Parading with the Idylls into the New Year!
Much in the works, and I'm finding myself orienting to the coming year in a number of ways with regard to the Idylls, and with regard to its (currently informal) framework for performance approaches to the form, and beyond: SiGiLPAL (
Sui Generis Literary Performing Arts Lab).
Right around the corner, as mentioned in previous posts: Happenings at the Harman will host an Idylls showcase on March 20th.
As also mentioned in this space, "Murder on the Bare Stage" debuted at Bloombars the weekend before Halloween. It is definitely a show - upon the experience of that night, we've applied to take it to Fringe this summer. The intermixing of the Idyll form and Stephen Mead's specialty in dramatic recitation brought out the contours and distinctive effects of each approach, for an intense impact on the audience. This, in service of the chilling nature of the theme.
Thus began our collaboration with Bloombars, a wonderful community arts space in Columbia Heights led by John Chambers, with poetry-related programming managed by Gowri Koneswaran, both incredible people to work with. Upcoming soon there: I'm holding a workshop on the performance technique of the Idyll, titled Power of the Poetic Monologue, on January 13th, 2:30pm. This is an introductory version of the 3-part workshops I did at the D.C. Actors' Center in 2011, developing the acting and theatrical approach to the form. The workshop also functions as an audition for performers interested in the possibility of paid performance opportunities through the Idylls/SiGiLPAL projects. More information about the workshops/audition at the following links...
Furthermore, I'm excited by the upcoming appearance of my introduction to
Idylls for a Bare Stage in the journal Nerve Lantern, edited by the painstaking, thorough, and wonderfully sensitive-to-detail Ellen Redbird.
For the purposes of this publication, the introduction is titled "Imagination and Performance."
Idylls for a Bare Stage exists as a book (you can order it
here), and also as a complete theatrical piece to be performed in order, all twelve idylls; at the same time individual idylls have been and can be performed on their own, part of what I've been doing on my own initiative, and as reflected in this blog. Also, the book can function for actors as a high end source for audition monologues.
Yet, beyond the work as a book and piece(s) for theater, there is the idea of the idyll, and its concomitant theory and techniques for acting and theater - the idea of the Idyll as a form, the re-interpretation of an ancient form for contemporary purposes.
This is what the introduction to the book (and its upcoming incarnation as an essay, "Imagination and Performance") offers; and this is what I'm trying for in the workshops/audition, "Power of the Poetic Monologue" - to activate an idea of, and for, performance which addresses the question, what does live theater still have to offer uniquely in competition with every other form of media?
Well, for one thing, the word. The live word, the living embodied in-person delivery of charged language. The "poetic," in the flesh. Live bodies, bare stage - rather than going for expensive spectacle, I'm going for portable essence.
In developing the Idylls approach, there has been much honing in on a contemporary standard for the stage (or sidewalk) delivery of poetic language: much to avoid in both the theater world and the poetry reading world, all the varieties of pretension from staginess to "wispiness," from the overly intoned to the monotone... an essential aspect of the idylls technique is a trust in the intrinsic power of words. Each word speaks itself, if you let it.
From there - and this goes deeper into the nature of the form, delving into the etymologies of the ancient Greek word
idyll and its cousins, as I do in the essay/book introduction - an exploration of the living invisible, basically: the relationship of imagination to performance.
We are actually working with the invisible, or the heretofore or nearly invisible: invisible, because imagined - conscious workings of the imagination, live. This is something that cannot be done when involved with the intermediary of screens.
The Idyll form consciously works on at least three levels of reality (and part of the art is to make this conscious both to artist and audience): the actor on the stage, the body/performer on the stage (visible); the imagined stage setting as created by the actor in character (actually invisible, but the audience sees it!); and then also, the character's internal life conveyed to the audience through the shared imagining - this is almost all invisible, but creates an unmistakable impact on the performance, one can tell when an actor is truly "seeing" whatever memory or projection she or he is putting to words.
The actor must actually imagine what he or she is thinking about, and the audience can perceive that - it is all apparently invisible, though likely we find clues and our brains put it all together from facial expressions, position of the bodies, even style of breathing... the art - its artistic intention, its relevance and magic - is in revealing these levels of reality, making them manifest and conscious.
I could also say, entry into this "shared imagining" is evolutionary for humans, a circumscribed engagement in group telepathy; at the very least, it opens up a temporary space for communion.
Anyway, the Idyll in performance is equivalent to some other modes of art demonstrating - or,
demon-starting (as I have it elsewhere, following my
daimon) - phenomena.
The Idylls in performance and their uses/denial/phenomenology of invisibility might have resonance with one of my poems from
Verb Sap, a poem also included in the 10th edition of Pearson Longman's textbook anthology of English,
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing...
Empirical / Imperial Demonstration
The difference between
what is seen and what is not seen
what is heard and unheard
what is touched and intangible
isn't the difference between
what is there and
