Buran Texts

Eat, Pray, Love

2011-04-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm reading "Eat, Pray, Love". It really is very good. It may seem like one of those books that women are reading, but it really is justified in its popularity. I just finished the section on Italy and wanted to share some passages I underlined. Take what you will.

"...a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the wold is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent 'opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors...' In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency.

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business-not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into...rhetoric and plot."

"...the idea that the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity."

"...when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt-this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."

Notes on devising material for HOUSE OF FITZCARRALDO

2010-06-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

Questions

Theatre is a forum for culture. Okay, it’s a forum for many things, right? But I’m looking at past patterns in what we’ve done, what we’re gravitated to, what we’re gravitated to to bring into the picture. Why we’ve chosen material like the Marx Brothers, Fitzcarraldo, Napoleon, Chekhov, Henry Fuseli, etc? This is the forum for culture and… reconstruction? Reconstruction vs. deconstruction seems to be the notion of post-postmodernism, or “after postmodernism.” Or not even. Yes, or not.
If we don’t want to think in those terms that is.
I will posit this though: There is viability in reconstruction. Nothing is ever the same when you put it back together again – it’s full of residue (attaching articles) and those are represented in the way a culture or a people behave. We have a responsibility to represent that in our involvement of a contemporary narrative in theatre.

What we are doing with mythology, this has to be explored so that it is something that comes from the group. Why do we use “the familiar” (that is, our own names) in productions? This must be proved or else, I’m not certain I buy it. Or rather, I buy it, but I’m not sure that it will reach its potential until we all recognize the rule and why it does or does not work in the specific instances of the work.
Why enacting mythology is more than just “theatre as hoax.” Or is it just that in essence? Is Frederick Allison a hoax? What about Nikolas Weir? Is this no more than Andy Kaufman theatrics?

Our relationship with the audience is deeply invested in the work from conception – when we work in this fashion (as we are in HOF) then we are enacting this notion of spectator-performance relationship into the work itself. Theory in practice is what we’re after – after all.

The following pages are to act as an entry point to the work. In them I lay out sources we might use, recent influences that respond/react/gravitate to past models and propose ideas and theories that relate to our current practice.

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Means of devising: Taking a structure from culture that is documented in a way that could shine light on new possibilities. With Fitzcarraldo (and the other swirling sources) are we Reassembling from the wreckage to find some meaning in the artifacts? To play artifacts. To play original artifacts – the source of artifact. Are we deconstructing a myth only to build a new one? Is it reconstruction via deconstruction? Or none of these?
By having Nikolas Weir’s involvement we are generating an archive that exists only in the world of our imagination. Our performance, not only our delusions, will be stronger and rooted in the reality of the world. It is a world of generosity – also a world accepting of a little madness too. This engagement gives rise to the possibility that a spectator may not even need to attend our show to be a part of the performance – they may never know how they are performing these new myths out. In this way there is the inclusion of accidental audience (see Schechner reference later) into the performance – an accidental audience who doesn’t even have to show up.
Even the phrase, “Have you heard of Nikolas Weir?” then becomes a performative. And after time, a sort of urban legend. (Re: “Smell my Theater: An Interview with Nikolas Weir)
The performer engages as the role of spectator (see Brecht/Boal molestations) in a way that ignores the role of tradition, for the sake of destroying “the sacred.” We destroy the sacred to make way for the profane – but more so, making room for the open palate of the mind. The feeling that this brings about from the audience (and in relation to the actor as well) can be euphoric, rhythm-changing, and potentially life altering. A willingness to accept one’s imagination for positive change…what that could possibly do? Unified joy. Not over any belief, but in the event of a performance for and with an audience.

We worked with what we called Attaching Articles in Money Buckets.
Attaching Articles = Riffs, commentaries, shoots and ladders of the “reconstructed narrative” = hope?

A narrative that has room – both physical room (the space of the theatre, the space outside) and textual room (rules, attaching articles, lost & founds, etc).

Means of Devising:
1. Interviews with key figures: From Fitzcarraldo, Buran Company, or the collective consciousness (i.e. Doctors Who Only See Other Doctors, Nikolas Weir, etc).
2. What does the hi-jacked story of Fitzcarraldo via Buran mean in a large context? Social/cultural/artistic responsibility. (Responsibility in the same respect that Money Buckets was a call and response to “Financial Crisis”, Great Recession, etc. Does Fitzcarraldo call and respond to, oh, say- the Oil in the Ocean?)
3. Metaphors: Dreams. What do these large metaphors mean? Carrying a ship up and over a mountain. Burial. Discovery. Rediscovery. Uselessness. Useless dreams.
4. Characters, theoretically, are unconscious of narrative – audience constructs narrative. The story, the plot, the happening, the event (whatever wish to call it) is not aware (although, often, as it has been in the past, in a Burancentric narrative, everyone is aware that “this thing is happening.”)
Getting to the place pre-narrative: what happens prior to the narrative that makes the narrative innocent as it occurs. Autobiography is a key to discover this. – Lisa Kron
5. Creation of rules in the construction of narrative.
Rule #1: Do not start the show until someone leaves.
Or
Rule: (from a design perspective) The stage is lit only with practical lights.
The rules dictate the direction of the narrative, what gets used and what gets thrown to the wayside depending on the make up of participants. (Spectators then, even unknowingly, become active. Push the button, the timer goes off, which vibrates the egg, which rolls and lands on the lever which results in an action from the performer on stage. So: Stand up and leave and the show starts. Participants find their equilibrium within the narrative and recognize their pivotal role in the action. It is like the old improv game Psychiatrist.)
6. Myth: How we use myth and history. There is only mythology – history is the attempt to believe that it is really true. Once something is told it only becomes more and more mythologized. Creating new mythologies (i.e. opportunities) for the community of spectators. “Buran was witness to Herzog’s filming!” “Buran at birth of Baby Jesus – That Was No Virgin!”
7. Personalities of the individuals: Pulling character traits from individuals in the group. What do we bring to ourselves as actors? What is inherently special/uncommon/specific to what we bring when we’re on stage? (Sometimes a body on stage is enough to make a performance out of.)

Our retreat week will be spent unpacking many of these notions in the work itself. The “devising schedule” (which you will be receiving shortly) will attempt to address all of these ideas in generating the material for performance.
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Spectators Playing the Game of Theatre

Since we’ll be working with source texts in film, I’d like to use Andre Bazin’s What is Cinema? as a text for us to consider – to at least consider and then throw away. He compares theatre and cinema with great articulation and presents some ideas that may be useful in our working with film as source materials. The ‘problems’ he states, especially in relation to the presence of the actor and the conditions of décor in relation to the spectator, can be taken back to our past work with spectatorship via performance and the problems we face in creating a work that performs before, during and after the event of show. Of particular interest: his criticisms that we have found solvable, or at least approaching them in a solvable manner, in performance – particularly, bridging the individual experience of watching a film in the dark and being a part of the community of “others” at the theater. Some choice quotes (put in context as best as I can):

“Strictly speaking one could make a play out of Madame Bovary or The Brothers Karamazov. But had the plays come first it would be impossible to derive from them the novels as we know them. In other words, when the drama is so much a part of the novel that it cannot be taken from it, reciprocally the novel can only be the result of a process of induction which in the arts means purely and simply a new creation. Compared with the play, the novel is only one of the many possible syntheses derivable from the simple dramatic element” (pg 83).

“There is no such thing as a ‘slice of life’ in the theater. In any case, the mere fact that it is exposed to view on the stage removes it from everyday existence and turns it into something seen as it were in a shop window. It is in a measure part of the natural order but it is profoundly modified by the conditions under which we observe it” (89).

“The camera is at last a spectator and nothing else. It was indeed Cocteau who said that cinema is an event seen through a keyhole. The impression we get here from the keyhole is one of an invasion of privacy, the quasi-obscenity of viewing….the viewpoint of the spectator, the one denominator common to the stage and screen” (93).

“What is specific to theatre is the impossibility of separating off action and actor. Elsewhere the stage welcomes every illusion except that of presence; the actor is there in disguise, with the soul and voice of another, but he is nevertheless there and by the same token space calls out for him and for the solidity of his presence. On the other hand and inversely, the cinema accommodates every form of reality save one – the physical presence of the actor.” From Henri Gouhier’s The Essence of Theater

“The cinema calms the spectator, the theatre excites him. Even when it appeals to the lowest instincts, the theater up to a certain point stands in the way of the creation of a mentality. It stands in the way of any collective representation in the psychological sense, since theater calls for an active individual consciousness where the film requires only a passive adhesion” (pg.98).

“The theater is indeed based on the reciprocal awareness of the presence of the audience and the actor, but only as related to a performance. The theater acts on us by virtue of our participation in a theatrical action across the footlights and as it were under the protection of their censorship. The opposite is true in the cinema. Alone, hidden in the dark room, we watch through half-open blinds a spectacle that is unaware of our existence and which is part of the universe. There is nothing to prevent us from indentifying ourselves in the imagination with the moving world before us, which becomes the world. It is no longer on the phenomenon of the actor as a person physically present that we should concentrate our analysis, but rather on the ensemble of conditions that constitute the theatrical play and deprive the spectator active participation…it is much less a question of actor and presence than of man and his relation to the décor” (102).

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Mission Statement

For our new project we are invested in what anthropologist John MacAloon calls cultural performance, “occasions in which as a culture or society we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths and history, and present ourselves with alternatives.” In a technological age we tend to forget before we remember. With this ease of information - from applications on mobile “telephones” to Wikipedia - we become so overwhelmed by these constant technological developments that the site of a live body in performance has become an endangered species of expression. Our methodology of performance brings a significant amount of agency to both performer and spectator. Money Buckets!, directly or indirectly (for me, directly, but I knew what I was doing [the matter of 50/50 – the half who get and the half who do not]) confronted the fears of Americans in the midst of a financial crisis with the use of a “lost and found” Marx Brothers screenplay.

We do no choosing. In this cultural exchange we do not call out to any group, any section, any race, any creed, any sex– we call out to everyone. Because we’re all in this together. In this way we are able to incorporate a cross section of spectators who attend our performances and will return again to see the live body in performance. Even with Bournijka the Boxer, a performance piece focusing heavily on Polish immigrants in America and the resulting progeny, it would be appropriate if it were not just a Polish-American audience, but rather an audience of Americans who all come from some place else. This is what engenders a performative, what cultural geographer Catherine Nash writes as “…developing a new theoretical vocabulary of performance and… exploring the imaginative and material geographies of cultural performativity and embodiment.” Each time we work together it is about constructing a new language specific the work itself – the language often comes from the work.

We seek new audiences for a new structure, one that approaches the event of performance as the possibility for inclusion, one that performs before and after entering the venue. Richard Schechner writes about liminal spaces in performance, noting that within this space “for a brief time two groups merge into one dancing circle. During this liminal time/place communitas is possible – that leveling of all differences...then and only then can the exchange take place.” Explore these liminal spaces within the event of performance by creating immediate familiarity within performance between spectator and actor. The over-arching goal of the project is to continue to find specific means to engage the spectator’s role in a variety of modes via the event of performance. What if this exchange to be taking place before the recognized beginning. A familiarity engendered in marketing and mindset – that suspension of disbelief by all participants: beginning with the creators?
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RADIOHOLE:
A contemporary counterpart, Whatever Heaven Allows

They go back and fix botched cues while they're doing something else! They dance, they fall, they get up again. Kourtney Rutherford plays a deer. I have no idea what these people are doing. I had a blast.
– David Johnston, Nytheatre.com

In March 2010 I witnessed New York based performance group Radiohole and their newest piece Whatever Heaven Allows (WHA!?), which was a mash up of the Douglas Sirk film All That Heaven Allows, John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s homage to the Sirk film, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. This mash up was by far the most exhilarating night I have had in the theatre (at least in recent memory) and it answered a lot of the calls we have been putting out, questions we have been positing in regards to the approach Buran has taken to the relationship between performance events and contemporary audiences. As with past models – Chuck Mee, Augusto Boal, LaMaMa, Complicite, The Anthropologists - written about in “Bringing Back the Spectator” and “Sustained Applause,” I’m interested in finding collectives who seem be investigating works near the same region of language. Radiohole spends a year devising each of their works (not something we’re going to have time to do for HOF) but citing them here is important as we continue to create work and reflect on the work of our contemporary counterparts, as

Growing up around community theatre the phrase was often heard, “The audience is stupid. They don’t know anything.” What I’ve come to appreciate more and more is the notion that the audience knows more, much more than we’ve ever given them credit for. I can assure you that 75% of the audience at the Radiohole show had little to no exposure to any of the source material. Their enjoyment was not dictated on their intellectual understanding of the happening, but rather in the complicity shared with the performers. The most unlikely spectator even, it would seem. A film buff friend of mine, who often finds experimental theatre as masturbatory and indulgent, was elated as his involvement with the production. He knew all the references and was delighted that he was one of the few who had that luxury. So I asked him, “What was it about then?” “Oh,” he said. “That? I have no clue about that.” My other friend, who was sandwiched between us, had no previous exposure to any of the material, and although a little baffled, left with a grin on his face with a radiating enthusiasm.

Radiohole’s confidence, a confidence has been bred during the twelve years they’ve been creating work together, comes across in how they share the material. By taking culture’s high brow and turning it upside (and vice versa), for instance, Douglas Sirk’s symbolism is turned over on itself into a chain-smoking deer, pissing on stage – the final image we’re left with – in this, we trust both Radiohole’s intellect and savvy, but more importantly and their lack of respect, their recklessness, and general theatrical rowdiness. There need be no narrative or explanation, their involvement and participation as creators opens up the possibility for free range. They can go anywhere as long as they know the rules. In their devising, Radiohole is concerned with letting everyone have a voice in the show -not worrying so much about narrative, but rather, making sure that it’s honest and funny. One rule that seems to subsist in all productions is their constant awareness of the theatrical and their audience. Founding member Eric Dyer said to the Brooklyn Rail in 2007, “It’s hard not to be aware of the audience in our space. You sort of have to be. Why pretend they are not there? People in the audience are alive, responding to events, acting and reacting while they experience the work. So are we. We can share that.”

The use of the “familiar”, as we have come to call it with Buran, is used in surprising and illuminating ways in their work as well. The actor is 1) the actor, then, 2) a character or an amalgamation of characters on stage in space in time and, finally, 3). the actor as the actor as the character in space and time commenting directly, or indirectly, on themselves, with one another, and the narrative with the audience. In Money Buckets! we used the Attaching Articles to achieve this. Radiohole delineates in fast movements – all of a sudden there is a karaoke number and then jello shots and then a large sloppy choreographed dance number all churning in their constructed chaotic world. In a scene from Whatever Heaven Allows, actress Maggie Hoffman breaks from the action and steps back, watches Eric Dyer and then turns to the audience saying, “Eric’s depressed because he thinks the show sucks.” She shrugs and jumps back into the manic, PBR-chugging, jello-shot throwing, sweaty adrenaline fueled hour and forty-five minutes that is Whatever Heaven Allows. Near the final moments of the show Hoffman announces, “This is where the drama that Radiohole won't deliver happens.”

What might be explored in devising for House of Fitzcarraldo is to find a means to bring the performer, the character, and the doer onstage. Not only are we constructing a piece (a set to perform on – if only for a brief time), but we are constructing the performance of a performance. Nick Kostner sits on stage in the corner, when there is a light shift he pulls a large lever down to indicate that lighting is going to change.
Perhaps Justin yells at him “LIGHT CHANGE!”
But making the mechanics a part of the action and the performance of mechanics (or broken mechanics) – this too could be a rule.

For what little time we have in the devising, I think the notion of rules might service us very well.

Want to address briefly what Richard Schechner refers to as Accidental audiences vs. integral audiences.

An integral audience: being most of the folks who come to our shows because they know someone in it, they’ve seen our work before or they typically go see theatre as an activity. This includes the theatre community at large – which is what makes up 80%, or more, of an audience: theatre folks going to see theatre (doctors who only see other doctors). What is rarer is the accidental audience, who attends voluntarily. The difference being, as Schechner writes, “…an accidentally audience comes ‘to see the show’ while an integral audience is ‘necessary to accomplish the work of the show.’ ” We have talked long and hard about this accidental audience and our desire to perform work for “non-theatre crowds.” The notion of performance as a means to change rhythms, engender spectatorship from a varying perspective than traditional theatre and bring together new audiences for a narrative structure that includes them.

Here, this might be illuminating, or not:

"…the accidental audience pays closer attention than does an integral audience. This is for four reasons: 1) the accidental audience chooses to attend, has often paid to attend; 2) its members attend as individuals or in small clusters so that large crowd action is unlikely – each spectator or small group is a stranger among strangers; 3) An integral audience often knows what’s going on – and not paying attention to it all is a way of showing off the knowledge. . .4) Sometimes the duration of a performance is so long that it isn’t possible to pay attention throughout. Performances for accidental audiences are designed to fit convenient time-slots; ritual performances allow for audiences to demonstrate their devotion by pilgrimage, duration and/or ordeals." - Schechner

So something like a television broadcast is intended for accidental audiences, even if it does have its integral audience who watches every week. How can a performance be both ritualistic in its treatment of the material and the spectator (inclusive in its exclusivity [that is, the use of the familiar]) and still have room for the accidental audience?

Absolutely rhetorical there, because, certainly, I have some ideas…but I know only as much as the question.

I think the answer to this lies in the construction of the piece.

One more chunk of a quote from Schechner on selective inattention in relation to spectator/performer relationships:

The graded and sometimes relaxed inattention of the performers allows for a subtle infiltration of their everyday lives into the dramatic reality of the performance. Some critics consider this mixture a serious breach of convention. I insist on it for several reasons: it is like the readiness of athletes not only on the sidelines but on the field before a play or a down; it shows the double person of the performer, the “myself” and the “person-of-the-character”; it serves as a bridge between the audience and the performers. Some spectators are disturbed by the “lack of energy” of this kind of performing. But when an engaged action occurs, the energy resources, not having been squandered, can be spent more powerfully. Some spectators find themselves falling into parallel rhythms of focused attention and selective inattention. As their attention “wanders” people begin picking up on events and images that would otherwise escape notice, or be merely blurred side visions: movements of spectators, gestures of performers not at the center of the scene, overall arrangement an dynamics of space. The performance can be contemplated; the spectator can choose to be in or out, moving her attention up and down a sliding scale of involvement. Selective inattention allows patterns of the whole to be visible, patterns that otherwise would be burned out of consciousness by a too intense concentration…through selective inattention spectators co-create the work with the performer. - Richard Schechner, Performance Theory

Burden of Dreams

2010-06-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

Val and I watched "Burden of Dreams" last night. We jotted down some notes throughout the screening. Here are a few...

