SITI Delight

Oh my, it's been a full, enriching week immersed in a seven day SITI Company Masterclass Workshop in Suzuki, Viewpoints and Composition. The learning is busting out my earlobes--physical, mental, relational, emotional learning. The work is difficult--and that's what makes it so empowering. 

I've had very little online time (which has been immensely good for my brain, heart and body), and such is the case at this moment too. Also, there has been too much muchness to encapsulate succinctly in this form at this time. I will instead leave a few snippets of touchtone points and phrases that stand out in brief reflection of this extraordinary time with Barney O'Hanlon and Stephen Webber in Boise State University Theatre Arts Department's wonderful Danny Peterson Theatre space:

"Recycling material assembles meaning over time." Barney O'Hanlon

"Creating an action (or a shape) can create and express an emotional state." Barney

"It's not just the stuff and text you have...what you're doing and where you're doing it can do the job even clearer." Barney

"Chekhov is all about time." Barney

"Concentration is the ability to handle several things at once." Stephen Webber

"Being an artist is breaking the second law of thermodynamics (the entropy of any isolated system always increases--everything loses energy over time)." We go against our own evolution and make something. Stephen 

"In repetition, if nothing changes, the audience gets puts to sleep." Barney

"Speaking is a physical act, not an intellectual one." Barney

"The director has two ensembles: the actors in the show is one group that the director has to take care of, the audience is the second group..." Anne Bogart (quoted by Barney)

Creating something in order to survive isn't enough. Find an aesthetic reason beyond survival that is more generous, meaningful and powerful for an audience. ​Stephen 

"Actors listen for the news of a distance." What has changed? Barney 

"Movement is the visible aspect of space. Space is the invisible aspect of movement." Barney

"Dance is conscious movement." Barney

It never gets easier, but we can get better.

A moment from last year's SITI Company Boise workshop. Photo by Andy Lawless.

​We have one more day of this bliss, with a short training session and showings of the short pieces we've been devising in our composition class, all using on The Three Sisters as springboard source material. I'll be grateful for every minute in there. My creative body/mind feels 500 times more motivated, inspired and ready for the next thing than it did before our first day on Sunday. I'm ready for artistic wellspring of autumn.