closeencountersofthedevisedkind

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

an end (of sorts)

IT IS OVER AND I FEEL UNSTOPPABLE.

I am still riding the high of seeing all of my friends and peers experiencing my work, but I’m equal parts sad and relieved that it’s done.

I was really anxious about the fact that we hadn’t run the show all the way through without stopping, but our incredible performance and tech teams came together and it went so so well. It was by no means perfect, and we had some issues with the Virgin piece (which was my biggest worry, and we forgot a lighting cue and it messed up the rhythm of the show slightly), but we recovered and continued and redeemed ourselves. I didn’t worry too much since the Virgin was our first transformation, so the rest looked just that much more powerful (keep those expectations low!).

The show looked really incredible, and it felt so cool to work with all of these women on a piece where we were the actors/directors/choreographers/playwrights all at once. There was that feeling of collective jitters as we all met the morning of the show to get ready and run some technical stuff, and I think that adrenaline really carried through our piece. During the piece, I loved looking at the audience and seeing my friend’s reactions who hadn’t been in the process with us, but I especially loved seeing the people from the other group because it reminded me of how far we’ve all come as a class and as creatives. There was a moment where I heard something fall as I was delivering the last line of my Bitch monologue, but it was about me destroying the system and timed out so perfectly it was unreal.

The feedback Emma and our classmates gave us after the show was the most validating part of this whole process. Our aesthetic was fully realized, the transformations ran smoother than they ever have, and I think our hyper-feminine costumes/pink lighting/gold glitter wall juxtaposed perfectly with the increasing grotesqueness of each transformation. Emma said she liked our Virgin piece, which she had previously critiqued the most, and it felt good knowing our main note was to include marginalized women if we were to stage it again, which I agree with wholeheartedly (we just couldn’t do those stories justice with the composition of our present group).

The other piece was also absolutely incredible, and I was honored that they asked me to help with lighting. I loved seeing their piece come to fruition, and how even little last-minute details like the glow stick picture frame made such an impact.

I think the most rewarding comment by far was from Emma, when she said our piece was sophisticated but dangerous, and made the audience feel uncomfortable with their complicity. We went beyond expressing women’s struggle through text and transformation, and our audience interaction (both literal and through the “applause” sign) called them out and forced them to cheer on the disturbing subjugation of the female tropes on stage. We made our audience consider their role in contributing to modern sexism, and Emma said we found our voice and took complete ownership of what we were saying.

I am so proud. I am so happy. I am so excited to continue creating and I am going to miss creating with these amazing women. Here’s to you, Miss Perfect Woman.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

the final countdown: december 3-10

Monday in class was our first full run in the space and gave us a great idea of what we can expect. Emma gave us feedback about our content and her biggest suggestion was related to the Virgin’s piece and finding a difference between show and tell; we’ve since reworked it, cutting down the bible story so we are telling the tale through pantomime while Emily T. delivers her monologue in a way that is hopefully less literal. Emily H. made a full technical script, compiling all of our work into a comprehensive document that I know will be my Bible for the next week. We’ve refined the dog transformation, assigning who reads which tweet and selecting which phrases we’ll repeat from each phrase. This week, we’ve fully fleshed out the script, assembled our tech (thank you Hannah and Tori), and run a rough cue-to-cue of what we can expect. We buckled down and worked out all of the technical elements we’d been missing (ie. hand-coloring pink light bulbs for 45 minutes and making fake blood). We need to work the most on our transitions and just running the piece start to finish without stopping; I am most worried about what we will do if we mess up, just because we’ve been stopping every time a mistake happens, but I know that’s true for most rehearsals. Monday night, we met in the space and fully arranged up our set and lighting, which looks incredibly cool and just pulled it all together. While we technically didn’t do a single run all the way through, I feel so much better about this piece than I was expecting to and I’m really excited for people to see it. I knew it would come together by the end, but I didn’t know how well it would, and this week just really drilled home the fact that we have a show! And it’s saying something important! And it’s saying it well! And we’re f*cking proud of it! I think it’s going to go really well because it’s a good show even if there are mistakes, and we’re starting to flesh out all of the technical aspects of performance that we’ve been uncertain on and have previously stressed me out.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

december 2: completion

Today might have been our most productive meeting we’ve ever had--we knew we were down to the wire and needed to just buckle down and get it done, and finally, IT IS DONE!! Set pieces are starting to get here, basically everyone has their costumes, and it’s just now hitting us that we actually have a show.