Mick Jagger?!!

"To act in front of a camera gives me physical pleasure." Jose Lewgoy, Brazilian film actor

Rubber trees, they really bleed rubber...can we do that on stage?

Filmmakers suffer death threats from the Peruvian natives

"There's no action, no action. I'm sitting here satisfied!"

Herzog insists on shooting at the "magic hour"

"We'll be stark naked at the end...like skyscrapers." -referencing the continued loss of natives and culture

Natives involved in the film suffer arrow attacks through the throat.
Many film assistants were lost.

"I'm running out of fantasy!" -Herzog

HUGE ARROWS! The natives are playing a game called "arrow catching", aiming them directly at each others' heads. Herzog nabs one as a keepsake. His little son will be excited that it went through a man.

"Gringos will take off your face."

"Everyday life is only an illusion behind which lies the reality of dreams."

Yuca plant makes alcohol called, masato, and it is a big food source.

Kinski breaks a native's arrow, "It doesn't matter. They'll make another one."

An engineer tells Herzog that there is a 30% chance of success at getting the boat over the hill, and that it's probable many men will die. Herzog decides to it's a go!

No alcohol + no soccer ball=tension

"Can't escape off this fucking, stinking camp." -Kinski

Peruvian priests advised Herzog to bring in prostitutes for the film crew. Keep them from sleeping with the natives.

"The people here are in misery...the birds are in misery. They screech in pain."-Herzog

"It's a land...if he exists, God created in anger."

"We in comparison...we sound and look like badly pronounced sentences out of a cheap suburban novel."

"It's not that I hate it...I love it..."

"The only difference between me and you is that I can articulate them." Herzog on dreams.

Val and I decide we want to see Adam as Herzog and Justin as Kinski.

The Cotton Plantation: Audience Response

2010-05-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

This is the official post for THE COTTON PLANTATION workshop production. If you came and saw the workshop and have thoughts, comments, responses, insults, etc. - feel free to post them here and if you have any questions, we will do our best to respond.

As we said at the workshop, we have high hopes for the future of this play and we are so blessed that you were able to attend and be a part of the groundwork.

The look we wish to live under

2010-05-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I have to admit, throughout the entire novel, I debated whether I liked either of the main characters, Tomas or Tereza. To be honest, I debated back and forth how much respect I had for any of the characters as people. I'm not sure that this is grounds for disliking the novel. I don't dislike it. Actually, as I neared the end, a section of it stood out to me as Buran relevant. Perhaps relevant as we consider ourselves, our audience, and the characters we discover and develop. What do we think of his analysis?

Part 6: The Grand March, Chapter 23, pages 269-271

"We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public...

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need...

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark...

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers...
Tomas's son belongs in the same category...The eyes he longed for were Tomas's. As a result of his embroilment in the petition campaign, he was expelled from the university. The girl he had been going out with was the niece of a village priest. He married her, became a tractor driver on a collective farm, a practicing Catholic, and a father. When he learned that Tomas, too, was living in the country, he was thrilled: fate had made their lives symmetrical! This encouraged him to write Tomas a letter. He did not ask him to write back. He only wanted him to focus his eyes on his life."

Fitzcarraldo Writings

2010-04-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

The Explorer: I’ve come to believe in the world’s complete and absolute disinterest in me.

Disembodied Voice: Disinterest?

The Explorer: You’re already questioning my word choice. I see where this is going. No! No no no no, not disinterest. Indifference. I see, I see. The world does not have and does not not have interest. Nameless and faceless. I know I am not alone in thinking this way. From all I have seen. And I have seen most of it.

Disembodied Voice: Iquitos?

The Explore: Iquitos. Rome. So on.
I've even been here before.
I rise. No. I am risen. My body is risen above the Lady City and I see her, as I so often imagines others do from a distance, in longing. But I’ve been lifted, lifted from being in and amongst it.

There, and there she lies. With her wide hips and thin, strappy legs, her luscious hair hanging in curls against her arching back – her tummy (her stomach), oh, like a ballerina - pushed forward ever so slightly, held, protruding to suggest contour inside her silver brown grey dress. I reached out to touch her and I am swirled, as if under the influence of a hallucinogenic. I swirl upside down and then twirl back to see her again from a distance. Each time I try to reach out I am taken up and over again. Twirling and twirling. Each reach, I am thrown back up and over myself.

When I land, drunk from my rising, I again am amongst her, in her, and the fervor of loving her but a memory. A memory that had this sort of name: of seeing her at a distance and realizing the Accomplishment in Mounting Her. But the fever remains: knowing what I had seen. Once inside the confines of the Lady City, oh her parallel lines, her spinning wheels, her smoke fumes, and the intersecting sections of the beautiful and wretched: I knew that my dream must be a reality, one I could acheive. To fly with her, this inhumane love of mine, This Lady City: Or I would go absolutely mad.

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I am hearing something and responding to it. I see a man with a cap who they call The Explorer, or maybe they don't call him that, maybe that's what we call him? We know him as the The Explorer, everyone else knows him as Stub.

-Adam

Committing to the Asinine

2010-04-09T14:43:00.001-07:00

Reading Werner Herzog's CONQUEST OF THE USELESS, the journal he kept while filming Fitzcarraldo, and I am struck by this notion of obsession. An image or idea that stays with us that we must complete, despite its obvious uselessness or riduculous nature. See, like Nikolas Weir, I hold the notion that it is commiting to the asinine and once you have committed, it doesn't matter - your commitment will create something important, significant, and as we always talk about, rhythm changing.

More to come as we digest all this material....

The House of Fitzcarraldo Project

2010-03-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

The source materials, as it now stands for THE HOUSE OF FITZCARRALDO, include the following:

CONQUESTS OF THE USELESS -Werner Herzog
ALL I NEED IS LOVE - Klaus Kinski
THE CINEMA OF WERNER HERZOG- Brad Prager
FITZCARRALDO: THE ORIGINAL STORY -Werner Herzog

The following films:

FITZCARRALDO- Herzog
BURDEN OF DREAMS
MY BEST FIEND: KLAUS KINSKI

The following songs:

"Fitzcarraldo" - The Frames
"Sudsy" - James Brown
The Cheesy Theme song from the film Fitzcarraldo
"To Dream the Impossible Dream" from Man of LaMancha (I see an frustrated and sweaty Brady Blevins trying to belt this at the audience with such anger.)

ENTRY 1:
Chapter 1 & 2 from Klaus Kinsk's memoir All I Need is Love.

Klaus Kinski's memoir is asinine. (Il ike that word. If anything this project is a study in the commital to the asinine.) I have read numerous reviews that suggest the entire book is a lie, a flight of fancy. But in reading it, how could it be anything but? His ridiculous, often grotesquely fantastic images, as a disgustingly poor child in 1930's Germany - bringing up rancid images of shit-water baths in the street, biting off the notes of a scroungy deranged mutt,sexual encoutners with his mother and sister. And later in his life, the constant and brutal sexual encounters with EVERY single woman he meets.

I do not see these as some longing perversion on his part, at least it's not as interesting as what I want to think: that it is not some more deeply rooted metaphor for his insanity in this ficticious memoir.

He writes: "My mother takes everything off in front of me. Her panties, too. Then she goes to the bed. 'Come to me,' is all she says.' For three days bombs blow the house all around to pieces."

Thris trim paragraph that closes Chapter 1 took my breath away.

These sexual trists are metaphors for the extremes he lived, whether real or imagined. This is what fascinates me so much about this larger than life individual - this man that Werner Herzog made a documentary about, My Best Fiend.

For instance, he on the battlefield during WWII for two days before he was taken as a prisoner of war - his memoir does not reflect this truth, or untruth. We get a story of him wandering aimlessly on the German front, trying to eat a live cow, and yes, fucking nearly everyone he comes in contact with.

Does truth really matter at all?

It is as if he is truly making it up as he goes along. I wish I could commit to my imagination in this way - without censor, any kind of censor in the representation on a thing.

These lies, these constructions, these imagined realities are of him. We are not seeing the man, we are seeing of the man I believe.

Some quotes that have stood out in the first two chapters that might find their way on stage:

"A person might think that I only lie around in bed and pass my time fucking. -That's not true. I often seclude myself from other people for weeks at a time, lock myself into my room, and don't even go out onto the street. During this time I do my voice exercises, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. Or all night."

-"What an honor," teases the meat inspector, making his rounds in the clinic, "to have such a great actor with us." I kick him in the balls.

-Why am I a whore? I need love! Always! And I want to give love, because I have so much of it to give. No one understands that I want nothing from my whoring arond but to love.

-I have to paint. I must express myself. Not like actors and pensioners or politicians do. It's mania. Obsession. An urgency, just like a pregnant woman having to give birth...I know that everything about life is erotic, everything that lives. I sculpt as well. Then I smash and tear everything up and burn it all.

-I never think of death. I haven't even begun to live.

Wow.

Pepsi Refresh Project

2010-03-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

Last month Buran submitted a proposal to the Pepsi Refresh Project and today we were given approval! The Pepsi Refresh Project awards 10 projects $5,000 to get an inspired idea off the ground. Our submission "Involve Community via the production of a new performance" is now up on their website for voting.

If we get into the top ten we will be awarded $5,000 towards our 2010 Summer programming in north-east Kansas, which includes workshops conducted by company members free of charge to the community, weekly performances in Lawrence and Kansas City during the month of July and a full production to play in Topeka (venue TBA), Kansas City (Fringe Festival) and Lawrence (Lawrence Art Center) from July 22-August 6th.

Vote now at:

http://www.refresheverything.com/burantheatre?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=good_luck

Pass this on to anyone you know who wants to help Buran!

Onward and upward!
Adam

Critical Acclaim for Buran

For Money Buckets!:

“The highlight of the festival. Pleasantly surprised and frequently stunned. . .an audacious act of creativity. It deserves to be seen.” - Robert Trussell, Kansas City Star

“The jewel in the crown of the Fringe Festival...flawless.” - Greg Boyle, KC Active

“Outstanding and seamless performances by the talented cast.” - KC Stage

For Meile be Akcento:

“A standing ovation and a sea of flowers for the actors showed that Meilė be Akcento placed the accents right where they needed to be. ‘A show is alive while it is still being talked about and while an audience is coming to the theatre,’ - said Vytenis Pauliukaitis. It seems that after the premiere of Meile be Akcento the audience will continue to come.” - Dina Sergijenko, Straipsniai

For Nightmares:

“Grand in scope...for what feels like a grand finale, [Buran] is digging where psychological horror and art history meet academic satire .” - Alan Scherstuhl, Pitch Weekly

For A Greater Release:

“With a cast of more than 15 actors...gives the audience something to think about while not neglecting the duty of entertaining. In short, [Buran] means to accomplish, all at once, all the things that professional theaters have such a hard time managing piecemeal.” - Alan Scherstuhl, Pitch Weekly

Dreaming can be a Fact in our Life

2010-02-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries lately. I blame my unlimited membership to Netflix and the instant play option for these late night sojourns into the fascinating lives of others. [Netflix directs me to "Understated Biographical Documentaries" every time I sign in.] I’ve particularly been fanatical about Werner Herzog as I’m in the midst of taking notes for a project centered on his intense hateful love affair with actor Klaus Kinski.

Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski on set.

What I find most fascinating about the figures documented in these films, whether it’s Phillipe Petit in Man on Wire or Klaus Kinski in My Best Fiend, is the desire to achieve the impossible – to dream wholeheartedly, to believe in its possibility and to actually live that dream, whether or not it’s being recognized, supported or funded.

Philip Glass says in Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, “People say, ‘I feel like I’m dreaming.’ And the reason they feel like they’re dreaming is because they are. Dreaming can be a fact in our life.”

Dreaming can be a FACT in our life.

Yes, I certainly agree with this. I will be the first to admit that 90% of my day is spent dreaming and acting out upon those dreams.

The notion of dreaming the impossible has always drawn me in. I say time and time again in rehearsals, a notion I garnered from someone else I am sure (I won’t claim credit), that our job as artists is to stage what seemed impossible. When I write stage directions I purposely write movements that cannot possibly be achieved on the stage – at least with the budgets Buran and companies similar to us are dealing with.

I’m intrigued and fascinated to see where this impossible movement will lead. I want the canvas to be as big and as sloppy as possible, with the hope that there might be some poetics in there. If not, there is the honest confrontation when meeting the impossibility of your ideas.

For instance, from Bournijka the Boxer (which will be premiering here in NYC in less than three weeks!):

BOURNIJKA comes out jabbing and punching.
ADAM goes in for a big old kiss – tongue prepped and all.
Bournijka punches Adam square in the face before the kiss can land.
Adam flies across the stage and OFF.

I see this as Adam literally being punched into the air and flying off the stage. This is the only moment this happens in the script. At no other moment does Adam FLY off stage. A literary manager, I am almost certain, would look at this and immediately, “No. I don’t think so.” Am I being stubborn for keeping this in the text? Is my constant day-dreaming deluding me?

I don’t think that’s even worth considering.

I feel very lucky to be the fool. The one with his head in the clouds and feet planted and scuffling about and around the stage.

The title track to Paul Simon’s album Rhythm of The Saints has the following chorus:

Reach in the darkness
A reach in the dark
To overcome an obstacle or an enemy
To glide away from the razor or a knife
To overcome an obstacle or an enemy
To dominate the impossible in your life

Dominating the impossible can only be accomplished by an act – and for me, at least, that act has always found itself achievable on the stage. As asinine as it may seem, I have no interest in staging something I have seen before, I want to tear apart and reconfigure the canvas each time.

How do your dreams manifest? Your aspirations? Your visions of a potential future that involve more participants than your own consciousness?

I want to know.

Onward and upward!

-Adam

Your Authentic Obsession

2010-02-06T15:34:00.000-08:00

I was watching Charlie Rose last week as I was trying to put myself to sleep and he had half an hour dedicated to discussing the life and work of J.D. Salinger. Charlie Rose asked his guest Adam Gopnick of the New Yorker, who wrote last week’s piece “Remembering J.D. Salinger," what he learned from Salinger as a writer. Gopnick answered:

“I learned that the only thing that matters for a writer is not how clever you are – the only courage that matters is the courage to write the thing you want to read. Not to be afraid of the thing that seems to matter the most to you…the experience of becoming an artist [a writer] is learning to not throw out your authentic obsession, it’s learning to recognize your authentic obsession. Which most the time people don’t want you to write about because it’s embarrassing in some way – that your authentic obsession is your real material.”

This struck me as being extremely profound.

Your authentic obsession IS your material.

As I’ve been working in the past week on material for 2010 Summer Buran I’ve kept this notion close to me.

We so often try to ignore the material that keeps welling up time and time again- whether as actors, composers, musicians, designers - but by ignoring that we suffer the consequences of not doing the work that lives in us most fully, honestly, and whole-heartedly, in a way that makes it individualistic.

It got me thinking about my obsessions, like my obsession to figuratively meet Chekhov in my writing.

Or my obsession with familial situations. Or with the Marx Brothers. Or with Shirley Temple. Or Leonard Cohen. Or sloppy staging. Or people on stage with their mouths full. Or stark colors or no color at all. Or musical moments that have no place on stage. These are things I find myself wanting to bring into the picture time and time again.

Finding your true authentic obsession. I’m surely still figuring that out for myself.

I want to know, what is your true authentic obsession?
Do you find this notion freeing? Or ridiculous?
What does this mean? Your authentic obsession?
Is obsession the right word for it?
How can we share what is singularly our obsession. Is that selfish? Or is it selfish not to embrace it?

Talk amongst yourselves!

-Adam

Postcards

2010-01-30T23:32:00.000-08:00

So my most direct reflection of the Buran Theatre Summit came from the postcards I wrote afterwards. See, I gave both my grandmas an empty photo album for Christmas with the promise that I would send them postcards from all the places I was to work/visit/tour in 2010. And my trip to Albuquerque was the first big trip of 2010. I'm sure I'll have more to say but I thought I would start a dialogue by sharing what I wrote on the postcards to my grandmas. Note: There were five postcards each, so this was not written extremely small on one postcard. Here goes:

Dear Grandma/Meme,

Here’s where this crazy postcard project gets started- Albuquerque, NM. I went down for the Buran Theatre Summit. Yes- this is the Buran of the Marx Brothers show this summer and the naked play from college. I picked up Erik at the train station at 4am and made the long trek to NM- a 10 hour drive. It was nice to get to some warmer weather and it was smooth sailing all the way down Route 66 and finally through the Rockies to arrive in ABQ.

Upon arrival in NM, we immediately fell back into our groove. With friends like these, it seems all you need is Lasagna, 12 bottles of wine, and a drum circle to reconnect (that’s what we did when we got there.) The next day was soaking in the slow paced Southwest with a nice relaxing drive through the desert looking at the beautiful mesas and an unfortunately unsuccessful stop at the Route 66 casino- Meme you’d have been proud. That night we had our first company dinner at the Frontier Restaurant for my first taste of green chile- something we had much of over the week.

The next days were filled with inspiring workshops, everything from Drama in Jazz, a Jam Session, Emotions in Movement, a Monodrama about Lewis and Clark, a Greek trilogy, and clowning. It was a nice reminder of why I love this people and why I love working with them. We are all artists and get the chance to create together. We also talked a lot about family mythologies in anticipation of the show this summer. I wrote one scene about Papa and another about Grandma Grace.

Over the week we had the opportunity to work with the Tricklock Company as they mounted their Revolutions International Theatre Festival. They were so welcoming and hospitable, having us to dinner at their place one night, a fancy kick-off party in downtown ABQ another, and even inviting us to perform in their Reptilian Lounge (more on that later). We also saw a play about the painter Jackson Pollock. The best however was getting to see an established company and how they work and meeting new friends from all over the globe.

