The Cotton Plantation: Audience Response

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

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

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.

-------------
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

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

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

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

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