CK Feel the Bend

Affirmations:

Your workshops (to me) speak to the strength of your collaboration. I feel like you have both really listened to the play and seem to be on the same page as to where to go/explore. Michael--it was wonderful to see how comfortable you were running the workshops--I could see you thinking on your feet and altering the workshop to be most productive for you both. Overall, you seemed well prepared to garner feedback and information in several different ways: writing, performance/movement, and speech (smart of you to record!)

The first workshop was a lovely way to capitalize on the poetic elements/nature of the play. Interacting with the hair and cards as well as with the sand and ocean sounds made these elements much more accessible and layered. Michael's comment in the second workshop that it seemed "too personal" to look at what we had written on the cards underscored how powerful this (convention? image? experience?) is. I'm completely enamored of the memory/hair/pulling out by the roots. Hair is really interesting in those ways: its dead, but attached to you at the living root. And it is very satisfying to pull it out cleanly (you can hear a tiny little pop inside your head like unplugging a cord).

Being able to participate in the different spaces of the play (confrontation/courtship, the ocean, the office) brought home how different these places feel and how differently one would act in each space. I found Soo-Jin's comment that being in the Jon/Betty space to be more about winning then anything else useful.

Interesting to think about tracking relationships through other relationships: seeing Jon/Anna escalate through Anna and Carol; seeing Anna through Jon and Betty.

I have to re-iterate that I really liked reading the part of Betty in your initial read through. I rarely have this experience (acting makes me nervous)--

Questions:

-I don't understand the shift in Carol's feeling toward Jon and Anna. Is it a game (given how boring the office is for her) that goes too far?
-How well does Carol know Betty?
-Why doesn't Betty ever come to the office? Is this about Anna keeping her personal life personal or about keeping B personal? Was there ever a time that Betty came by the office?
-What exactly is Anna's job? How "incharge" is she?
-What are you trying to acheive through the very different settings/(and i would almost say genres) in the play (the office, the beach, the apartment/inside characters' heads and thoughts). I see quite a few possibilities but wonder which way you're wanting to go.
-I want to know more about Jon's Marie.
-Why is Anna's hair falling out (it is right, aside from when she pulls it out?)
-Why does Anna stay with Betty?
-Does Anna believe that Betty is safe from her curse because she is a woman? If so, what does this say about the gender/sexuality issues in the play? Does this shift when Betty dies?
-Is Anna the same Anna with each of these people? In each of these spaces?
-Who or what are opposites in this play?
-What are the conventions of inside and outside--do we need the office to provide an outside?
-What does it look like when Anna lets go?
-What is the definition of "love" in this play?
-what is Anna trying to control (you can see that I think she is)

Observations/Opinions/More pointed Questions
-I honestly forgot about the "curse" that Anna's boyfriends die during the two workshops--this may be because it comes out toward the end. I didn't miss it.
-If Anna is linked to the sand, Betty seems to be linked to the water and Jon to wind--sorry, I've been reading about "elemental dramaturgy" This seems to be a neat fit for these characters however.
-I am going to re-iterate my comment about the sense of control I associated with putting memories onto cards and being able to organize them--
-I had forgotten, until I went back to the play, that Betty is the one who actually likes to swim and likes to *be* at the beach
-In the first set of improvs, Jon really did seem to have the upper hand, he also seemed to provide Anna with something she wasn't getting elsewhere--what is it?
-I'm not really all that interested in the office right now.
-I think I'd like to learn the "rules" of this play earlier--or for their to be fewer really cool and interesting facets (does that make sense) I feel my attention pulled in too many different directions
-The nature of Jon's, Carol's and Anna's jobs seemed telling: the traveling salesman, the receptionist (in charge of communication and in charge of access to Anna), the one who "processes" things.
-By now i think you've grasped how much I love the hair, I'd be happy for more on this, more memories--i found that i had a hard time keeping my own memories discrete when we did the activity--my memories were all balled up/attached to one another--how do we delineate between what makes a discrete memory?

S'good for now? I can't wait to see what you do with the input and exploration!