is actually more interesting than you originally thought of.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

The person who has an idea of what this language is will be able to understand us. We write only for him. --Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/28/1932