The culmination of the summit happened at that Reptilian Lounge performance where we showcased a new short piece- The Buran Interviews. I even got to tell three jokes I came up with. Here goes: What did the Hungarian ghost do to the fly? ---Budapest! What did the lawyer do to the crooked FBI agent with a cold? ---Sudafed! What did the lawyer do to the crooked FBI agent with a cold at nighttime? ---Sudafed PM! Pretty good, huh? The entire piece was really fun and I think well received. It was the great ending to a wonderful week filled with amazing work and some of my best friends. Although I’m of course glad to be back safe and to spend some time with you.

Love,

Brady

Out the window

2010-01-29T07:44:00.000-08:00

It’s taken me a long time to ruminate over my week at the Buran Summit. I’m by no means finished. I wanted to write a response, but I got myself so bogged down in commenting on every aspect of it that it just felt impossible. So I decided to just focus on one subject!

Throughout the summit there was a lot of talk about the spectator and their role in Buran’s work. Not a surprising subject to be breached as Adam has written on it in Bringing Back the Spectator and Sustained Applause. But during one day of the week we had quite an in depth discussion on the topic. I contributed by sharing some experiences I had just had while touring with a children’s theatre company in New England.

While on tour we had many different kinds of audiences. Two “types” stick out in my mind. We went to many schools where the children were experiencing theatre or live performance for the first time. They were excited and curious, and they had no concept of what was “appropriate audience behavior”. On many occasions students would scream or cry. Some would shout from their seats attempting to warn a character of impending doom. Others would vocalize their approval or disapproval of the performance. Occasionally one would try to wander on stage. It was quite the experience for actors who are accustomed to seasoned theatergoers who know how to “behave”. But to be honest, it was SO invigorating at times. They were incredibly involved. They truly became a part of the story. And there was no questioning how they felt about the production. I mean, that’s supposed to be part of the beauty of live theatre-you get instant and firsthand reactions!

On the other hand, there were shows where we performed to complete silence. There were many schools where the students were threatened with countless forms of discipline if they didn’t sit as still as stone and keep their mouths shut. It was a sour experience. The air was just filled with oppression. We had no idea if they were enjoying it at all. We certainly weren’t enjoying ourselves. It really felt like there was no connection or shared experience. I was frustrated that the teachers didn’t understand that theatre isn’t one sided. “The audience and the actors feed off of each other. It’s a give and take!” I wanted to tell them.

These two very different audiences really got me questioning the spectator’s role? Does the responsibility stop at buying the ticket and showing up? I think, and many at the summit expressed the same opinion, that it goes beyond that. I know I like seeing a spectator that is engaged, responsive, and questioning what is in front of them. But just how active should they be? We came to no definitive answer, but everyone seemed genuinely excited by the possibilities and how we could implement them in future Buran productions. What if we made it okay for the spectator to walk on stage if they feel so compelled? What if we said it was okay for her/him to start commenting aloud or questioning the actors? What would happen if the rules of theatergoing got thrown out the window? Would the experience be enhanced? Would the story still get told? How would it affect audience turnout? Perhaps we should find out.

-Hilary

First Annual Buran Summit Wrap Up

2010-01-24T22:14:00.000-08:00

The first annual Buran Summit took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico from January 8-17. After a successful season of performances in New York City, Kansas City and Vilnius, Lithuania we felt it was time to reconvene with old collaborators and new collaborators in an inclusive environment that would prompt new work and discussion.

In August, after the closing of Money Buckets at the Kansas City Fringe Festival, we invited over three dozen artists to commune in Albuquerque for a week to share their work and to begin a dialogue about the art we're making, why and how we're making it and how we might be able to support one another more directly.

Erin Phillips, Adam Burnett, & Erik LaPointe perform a piece devised from the Jam Session led by Jean Goto. Photograph by Joshua Efron.

Meg Saricks, Erin Phillips, Ben Leifer, & Adam Burnett perform a movement piece.

The week was full of workshops, round table discussions, and live performances of new works all over Albuquerque. Jean Goto of The Anthropologists (www.theanthropologists.org) came down from NYC for five days of the summit and led a Jam Session. Eric Avery lead a workshop that incorporated music and rhythm into finding emotion physically in performance. We joined the cast of "The Great Negocio" for a clowning workshop with Laurel Butler and company - where we all came to Confront the Audience. Erin Phillips and Casey Mraz stopped by to have a dialogue about their vision for an Albuquerque New Play development center. And Tricklock Company graciously made us feel at home in the midst of their 10th Annual Revolutions Festival, a magical international theatre festival (what brought me to ABQ in the first place). The summit ended with a performance at Tricklock's infamous Reptilian Lounge where we devised a new short performance piece based on a devising exercise we use in texts and rehearsals - The Buran Interview (see posting below). It was serendipitous that the summit week coincided with Tricklock's festival as we were talking with artists from Poland and Canada and all over the United States almost every night. We were working hard all day but definitely letting it all hang loose at night as we continued to discuss theatre and music and art making and community well into the wee morning hours.

Company devises new material. Brady Blevins looking on bored. Photograph by Joshua Efron.

We also spent a great deal of time developing material for the 2010 Summer Buran premiering at the Kansas City Fringe Festival in July. We looked specifically at personal mythologies and how they might be performed by the self or an other. There were so many vivid images and stories that came into the mix. A few that stick out immediately: Lara Thomas-Deucy's stories of her great-grandma, Brady Blevin's one and a half minute play "The Blevins Family Basement," Val Smith's tender stories of her dziadek, and Meg Sarick's hilarious mythologies about her aunt's posse of friends: crabby, old, drunk theatre patrons. We plan on employing the devising methods in the workshops we will be conducting this summer in Kansas and Missouri (and hopefully some of these stories too!).

We never got all participants in a photo. Three days in, after many people had come and gone, we brought the camera out for the first time. From left to right, (back row) Ben Leifer Adam Burnett, Justin Knudsen, Brady Blevins, Erik LaPointe, Carter Waite, (front row) Hilary Kelman, Val Smith & Meg Saricks. Photograph by Joshua Efron.

We took a trip out to the Mesa one afternoon to view the historic New Mexican sights of La Ria Llamas and General Pinchback Mountain. Pictured: Ben Leifer, Hilary Kelman, Adam Burnett, Erik LaPointe, Justin Knudsen, Brady Blevins, Jean Goto, & Meg Saricks. Photograph by Joshua Efron.

Carter Waite and Joshua Efron both brought in new material to share and discuss. Carter is currently writing a one man show for himself to perform. The topic of this mono-drama is Meriwether Lewis and Carter brought in a handful of pages to be read. What spurred Carter to invest in the research for the work was a general dissatisfaction in our generations lack of interest in seeking out adventure. "This play is about that moment - standing on the edge of the cliff before you jump," he said. Or as Justin Knudsen replied in response to that, “Or what the last day of your old life feels like before you start a completely new adventure."

Joshua brought in a sample from his ambitious project – his own three part version of the Orpheus myth. He first began working on the project as a response to a production he witnessed of Sarah Ruhl's "Eurydice" last spring. The more he has written though the more invested he's become, and he is pointing towards a three play cycle. Joshua intricately led us through some Greek Mythology 101 and his spin on these classical narratives. His breathless attack on discussing his work was admirable. It's so difficult to discuss one's work and it was remarkable to be in a space where everyone was open and willing and ready to respond honestly and generously.

Ben Leifer shared with us a composition he wrote for trumpet, bass, piano and drums using Buran performance methods. This was a mind-blowing session for many of us. Ben stressed the significance of rhythm in everything we do, but especially in performance. For a more detailed description of Ben’s workshop/discussion go copy and paste this into your web finder dealio: http://burantheatre.blogspot.com/2010/01/buran-summit-day-five.html

Or just scroll down and read the Blog entitled "Buran Summit: Day Five."

Erik LaPointe and Brady Blevins in rehearsal for Buran Interviews. Photograph by Joshua Efron.

Eric Avery as Justin Knudsen in "Buran Interviews" at Tricklock’s Reptilian Lounge. Photograph by Richard Malcolm.

Hilary Kelman as Justin Knudsen, Justin Knudsen as a Doctor Who Only Sees Other Doctors – "Buran Interviews." Photograph by Richard Malcolm.

Some quotes from the week:

On Buran workshops: “It’s about keeping body/mind in tune. The freedom to explore without limitations. Taking the felt and sharing it with others.” – Brady Blevins

On Buran methodology: “It is not the developmental process (i.e. devising, improvising to the text, etc) that makes it unique – it is the community itself. It’s an attitude.” – Eric Avery

“Buran equals a positive infection that we want to spread to everyone.” –Joshua Efron

“There is a release of ego and preciousness from the beginning. This is the attitude.” –Erin Phillips

“It has to be personal, this cannot be trained.” –Eric Avery

“We’re all here looking for new teachers in one another.” –Justin Knudsen

“Text is not sacred, but a performance is.” – I kept yelling this.

"[A move towards] structure in direction, not in expression." - Justin

"Crossing that line [between chaos and center] every time we get up to perform." - Jean Goto

"The expression is individual - but the direction, or structure, is the group." - Ben Leifer

""It's not the what. It's the when."- Jean

The phrase that was used over and over, time and time again was “generosity of spirit.” Everyone who came to Albuquerque made an investment – an investment to have the time and the safe space to create with others in a new community.
We received no grant support.
This was all made possible by hosts in the community of Albuquerque and the willingness for folks from all over the nation to stop their lives for a week to retreat, reconvene, rejuvenate, and reinitiate the dialogue.

Justin Knudsen as Justin Knudsen, Brady Blevins as Edward Gordon Craig –"Buran Interviews" at Tricklock’s Reptilian Lounge. Photograph by Richard Malcolm.

Buran in silhouette. From left to right, Brady Blevins, Meg Saricks, Justin Knudsen, Erik LaPointe, Jean Goto, Hilary Kelman, Ben Leifer, and Adam Burnett.

There were so many wonderful ideas shared at our first summit. I can't wait to see who hosts next year and where!

As we plan for our series of workshops and productions in the mid-west this summer we're going to keep a dialogue active on here. Anyone is welcome to join in and respond.

Thank you to the gracious hosts - Eric Avery, Mary Cianflone, Casey Mraz, Erin Phillips, and Julio Romero. You opened your homes. You cooked for us and with us. Everyone ate and drank and played and danced all over your homes and you egged it on. That's pretty great.
Thank you to Tricklock Company for your hospitality and true generosity of spirit. For opening their home, as they do every year, to artists from all over the world.

For everything Buran related – keep in touch with this blog. (For a bunch of
self-proclaimed Luddites, we’re doing our best at keeping up with the technological age.)

-Adam

Buran Summit Thoughts

2010-01-20T12:05:00.000-08:00

I know this entry is coming a few days late, but it's taken me a little bit to collect my thoughts on everything I got to partake in but I really wanted to contribute to the blog! I had left New York feeling ragged at the edges, not sure why I what I was doing or why I was doing it and I came back feeling incredibly rejuvenated and ready to throw myself back into my work. I wasn't quite sure what it was that had done it- the fact that I was far away from the hustle bustle of NYC? the beautiful desert? the wonderful conversations about theater we had (with mostly people I had just met)? the immediate feeling like these artists were good friends right from the start? the amazing various workshops and play sessions??? ... I think all of the above!

I think all of the above was, in a sense, the Buran Community. There were a lot of questions about what Buran is and whatnot and I'm not trying to answer that question. But all these elements put together reminded me of whats really important for me right now. Its not my job, not whether or not I have an agent, or any of that! But rather whats really important (for me) is my attitude and my process. The attitude of the summit (it seemed to me) was very open and curious .. and it was catching! It was because of that attitude that I felt like it was safe to say whatever thoughts I had, to challenge myself and others etc. Remembering that everyone has their own process in every step of the way (when it comes to theater, but I think also maybe in every aspect of life??) reminded me of the sense that right now my goal is to learn and grow and push myself and learn what my process is... And to stop worrying about whether or not the work is "good" or whatever! Right now is the time to be a fool for a little bit!

Digression: a few months ago I decided that just as we should all face one fear a day we should also be embarrassed at least once a day. I wasn't sure exactly why I thought that was such a good idea until this trip-- we were on the dance floor at the tricklock party and I was so UNable to follow the leader and felt like such a fool! But the music was too enticing and I was having too much fun to care.. and I realized --- embarassing yourself is a humbling experience and when we are humble and open to making fools of ourselves we are able to take the risks that artists need to take to make art that is personal to them!

So, anyway, I dont know how corny/idealistic this blog is, but these are my thoughts (among many) from the past week! And who cares?? I'm an idealist!!! :) Many thanks to Buran and Adam for all the inspiration! (Now the question is how do I bring this into my life when I fall back into the hustle bustle attitude of NYC???)

-Jean

Buran Interviews

2010-01-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

BURAN INTERVIEWS

Justin Knudsen: Justin Knudsen
Justin Knudsen: Erik LaPointe
Justin Knudsen: Hilary Kelman
Justin Knudsen: Brady Blevins
Justin Knudsen: Eric Avery
Justin Knudsen: Justin Knudsen

Edward Gordon Craig: Brady Blevins
Your Mother: Erik LaPointe
Doctor: Justin Knudsen
Brady Blevins: Brady Blevins
Pollock: Adam Burnett

JUSTIN KNUDSEN
Hi. I’m Justin Knudsen. I’m an actor who also plays a person in real life. Tonight I will be interviewing a number of significant – um – figures and individuals and um – people who – have – done a significant amount of …things. Tonight we must move briskly, due to the strict measures placed upon my time here in this space with you here. Usually I do this for four hours straight, with or without people watching. Sometimes it’s just me.

On our schedule this evening: From 11 to 11:01 I will be interviewing Edward Gordon Craig. From 11:01 to 11:02 I will be interviewing Your Mother. And from 11:02 to 11:03, a certified doctor. From 11:03 to 11:04, I will be interviewing comedienne Brady Blevins. And - - oh here we are now. This is how it begins I guess.

EDWARD GORDON CRAIG enters

According to half a sentence I read on Wikipedia immediately prior to this interview: Edward Gordon Craig was an English modernist theatre practitioner; he worked as an actor, producer, director, and scenic designer, as well as developing a theoretical body of writing that - - (beat). Borrrrring. He wrote a scathing review about a performance of mine some years ago. But I’m willing to look past it if you are, Edward.

EDWARD
Not even in my memory now.

JUSTIN
I’m glad that works for you. Often known for her writings on the uber-marrionette, Craig - -

EDWARD
Her?!

JUSTIN
His – hers – sorry, it’s hard for me to tell by the features.

EDWARD
What’s a day like for you?

EDWARD
A day?

JUSTIN
A typical day. Wait a minute. I just got this – text – here. Huh.

EDWARD
Excuse me?

JUSTIN
No, no by all means, keep talking. It just says he’s not going to - My friend. Bob. He’s was supposed to pick me up. Damn. Is anyone – anyone here doing anything after this? Buy me a drink maybe and give me a ride? I’m uh - - …sorry.
Is it true you hate actors?

EDWARD
Acting is not an art. It is therefore incorrect to talk of the actor as an artist.

JUSTIN
I’m going to ignore that previous quote. Here. Just give us something. A quote I can use. The papers would love that.

EDWARD
There are still papers?

JUSTIN
Sometimes. There’s my paper.

Justin pulls out the JUSTIN KNUDSEN TIMES.

It’s for me.

EDWARD
What do you cover?

JUSTIN
There’s an article about pajamas…that I like. There’s an article about Thursdays. Um…

EDWARD
Is there still theatre?

JUSTIN
Oh, often.

EDWARD
Does it work?

Silence. JUSTIN is looking through his newspaper.

Does it work?

JUSTIN
Sodoku…do you Sodoku? Most this is…yeah…and crosswords, see.

JUSTIN starts working on a crossword. Ignores Edward..

EDWARD
Does it work?
Does it?
At least give me a quote.
The papers would love that.
Does it work?

JUSTIN
Oh, well, we are just about out of time. I’m sorry, Craig. Paaaaass the pigs!

EDWARD gets taken off stage by the audience as Shooby Taylor plays.

JUSTIN
I need a smoke. One moment. We have a minute.

He exits. As JUSTIN KNUDSEN exits, JUSTIN KNUDSEN enters.

JUSTIN
Hi. I’m Justin Knudsen from the Knudsen Times and tonight I’ll be interviewing your mother.

YOUR MOTHER
Sweetheart! It’s so wonderful to see you! All of you!

JUSTIN
How – long have you been a mother?

YOUR MOTHER
(to the audience)
Oh, goodness my oh my. You don’t ask a Mother that sort of thing. (beat) Thirty-three years.

JUSTIN
What – is – a typical day like for you?

YOUR MOTHER
(directly to the audience)
Oh, you know, I just wake up. I put the pot of coffee on for your father. And then, well, you know my bladder it just – well! – and there’s this ringing in my ear. It won’t go away. Your father thinks I’m going nuts. Of course. The ringing, this ringing in my ear is so loud sometimes I just – (whispers) I take a lot of pills that make me feel kind of funny, you know what I mean, sweetheart, and I just go right to sleep. I don’t think that’s like doing drugs, is it?

JUSTIN
(with a piece of paper)
If you curl up the end of it, it looks like a doll.

YOUR MOTHER
A doll?

JUSTIN
Like a little doll, “I’m a doll. Ra. Ra.”
I’m sorry, what were you saying?

YOUR MOTHER
Oh, I -

JUSTIN
Oh, darned, I believe we’re out of time. Isn’t that – just- the darndest.

YOUR MOTHER
Take care of your mother! Your mother is going to die if you don’t take care of her! Please take care of your mother!

YOUR MOTHER is taken off stage to Shooby Taylor.

JUSTIN
We got a few minutes left. I’m gonna get a cup of coffee and I’ll be right back.

JUSTIN exits. JUSTIN enters with a cup of coffee.

JUSTIN
Hi, I’m Justin Knudsen from the Knudsen Knews and tonight I’ll be interviewing a real doctor.

Doctor enters.

JUSTIN
Tonight we have a very important Dr. who has worked with many people? Is that correct to say?

DOCTOR
Are you a doctor?

JUSTIN
(beat)
I prefer to ask the questions, doctor.

DOCTOR
You’re not a doctor, are you?

JUSTIN
I can – what?

DR
I’ve already said too much.

