Dell' Arte #1: Pure Joy

Pure Joy:

On September 28th I hoped on a train in Omaha to make my way to California.  Waved good-bye to my loving family and rode for 40 hours straight. It was a great experience that I advise everyone take at least once in their life time. I landed in San Francisco on the 30th where my friend from the PTP would pick me up and offer me a place to stay for the night.  I had not met her before, but had communicated over e-mail.  We picked up another PTP gal from the airport that night (she was arriving from Denmark).  In the next morning we made our way up the coast to the land of the Redwoods.

I arrived in Blue Lake on October 1st to a house filled with strangers.  I was the fourth to arrive. I live in a house with eight other PTP (Professional Training Program) students. Total Occupants are: three from the United States, two from Canada, one from Spain, one from Zimbabwe, another from Australia and one from Iran.  Jumping into this was terrifying and exciting.  Each one greeted me outside with a smile, handshake, and a helping hand.  We carried my stuff to a room and headed out to grab a beer.  I barely had time to take a breath and I was off again.  There was so many stories and moments to take in.  Very overwhelming and exhausting.  There are many different cultures and traditions that I am not used to.  One being my Spanish friend, who sleeps in the room next to me, always prepares a surplus of amazingly delicious food to feed his fellow PTP friends (notice they are no longer strangers, but dear friends).  I could go on and on about that, but let's fast forward to Orientation.

Orientation on Saturday!  Everyone was anxious to just get going.  We had enough of laying low and "me time" and wanted to get to work.  We started at 10 a.m. and had a tour of the main building (where the MFA 2yrs and 3yrs work), the downtown area which is all of a coffee-shop and world famous bar called, The Logger.  Then we walked down towards the river where the building the PTP and yr 1 MFA students will work.  It's called River Campus. Why? Because it's right next to the river.  
Once we arrived we began introductions,paper work, and procedures.  There are twenty eight of us in the PTP program.  Fifteen of which are international students.  This is unheard of, usually there are only 5-7 international students.  We already have the feeling our class will be a special one.  After all the paperwork, we received our first assignments: develop a 3 minute play by 6:45 pm Sunday night where it will be shown to staff, faculty, fellow students, and residents of Blue Lake. AHHHHH! We were numbered off and those were who we would work with.   But before you rehearse, there is a welcome potluck until 3:30. Okay.
Potluck, awesome. Great food, great games, and great people.

Rehearsal.  We worked well as a group and developed a story line pretty quickly.  We all agreed that we just needed to pick a path and go with it.  We had a list of this required for the 3 min play such as specific props, text, and a UDA AND A CLEAR BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END.  This was familiar to me which made me thankful for the a-tude work done in Matt Foss' acting classes.  As we worked, I realized that there are completely different ranges of knowledge in the room as to creating theater. This was a comfort and frustration.  Comfort that no one has the answers and frustration in communicating ideas and beats.  You get used to the way you have been doing things at University and being thrown into this new world with different people is quite different. You learn quickly to accept the given circumstances of the situation at hand and move forward.  Our idea was motivated by one of our girls experience making the choice to pursue theater specifically at Dell Arte.  Things went well.  We listened to one another's ideas and began building a mini-play.  I went to sleep feeling a little to comfortable about the whole thing.  Knowing me, I should be terrified about all of this? Why does it feel so comfortable?

Orientation Sunday!  Meeting at 11 a.m. going over procedures in the rehearsal space and why the faculty and trainers are here and what their job and our jobs are.  One being, my body is my personal responsibility. The faculty are trainers, not doctors.  It is their duty to improve our awareness and strength of our body.  We are responsible for taking care of it.  After the meeting, we began rehearsals again for the show that night.  So, now I'm terrified.  There it is.  I began to doubt everything we were doing, felt the need to try to "save" the show...although it did not need saving, and started to compare all we worked for to others as we saw them rehearse. Looking back, it was all silly.  Naturally these plays were going to be struggles.  The whole process was condensed to two days and on top of that, no one really knew what they were doing.  But it was beautiful chaos Sunday night.  I have never experienced that much pure joy before.  I will save all of the magic for a more personal setting, dear readers (Harry potter voice over reference shout out!).

I will say this- I am very grateful and humbled to be given this opportunity. After Sunday,  I feel apart of something much bigger in this world.  And I feel that I am necessary in it and that it is time to get to work.