Read

Groff, Rinne and John Collins, Eric Dyer, Moisés Kaufman, Winter Miller. “What is Devised Theatre?”

Martin, Carol. “What Did They Do to My Country!”

DUE TUESDAY, FEB 9

Watch

Finish watching Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth’s The Five Obstructions.

DUE TUESDAY, FEB 9

Make

“Five stories, told 50 ways”
Come up with five stories you want to tell. They should be stories that are or have been important to you and that you know well: favorite bedtime stories from childhood; books you read and reread, or movies watch over and over. Myths and legends, or songs that tell a tale. But also favorite stories that you tell, family stories, the stories you tell about yourself that say something about who you are or want to be.

Find a way to encapsulate each story in 1-2 sentences, and write that down. It should have a rudimentary narrative component, but mainly it needs to capture the essential essence or gesture of why this story has been important to you. Write this down for each of your five stories.

Now, tell your five stories in fifty ways, through fifty (50) objects that you make. It is up to you how many object you devote to each story—it could be 46 for one, and then one object for each of the remaining four stories. It can be an even-handed 10 object per story. It can be anything in between.

It is also up to you how the objects within one story relate to one another. Maybe all of them, taken together as a group or in a sequence, tell the story once through. Maybe each object is a total and complete telling of the story, and you are showing us multiple versions of the story, told in different ways, with different emphases or from different perspectives.

Your objects should fall into one of the following categories, and you must, out of all 50, make at least one object in each category:

• a “sketch” (2D) postcard sized or smaller
• a “sculpture” (3D), cuppable in your hands
• a “video sketch”, 10s max
• a performance by you, 30s max
• a performance by someone not you, 30s max
• a performance using 2 or 3 actors, none of them you, 30s max
• an audio-only event, 20s max, live or pre-recorded
• a piece of writing, 150 words max

Document each of your 50 objects in a format that can be uploaded, shared and archived on the class WordPress site. (e.g. any live performances should be videoed for archival purposes, but this is different and distinct from the 10s “video sketch” format.) Make 1 post per story (so you will have 5 posts in total) with all of that story’s objects, and give each story a title.

After you have completed all 50 of your objects, look at the objects in each story and then re-read what you wrote as the synopsis of that story. If you feel that the story has changed in the course of telling it through objects, write down a new version of your synopsis (still limited to 1-2 sentences) immediately after your original story—but do not alter what you originally wrote.

Email all of your synopses, including both versions for any that you feel may have changed, to me prior to class when this is due. Do not include your story synopses with you posts on the wordpress site.

In class, you will each have 10 minutes to share as many of your 50 objects as you can or want to with the group. We will all look at the remainder of your objects online.

DUE TUESDAY, FEB 9