JUSTIN
Have I said too much?

DR
I don’t - (sigh) Excuse me, but I don’t do this.

JUSTIN
Do what?

DR
I only talk to other doctors.

JUSTIN
You are a doctor though?

DR
Absolutely I am a doctor.

JUSTIN
You’re a doctor who only talks to other doctors.

DR
Precisely. I have no patients. Only other doctors.

JUSTIN
You have no patients at all?

DR
None at all.

JUSTIN
Do you have your own practice?

DR
Are you a doctor?

JUSTIN
Am I doctor?

DR
No, you are not. I’m sorry. I can’t be here.

Doctor leaves.
Justin exits. Justin enters.

JUSTIN
Hi. I’m Justin Knudsen from the Buran Theatre Company and tonight I’ll be interviewing comedienne Brady Blevins. Bwady Bwevins. Brrrraaaady Bwwwevins.

BRADY sits.

JUSTIN
Tell me a joke.

BRADY
What did the ghost do to the Hungarian fly?

JUSTIN
(pissed as can be)
What?

BRADY
Budapest.

Justin: No response.

JUSTIN
No. Next.

BRADY
What did the lawyer do to the crooked FBI agent with a cold?
Sudafed!

JUSTIN
- -

BRADY
Okay okay - one more. What did the lawyer do the crooked FBI agent with a cold - at night?
SUDAFED PM!

JUSTIN
No. No. Leave. Leave. Get off. Now. Leave. Now. Get off. No, faster. Leave. Go. Go.

Justin exits. Justin enters again.

JUSTIN
Hi, I’m Justin Knudsen. Our final guest tonight is an influential painter – and uh – mind – he paints and he has an influential mind. Ladies and gentlemen, Jacksen Polack.

POLLOCK
Pollock.

JUSTIN
Po-lack.

POLLOCK
Pollock.

JUSTIN
Nuh-uh. Polack.

Silence.

JUSTIN
What’s – um – what’s a typical day like for you?

POLLOCK
I go out to my barn. And I light up a cigarette. I drink a drink. A whiskey. Some coffee. And then I get to work.

POLLOCK pulls his pants down, revealing his bare cock, and pours cottage cheese over his head.

Buran Summit : Day Six

2010-01-15T10:06:00.000-08:00

Some quotes from yesterday to start off with - I know others will piggy back on these and detail in their own words the discussion we had on form, structure, creation, and involvement in the event of performance on stage:

"[A move towards] structure in direction, not in expression." - Justin

"Crossing that line [between chaos and center] every time we get up to perform." - Jean

"The expression is individual, the direction, or structure, is the group." - Ben

Buran Summit: Day Five

2010-01-14T22:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Jean Goto led us through a Jam Session, using a lot of Viewpoints and methods employed by the New York City based theatre company The Anthropologists. I feel blessed to have have worked with The Anthropologists briefly and it was such a wonderful gift for Jean to give this week of exploration by leading this Jam. The sense of community I've witnessed The Anthropologists enact within their own collective that extends to various boroughs throughout NYC, whether it be through a Salon Session or via their June 2009 production of Give Us Bread, it is surely a rare quality - one that is central to the work Buran does.

One of the discussion points that has come up time and time again this week is appropriation of work and the initiative to make it happen where ever one might be. Looking at the participants who have attended the summit - individuals from New York City, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles - all of these folks have the potential to create Burans in their own community. A community invested idea that exists in one place but can be extended through the members of the company. Or even a text that can be performance in various communities but altered by the face of that community and the company performing.

This is the satellite system.

A recent company member who has utilized this concept is jazz bassist Ben Leifer who composed a piece in five parts (bass, drum, saxophone, piano) where he used Buran performance methodologies to enact a relationship between the event and the spectator. The workshop and discussion he led yesterday was quite earth shattering for many participants. Those who had been struggling with the idea of a Buran in structure were suddenly invigorated with a sense of possibility - one of: Yes! Why the hell not, I can do this too!

Some quotes from Ben when talking about his piece relating to Buran methodology in performance:

"It's when you are feeling like you're in the wrong place, that's when you're in the right place - that's the groove. To be absolutely consistent as you can be within the groove is what you're after."

"Keep your own self centered, but let the physical, that is, the rhythm, do its own thing. If you find this centered moment, the moment of unity within the chaos, even if it only occurs briefly. That's what makes a piece expand and contract."

"It is idea driven first, not harmonically driven."

"The space in a piece creates motion, thus, giving the spectator options."

and one from Jean:

"It's not the what. It's the when."

and Justin:

"It's less important what's written than what's happening."

I hope that others will write on here in the coming days.
As you can see, the conversations have been rich and thick. And the physical workshops have given us so many options as to where to lead the rest of this week as we prepare to perform a 7 minute Buran in a Cabaret on Saturday night as a part of Tricklock Company's 10th Annual Revolutions Festival.

Another thing I must mention is the true Generosity of Spirit that has been shared this week. That phrase was mentioned the first day and I believe it has become the phrase of the summit. A handful of folks in Albuquerque have opened their homes, and in some cases their family, to Buran - through group dinners, drinks and gatherings. It's this Generosity of Spirit that, for me, makes Buran so god-damned special and I am always overjoyed at our reunion as a collective of artists striving towards similar ideas.

As always, looking forward - that is, look forward to future posts on this here blog.

-Adam

Buran Summit: Day Four

2010-01-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

We had another participant join us yesterday, Jean Goto from New York, a member of the theatre company The Anthropologists. Having another join the group was revitalizing. We jumped back into working with the Buran script Bournijka the Boxer: American Mythology, Vol. 1. This led us into writing more personal mythologies, sharing them, and getting them up in their feet for a blizzardy devising session. Five narratives playing themselves out in tandem in the space. I believe today Ben Leifer in his session will find a means to relate this blizzardy effect of performance in Buran to his recent composition.

In the evening we joined Laurel Butler and the cast and creative team of The Great Negocio and did some clowning. Laurel and her creative team were so gracious to let us be a part of this workshop. It was a special moment for everyone to don the red nose and to play within Laurel's clown pedagogy. An exercise that closed out the workshop was The Awkward Moment - where two clowns started off dancing to music, when the music stopped the two clowns had to make contact with the spectator, looking straight at then, share a moment, and then investigate within that Awkward Moment.

That moment of confronting the spectator was so invigorating and a performative flair that we often encounter in Buran rehearsals and performances. Many commented that we had actually never done a lot of clown work before, but the physical minded approach was familiar and the sense of play and chaos were similar in certain respects to how we enter the rehearsal process for a Buran.

Sharing this week and finding the similarities that keep us bound as a community of artists is what has made this week so special.

I expect there to be many posts to come from the various individuals who have been in Albuquerque this week. So - stay tuned!

-Adam

Day Three: Buran Summit

2010-01-12T09:58:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we began with a workshop conducted by Eric - who is working on a methodology of performance that engages both the physical and emotional life of the actor. He is particularly interested in using this methodology in drama therapy. Participants were led through a workshop where they played with and discovered rhythmic patterns based off of key words Eric had chosen to use. I had to leave half way through the workshop to pick up Ben at the airport, who joined us from Kansas City yesterday, so I did not get to stay for the whole session. I am sure that there will be further written on this by any of the numerous participants communing here in Albuquerque this week.

In the afternoon we workshopped a new play by Josh, or rather Josh gave us a little bit of "Greek Mythology 101" before jumping off and talking about his own process and means of attack on his new work. After seeing a production of Sarah Ruhl's "Eurydice" last year he was invigorated by the experience but not fully satisfied by the script's outcome. This sent him into what has been almost a year of writing and investigating and sharing and getting down to writing a triptych of plays centered on Eurydice, Orpheus and Persephone. Josh spoke breathlessly about his work and although we did not get a chance to read it out loud or get it on its feet, a very important dialogue occurred for Josh as the playwright. These type of dialogues will continue throughout the week, both in Summit sessions and outside of them.

One of the most exciting elements of this week is Tricklock Company's Revolution Festival - a three week long festival that brings in theatre companies from all over the world.

In the evening the company attended the Tricklock Company Revolutions welcome party, where we perhaps drank a bit too much and spoke a bit too loud, but in the process met members of the Polish company Teatr Figur, who are in Albuquerque to co-produce a show with Tricklock.

All in and all in was another wonderful day of work and creative exploration.

As fast paced and busy as this week has been, these daily updates are certainly brief and only distill the sweeping events of the day. Once the summit is over I hope to go into more specifics about the overall happenings - workshops, discussions, roundtables, new theories, new texts- and how they can be shared and extended to our sallelite system that reaches from Los Angeles across the country to Kansas City, onto New York City and across the waters to Lithuania.

As it was said by Summer, co-artistic director of Tricklock, last night, "Buran is so different from anything I've encountered in American theatre - you have the potential to have Burans occuring in different places and different times all over the world. And that's a rare and special thing." Everyone who was in on this conversation agreed.

And I have to say, from my own eyes and participating in the work being done this week: Yes, this is very much possible.

-Adam

Day Two

2010-01-10T22:42:00.000-08:00

It was another enriching, fulfilling day here in Albuquerque. We worked as a group on a new Buran script, Bournijka the Boxer: American Mythology Vol. 1. After reading a selection we each wrote our own personal mythologies and shared them with the group in order to actualize the ideal of universal text appropriation between our members; one quality of a Buran event is its ability to be formed and re-formed depending on the location, culture and peoples of the community in which it is occurring. And the stories were pretty damn interesting. And a little bit giggly.

After lunch, Carter shared with us his new project based upon the life and adventures of Lewis Meriwether. An articulate discussion followed as to the research, current process and future of the work-in-progress. It was very exciting to be working as a company on the development of new work and thank Carter for sharing with us. I won't say too much as Carter will be posting his own thoughts later in the week.

-Justin

---------

Over the past two days there has been a phrase that has been brought up again and again - "Generosity of spirit."

This has been exemplified in so many ways in the past 48 hours - in the sharing of homes and rehearsal spaces and texts and ideas. Or as Josh put it, "A positive infection that spreads itself over the group." (We've been using many colorful metaphors this weekend...).

This afternoon Erin and Casey came in and shared with us their aspirations for an Albuquerque New Play Initiative - a theatre with development of New Plays, specifically, in mind for the 21st century.

More to come!

Adam

Buran Summit: Day One

2010-01-09T16:51:00.001-08:00

Jan. 9th:

We had such a productive day for our first day of the summit. In the morning participants were led through a typical Buran workshop (see "Sustained Applause" part 3) and in the afternoon we had a thick three hour discussion about the community of Buran, it's means, purpose, and involvement. Those who were a part of this discussion included Brady Blevins, Eric Avery, Val Smith, Lara Thomas-Ducey, Erin Phillips, Joshua Efron, Nick Kostner, Carter Waite, Justin Knudsen and Erik LaPointe. Joining us over the coming week will be a number of other artists from around the states including Casey Mraz, Hilary Kelman, Jean Goto, Laurel Butler, Ben Leifer, and Alex Haynes.

All of our minds are rattling with so many creative ideas and impulses that it's honestly quite difficult for me to distill everything that was dealt with in our first day. But the general consensus is that everyone is pretty thrilled to be sharing this time together to create, investigate, exchange, and extend.

Expect a more detailed report tomorrow from both Justin and myself.

-Adam

Sustained Applause: Recent Buran Performatives

2009-12-26T13:14:00.000-08:00

Sustained Applause:

Recent Buran Performatives

1. We’re all in This Together

The lights fell on Firs, the old servant, dead on the floor. We were wrapped in darkness for a few brief moments before the house lights were brought up. Immediately the spectators began to applaud; the actors shuffled out on stage, bowed smiling, making funny faces at one another. As the applause continued I felt something – something different than what I usually experience at the end of a performance in a theater. The applause was rhythmic. Everyone was clapping together. The claps were in unison. Audience members ran from their seats to the stage and gave flowers to their favorite actor/character in the show. These weren’t just family members, but theatre patrons, both first-timers to this production and those who had seen it any numerous times in its seventeen years upon the stage at this particular venue.

Although The State Small Theatre of Vilnius’ production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard was the first production I witnessed in Lithuania, it was not the last that followed with the Event of Sustained Rhythmic Applause. Every performance I attended followed suit in this way: a unified sustained applause, broken intermittently by a handful of audience members who rushed to the stage and approached an actor/character.

As it was explained to me many times while I lived and conducted research in Lithuania, “When you get a cold, Americans take antibiotics. Lithuanians? This is a silly notion. We go to the theatre to keep us healthy.”

Theatre as preventive health care.

We perform to save others, not ourselves. (If we save ourselves in the process, that’s a by product.)

This was true. During the two months I lived in Lithuania I went to the theatre almost nightly and it was packed with active spectators who were engaged and had arrived to go through something together. A notion that I had in mind for some time: We’re all in this together and so we must create together. Whether it was Waiting for Godot or Man of LaMancha or a children’s play I saw, roughly translated, The Monsters – the moment of unified release at the performance’s end was always equivalent to what I first experienced witnessing The Cherry Orchard. Even when it was an audience of children, there was the pulse of solidarity.

When the Comedie Francais came to town and played the National Theatre for two nights, I sat two rows in front of the Prime Minister. My Lithuanian host shrugged his shoulders and said, “He goes to the theater almost every night.” After the performance of the two one act comedies the audience clapped together, in that cathartic unified pulse and a few people broached the stage where they bestowed flowers upon the bewildered members of the Comedie Francais troupe. The French did not know how to respond to the presentation, this extended performance event. They all gave each other quizzical looks, back and forth, not knowing how to respond to the gesture. For me, this was a moment of significant realization: An American in Lithuania watching the Comedie Francais. I was witnessing something recently learnt, untranslatable, only in the felt, and here were these French – the other “other.” Who did that make me? The interlocutor? The one who accounts for this recently learnt cultural quotidian?

There was certainly much to be mined from all of this when I brought it back to what had taken me to Lithuania in the first place: to develop a new work, a piece of musical theatre, with the co-founder and associate artistic director of Buran Theatre Company that would premiere on the Lithuanian stage. My lens was widened by the experiences I had in this strange, beautiful little country and gave me a newly shaped reference point from which to go back and dig through past performances to look for specific performatives Buran practices in creating new communities via the event of performance. What I was witness to in Lithuania confirmed the conviction of my previous endeavors with Buran Theatre as co-founder and co-artistic director, if only a testament to the phrase: This is all very much possible. Theatre scholar Jill Dolan writes, “Engaging performance as a public practice, as a rehearsal for an example that yearns toward something better and more just than the social arrangements that divide us now, theatre becomes a sort of temple of communion with a future we need to practice envisioning” (135).

Theatre as a public practice, as an all inclusive space for everyone.

The conclusion has been that Buran must be everywhere, because it can be –wherever two or more are gathered, to be religious! But sincerely, if Buran is everywhere, Buran is everyone. This open minded approach to the theatre, paired with an understanding of the complex culture we are representing makes me optimistic for the future of a new theatre. And it must be a “grass roots” effort. It cannot be commercial. And it must be for the people – not the impoverished, or the rich, or the poor, or the hungry, or the overfed. We do no choosing. We do not call out to any group, any section, any race, any creed, any sex– we call out to everyone. Because we’re all in this together.

As Buran continues to produce and move forward with various modes of performance it is central that our productivity and explorations are also documented. I have been adamant since the creation of the company that we explore both the production-oriented and theoretical approach to our performance methodology as a collective. What I intend to do here is cite specific contemporary performances by collectives or individuals in popular American theatre that point to Buran peformatives. What I refer to as a performative is largely influenced by cultural geographer Catherine Nash who writes on performatives as “…developing a new theoretical vocabulary of performance and… exploring the imaginative and material geographies of cultural performativity and embodiment” (657). Although, as a whole, many of the examples I discuss are not particularly ground-breaking or life altering, I intend to point out key moments in the event of these specific sites that open up a discussion of Buran in the context of contemporary theatre. I will then briefly unpack the current process of Buran via a workshop and, finally, explicate this by using a specific example, the most recent Buran, the summer 2009 performances of Money Buckets! The Untold Story of FDR in Kansas City, MO at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater.

2. Influences:

Buran Performatives in Contemporary Theatre

“…what is more fundamental is the notion that when everybody laughs together or, last night, when I heard people around me collectively sobbing, at that moment we are bound together not by our bodies sitting in the theater but by a collective imagination. At that moment we understand the lie that what we think is only our own, that our internal lives are only our own. At that point our collective imaginations become one imagination and my internal life becomes the same as your internal life, which is what Aristotle understood when he analyzed tragedy. It’s a collective act in which we collectively understand something about being a community together. The moment we understand that, feel it, we feel a kind of responsibility in which we must collectively help and take responsibility for each other.” – Simon McBurney, from New York Times interview, Oct. 2008

On the evening of the 2008 election I attended the Broadway revival of All My Sons, directed by Simon McBurney, artistic director and co-founder of London based performance collective Complicite. I was excited to see a performance on a night full of so much anticipation with a text I had always admired under the direction of McBurney, who I had heard and read about but had never seen his work in person. McBurney’s all inclusive amorphous use of text, sound, light and the actor’s presence allows him enter the rehearsal process with Complicite sharing the responsibility with his collaborators. Even if he is the one deemed “director” or “playwright” – it is the collective that creates together. As artistic director of Complicite his interests lie with the actor, he writes, “A piece of theatre is, ultimately, in the hands of those who are performing it. The actors. It is they, not the director, who must have the whole piece in their every gesture, hearing the meaning in each word. And to do that I think, as an actor, you have to feel that you possess the piece. And to possess the piece you have to be part of its creation. Involved intimately in the process of its making” (www.complicite.org/about). The status of actor is given power here alongside director, playwright, designers, and the rest of the creative team.

What is essential to note here in regards to McBurney and Complicite is the method: There is no Complicite method. There is only collaboration.

