30s

Attempting to play Cat’s Cradle by herself

Did you ever play this game? I used to play it all the time…played it with my little cousins, so…

But it’s harder to play by yourself.

I’m not planning on having children. Never was. The things I want to do, have done…not possible. And that’s okay. It’s great. Besides, the responsibility? Having a little human following in my footsteps? And then they grow up and what happens if they’re little shits? If they’re rude or racist or…who knows what else. I don’t want that responsibility. And besides, I’ve got things to do…

My friend from high school, Caddie, she’s got three kids. Started having them as soon as graduated. She was just…so ready to be a mother. And now she has three little terrors, running around, complicating things…her house is littered with board games. And I’ve never seen a kid play one. They’re always playing games like this. Gestures to Cat’s Cradle. Plays silently for a few moments.

No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s hands and little kids look and look and look at all those X’s…and…..no damn cat, and no damn cradle.

1. I would really like us to keep and expand upon ways of putting the audience in unique situations that they aren’t used to in a traditional theatrical context, such as the opening, or some of our other participatory performances. I’d be interested in developing those ideas further and making them more connected and cohesive. We currently have a lot of different, disparate ways that the audience is involved in the performance, and I’m curious about ways we could make those different ways more connected, so that the audience has an understanding of the general rules of how the space works, even if small things change moment to moment.

2. I feel like a lot of the work we’ve made that is not performance based has run its course. I think the ideas contained in that work are interesting and there is definitely potential to expand upon them, but I think we’ve now moved beyond the usefulness of showing the more static, non-performance based work. It seems to not engage the audience in the same way as the live performances, and I think the format of presentation of all of those objects is a little crippling- it very distinctly shapes how we set up our space, and it allows the audience to distance themselves from some of the work, which I feel ended up at odds with the more immersive performances.

3. We haven’t really talked about creating something with more distinctive characters and moments of more narrative. I’m not necessarily saying that we should prescribe narrative to the entire piece, but I would be interested in exploring ways to add a character or two into the piece and letting their choices shape parts of a narrative tying different moments together.

My thoughts:

I felt the opening worked well- having everyone led in one at a time set up the rest of the showing as something out of the ordinary, and different than they may have been expecting. However, I think it did lead to some confusion as to what they were supposed to do after their masks had been lifted. I think it very quickly moved from a more personal experience to an overwhelming sensory stimulus.

There was also a bit of aimlessness in the museum style- it worked well, for some exhibits, such as the video in the closet or Sophia’s story, but there was a hesitancy to really sit and and observe something. I felt people very quickly moved through different pieces and then were left standing around with nothing to do.

This made the live performances much more valuable I think. Everyone had arrived prepared to be more traditional audience members, so they were really ready to stand and watch Kimmy and Omar perform. I also enjoyed the diversion of the live performance, and almost wished we had had more going on throughout the room (not as separate events) so that audience members would have had more chances to engage with actual people, and to participate in something for a longer period of time. Interestingly though, I feel that Bailey’s piece suffered with people approaching in ones and twos- I think we got more out of it by watching the faces of those who were getting fed bread before us.

Other’s thoughts:

Interestingly, most people who participated in the Federalist Papers voted Nay in my final questioning. One person who came suggested that was because the Federalist Papers had come after Kimmy’s and Omar’s performances, and so people were less inclined to ratify a Constitution that at the time really only supported more well off white men.

I had one person come who was very confused as to what was going on for most of the presentation and so was unsure how to interact with the objects or fellow audience members. They likened it to a modern art museum with interactive exhibits. They also found some of the live performances easier to connect to in comparison with the other pieces.

Emerging Themes/Ideas

Memories/Lost Memories

• Phoebe’s ELI5 and Show Don’t Tell (The struggle of remembering something truthfully, whatever that means)
• John’s 5/50 “Short Term Memory (I love the line: I forgot what the stars looked like”, and it seems to be its own sort of theme; it’s cropped up in several juxtapositions)
• My 5/50 “Peter” (“It’s so much easier to just…forget)

Myths/Legends

• Gabrielle’s 5/50 “Icarus”
• Molly’s 5/50 “The Origin of Love”
• My 5/50’s “Orpheus” and “Arthur”
• Molly’s 5/50 “Adam and Eve” and Paige’s Juxtaposition

Audience Participation (This appeared in many forms, both intentional and unintentional, in really interesting ways, and with varying degrees of audience agency)

