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AyeStreetTheatre

Becky looks for something unexpected on this page. Lets hire a theatre group and lets act them a blaming (or another type of) organization in an extraordinary way. I guess, a lot of fun. Maybe there are some actors or even Oscar winners on the Wiki members? Becky, maybe we could act the star roles? ErwinVanDerBij 3/27/02

Maybe this could feed into the logistics or program for the 2002 AYE conference! Erwin, are you and others game for AYE Street Theatre? - BeckyWinant 4/8/02

Thanks for the pointer. I wish we could hear more about Emmanuel's experience. Has he put on a production? It sounded like he was developing it.

It might be a good dinner discussion. A BOF that goes somewhere related to theatre to discuss our ideas. We would need to figure out where in Phoenix would be most "appropriate". Maybe Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin's theatre to draw inspiration!

- BeckyWinant 2002.08.06

To keep it simple, you could use the place used at the end of the conference, where everyone will be together. Is that possible? I could ask two actors I know to do a performance. I could work out a script for the performance as well, based on some input I get from this thread.

- ErwinVanDerBij 2002.08.13

I sense potential fun!

There are resources on the web and books offering guidelines and exercises for Comedy Improvisation.

There are actors and troupes in Phoenix (I picked up a few doing a web search: (Improvamerica.com, http://www.nightguide.com/phoenix/data/n100388.htm and http://www.improvcomedy.org/groups/amuse.html). Could we hire someone to come in and coach us in doing comedy improv?

Certainly, we could take a either software development issue or a Satir or Satir related topic (or, something like Into the Woods!) and use it for an Improvisation.

I'm game if others are interested.

DianeGibson 8/14/02

Strangely enough, Improv exercises were being discussed recently in the XP mailing list. ("Pair drawing", done in XP simulations is apparently an Improv exercise.) One bit of advice that struck me: when two or more people are doing an improv scene, never disagree with or contradict what someone says, because that ruins the momentum of the scene.

The example given was someone who says they are a werewolf -- the other person can't say "no you're not". She should instead build on it, for example by saying that she is a werewolf inspector, and his fangs are so bad that she's giving him a ticket.

Also: this looks like a fun game to play at AYE: 1000 Blank Cards

KeithRay 2002.08.15

- BeckyWinant 2002.08.15

Another good rule is 'always have an out' - a way to get out of a scene or skit. In meetings, it is important for people to know when they have accomplished what they have come for. Too often, I think, meeting wander way out of there territory, looking for a way out.

- MaigWorel 2002.10.01

Even if we don't have a chance to have an actual AYE Street Theatre session, perhaps we could have a cast party or dinner? Or, a luncheon table one day? Based on your comments and what I've observed there is a lot of value in the theatrial analysis of the structure of behaviors, characters and situations that apply to our work and play lives. After all playwrights use real life for inspiration, right?

- BeckyWinant 10-01-2002

I encountered "Yes, and . . . " in the context of reading about improvisational theatre. It's part of what makes improvisations work. Your job is to respond to and build on the stuff that is offered to you, not criticize it as not being "right." One great example lots of people could access is the TV show Who's Line is it Anyway. I've been addicted for years, starting with the original british version. Laugh out loud marvelous stuff.

Another model from theatre & music is in so-called supporting parts and players. There's a good story of this in Piers Anthony's Blue Adept part of his Split Infinity series of books. The protagonist is in a musical competition, improvising with one of his rivals. The rival takes the lead and melody, while the protagonist cooperates, and supports where the other guy is going. The protagonist is eventually recognized as having provided a superior performance. He made the music work, by supporting this other guy's performance.

I've noticed that in many of the great comedy teams, the one who gets the laughs extends tremendous complements to the other one - the so called "straight man." Would Penn be half as engaging without Teller? (A pair of subversive magician / entertainers, for those who don't know.) Some actors talk about other actors as "generous" particularly when the one off-camera in a shot, plays and reacts in a scene while the person on-camera is being filmed. Sometimes again and again. That reminds me. The Actor's Studio is another really marvelous series on TV.

These ways of behaving seem to me to be appropriate for teamwork, coaching, managing, and change artistry at least. I think that creating systems is in the end a performance art. Management (vs. administration) certainly is. It seems to me that "Yes, and . . . " is a fine way to AYE. So is providing things for others to "Yes, and . . . " with. I'll bring my jester hat.

But then, that's just me. I'm gullible. Any number of sources of hot air have been "the wind beneath my wings" from time to time. You use what you can get.<gggggg>

-JimBullock, 2002.10.2

Sounds like we listen to the same stuff. I also have been a fan (not quite addict) of Who's Line is it Anyway starting witht he Brit version, also a fan of all magicians (Penn and Teller being just two wonderfully wacky examples with a comic overtone - and who just happen to come from my hometown), and The Actor's Studio.

Based on this overlap, I'll have to look into Piers Anthony.

I have been a fan of theatre, magic and improv . While working for a Canadian firm in the late 70's I had the pleasure of going to the Second City in Toronto where Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner were before SNL. I remember them in particular because the characters that Dan Ackroyd played were diverse and I was always referring to the playbill to see "who was that?". Gilda Radnor was always recognizable and absolutely head on hilarious.