The performance on election night opened with the entire cast coming out to greet the audience. “It’s wonderful for you to be here with us on this momentous night,” actor John Lithgow said to a hearty cheer of applause amongst the respectable Broadway audience, he then bowed his head into the script and begin reciting the opening of act one, “Miller’s play opens as written. Act One, scene one…” McBurney’s revival took the text to its edges allowing for it to perform itself out in acts that kept the actor/character/text at a deliberate distance from each other. Actors waited on the edges of the stage to make their entrance and stayed neutral until they hit the light at which point their “performance” in the play, All My Sons, would begin. By allowing for both of these performances to exist on stage McBurney distanced the audience in a Brechtian sense, but by his choices he also included them. It became a choice for the spectator and how they wished to be involved with the event of performance. The presence of the actor on and “off” the stage in performance being felt rearranges how a spectator takes in the space. In every Buran production we tend to utilize this affect in some way, for A Greater Release in July 2007 a pair of traveling musicians stayed closely tied to the stage and to roaming the audience. They were never off, always on and amongst and in between the performance.

Forty blocks down from the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, where All My Sons ran, is Ellen Stewart’s international home for artists – LaMaMa E.T.C. I attended LaMaMa’s first international playwriting symposium in the summer of 2007, where my ideas concerning Buran became immediately solidified. I suddenly saw a concrete future for the company and what it could potentially do with the inspiration acquired from the long and winding midnight talks with LaMaMa founder and artistic director, Ellen Stewart. The international scope of Buran suddenly became paramount:

1. To find a home for artists where they can create in a safe environment. And that this safe home does not need to be permanent.

2. To extend that safe environment to our audiences, wherever we are.

I’ve written much about Buran’s relationship to LaMaMa in the first Buran text, Bringing Back the Spectator (April 2008, published on our website), but what is important to note here is that these two initiatives, prompted by the spirit of LaMaMa, become performatives once you get a text or a concept into a room with collaborators. (This will be described in some depth in sections 3 and 4.)

A young theatre company that exhibits a unique collaborative relationship with community in a safe environment is New York City collective The Anthropologists, led by artistic director Melissa Fendell. The Anthropologists are a group of artists who interact with their community in a large way and when it comes to “do-it-yourself” and sharing, I can think of no other company who is giving so much right now. The Anthropologists’ inclusive nature is what breeds familiarity, in a similar way that McBurney breeds familiarity in his staging of a famous American play on a Broadway stage, or the way that Ellen Stewart is called Mama by those who know her and if I ever need a bed in New York City I can stop by the Annex, watch a show, and see if there is any room in the inn, so to speak.

I could use a number of examples from The Anthropologists, but I’ll use a recent one: The Anthropologists sent out an e-mail to all of their subscribers a few days before Thanksgiving this year asking for a six-word memoir (the basis of a lot of their devising and creation) on a holiday memory. The Anthropologists plan to turn the top five memoirs into plays which will be filmed and posted on the internet in time for the holiday season. This is the kind of performative that allows for a community to exist regardless of place and time. As a Rogue Member of The Anthropologists, now residing in Albuquerque, I can be an active participant by submitting my six word memoir, or I can not. It is the choice they have given their potential collaborators.

Playwright Charles Mee, who works often with Anne Bogart and her SITI Company, litters his texts with choices – the option of “or not” is always present. In a class I took at the University of Kansas from company member Henry Bial I was first introduced to the work of Mee and the world he creates for other artists. This began a small series of e-mails between me and Mee, prompting questions about his work, his influences and in particular his Re-Making Project, which encourages young theatre companies to steal his work, in the same way he has stolen from the Greeks, Shakespeare and internet blogs, and remake them with their own name under the title.

I go into the rehearsal process now always carrying the credo of Charles Mee: Culture writes us first, then we write our stories (www.charlesmee.org). We write/perform/engage culture for the sake of our work. We use history in all its infinite pratfalls and wisdom – because it’s all flat. Reality TV is really just bad Chekhov. And this simple credo of Chuck’s can free us from the baggage of the actor training.

Mee’s own biography is as engaging as it is telling about the makings of a playwright who has such distinct and anachronistic varieties, whose own voice is the culmination of remembered pasts, a romantic recognition of the ‘now’ and ‘then,’ and an unabashed taking of public property. Mee is both a consumer of products (real or imagined) and a contender of how those products are use and by whom. His plays are a mixture of pastiche, brick-a-brack, collage, hand-me-downs, and a total disregard to the current commercial production of performance. His plays are large, only contained by the limits of the imagination, and their wondering, winding method of getting to the center of the thing is often aggravating, leaving some audiences with the feeling of an empty hand. Mee’s own history comes out as a proponent against it – history is unfixed, there is still play to be done upon the texts of the western world, upon the Greek plays, upon Shakespeare’s canon, the Constitution of the United States, or a recent blog posted by an unknown poet in Queens.

His fascination with American culture comes from those things said and those unsaid. A he writes in his autobiography, “Just as a baby knows who it is by knowing who it is not, just as a word is defined by saying what it does not mean and what it does not include, so a society defines itself by saying what it is not and what it does not include” (139).

In my writing Money Buckets! The Untold Story of FDR for Buran I was highly influenced by Mee. Working on Money Buckets! I was writing for a group of actors that had already committed to the project, actors who had worked with Buran in past productions, much in the way that Complicite and The Anthropologists conduct their work. I knew these actors strengths, their weaknesses (which are just other strengths), what their physical presence can do to a space, and how these elements can be extended further. Coming down from a period of intense roaming and traveling, specifically my time spent with Buran in Lithuanian, I had grown fond of the conclusion, for this project, that eclecticism of style is a response to ethnicity – “there are no Americans” – we all have heritages we trace to somewhere else, but we are all in this thing together, with interweaving cultures, ethnicities, histories, etc. What they share is a medium – in our case - theatre or performance or event. Culture might not be always be shared, but a sub-culture is shared in art.

A final example I want to point to in this section has to do with that subculture rearing its head in performance, a breeding of familiarity with the use of ‘real names’ and the use of call and response.

The Tony-award winning musical Passing Strange: A Stew Musical tells the story of Stew, an African-American musician whose buildingsroman takes him from his home in Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Berlin in search of “the real.” Stew and his musical collaborators perform songs on stage as actors carry out his story alongside. As the musical progresses Stew makes off the cuff asides to the audience and brings them into the action with a number of call and response sections. The Broadway audience in attendance at the Belasco Theater, in general, did not know who Stew was and were not familiar with his band the Negro Problem, as he states in the opening line, “Now you don’t me and I don’t know you/ so let’s cut to the chase the name is Stew/ and I’ll be narrating this gig so just sit tight.”

Stew engenders familiarity immediately. He is playing himself, exposing his story on a stage, and the performance becomes heightened and interchangeable in multiple ways due to this performative. This assumption of “you will know me and I will know you because we are here going through this together” is central to breeding familiarity with the spectator in mind. Stew’s story is specific to him, as a certain race in a certain place at a certain time- and although that might not be shared in the culture at large, it becomes shared in the sub-culture (the event of performance) that brings everyone in the audience to the story. In her review of the musical Elizabeth Wollman writes, “It’s a rock musical and a black musical that depicts outsiders and obliterates socially constructed distinctions… Passing Stange is an important—and potentially enormously influential—musical” (636).

As Stew pointed back and forth from himself to the spectators in a call and response of, “Yeah, it’s all right. Yeah, it’s all right,” I truly felt an essential part of the collective gathering that had come to witness something new and potentially rhythm-changing. And that, more often than not, does not happen in a Broadway house.

What I see in Complicite, LaMaMa, The Anthropologists, Charles Mee, and Passing Strange are the types of performance based event solutions to bringing back the spectator– and suggests a theatre where the spectator wields an equivalent of responsibility alongside the performer and the performance. When the flesh has become a rarity - live bodies in live performances -it is the communion with others that brings us back to go through it together again.

And engendering this type of event in performance begins with the collaborative creation of a piece of work.

3.Buran’s Recent Performative: Spectatorship

Whenever the company works together in the “state of buran,” every participant is inside the work and the modes and methods are very much a felt thing, one brought about by close familiarity and a sharing of knowledge that does get verbalized, but most often in abstract ways. It is in the leaving the communal space that it becomes lost, most certainly because we are not together, but also due to the nature of the company – being spread across the globe and joining one another in different communities at different times – it is only appropriate that growth occurs in this fashion. When we reorganize, regardless of the personalities involved as participants, we must reconstruct the thing again and we make a move forward each time. Catherine Nash writes “that which cannot be spoken or written becomes new uncharted realm” (657) and therefore one needs to find means to write about its elusiveness rather than chart its specific means. Perhaps this is the strength in Buran, its amorphous personality paired with the creation of a specific method of entering into the work of creating with the spectator in mind.

When I write about Buran I try to talk about it in two ways: 1.the creation of methodology (what it is, where it comes from, what it can possibly do) and 2. the practice of the methods upon text, actors, collaborators, and most importantly, spectators. Although we have produced ten full length performance events in the past four years, I tend to choose four pieces as hallmark Burans. Rather than thinking of these as plays or traditional dramatic texts we must look at them as some Other. For the sake of clarification, company members began calling our texts “buran” (which also happens to mean “blizzard” in Russian). This self-referential way opened up the possibility to explore the structure, beginning with conception of the text -which is usually informed by actors who will be working on the project - to practice for the rehearsal, to the rehearsal itself, and finally, into performances and relationships with spectators and community.

The workshops conducted at the Helen Hocker Theatre (Topeka, KS) in June and July of 2009 were significant to Buran on many levels. It allowed us the opportunity to return to a community we had previously created in (the Topeka-Lawrence-Kansas City area) and to reconnect our methodology with those who had seen our work and wanted to know more. The workshops were introductory, as I engaged the participants (usually five to six actors and myself) in many of the exercises that were implemented upon the company that participated in the Buran production of Nightmares.

I chose Chuck Mee’s play Paradise Park- telling participants that Chuck intends for his work to be a starting point, a reference for artists to use and remake on their own terms, to tell their own stories. This idea, in of itself, was freeing to the participants in a major way.

First and foremost a precedent was set, as it always is in the Buran rehearsal space, prior to a participant entering. Participants entered the space (a black box theatre, which was set up in a thrust) where they found me, already in the midst of warm ups. Nothing was said. There was no articulation of expectation, other than, “Oh. Find a space to warm up.” And if they didn’t have anything to drink, “Would you like a water?” If participants brought musical instruments this was also designated as a time to tune their guitar or warm up their mouth on the flute. Rather than saying anything, if they brought an instrument, I would just go get it and give it to them.

After all participants had arrived I began to lead them through a warm up, relating their physical presence to the space in very specific ways – jumping off a lot of fond stuff from Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal and Anne Bogart. Another inspiration for these workshops came from my participation with Melissa Fendell’s Anthropologists in the summer of 2008. Melissa’s intelligent, thoughtful guidance through space (in 100 degree heat, 90% percent humidity most days that summer) and allowance of time was hugely beneficial. To be worked upon in that way was truly remarkable. The “Jam Sessions” that the Anthropologists hold is a gem of an offering in the New York theatre scene – given from one artists to another, out of the love of the craft and collaboration.

The physical warm ups in the workshops would then shift into defining space – inside and outside. As space is defined rules are made and given out, and then taken away. Options for rules are thrown out to participants who listen, or not. Scenes begin to occur and also non-scenes.

There are participants working inside and participants watching outside – as I too go in and out, from working inside, and watching outside. I encourage participants to weave in out of events, from watching to doing. In this kind of work one feels how space alters depending on event and where actual energy is placed. Actors are watching spectators, spectators are watching actors – and we move forward. For those who relish working in this manner, some truly inspiring moments can occur if they are allowed.

During the first hour and a half if one participant does not know another participant, they discover each other via the physical work. There are no introductions, the work begins right out of the warm up itself and a dialogue happens – one not about the thing, but a dialogue of the thing.

After we come out of this and shake all the tension and history acquired from the event out of our bodies, we hunker down and introduce ourselves. Just our names, no need for anything more.

We get back up on our feet and participants are led into “Building Sculptures” – an exercise garnered from Stephen Wangh’s Acrobat of the Heart, except it is used here in relation to flexing the Five Point Method of Extremities, a Buran performative created prior to rehearsals for Nightmares (again, this is written with some detail in the Buran text, Bringing Back the Spectator). The Five Point Method, as we interpret it became a useful tool for engaging actors with the text and their world on the stage in electrifying and interactive ways. To quote the text of the play, Nightmares:

Five points of a man. His mind. His heart. His hands. His feet. And his groin. What a man thinks, how a man feels, what a man does, where a man goes, and how a man loves. The five points. These are our extremities. Not uniquely mine or his or yours. This is something we all share.

Like an improv artist does with a similar sculpting exercise, we allow for the sculpture to move – to find a second shared shape, or scene. We listen to each other as a collective based on what the sculptor has placed in us at the moment of conception, that is, the moment we are sculpted. As sculptures turn into sculptors and vice-versa, the role of leader soon disintegrates. There is a steady flow between who is leading and a constant “listening” to the extremities as deemed by the Five Points.

This exercise has two parts – the first being the actor’s participation as the sculptor and their fellow actors as the mold by which to construct their sometimes epic sculpture. This exercise, done in the nude or with very little clothing on, demonstrates the Five Point Method most predominately. After maintaining often excruciating elegant poses, the sculptor-actor asks the molded-actors to begin moving, transitioning into another moment of the sculpture. Using the motion that the sculptor-actor has placed in their muscles at the moment of conception, so to speak, the group of molded-actors begin to engage with one another, moving, physically discovering moment to moment where their bodies lead them in relation to the body of the other molded-actor they have been attached to. When the sculptor-actor feels as if their sculpture has reached a moment of finality they ask the molded-actors to pause again before releasing from the exercise. The sculptor-actor then replaces a molded-actor who takes the position of sculptor-actor. This going in and out of roles is significant.

My presence as “the one leading this workshop” has now, ideally, lessened to a degree. What is desired here is immediate trust, trust that arises out of responsibility, which is attained by the Precedent set at the beginning of the workshop.

The only rules that stay intact at all times are:

Be looking for places that seem safer than others. Safe space. And “space not as safe as…”
Breathe and listen. And if you do this, you probably won’t harm yourself, regardless of what you do.
Keep your eyes open. Don’t close them. Allow the imaginative world to paint itself in front of you, not behind your lids.

Those are about the only things I find myself saying repeatedly, mostly because I think they are nice things to be reminded of and to be “looking for.”

So leading into the text from arriving in the space includes at least the following moves:

A Precedent (tempo) set by “leader” before participants enter into space. (In most cases- stretching, warming up, keeping eyes open and forward in the space.)
Participants enter into something already happening – the atmosphere of “in the midst of”
Participants join in
Leader gives directions. Using impulse, music, rhythms, architecture and a focus on the Five Points of Extremities. This takes about an hour. Participants, if they do not know each other, they are put into the midst of it and familiarity is breed out of the circumstance. Scenes, dialogues, and physical interactions are played out.
Leader joins in. Leader stops leading.

Actors soon begin making decisions for the group – and since it is for the group, everyone is willing to make a run for it. By the time we get to Chuck Mee’s piece, two and half hours into our workshop, everyone has forgotten we have come together to work on a text. I throw out character names arbitrarily. Double, triple casting for no reason, other than to get words out there. We read about ten pages, quickly, sloppily, then we throw down the text and I say, “Let’s remake this thing.” At which point, an orchestrated sort of madness begins.

We take a tiny section of text. For this instance, since workshop participants varied each session, I did the same text each week. After we read a section I would say, “Okay, this is the portion of the play we’re going to do today. How? I don’t know. Let’s see what Chuck has given us to play with.” At which point I ask a participant, now assigned as the character ‘Nancy,’ “What do you think? What do you see here? Get up on your feet and try this - -” If the a participant seems hesitant I call out the first “direction” or rule.

Working in this fashion we come up with ideas; spontaneously and immediately get them up on their feet. A noise would occur and if someone heard it we would say, “What is that noise? Now that noise is a part of the thing.” If we had music, I’d often instruct whoever had an instrument to have it close at hand. Music is always integral. It’s the texture that pulls so many elements together.

Conducting these scenes from a source text into something inspired and instigated in the flesh in the moment was exciting to watch. The physical life of the characters created were often informed by moments that happened previously, either in the warm ups, the events that took place during explorations, and/or the sculptures, allowing for an unspoken dialogue between participants; a reckoning with familiar shapes and symbols expressed earlier. The reliance of something familiar, especially something you’ve just recently shared with others, creates community quickly and efficiently. This is similar to the modes that were worked out upon in rehearsals for Buran’s All Men Are Whores, where actor/character’s were given single props upon which to establish a strong relationship with as opposed to the other actors/characters/bodies.

Scenes would begin and end out of nowhere and as I watched, I kept a hurried, chicken-scratched score. Once a scene was complete I would go back over with the participants what I had written down – which did not always correspond to what I had heard or seen. From the score we would all piece the narrative together, rediscover a tempo, a melody that had occurred, and come to very quick conclusions. Small conclusions, like, “She must yodel not whistle, must must yodel, not whistle.” We would go back, rehearse the scene – and repeat with the next event in this way – in this case the events had titles: “Cotton Candy,” “Roller Coaster” and “Balloon Head.” There were wild and vivid characters that erupted from participants. Heightened lyricism paired with rough, low language. Soaring orchestrations paired with plunking flat guitar strings. The disregard to the sanctity of the text allowed for more open interpretations and responsibility was wielded by those who took on these roles. What came out of these scenes were stories, stories of people’s fear, fear of love and death most centrally, but also a reckoning, dealing with and sorting through the madness via the seemingly chaotic world we were creating in. Strong emotional ties were built and were attached to physical gestures that rippled through the participants. I witnessed the ability of every participant to accept each other's imaginational pallet, where collaboration was occurring without the pretext of “we are a collaborative.” The collaborative found each other in the midst of the work and again like a great improv artist knew that “Yes” is always the right resounding answer when working with others.

After we were finished remaking the text, we briefly summed up with thoughts, impressions and discoveries. Many participants were surprised to find how quickly they found themselves surrendering to the space and with a great sense of comfort due to the Precedent set that they had walked into at the beginning of the workshop. Others said that the Precedent cramped them – as warm up is a very personal time.

One participant said that she missed out on “hearing the room” as she stretched and warmed up. For her the Precedent set in a Buran warm-up took away something essential to understanding and creating space. That canvas of silence that offers up so much had been compromised.

