The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.
--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,
looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
Something about the hair, and the grains of sand, a question of magnitude, the idea
of details and what catches our attention.
OBSERVATIONS
1. Really great work in your workshops. It's prompting me to start my own blog,
just keeping track of the exercises people invent. The one that really grabbed my
attention was the first improvisation, where we imagined ourselves as Jon and Betti.
Again, I think what I liked was the chance to play with that idea of "the one who isn't
in the room." Because usually it's one of THEM who's not in the room, whose presence
is still in the room, and in this case, it was Ana.
2. The hair exercise, coupled with Daniel's plucking the hair off Soo-Jin, really
helped me internalize how powerful that image of a single hair can be, especially once
we realize what the hair represents or holds. It's a very arresting thing, that single
hair.
3. I really noticed, in doing the workshops, the different levels of reality on which
the play is operating for me. It feels like at least three distinct worlds that Ana's
inhabiting; (1) the public, and for me very recognizable, world of the office (2) the
world of relationships, with all its byzantine twists (3) the incredibly personal world
of each strand of hair, and the journey on which that is taking her. I have a question
about this below.
4. I noticed that none of us really tackled the question of Ana's bisexuality when
we were doing the Jon/Betti scenes, at least not in a direct way. Interesting.
5. I noticed that we didn't devote any of the workshop time to Ana's history of "killing"
men.
QUESTIONS
1. Is Ana the single connection between the different levels of reality I discussed in
observations? Or am I just not registering the other connective tissue at work?
2. Is Ana's bisexuality important to the story you're telling? Why and how is it important?
This is not a veiled opinion, I promise.
3. How are the specific memories Ana has in the play "working" for you right now?
4. What was Ana and Betti's relationship like six months ago? Six years ago? What did
their courtship look like and how did/didn't it resemble the Jon courtship.
5. What does Jon see as the goal of his relationship with Ana?
6. What is Carol's primary function in the play? Secondary function? What does
Carol want?
7. There is a lot happening to Ana. What does she want?
OPINIONS
1. I think that beach imagery is incredibly powerful. Can be, sometimes, overpowering.
Some of that, Priscilla, you know is just because I grew up on the Atlantic...so take
it with a grain of...you know.
2. It's funny, I don't think that bisexuality is necessarily something that draws much
of my attention in real life, but on stage, the fact that a relationship is bisexual
draws a lot of my focus. I guess I'm still not sure whether you want (1) to make
Ana's bisexuality a non-issue for your audience (2) for us to be paying attention
to her bisexuality (3) something else...
3. There are so many places I want to turn my attention in this play -- to the budding
relationship with Jon, to the problems with Betti, to the Carol/Ana relationship, to
the mystery of the hair, to the beach. I want to pay attention to all of it at once.
That's hard. I think do-able though. Do you want my attention in all of those places
equally?
4. I think this play is really beautiful and complicated.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Jenny's Response to "Feel the Bend"
To start, something that is neither observation, question, nor opinion. I mentioned, after we talked about the beach, a poem by Elizabeth Bishop that I thought might resonate, or that resonates for me when I think of the play. Here it is -- "Sandpiper."
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