• Carina’s Juxtaposition “Human Again”
• My Federalist Papers Show Don’t Tell
• Rearragning the letters in Gabrielle’s name from her 5/50
• Phoebe’s pokemon trading cars in her juxtaposition
• Bailey’s eating of bread and honey/oil in 5 Senses
• Paige’s counting game in Show Don’t Tell
• Creating a map with Molly’s Show Don’t Tell

Things I’m interested from what I’ve made

• Federalist Papers Show Don’t Tell: I was fascinated in how the reading of the papers escalated so violently, even though I’d given no instruction for that to happen.
• 5/50 “Peter- Glitter”: Flushing the glitter down the drain was both incredibly violent and a little sad to me, sort of a distortion of beauty that I found interesting

Things I found interesting from what others have made

• Carina’s Show Don’t Tell performance: there was something heart wrenching and terrifying about watching her run back and forth across the street in the cold and wind, but I also recognized my own hesitation to go out to help, which I think spotlighted an interesting problem of being an audience member.
• Kimmy’s Juxtaposition: I liked seeing how images that had brought humor before could be twisted and changed to make something so tragic.
• John’s Hotels Across the Country: There is something simple and beautiful about a homemade map that I really love, particularly one that feels like it belongs to people who are going somewhere, or have been somewhere together.

Fact: The artist Caravaggio was arrested 11 times in 5 years, at least once for drunk and disorderly conduct.

Sight:

Sound:

Smell/Taste: The smell and taste of old, sour wine

Touch:

The feeling of cheap beer, slightly sticky.

Combination: The taste and smell of cheap beer, while a “roaring fire” crackles in the background.

The Federalist Papers, originally known as “The Federalist” were a series of eighty-five essays written between October 1787 and August 1788 that argued in support of the newly drafted U.S. Constitution. The essays were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, all under the pseudonym “Publius”. The pseudonym, chosen in honor of Publius Valerius Publicola, was picked by Hamilton, as Publius was essential to the founding of the Roman Republic. Hamilton felt that this would hopefully parallel the importance of the Federalist Papers in the ratification of the Constitution. The essays were published in a series of newspapers, The Independent Journal, The New York Packet,  and The Daily Advertiser and all were published anonymously. It wasn’t until Hamilton’s death in a duel with Aaron Burr that he was revealed as one of the authors. It is widely believed that Hamilton wrote fifty-one of the essays, Jay wrote five and Madison wrote twenty-nine. Jay was going to contribute more, but fell ill after writing four (numbers 2-5) and so didn’t write another essay until number sixty-four.  Madison disputed these numbers, claiming he had written more than his twenty-nine, but none of the authors ever released a breakdown of authorship, so the exact who wrote what is still up for debate, and will never be known for sure. Only seventy-seven of the essays were originally published, and the other eight were added in later when the collection was published. 

Hamilton masterminded the Federalist Papers as a way of garnering support for the Constitution. All three authors of the Federalist Papers were strong nationalists, hoping to increase public support for the new Constitution, which was written to replace the old Articles of Confederation, and it had to be passed by nine of the thirteen states. The Federalist Papers were written to counteract opposition that the Constitution would create a large, tyrannical central government that would infringe on state’s liberties. They instead argued that the proposed government as outlined by the Constitution would keep the Union from falling apart and would give the federal government the ability to act with authority in the national interest. They pushed the idea of checks and balances, outlining how the Constitution’s clear outline of defined powers of the government would be the best way to protect the individual rights of each state.

While it is not fully clear how much of an impact the Federalist Papers had on the public at the time (although, the Constitution was obviously ratified), they have since been compiled and are widely studied in conjunction with the Constitution as a great analysis and interpretation for the founding principles of the United States.

References

So, I woke up this afternoon and…well…I found something. It’s small, I’m sure just a minor tumor, or maybe a hernia? Can you get those there?

And, it’s fine…it’s probably spreading, I should go. To the doctor’s and…well, my legs have stopped working. And is that tingling in my arms? Does that mean a stroke, or a heart attack…both, it’s probably both.

You know what they’d say. You’re fine. You’re fine. Probably fine. Definitely…not fine. Definitely dying.

IMG_0518

A hypochondriac knows both nothing and everything are wrong.

So, she died. And we cried. And we laughed. And laughed.
And we finished the trip.

How do you cremate someone in a Catholic country?

“This says you have four traveling in your party, is someone not returning with you.”

“Oh, we’ve got her in Ziplocs in our luggage.”