Another participant appreciated the amount of time we took but had trouble correlating that to work in actual rehearsal. Rehearsal time is extremely limited and if you don’t have the budget for it or the space – it is difficult for us not to worry about time. Perhaps for this actor time equaled productivity towards a result that is fixed as the end; where a director comes in and says, “This is how we do it and this is how we get there.” A sense of constant rush, the reoccurring phrase We’ve only got such and such amount of time left!!!!

Time is a vehicle to use, or not use, in search of a community invested concept.

Knowing that the thing we created would never leave the space we were in, because it was a special event in a safe space created by community, an event that we went through together, made it all the more heightened and singular. The aim of these introductory workshops was to witness how these events, created at a specific place and time, could potentially be carried outside of the space and affect any numerous facets of the participants’ life.

And this is where true spectatorship begins.

Jan Cohen-Cruz writes, “Being community-based does not indicate level of universality or artistry but simply collaboration between artists and a group of people connected in some ongoing way who have contributed significantly to a work’s creation” (82). In this way, our Buran communities (now in Kansas, Missouri, New York, and Lithuania) are about the creation of community brought about by the collaborative artists who involve themselves on each project. We reconvene and create community based out of the collective. The collective company members are central to this element. Anne Bogart relates an encounter with Ariane Mnouchkine in her book A Director Prepares on the importance of having a company, “‘Well, you cannot do anything without a company. Don’t get me wrong, companies are difficult. People leave and break your heart and the hardships are constant, but what are you going to accomplish without a company?’ ” (15).

After the final workshop was complete I looked to co-founder Alicia Gian, who stood with her fingers attached to her lips and her brows deeply furrowed. When Alicia looks like this, something significant will be said soon. Alica said, “These workshops are great. They truly are. But now we need to develop specific exercises for Buran and Buran only, not just morph other exercises to fit our need. But to create from Buran itself.” I agreed.

From talks with the rest of the company it seems that the goal now is to find a set of movements that are richer, more developed, and specific to the kinds of worlds we create in the rehearsal room with Buran and extend these in various ways to incorporate, introduce, inspire, and insist with as many others as possible – both actor and spectator.

4. A Buran in Action

Not only getting to the theater district, but entering the building itself involves ceremony: ticket-taking, passing through gates, performing rituals, funding a place from which to watch: all this…frames and defines the performance. Ending the show and going away also involves ceremony: applause or some formal way to conclude the performance and wipe away the reality of the show re-establishing the reality of everyday life. The performers even more than the audience prepare and then, when the show is over, undertake the “cooling-off” procedures. – Richard Schechner, “Towards a Poetics of Performance,” Performance Studies

I can’t get it out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between ideas and living.

-Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

When an audience goes through something together at the theatre, as a community, there tends to be the lingering afterwards in and around the space by a handful of audience members - spectators getting close to the scenery, walking around the stage or the lobby, waiting to meet and greet with the actors, or even a cigarette outside in close proximity to the space, akin to after a big meal or sex. There are all of these moments of pause before moving on to the next thing, whatever it may be; a need to cool down in the presence of the space and in the company of those who you went through the thing with. How do we properly reflect on performance? Especially performances that do something other than just perform?

I have found writing to be useful to for me, to try and contain the essence of what I experienced and what I saw, not particularly the event of plot, story or the critical eye looking upon performance, but writing about the event of the performance itself, the radiation that occurs amongst the audience in tandem with the actor and their physical presence acting out upon the stage. After conducting numerous talkbacks post-show I find that they rarely function in the way that everyone on the creative side can agree on and they don’t particularly address the questions that an amateur audience member might be grappling with. As dance and performance theorist Andre Lepecki writes, “Where does dance come from and where does dance go to? … For this travelling implicates sites of departure and arrival that are not evident and, moreover, that try not to leave evidence … Which space does dance fill in this journey of uncertain origins and ends?” (74). Schechner also writes about these liminal spaces, noting that within this space “for a brief time two groups merge into one dancing circle. During this liminal time/place communitas is possible – that leveling of all differences in an ecstasy that so often characterizes performing. Then and only then can the exchange take place” (128).

These are issues that are central to Buran, a collective whose aim is to explore these liminal spaces within the event of performance by creating immediate familiarity within performance between spectator and actor. The audience must go through something while they are still in the space, together. As we continue to produce and find means to engage spectators role in a varietal of modes via the event of performance we ask ourselves a central question: How do we create this new community within the audience, one that gains a sense of familiarity by merely being in the theatre amongst others and the other on stage – the others on stage who have names that they may or may not be indicative to the performers’ own history and/or present space in life? In a similar way that Passing Strange being a “Stew Musical” engenders familiarity, we integrate the stories of the collaborative into our dramatic narratives.

A brief example I will use is the 2009 summer Buran production of Money Buckets! The Untold Story of FDR and the workshops surrounding it. The marketing and performance of this play was enacting a mythology that was conceived by the company itself. By doing so, the performance began before the audience entered the theater and continued beyond the finish of the play (which the performance even resisted in the event itself), via printed reviews in the KC Star and other forms of media and journalism. We used press releases as a means to enact the belief that this was a found text, a screenplay that was never produced by MGM while the Brothers were under contract. We created an entire history for this text, from acquiring the rights to the rules under which we had to perform the lost and found text. On account of this, audiences were aware what they were going to see was remnants of a whole piece and not the whole itself. We suggested that perhaps Clifford Odets could have been at the helm, since he was at MGM during these years and the screenplay had an overtly politically tone, one that criticized the Roosevelt administration directly via the Marx Brothers. But we made no specific claims, just speculations. As Robert Trussell wrote in the KC Star, “After some legal wrangling, the theater company won the right to stage parts -- but not all -- of the screenplay. So what we get with ‘Money Buckets’ is a crazy hybrid of Marx Brothers routines and absurdist digressions that include bizarre interviews with German theater director Erwin Piscator and futurist/visionary Buckminster Fuller with some oddball musical numbers thrown in for good measure” (D1).

We attacked the script of Money Buckets! in two ways: there was the Marx Brothers strand, with its plot progressing in a typical Marx Brothers mode, and the attaching articles – pieces of postmodern commentary that either supplemented the action or performed against it. Scenes betwixt and between the two strands were navigated by Luxem & Leifer, a pair of clueless folk musicians who had been paid to show up and play their music and tell jokes (which they cannot ever properly remember). When looking at the actor/character Justin Knudsen, we would dissect his role in the play in this way: Justin Knudsen as Grouch Marx as Franklin Derby Ruse-Velt Or: Alicia Gian as Margaret Dumont as Eleanor Ruse-Velt. Our concern was with the individual - the individual performer and the individual spectator and how they might infringe upon each other in ways other than typical addresses made to an audience.

Even with the posters we bred familiarity, pairing Justin Knudsen, Groucho Marx and FDR’s heads all sharing the same jacket. By placing a relatively, or rather, in most circles, a completely unknown actor in this grouping, we engendered a familiarity that was then enacted upon at arriving to the theater. In the same way that Stew becomes known in Passing Strange, Justin Knudsen’s performance as Himself began not just at the theatre, but before the audience had even arrived. This sort of familiarity is something we intend to breed with our audiences, wherever we perform. When writing about Buran, founding member and co-artistic director Justin Knudsen said, “When I think of Buran and things that I hope continue within its productions in some way or another are live music, danger, extremity, lies, respect/disrespect for conventions, a looseness of space, implied improvisation, creation of the event prior to the event.”

In the production of Money Buckets! we were able to reposition the role of the spectator and bring them onto the stage, literally, by the end of the show, out of the doors, and into the streets with us. This was physicalized in manner similar to the Buran performances o A Greater Release where we led the audience outside singing Van Morrison’s “Caravan” – but our interest now lies in finding a means to do this without suggesting as much through the physical act of doing a caravan following each production! In the most recent Buran, being workshopped this spring, we are taking the notion of familiarity to its edges with a fictional story that involves several of the company members as characters. Perhaps the extension of our motives can be found in this structure.

Maybe not.

Either way, we will stay amorphous, aware that with each production we will discover something new about what it is that we do.

Bibliography:

Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. 1985. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group.

Bogart, Anne. A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on art and Theatre. 2001. London England: Routledge.

Cohen-Cruz, Jan. Local Acts: Community Based Performance in the United States. 2005. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Dolan, Jill. Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. 2005. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Knudsen, Justin. “Re: On Buran.” Message to the author. October 13 2009. E-mail.

Lepecki, Andre. “As if Dance was Visible.” Performance Research. 1996. New York. NY: Routledge Press.

Mee, Charles L. A Nearly Normal Life. 1999. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

Mee, Charles L. Paradise Park. http://www.charlesmee.org/html/paradise_park.html.

McBurney, Simon. “Complicite Overview.” http://www.complicite.org/about/message.html.

Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. 1961. New York, NY: Grove Press.

Nash, Catherine. “Performativity in practice: some recent works in cultural geography.” Progress in Human Geography. pp.653-664. 2000. London, UK: University of London.

Piepenburg, Erik. “An Expert in Audacity Tries Arthur Miller.” Oct. 22, 2008. New York Times.

Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. 1988. New York, NY: Routledge Press.

Trussell, Robert. “Money Buckets at Fringe Festival Does Marx Brothers Right.” Kansas City Star. July 26, 2009. D1. Print.

Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat of the Heart: A Physical Approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. 2000. New York, NY: Vintage Press.

Wollman, Elizabeth L. “Passing Strange Review.” Theatre Journal 60.3 (2008): pp. 635-637. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Print

All My Sons. By Arthur Miller. Dir. Simon McBurney. John Lithgow, Dianne Weist, Patrick Wilson, & Katie Holmes. Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. New York, NY. November 8, 2008. Performance.

The Cherry Orchard. By Anton Chekhov. Dir. Rimas Tuminas. Egle Gabrenaite, Rimantas Bagdzevicius, Arvydas Dapsys, & Andrius Zebrauskas. The State Small Theatre of Vilnius, Vilnius, Lithuania. January 27, 2009. Performance.

Passing Strange. By Stew and Heidi Rodewald. Dir. Annie Dorsen. Stew, d’Andra Aziza, Daniel Breaker, & Eisa Davis. Belasco Theater, New York, NY. June 24 2008. Performance.

Buran Performance Archive

A Greater Release. By Brady Blevins, Amy Virginia Buchanan, Adam R. Burnett, Matt Crooks, & Tosin Morohonfola. Music & lyrics by Alicia Gian & Christopher Luxem. Dir. Adam R. Burnett & Meghan Reardon. Perf. Alicia Gian, Spencer Holdren, Justin Knudsen, & Lara Thomas. Oldfather Studios. Lawrence, KS. July 20-27, 2007. Performance.

All Men Are Whores. By David Mamet. Dir. Adam R. Burnett. Perf. Spencer Holdren, Ryan Klaymen, Val Smith, & Lara Thomas. William Inge Theater. Lawrence, KS. Dec. 8 2007. Performance.

Beneath the Bed. By Adam R. Burnett. Dir. Adam R. Burnett. Perf. Brady Blevins, Justin Knudsen, Lara Thomas, & Carter Waite. William Inge Theater. Lawrence, KS. December 15, 2005. Performance Workshop.

Enormous Weight. By Carlo Matos. Dir. Adam R. Burnett & Lara Thomas. Perf. Brady Blevins, Jenna Bleecker, Justin Knudsen, & Meg Saricks. William Inge Theater. Lawrence, KS. June 3, 2008. Performance Workshop.

Meile be Akcento. By Adam R. Burnett. Music & lyrics by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and Kurt Weill. Dir. Alica Gian & Elfus Teatras Company. Perf. Alicia Gian, Tadas Gudaitas, Zana Jablonskyte, & Marius Maciulis. Elfu Teatras. Vilnius, Lithuania. May 18-27 & Oct. 24-Dec. 31, 2009. Performance.

Money Buckets! The Untold Story of FDR By Adam R. Burnett. Music by Ben Leifer & Christopher Luxem. Dir. Adam R. Burnett & Val Smith. Perf. Brady Blevins, Justin Knudsen, Alicia Gian, & Marius Macuilis. Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre. Kansas City, MO. July 21-27, 2009. Performance.

Napoleon Exiled! By Adam R. Burnett. Dir. Adam R. Burnett. Perf. Theresa Buchheister, Kate Hurley, Justin Knudsen, & Meg Saricks. Dramatist Guild, Frederick Loewe Space. New York, NY. Oct. 17, 2008. Performance Workshop.

The Next Great Thing. By Adam R. Burnett. Dir. Adam R. Burnett & Hilary Kelman. Perf. Matt Crooks, Justin Knudsen, Kate Giessel, & Courtney Schweitzer. William Inge Theater. Lawrence, KS. May 18, 2006. Performance Workshop.

Nightmares: An Artful Demonstration of the Sublime. By Adam R. Burnett. Music by Christopher Luxem. Dir. Adam R. Burnett & Val Smith. Perf. Brady Blevins, Justin Knudsen, Erik LaPointe, & Lara Thomas. Lawrence Arts Center, Main Stage. Lawrence, KS. Feb. 13-16 2008. Performance.

Paradise Park. By Charles Mee. Music by Christopher Luxem. Dir. Adam R. Burnett. Perf. Amy Virginia Buchanan, Shanna Carlson, Jon Matteson, Dorianne Rees. Helen Hocker Theatre. Topeka, KS. June 3-27, 2009.

The Sensualist. By Adam R. Burnett. Music by Ian Nichols. Dir. Adam R. Burnett & Alicia Gian. Perf. Andi Porter, Courtney Schweitzer, Lara Thomas, & Carter Waite. Lawrence Arts Center, Black Box. Lawrence, KS. February 2-16 2007. Performance.

Buran Texts

Burnett, Adam R. and Alicia Gian. Bringing Back The Spectator: The Aims, Motives & Mission of Buran Theatre. April 2008. www.burantheatrecompany.com.

Bringing Back the Spectator

2009-12-26T13:07:00.001-08:00

Bringing Back the Spectator

The Aims, Motives & Explorations

Of the Buran Theatre Company

By Adam R. Burnett

With an onward

by Alicia Gian

To the company members of Buran.

Present

Future.

Onward

Greetings dear friends and colleagues, those that I have had the sincerest of pleasure working with and those that I greatly anticipate working with. As I sit and write to you from approximately 5,000 miles away, I do not feel far. I feel as close to you now in the spirit of Buran as I did during my physical time with the company – maybe even closer. As I have lived abroad this year, while still working closely with Adam to begin Buran’s international projects, I have come to a much clearer sense of the future of Buran and the spirit of Buran. The ever-evolving spirit of Buran is one of imagination, inspiration, investigation, exploration, implementation and transformation.

The theatre is an interesting place. We dress ourselves up, go to a big dark hall, sit beside a complete stranger, accidentally bumping elbows and saying our usual apologies as we figure out who will use the armrest and who has to keep their arms to themselves. We check four times to make sure that our cell phones are on silent because nobody wants to be “that guy”, and we settle in for...for...for what? Why have we come to the theatre? And more importantly why should the spectator come to our theatre?

People come to the theatre for three main reasons; entertainment, inspiration, and transformation. These three things, my friends, we can provide and have provided in our work with the Buran Theatre Company. The entertainment element is the human element. And regardless of technology, which seems to advance at a startling rate, I do not fear the loss of the spectator in theatre. People want to experience a communal joy and a communal sadness – in the flesh. No one laughs with an accent and no one cries with an accent and that is why our work with Buran as a part of the global community is so important. The theatre provides a house of communal experience, and that is sacred - and that is Buran. If I could I would stand outside on the street of every Buran production and shout “Welcome one, welcome all, welcome – to the house of communal understanding and experience!” We, my fellow creators, are the conduits of communal understanding and human experience.

The second element of why people come to the theatre is inspiration. Adam writes in section seven of Bringing Back the Spectator, “if we ignore our soul, we ignore what gives rise to soaring flight – flight in action, in thought, in inspiration, in love, in creation, and as we attempt to do as theatre arists, flight on the stage” – and inspiration is the stuff of our souls. The role of Buran, first and foremost is the feeding of the soul – the stuff that transcends this physical plane of existence. We must strive physically to feed the metaphysical. We must inspire one another daily, in our rehearsal process, and then as a collective to inspire the spectator.

The third element is transformation. Yes, it is possible to sit in a darkened movie theatre or in the comfort of our own homes and watch transformation occur on screen, but it is something else to watch transformation in the flesh, before our very eyes. A play from beginning to end is the transformation of a situation - as is everyday life the constant transformation of situation. If a spectator can sit, somewhat removed but still very much a present factor in the transformation – then that is our greatest strength and again I would stand out front and shout “Come one, come all – come be a part of transformation!” We all need the hope of transformation, and we, the members of Buran, can provide that within our sacred space.

I would like to conclude with the reason I entitled this an onward and not a forward. I am not trying to be clever or witty, I am only trying to discover the motion of Buran. Where ever we end up as we are leaving or have recently left what Adam calls the “cradle of academia”, we take with us the spirit and ever-evolving work of the Buran Theatre Company. We devote ourselves as members of Buran to the onward work of inspiration and transformation.

Alicia Gian

Vilnius, Lithuania

June 3rd, 2008

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How do you bring the spectator to the stage? This has become a central issue in the work I’ve done with the Buran Company.

The question that remains for me: How can the action of the play, the physical presence of the actor, and the presentation of spectacle (the living, breathing human body seems spectacle enough) readjust the community of spectators away from their cell phones, blackberry’s, iPod’s, the technological devices that now follow them into the arena, attaches them, whether they like it or not, to the world they’ve come to escape from.

As a spectator I admit that I often keep my phone on vibrate – just in case. But why? What is so necessary about keeping in touch with the world outside of the theatre when the creation of the community within the theatre is so much more sacred, more telling, and at specific, unique moments in our experience as artists and audiences – powerful, challenging, and life altering? The relationship between the actor and spectator and that indefinite space between are the components of our supposed alchemy. Through my present work as Artistic Director and resident playwright of the Buran Company I seek new means to challenge this space and discover its potential for a modern audience.

We need to bring the spectator back to the stage – and the Buran Company is investigating how to do this with every theatrical endeavor.

1. Inspiration

I spent the first half of August 2007 living in a villa in Italy, a renovated 700 year old monastery, ten miles south east of Spoleto - LaMaMa’s summer retreat for directors and playwrights from around the globe. Before I went I was told that LaMaMa’s residency in Italy was as close to heaven as I’ll ever get on earth. This seemed to be quite the grand statement. And although I am all for grand statements, I wasn’t prepared to buy into the image of “as close to heaven as I’ll get on earth.”

