Dell' Arte: Suffering

Week Seven:

We applaud you, because you suffer.

This week started off rough for me.  It was all about music and movement and putting the two together.  I love both of these things and they mean a lot to me, BUT we were challenged in our movement to BE the music, to PUSH the music, to PULL the music, to be WITH the music, and to go AGAINST the music.  All of these needed to be distinguished apart from one another.  People were physically able to do this and I felt that I was the only one in the room who could not.  This of course was not helpful.  Also, our theme for the week was "Whispers of running streams and winter lightning".  We were told that we NEED to step up and invest our entire selves.  Week seven, come on guys, get it together.

Our group struggled greatly throughout the week, as did many.  But no one felt like they had something to say or had a passionate view of the experiment we chose to invest our time in.  On top of that, two of the five group members were battling illnesses.  We had developed a small piece and on Thursday all the groups shared what they had been working on.

Well.
Everyone was told to scrap everything and make an entire new piece for the next day.  Tension was high and everyone was on edge in the studio.  Our group found something and developed it, but after we got a night of rest in, we awoke with the feeling, this is shit.  And it was, we were shooting in the dark and had no idea what we were doing in that p-lab.

P-lab was great.  Every group struggled and suffered.  BUT we worked on our pieces like you would in a lab and workshop-ed specific ideas we were playing with to music.  Everything changed drastically. Everyone was making it too complicated and Ronlin was able to find these great moments and strip them to them down. We were all very vulnerable and could stand up in front of the world and say, I don't know.   And that was ok.  That lab was just what we needed.  Now I'm not saying that we finally broke out of our shells and habits, but maybe something started a crack that day.

Yes, I felt embarrassed during our group's p-lab, but we suffered.  And through that suffering, there are gains being made.  I am incredibly thankful.