I use humor and staging in my work, but feel could learn a lot from the theatre arts.

Jim, I agree the work we do is a performance art. Speaking of which, I am also a fan of performance artists. Laurie Anderson being one. This is, of course,just a step away from conceptual artists (John Cage, Andy Warhol) and who know who else we can connect! It can be fun to see how much of what we all do has interrelationships.

And, please bring your jester hat! Nynke talks about using the jester as well. Maybe I'll brush off the old Donald Duck hat from an Epcot visit many years back.

- BeckyWinant 2002-10-02

Sounds like we have some influences in common. I like spoken word stuff as well. I encountered Eric Bogosian on some obscure TV channel. There was another interesting piece - one man performance - based on Huey Newton just a couple months ago. Even Garrison Keillor's work has spoken word elements, as do many radio and TV talk programs. Then there's the character based comics. Whoopi Goldberg's and Lily Tomlin's broadway shows were more like spoken word than theatre. Haven't seen John Leguizamo yet. I suspect he'd be brilliant. Nor Henry Rollins, except a small piece as part of an (infrequent) interview.

It seems to me that cable TV & secondary networks have actually done some good, creating a venue, and greater access to some of this stuff. However, indexing and biography is often hard for me to find. The media sites are stoking the star factory and episodic television or the next big band. The spoken word sites and spoken word indexes are trying to be more alternative than the next guy. We need to get the media web sites, or at least part of them, out of the hands of the marketing droids, or at least make a small archivist section. I want the names of those spoken-word performers I caught last month late at night on an MTV alternative. Of course the credits were no use, and the broadcaster unresponsive. No money in it.

Irony runs amok, as the alternative fringe is more coporate than Enron ever thought of being. There's an adaptive competence in decentralized systems that outperforms command and control. Shows up in the rapidity of rap fortunes, and the careful content controls of spoken word slams. It gets to be about being about, before you can say "Ani DiFranco." And the Benjamins. It's all about the Benjamins.

The promise of the internet - that big index in the sky, with channels for everything - has yet to be completely realized. I have some hope. There's a tape version of Peter Brook's Mahabharata adaptation from the mid 80s for sale on e-bay for the first time in years. (Don't even think about bidding. My maximum is absurdly high - I want this thing.) And a DVD version of the same has been announced for availability in November. Would be nice, of course, if in addition to the soundstage version, each performance venue had been taped, and now distributed. Performance is alive, and different every time. We have the technology, just ask any deadhead.

I even found sources to refurbish my now classic turntable from way too many years ago. Thing is, some of my music, and things like an amazing radio interview - Robert Klein interviewing Fagan and Becker of Steely Dan, talk about performance art - is only on vinyl and not likely to be digital any time soon. That's good or bad, depending on your taste, I suppose.

At the limit of no barrier to entry or distribution it pays off to provide anything that any one person wants. Even me, which I like. But sometimes that's not necessarily good, as suggested by the audience appreciation for the cliche-ridden, self-absorbed adolescent mewelings of one would be bohemian I heard in a Rochester coffee shop. It was Rochester after all. Think about it. Poetry slams, or the attempt. In a would-be coffee shop. In the frozen North where the glaciers just recently retreated. Lots of decent, smart, hard working people there. But literati, and the avant-garde edge they aren't.

With obligatory references to Pfeizer and SUVs this child of suburbia bemoaned her fate, along with the drugs that made her dental work tolerable vs. mind-shatteringly painful, and the car that drove her there. She was annoyed, apparently, that both painkillers and some antibiotics make her loopy. This in a cultue where the dominant recreational drugs are percosets and vicodans, while valium over prescription runs amok. Not enough, it seems. She was still both unhappy and able to say so. There was applause.

The Pfeizer plant smells, kind of like yeast, and since I'm living my life vs. pretending it, that's OK with me. At least it's all fodder. The indescribable exestential anguish of hearing that stuff - not - has gotten me far more mileage than her. The following morning the owner asked what I thought, and my pre-coffee riffing on the event got me invited to submit something to the next one. Slam? No, more like gentle placement on the princess's much padded pea. My coffee was free there about half the time, and I got invited to a party, which I missed because I was busy moving to the land of Starbucks, where the professional poseurs live. Irony runs amok.

It's about nuggets, I think. Finding them and keeping them among the piles of dross bouncing downstream. Or maybe backchaining to find the veins where the real stuff lies in its own environment, before it's torn lose into the larger, leveling stream.

But that's just me.

- JimBullock, 2002.10.2 (Rev. 1.2, 2002.10.3)

Years ago I had the pleasure of working for the Newport Folk and Jazz festival and for a small coffee house (yes, it was the sixites). I heard incredible stuff that I might never have run into just listening to radio or records, at that time. One haunting performer for me was John Fahey. His earlier music seemed to fuse folk, blues, and sort of Zen-like, Gabriel-like talking guitar. I was also in love with Olatunji's drums and interpretation of western music.

Anyway, sounds are fun and magical. - BeckyWinant 2002-10-03