DAI Week One

Week one of the Dell'Arte summer workshop is done and over with. Day three we worked on archetypes with Joan some more. We had the afternoon with Stephanie Thompson of the Core Faculty. We did lots of walking and discovered the 3 different centers of Intellectual, Emotional, and Will. The intellectual leads with the head and focuses on questions and thinking, the emotional feels the world through the chest and moves with the breath, and the will leads with the pelvis and consumes space and objects. Our group decided to change our soundscape to loading groceries in a trunk at a grocery store.

Day four started again with Daily Practice then class with Stephanie. We worked more in the 3 centers then discussed archetypes that live in each center. We talked about the archetypes Pantalone, Dotore, and Capitano from Commedia Dell'Arte. The afternoon class was with Ronlin. We did a lot of work with respiration, opening the body, and different ways of walking. We finished the day with throwing imaginary stones and seeing them land.

Day five, we had the entire morning with Joe and learned a lot about the skeleton and how the body moves. He talked about different modalities such as yoga and ballet and how they all started as one person's understanding of how their body works. The work at Dell'Arte is to work deeper than that understanding and to find the origin of these modalities in order to understand the body in our own way. We had Performance Lab in the afternoon where our groups each presented our soundscapes. My group went first. The presentations varied from concerto-like immersions to what Ronlin called radio plays with distinct narrative structures. Ours was closer to the concerto with lots of layered sounds produced by multiple people. The soundscapes in order were loading groceries in a trunk, brushing teeth, making popcorn, changing a tire, and a malfunctioning computer printer. Ronlin talked about working intuitively rather than analytically, dynamic structures in theatre rather than narrative structures, and sublimation from flesh to spirit.

I ushered for the shows "In-Tents: a Conservation Comedy" noon Saturday. It was a two person clown show geared toward children with lots of physical humor and tons of energy. I spent the afternoon with some friends at the river and got a wicked sunburn then ushered "Comedy of Errors" put on by the Dell'Arte Company. The show incorporated music, masks, farce, lots of doors, and, of course, mistaken identity. I enjoyed it immensely. We had a birthday party for Mick where I learned the sacred game of drink ball and had far too much fun. I went hiking in the Redwood National Forest with some friends Sunday afternoon. Look forward to what I learned through the beginning of this week on Wednesday!

Enjoy the Day,
Brandon Brockshus