After spending a little over a week writing, and workshopping, and eating the kind of food they only place in art galleries, and discussing the future of theatre and playwriting with enormously brilliant people, I felt as if I had found a place where new ground could be broken. A place where getting to heaven on earth was not only possible but at certain moments – realized.

The morning before I left LaMaMa’s home in Italy I met with Ellen Stewart in her bedroom. Before I entered I watched MaMa’s assistant, Mia, put her face on: red lipstick and a pair of large dangly earrings. She wore a plain white cotton nightgown – she was sitting, on this Sunday morning, in bed, waiting to talk to a shy young playwright.

I was ushered in to sit down across from MaMa.

When I travel I kept a strict journal – as I often try to keep for immediacy’s sake- here’s the scene as it was remembered at a time closer to the occurrence:

8/14/07

My last day at LaMaMa Italy, Kaori saw me wondering around watching her & Denise hang up clothes on the clothes line. She said, “Come on. Let’s see if MaMa can see you before you leave.” We took Mia with us through the office.

Mia, beautiful Mia, said, “MaMa, that boy, that shy boy wants to see you before he leaves. Is that alright?”

I heard moans & grunts. Kaori smiles & motioned for me to come in & then motioned for me to stop abruptly.

“Oh – let me take some more medication - & here…” MaMa grumbled with warmth.

“Do you want to put some earrings on?” Mia asked.

Karoi signaled that MaMa was putting on lipstick.

After a few moments Mia gave me the signal to enter.

There she was – MaMa – on her twin sized bed – her TV tray full of medication & jewelry. I sat before her & we talked. I talked about how much I loved the place, how important the week had been to me, how important she was & being around her was like a dream come true. This last statement she didn’t like.

She told me how hard it was to get funding for an artist residency in Italy. The National Arts Foundation has said, “Why not Iowa? Kansas? Montana? Open space for open minds.”

MaMa said, “Sure those all sound fine. But there’s one difference between all those places & LaMaMa’s residence in Italy – here you are only an hour & a half from – Rome.” MaMa said all of this with marked heavy breath. Each word weighed upon me. She said so little but its reverberating power was unlike anything I had ever experienced prior.

MaMa then offered me a bed when I come to visit New York and said goodbye to me. I leaned in – hugged her to the right – hugged her to the left - & pecked a kiss on her left cheek.

MaMa reminded me why I’m doing this. She had nothing – nothing but her gigantic godly soul (which I do not have) - & she made “universes” (to quote Alicia Gian) – she created worlds for our world. In those first years of LaMaMa when they had no permanent home in New York, MaMa rarely saw her shows. She’d ring the bell at curtain & wait outside in case the police tried to come & shut them down. Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Andrei Serban, Robert DeNiro- she saw none of these legendaries working in their first years with LaMaMa. But she protected them. Made sure their work was seen – uninterrupted & safe.

I cannot – now I cannot ever – ever imagine a world without MaMa.

2. The Physical-Life of Buran

Although my work with the Buran Company was forged long before my experience with LaMaMa it made my influence as a director and collaborator so much more specific in my work with David Mamet’s All Men are Whores in the fall of 2007 and Nightmares directly following. I suddenly began to see clearly where the company had previously been under my direction and the possibilities of its future residing under my direction.

What is it that Buran does?

What does Buran mean?

Buran: A creation of new plays for a new audience (closely associate with the now) with respect to the actor’s physical presence in relation to the spectator.

It is not just a physical approach to theatre – it is an all encompassing physical-life approach to theatre.

For the production of The Sensualist in February of 2007 I wrote accompanying notes to go with the premiere production. Here’s what I had to say then about the play and our work:

This past June while I was in constant revision of the script, which is when the real writing happens mind you, I had the chance to attend the opening night of Martin Crimp’s new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull at the National Theatre in London. I wrote the following afterwards in my journal:

“I left the theater in shivers. I walked the dark tunnels leading out of the theater to the Waterloo Station, my entire body convulsing of fever, fervor & fire. Chekhov was in me. The disallowance of every desire I’ve ever had churned and turned over and over again inside my gut. As I took the Bakerloo line under the Thames, I realized I had left the script I was reading prior to the performance under the seat at the theatre. I felt it was only appropriate that I not return to claim it. I could not return. The longing was too great. Upon arriving at my flat, I fell into the hard bed - fatigued, worn, dizzy and soaking wet with sweat. I spent the next 48 hours in a fever recovering from my night at the theatre.”

I traveled for two months throughout Western Europe last summer, and almost nightly I attended the theatre, most of it was really great. But that night in London at the National Theatre, sitting before Chekhov and The Seagull, I was irrevocably changed, the intense visceral answer to the play breathes in me still, reminding me why I live my life in the theatre, and most importantly, why the act of creation for the stage continues to thrust me forward with great passion. Leaving the theatre that night, I had nowhere to turn; I walked the streets of London and turned to the only place I knew I could turn – inward. I believe this is why we go to the theatre.

With The Sensualist I have set out to experiment with new forms of staging for our 21^st century stage, our stage that is highly influenced by film, television, iPods, and the postmodern (particularly in art and literature) of the recently passed century – it’s an ambitious aspiration I know. I have no thesis set yet on what I intend to do, but I’m working on it. This production only hints at what could be done with this script if budget, space and manpower were on the producer’s side. For this initial production, all of those were limited. The structure of this new type of drama exists on a plane where time and space are secondary to the action that needs to occur.

Looking back on my writing it seems that that final statement - of this new structure, this structure that exists on a plane where time and space are secondary – is really an introduction to the notion of performing a priori knowledge, unlike Francis Bacon’s assertion that “whatever deserves to exist also deserves to be known," the plays and productions of Buran display otherwise. It is the immediacy of arriving in the theatre without pretension, without assumption – it is this kind of experience that creates surprisingly unguarded interpretations from spectator and actor alike. Drop in. Drop out. Pick up. Pick out. Choose. And weave.

This may seem like a heightened interpretation of the vague postmodern, but rather, most who work with the company find it to be applicable and concrete, especially once the work we have done in exercises is put in front of the spectator.

Bringing the spectator into the work has been central since the very beginning of the Buran Company in our staged readings where we conducted extensive talkbacks. Although I will later use Nightmares as the key example, our previous endeavors tread closely to the spectator as well, repositioning their role in the theatre (the violent puppet show and use of interviewers in The Sensualist, and the constant roaming amongst and watching of the audience by the Gypsy and her Faithful Troubadour in A Greater Release). Even the approach to acting, that physical approach, one that is life-encompassing for the actors who work with Buran – every production is a physical impossibility that works itself out upon the collaborative company of artists. This physical approach is not just “movement-oriented” acting but a dialogue that incorporates all facets of the production – from composer to designer to actor. This kind of direction I have found allows for a sort of brevity in note taking and giving. Within the company and for each production a set of language is created that is specific to the project and often it becomes a physical dialogue the actor has with the director, most often myself.

In rehearsals for The Sensualist attention was directed towards the animalistic behavior and instincts of the characters – this was a drama based on the decisions of people, a cast of people who engage entirely in immediacy, the action being the result of the moment. The movement of the play, the texture of the thing had to spring the actors from ‘portion’ to ‘portion’, through the non-linear unlinked narrative, and attack the play in the presence of an audience. As the play progressed the world of Leonard, our anti-hero, began to turn in on itself and the women in his life instigated the role of spectator – his wife (#2) watching scenes play out with his young mistress (#3), his young mistress watching scenes between wife and husband, the sister-in-law (#1) watching these scenes and recreating them in her stylized grotesque puppet show (a cruel moment that has become a trademark in the work of Buran). By using this animal imagery and physical work it created this growling, narcissistic, angry, embittered, sex-fueled, godless group of beasts working their action out upon the audience – making the final act of attack on Leonard truly cathartic (a component we all look for on the stage), and empathy began to settle itself in the gut.

To use specific examples: In rehearsals we found The Wife taking the form of a black widow spider, hovering over her eggs – defending her life and lot against the Lion (Leonard) who was hungry for her eggs and her juicy Spider body. The struggle was fierce and I had never seen the female actor ever put up such a battle in her life. Those last moments of the struggle, sweat pouring from the actors, bearing their teeth, both engaged completely in their body, listening to each other’s moves with the sharpest ear – it was a moment of transcendence for everyone in the rehearsal room.

The actors in The Sensualist were put through a painstaking process that was focused on time – on having the time to discover. In the rehearsal room ‘intimacy modules’ were set up throughout the space where actors could confront one another in a space and time that was singular to them. Neither Alicia Gian (who was co-directing the play) nor myself ever knew what happened between the actors in this heightened intimate space. By allowing for this time and space, which is rare in the typical three to four week rehearsal schedule, the actors were given stake in the piece, in the collaborative act of creating. This handing over and placing of responsibility on the actor in rehearsal is vital to the kind of heightened dialogue that can be shared.

Although these exercises often played out as clichéd scenarios after the fact, the work of immediacy and in living in that animal body, this carried into their work as actors in the profoundest ways, taking the leap that is impossible when the actor’s mind gets wrapped up in the work. By pushing towards these physical extremities fiercer, braver, stronger, bolder, more assured performances can be created. This method of pushing towards extremities was powerfully demonstrated upon two male actors in A Greater Release. The scene centered on two young globetrotting men, one American, the other French, who are involved in an encounter that leads to irrevocable, irrational violence. The scene was charged with overt sexuality and kind of eroticism that made the struggle for and against each other potentially devastating.

Our rehearsals for this scene were devised in meeting every other night. For two weeks Meghan Reardon (who was co-directing) and I worked upon these actors, pushing them to a violent, sexual encounter. It led to nightly wrestling.

For an hour at a time we had these two young men wrestling each other.

Attacking one another.

It was awkward for many nights. There were moments of true brilliance, where inhibitions loosened and the actors engaged truthful and without hesitation to the natural homoeroticism of the act. After two weeks of physically awkward encounters something finally broke between these two actors, who had entered into the process uncertain of their skill. We took the wrestling outside to a grassy courtyard in the second week, and on the last night of our physical work they attacked one another, wrestling with one another in an act that was engaged so thoroughly that neither Meghan nor I took our eyes off of them or even took in a breath for, it seemed like, a quarter of an hour.

After this encounter neither of the actors took on the script the same way, they were charged by this elongated intense physical engagement. By the time we opened the production, these two young actors were giving the most assured performance I had ever seen from either of them or many of my colleagues. It was an impressive feat and a moment I feel blessed to have watched - the impossible play itself out on stage.

By working in this intensely physical way actors let go of the analytical side of performance and begin to listen to their physical life - making theatre more theatrical and returning to this notion of bringing the spectator into the stake of the action. This also has the double advantage of allowing the text in the script and the dialogue shared in rehearsals to be more precise and full of a weight that makes the discussion in creation more useful.

Words mean very little, so the words we do use in drama must be infused with importance. The text is, after all, not sacred. It is merely the beginning to a much greater end.

For the fall 2007 Gender Performance project, using Mamet’s All Men Are Whores as a source text, most of the rehearsals were conducted in silence. I would lead the four actors into rehearsal spending the next hour watching them respond to one another and to the text. Oftentimes I would throw out a word, a phrase, an image or prompt them with a piece of music, other than that I remained silent and watched. Over a period of two and a half months we, as a company, had honed the hour long piece into a twenty minute physicalizing of the text. Wearing only a loin clothes over their privates, these two men and two women gave a sexually charged, gender-neutral performance that was arresting and insightful. Here we had the stage, the flesh, and the truth naked for an audience - it was undeniably engaging, even for those who were initially put off by the subject matter.

For the project I wrote the following notes:

Acting on the stage is a physical endeavor – an offering. In our daily lives we strive to live from physical act to physical act without regret, remorse, or guilt. Our precious consciousness breaks this. It would be much easier to fall from one bed to another, in and out of love with anonymous entities – whether the comfort of our own warmth or the presence, the scent, the arms, legs, lips, fingers, bare back, and hair of another. In love and in sex we are crippled by our mind, our intelligence, and our understanding of the condition that disallows us every one of our deepest desires. In rearranging Mamet’s work I have taken liberties with monologues that were assigned to two men and one women, recast them as dialogues in dueling tenses (the past in the present) and without regard to gender. Our interest is to find a universal, physical stage relative to each intimate encounter, prompted by music, impulse, and desire.

By working in these ways it leads to a repeatable process for the actor and director – one that is more focused on the work.

3. We’re all here together…

A gentle idea of inclusion. Bring your hand-drum, maracas. Warm up your voice. We're all here together, let's make something of it.

– asia and the flavors

The music of Buran is another unique component in our productions. In A Greater Release and in Nightmares I relied heavily on the original music of Christopher Luxem, whose collective embodiment of music follows in the ironic folk tradition of Loudon Wainwright, Harry Nilsson and Devandra Banhart. Although the music used in A Greater Release was pulled from previously written music by Christopher (and the improvisatory themes created by both he and Alicia Gian, who played the Faithful Troubadour and the Gypsy Poet, respectively), the music for Nightmares was written to fit the heightened physical encounters of the characters. By composing music in this manner, Christopher pushed towards the extremities of his own territory as an artist, creating music with the actor’s physical-life in mind.

Music is the language of humanity. There is a kind of elevation brought to the theatre when music is present – a sense of awe, a joy, a momentary surge of the sublime. The large company involved in the production of A Greater Release experienced this surge when we broke out in finality with Van Morrison's “Caravan,” bridging in a very physical way the gap between spectator and actor. Company members brought the audience onto the stage to dance and sing, having them follow us out of the theatre, and onto the streets. The play centered on the dizzying, overwhelming, spectacular sensation of travel in foreign lands. In a very real way, the audience partook in a “other” type of travel, a theatrical journey that led them elsewhere – and if nothing else, at least out of their seats.

The space between their experience as spectator and participant narrowed. Some of the spectators merely left the scene once we departed the theatre, others jumped into improvisatory songs and dances. Each night we spent another thirty minutes outside of the theatre performing with our audience.

The music we use for each production is influenced by many factors: by the actors, the text, the rehearsal methodology, the designers, and those influences that we allow to interrupt and enter into the process. These productions are not musicals but rather plays of a musical variance - as the music ties heavily to the songwriter's craft, as expressed earlier, in recent incidents the folk revelry of Christopher's collective musical offerings - which he terms as 'asia and the flavors' - has been used to augment rehearsals and performances. His own persuasion as a musical artist brings the same kind of passion and potpourri to the work that is typical of Buran.

This is what we look for.

Rather than finding a musical theatre artist or a composer of classical music, I sought out a singer-songwriter. Just as in the same fashion for scenic designs, my instinct is to find an interior decorator, an architect, a sculptor - someone outside of the theatrical realm who can implement their form into the production. This becomes a process not only about collaboration of different artistic expressions, but also a chance for new dialogue, for learning and exploration into areas unthought-of for every artist invested. The equation that I always find enlightening here is that by taking two forms (using any artistic model) and bringing them together, there is a quirky homogeny, a kind of queer balance and harmony in discovering the varying interpretations in rehearsal, design, and performance.

1+1 =1

This is the mathematics of Buran.

Christopher Luxem's 'asia and the flavors' project has a wonderful slogan that I find universal to any artist who wants to learn and explore through a different medium. Christopher writes on his website:

"asia and the flavors is the name of a collective of musicians organized by christopher luxem to include as many people as possible into the world of music. black/white left/right uptown/downtown, there are no boundaries, simply flavors for the tasting."

This open positivist world view is rare in today's commercial driven artistic society. Artists like Christopher and his collective gathering keep me and others in the company inspired - as we hope to continue working with him and other artists from all walks of life. In the 2004 production of In Black and White, which came before Buran was fully realized, I used a set design that arose out of collaboration between a painter, a graphic designer, and an architect, while implementing filmographic techniques and an original score of classically influenced music. This kind of group dynamic, filling the theatre with artists from distinctly different mediums and having them work towards a theatrical end, was blissful to watch and to be a part of that dialogue was inspiring in so many ways.

Without a doubt I believe and contend that there is a New Theatre emerging at the beginning of this 21st century. It is a theatre that is being returned to the spectator and to the artist.

We are the forerunners of this.

Theatre is not something to be hoarded by the select few, it should be given freely to as many as possible and this begins with the creation of new work for a new audience that we are seeking to cultivate.

Buran is placing itself in the center of this.

We want to maintain the bridges of communication between all artists who work with the company and delve into the varying modes of performance for a New Theatre that challenges both artists and audiences, allowing the actor and spectator to leave the theatre, the stage, and the community of bodies in that sacred space - conflicted and irrevocably changed.

4. The Rarity of Flesh

Our choice now, it seems to me, is either to accept or deny our current condition.

And it takes so much negative effort to deny.

For years I kept myself at a distance from technological advances – the iPod, the cell phone, social networking systems on the internet such as Facebook– because I felt these were somehow harmful to my creative life. My folly in this thinking was double-fold. By denying the culture I live in I was denying the possibility for a creative world, a new one, influenced by and for the great masses – the audience. I was merely not listening – fingers in my ears, listening to my own cries reverberate throughout my cavities.

I don’t believe the individual is losing power, in fact, I believe we are living in a time where a certain type of power is handed over to the individual. With the rise of social networking via Facebook or Myspace and the extreme popularity of YouTube where anyone can post just about anything, individuals are taking stake of their creative work in startling ways that allows for new audiences in ways never imagined. These types of audiences can be utilized in the theatre.

When so much time is spent watching the body on a screen, from a distance – flesh becomes a rarity. When we return to the theatre there is always the shock that, “He or she is doing this or that – right in front of me.” An act, a physical act, on the stage will remain and reverberate longer than any word spoken. Words lose their meaning as soon as they are said, an act lives on the stage forever.

Roman Catholics return to mass for the Holy Sacrament – unleavened bread turned into the Body of Christ, wine turned into the Blood of Christ. Audiences return to the theatre because we get the whole damned thing – the blood, the body, the organs, the soul, and most importantly, if we’re lucky, the truth.

There is much to learn about our current culture if we watch and listen, but we must remember what the theatre is for and why we’re doing it. Theatre is not film, nor is it television, or radio, or a painting, or a book. It is alive in the most profound ways – incomparable to any other form. We take stake in this and we must hold onto this. Audiences don’t come to the theatre to see something resembling a sitcom or a blockbuster – they come for the Body and Blood of the Truth.

Playwright Charles Mee (www.charlesmee.org) says that culture writes us first and as a consequence, we write culture. Therefore there is no such thing as an original idea; these concepts were given or handed down to us by our culture. By denying culture, by denying the wave and swimming against it we are putting our fingers in our ears and listening to our own cries reverberate. I am not trying to influence others to spend hours in front of the television, riding the wave through VH1, MTV, and CNN, or on the internet mindlessly surfing – but rather, not to deny what is being consumed because it informs our work in drastic ways. If we listen closely we can hear our audience, that audience of a New Theatre who craves the flesh due to the direction our culture pushes away from it.

Perhaps it is my idealism that leads me to believe that no single figure will ever become powerful enough to singularly dictate culture. Corporations - ABC –GAP – Time Warner – Churches- The Government – The Bushes- Yada Yada- etc. – can influence what we see and hear, but culture, that great mass, our audience, will go where they want regardless of what is shoved down their throat. This is something I must believe in.

If nothing else, I’ve been convinced in my short time living and breathing amongst others, that a deep faith in humanity is humbling and necessary to move forward in these quickly advancing times.

I rest my faith and my livelihood in the desire and quench for truth in the flesh.

5. Nightmares: An Example of Buran in Action

Sex is the ultimate body language…When somebody’s in pain and says “I love you,” you don’t know if it’s true. When they scream, you know it’s real.

-Ang Lee on Lust, Caution

How does an actor physicalize an idea, mobilize a concept, create a dialogue of extremities, engage an audience by warranting their responsibility – how does an actor make a painting, a seemingly static piece of work come to life, in particular a painting of such instantaneous and irrational eroticism such as Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare? In directing my play Nightmares: An Artful Demonstration of the Sublime with the Buran Company a language had to be created, a new landscape on which to build a method of training and rehearsal that was specific to the script, to the production, and to the company of actors. In the rehearsal process for every production it is an ideal, especially for the Buran Company, that there is a constructed, shared dialogue between actor and director and designers; but the process for this production is one that I consider repeatable and that I will continue to use in my work with the company as we leave the cradle of academia and take a step into professional theatre.

Though the performances were well received in February 2008 at the Lawrence Arts Center it was the process that was central to this research. The two months leading up to the performances, the five to six hours spent daily in devised rehearsals during the winter, creating this system in close proximity to one another where trust and space were key elements. Since the experience was process oriented it is only appropriate that I lead you through our rehearsals, where my research took place, discoveries were made, and the relationship between the actor and the spectator was significantly explored.

From my journal, written on the morning of auditions for Nightmares:

We tend to compartmentalize our bodies – we’re not as tall or wide or long or even strange as we think ourselves – our bodies to be. Our bodies are a canvas. This compartmentalizing can be seen as economics at play, habits of culture & identity & gender. Our physical world is wider & grander than our intellectual or verbal world. An actor does not do –he or she responds – responds to impulses. But an ear for physical impulse must be honed.

What we’re looking for are the extremities. An actor on stage will produce the impossible. That is an actor’s position in the theatre, to create a universe of impossible possibilities.

As my journal entry demonstrates, I think in too precious of tones - for the actor to obtain the fullest amount of physical expression the inner world has to be prepared, has to be sitting on the threshold of purity, of openness prompted and awaiting discoveries. This form of expression involves every organ – it involves the actor’s heart, mind, lungs, groin. This is not a science, but an equation can enter into it, as I will later demonstrate. But before adding anything to the actor’s expression in rehearsal we had to strip away a lot of baggage, the everyday world in which we each inhabit and that inhabits (inhibits) us. Our rehearsals during this time of discovery were divided daily into two parts. In the afternoon we would spend two to three hours working physically and in the evening we would spend another two to three hours bringing that physical work to the text. These afternoon rehearsals were conducted with the notion of opening up the vessel of the actor for the fullest amount of physical and emotional expression. Conducted mostly in our underwear and then in the nude we were able to watch, as a company, these inhibitions loosen and fall from the guard of the actor. An hour prior to rehearsal beginning I would arrive in the rehearsal space and reconstruct its appearance down to the minutest details so the actors would enter daily in a space that was ever so slightly changing in direct relation to their change. This element of the rehearsal process successfully went unnoticed.

As soon as the actors arrived, the doors of the rehearsal room shutting behind them, a precedent was set that the outside world was of no concern and that we were investing ourselves in the work and only the work. Many of the introductory exercises I garnered from the writings and physical approach to acting of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, especially his plastique isolations, isolating every part of the actor’s body – from the eyelids to the neck to the wrists, fingers, down to the knees and feet. What designates something a plastique is that the movement is specific, that it is filled with life and that it is related to an image. The role of images was central to our understanding of the text as we always returned to the paintings of Henry Fuseli and his contemporaries as a signal.

Rehearsals began with the actor’s finding a safe space to conduct their initial warm-ups and then, when they felt this space was adequately explored, they would disrobe. By giving the actor a sense of responsibility and allowing for personal time and space in the rehearsal, we all found ourselves disarmed quicker than we had prepared for and surprisingly, feeling extremely comfortable with it. After disrobing - a range of physical, interactive exercises followed, with the main intention being physical engagement of the body, an awareness of sight, and the possibility for a physical encounter. This stripping away, both literally and figuratively, gave us more options as we began to add textures that were initiated by with the physical world of the actor, responding only to impulse and instinct. Answering first with the body and then with the mind. In an exercise actors were asked to walk back and forth across the rehearsal space as I prompted them with questions about their characters, these questions soon became very personal and charged. These Character Walks, without the armor of clothing, jewelry, make up, or any other guard worn by both actor and spectator in the theatrical arena, opened up insights and discoveries that were unprecedented.

This led us right into the heart of our work – the Five Point Method, used primarily by artists and our chief subject, Henry Fuseli. The Five Point Method as I interpret it became a useful tool for engaging actors with the text and their world on the stage in electrifying and interactive ways. To quote the text of the play:

By using this definition of the Five Point Method we plunged into the life of the text working towards extremities. There are two exercises I devised in attempts that we could explore the possibilities of the Five Points. In the first of these explorations the actors again sought a safe space to warm up, first trying many other spaces in the rehearsal room that deemed not as safe or as comfortable as others to disrobe. After disrobing the actors came into the middle of the space making contact, engaging at their own will. I always had orchestral music playing to spur physical contact, a method I use in all physical explorative exercises as a director. In the case of these rehearsals I found myself primarily using the music of Ravel, Stravinsky, Astor Piazolla, and traditional Kabuki music. (Previously with The Sensualist we found ourselves with Leonard Cohen, Elvis Costello, Nina Simone and again, Stravinksy.) I placed enclosed units of space marked by standing mats. The circular space in these mats had a radius of two and a half to three feet. The music continued to play as the actors walked the entirety of the rehearsal space engaging their bodies, their eyes, and the forward initiative of movement - moving in and out of the center of the room in unrepeatable formations. The actors at their own will chose when to enter the units of space. Once the actors chose to enter into these spaces they were given an object or two – sometimes a chair, a coat hanger, a ball, a sheet, etc. The rule was that at some point there must be a confrontation with another actor leading to an elongated engagement. These explorations found the actors enabling every part of their bodies – there was a constant struggle in the muscles, in the eyes, in their brows. Once they had a confrontation in the units of space the actors were free to exit the unit and watch from outside at another vantage point, or walk the area surrounding the unit of space. These explorations lasted up to an hour at a time and by the end of each exercise the actors had exhausted their habitual bodily arrangements and began to find new rhythms, themes, mutations, and forms in relation to one another. These explorations then were two-fold, in fluxing the Five Point Method and in character relationship building.

The second exploration that relied heavily on the Five Point Method for Actors was an exercise I titled Building Sculptures. As I explained it in rehearsal, “This exercise is about an expression of opinion, emotion, artistic fervor – without speaking, using only the bodies of the other participants and “sculpting” with them a group of statues in a way that your idea becomes evident. The only rule is that the actors all must be touching one another.”

This exercise had two parts – the first being the actor’s participation as the sculptor and their fellow actors as the mold by which to construct their sometimes epic sculpture. This exercise, done in the nude, portrayed the Five Point Method most predominately. After maintaining often excruciating elegant poses, the sculptor-actor asked the molded-actors to begin moving, transitioning into another moment of the sculpture. Using the motion that the sculptor-actor had placed in their muscles at the moment of conception, so to speak, the group of molded-actors began to engage with one another, moving, physically discovering moment to moment where their bodies would lead them in relation to the body of the other molded-actor they had been attached to. When the sculptor-actor felt as if their sculpture had reached a moment of finality they asked the molded-actors to pause again before releasing from the exercise. The sculptor-actor then replaced a molded-actor who took the position of sculptor-actor. This going in and out of roles was extremely important to our work as it leads to the next topic of research and innovation in rehearsals – the role of the spectator and the playwright in relation to the actor on stage.

In this area I drew heavily from Augusto Boal’s writings in Theatre of the Oppressed and his Joker System. “We propose a ‘Joker’ who is a contemporary or neighbor of the spectator. For this is necessary to restrict his ‘explanations’, it is necessary to move him away from the other characters, to bring him close to the spectators” (Boal, 175). The role of the Uber-Joker, as I termed it in this instance, was filled by the role of the Narrator who reveals himself to be Henry Fuseli, only to later reveal himself to be the playwright, Adam R. Burnett.

The Joker’s function is “the only one that can perform any role in the play, being able even to replace the protagonist when the latter’s realistic nature prevents him from doing something” (182). I built upon Boal’s notion of the Joker, which is closely tied to his Arena Theatre in Sao Paolo, Brazil. By inserting an Uber-Joker, the voice of the actor-spectator, I felt it necessary for there to be Quisling-Jokers, the collaborators of the Uber-Joker. These came in the forms of two actors, one male and one female, who took the role of many characters without any regard to age or gender. This trio of Joker’s engendered a dialogue between the audience and the action of the play. At certain points Fuseli would come out to the audience and ask them how they were feeling, how they thought the play was progressing, whether or not they had had enough yet. The Quisling-Jokers did not interact as obviously, but by shifting in and out of roles (Drop in. Drop out. Pick up. Pick out. Choose. And weave.) a thread was created and by the time they reached their last formation – two bumbling Investigators ala Chico and Harpo Marx, the audience had become desensitized to the violence on stage, not so much the physical violence that takes place on stage (soaring angry speeches by an embittered professor, a husband raping his wife, self inflicted paper cuts, a fantastical nude display of Fuseli’s Nightmare, etc), but rather the violence of language, of gesture, alienation. To quote Boal one last time from his chapter on “The Poetics of the Opressed”:

The spectator is less than a man and it is necessary to humanize him, to restore to him his capacity of action in all its fullness. He too must be a subject, an actor on an equal place with those generally accepted as actors, who must also be spectators. All these experiments – the liberation of the spectator, on whom the theatre has imposed finished visions of the world.

In performances of Nightmares..., the dynamics of the relationship between actor and spectator became very clear. At the end of the first act, Henry Fuseli (played by actor Justin Knudsen) repositioned himself to sitting in the audience to watch the act of rape occur beneath the proscenium arch. As the lights faded to black – Justin asked blankly to the spectator sitting next to him, in a tone that was hushed and pointed, “How does that make you feel?” He then brought it out again, louder, “How does that make you feel?” And a third time to everyone, “How does that make you feel?” During one performance he asked the question the first time and a spectator burst into tears. The ability to reposition himself – to be on stage for the spectator had given him the volition to perform for everyone in the theatre that night. If a spectator did jump boat and leave before the end of the play, it was not due to the overt sexuality, or violence - but because Justin Knudsen, the actor, as Henry Fuseli was constantly making the spectator aware of the theatrics. The melodrama of the action and the commentary of Knudsen became emotionally, and perhaps physically, overwhelming for them.

The audience must go through something while they are still in the space. We lead them towards catharsis so that when they do leave there is safety in numbers.

If we cannot confront these issues in our theatres, where are we going to confront them? Not in our Cineplex’s, not in our art galleries, not at our daily Sunday service – but in the flesh, in the only communal gathering space where we are shown ourselves.

The theatre is a world of the unfinished. And it is my intent, and the intent of the Buran Theatre Company to delve into the unfinished and create theatre for a modern audience, theatre that can alter, can change, can bring the spectator back to the stage, back into the action. The actor is complete, just like the spectator, when they walk into the space, any space. In a process of rehearsal you cannot aim to change the actor, make them become the character by some alchemy or an abundance of makeup and a wig, but I hope this analogy, The Five Point Method, will continue to aid me and perhaps others in discovering new terrains of performance methodology.

We live in an American culture inundated by mass media –a constant choosing to forget – yes, our forgetting, it is a choosing we do. So we must represent all of that in the flesh, which is shared. And if we can release that, it might save us.

This is why we need theatre now more than ever.

I was trying to consider a solution to the great hubs of culture in America – New York, Chicago, LA, Seattle, Atlanta – all the places my fellow artists were scurrying off to and I was, more likely than not, joining them in these epicenters of American culture. I concluded that Buran must be everywhere, because it can be. Wherever two or more are gathered, to be religious! But sincerely, if Buran is everywhere, Buran is everyone. This open minded approach to the theatre, paired with an understanding of the complex culture we are representing makes me optimistic for the future of a New Theatre. And it must be a “grass roots” effort. It cannot be commercial. And it must be for the people – not the impoverished, or the rich, or the poor, or the hungry, or the overfed. We do no choosing. We do not call out to any group, any section, any race, any creed, any man, any woman – we call out to everyone. Because we’re all in this together.

The artist, the true artist, has come to see himself as less than human – I echo Boal here, but we don’t see ourselves as worthy (if we ‘re worth anything). All an artist asks is to be reimbursed for their art – not paid, not praised, not awarded – reimbursed. And often, it is in that give and take with the spectator where we are all reimbursed, given something back as we return in offer.

I will continue working with this method of acting, to continue my research in this direction. Just as there is no fixity in theatre, no such thing as a flawless performance, my work with the Buran Theatre Company will never be finished and never absolute. As long as there is the presence of the audience, that relationship between the actor and the spectator, the unpredictability that makes the human will so strong in the indefinite space between the two, there is the hope that the theatre will always remain a restless reminder of possibility.

6. The Mission of Buran

· Producing new theatre that challenges the relationship between spectator and actor- bringing the spectator back to the stage.

· Bridging the gap between theatre artists and other forms of artistic expression: music, dance, architecture, design, sculpture...

· Working in a sensitive environment that allows for an open collaborative process between the actor, the text, and the audience.

· Research on physical acting via text, music, and experimental methods relating to the role of the audience and the global community.

· Creating theatre in as many environments and communities as possible to discover new audiences.

These are the current tenants of the Buran Company and they will undoubtedly change as we add to our repertoire new plays, new places, and new faces. We are setting up satellite systems around the globe for Buran – company member’s Justin Knudsen and Brady Blevins in Minneapolis, Lara Thomas and Jenna Bleecker in Los Angeles, Meghan Reardon in Chicago, Meg Saricks in Kansas City, Alica Gian in Vilnius, Lithuania, and myself and Stephen Ferrell in New York City.

By creating this system of satellites it is the hope that the Buran Company will find a place in all of these communities, garnering new plays, new actors, new directions, and new visions that will one day open itself up for a permanent home – a place for the artist, to conduct their work- safe and uninterrupted - a space, a theatre they can finally call home.

7. The Future of Buran

It is imperative we consider the next work.

The next work to unite us – to ignite us.

All there is to consider is the next work and I’ve done so much time considering work that has already been done. But these plays, specifically The Sensualist, A Greater Release, and Nightmares are the forerunners of the Buran plays to come. Our work as theatre artists, whether with the Buran Company or not, is to conduct ourselves as forerunners. Virginia Woolf said something to this effect – and in a much more dignified and startling fashion than I ever could.

But it’s true.

We are signaling towards the future of theatre.

Our generation needs it more than any other.

When the flesh has become such a rarity – the stage is more shocking and vital than ever. We must continue to work and discover means to consider the spectator in our work. If we don’t, we lose them. We need them as much they need us.

I have spent this time writing about my own work, my plays that have served as exploration for the Buran Company, but my deepest desire is to share this company with others – others whose visions will shape the theatre.

Playwrights.

Directors.

Actors.

Singers.

Dancers

Designers.

Architects.

Songwriters.

Sculptors.

Painters.

Storytellers.

Craftsmen.

Belly dancers.

Come to our home!

Our home is where you are and we are ready to create and invite and share the spectacle of our collaborative work. It is a feat of the impossible, as every production is, but it is a feat well worth the taking especially when the energy is so palpable and present.

When writing the notes that accompanied the production of Nightmares I felt it was put quite appropriately, the spirit and soul which this company creates and will continue to create by:

It is vital to the human experience that we return to the dark places of our soul. As we expressed it in rehearsals- "shine a light in on the dark closet to discover what's hiding there." We shut that closet tight because it scares us. Rightfully so. What we find is often surprising, maddening, terrifying, and very powerful - we cannot function day to day accompanied with a gale of such overwhelming emotions. Keeping the closet locked day in and day out, through the potential fear of the night and the terror that lurks in our heart, our mind, our extremities; we are imprisoning the essential material of the soul.

If we ignore our soul, we ignore what gives rise to soaring flight - flight in action, in thought, in inspiration, in love, in creation, and as we attempt to do as theatre artists, flight on the stage. What we share when we shine the light into that dark closet together is strength in unity. Merely being amongst one another, in this social union, in the theatre for a few passing hours, we can handle anything. As a community in this space we are unstoppable, unbreakable, making flight achievable for every spectator in the darkened audience and every actor on the lit stage. The relation between actor and spectator defies logic, allowing our souls an escape to sing, or scream, or laugh, and we find the potential for soaring.

And this is not my poetry, this is my reasoning.

Special thanks
to Dr. Henry Bial, Stephen Ferrell, Alicia Gian, Ron Willis,

Russ & Vicki Burnett, Vicki & Edward Fulmer, Christopher Luxem,

Lara Thomas, Tom Picasso, and Charles Mee