We began our props work, reassigned Emily H.’s mother dress to the Slut, created our puppet sticks, and made a loose plan for the Virgin’s bloody apple. This was the first time we had a chance to actually work out and stage the Mother’s transformation, which was one I was really worried about just because I hadn’t seen the creation process, but it was super straightforward and effective. I think it’s simple in a really good way, and lets Emily’s monologue and our actions speak for themselves; the Mother is one of my new favorite transformations and absolutely not a source of worry for the performance (thank god).

After this, we sat down and began to work through all of our technical shadow puppetry. This process by far took the longest, and we struggled with being compelling without being too literal, and challenged ourselves to play with scale and perspective. I think adding Emily’s monologue really made a difference and made our point more effectively realized. During this part of the devising process, I found myself getting frustrated with Jaden because she complained a lot and got caught up in details I don’t think we needed to focus on until we had a fully realized piece, but we still worked together and got there. This is the piece I’m most worried about because it depends on a lot of elements we can’t work a lot (ie. bloody apple) and Emily Turner has not contributed much to her transformation or the overall piece, so I’m worried about memorization.

After realizing the Virgin and Slut don’t work in the same moment, we decided to give the Slut her own moment, and used a really incredible audio clip Claire had made compiling some of our male classmates saying exact interviews/blogs/quotes of various men talking about sluts. This piece is also simple and straightforward, and we’re incorporating a game of telephone that will hopefully make the audience feel responsible again.

Finally, we worked on my transformation as the Bitch, settling on the Bitch Manifesto I had found in my research and the SCUM Manifesto Emily Hayne’s had found. We decided the Bitch will be a dissenter who speaks out against the male voice, and while we didn’t write the entire text at rehearsal because the night was winding down, I volunteered to create the dialogue and play with interruptions/arguments with the male voice. I’m nervous about my piece being too text-heavy and I don’t want to talk at the audience, but at the same time our piece is an exploration of language and I am the bitch, so I think it will work out.

I feel like a weight has been lifted know that we’ve made a fully realized show. There are obviously elements to clean and refine and edit, but we don’t have any blank spaces or hypotheticals left, which feels damn good. I’m so incredibly proud of us and our piece feels like it has a lot of potential.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

rehearsal #? (november 26)

Today was our first full meeting as a group in a phat minute, and even though we were crammed into a tiny classroom and couldn’t physically execute much, it was really nice to just brainstorm all together and make a game plan for our remaining transformations. Everyone was exhausted, but we decided the slut and the virgin could probably have more fully realized moments if they transformed separately, and we decided to keep the bed idea for the slut and lose it for the virgin, but keep the use of a sheet for some shadow puppetry so the two have the bed/sheets motif in common as they are our two characters most concerned with sexuality and intimacy.

After some conversation about what exactly we would portray behind the sheet for the Virgin’s transformation, we touched upon the story of the Fall of Man and focusing on Eve’s story. Emily Turner expressed she didn’t want it to seem like a religious condemnation and Emily Haynes expressed how she felt about it as a religious person, and I think this piece is something we really have to be careful about. I don’t want to offend anyone or have the concept of religion distract from our main focus of language and the patriarchy, but I also think religion is largely controlled by the patriarchy and using this incredibly well-known story as a lens through which to look at society’s historical treatment of women is going to be interesting. This is the piece we currently feel the least sure about, and I’m concerned about upsetting any of my religious peers because I am not personally religious, but we have nearly every transformation planned now and that is a feat in itself.

This meeting was again mostly discussion, though this time it was primarily because we didn’t have the room to create. I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Emily Turner, as we have each created a google doc for our character and have been regularly adding our text/research/contributions to the piece, and I feel as though she is consistently late and does not contribute at all in terms of content, but she still has a positive attitude and listens well, so I appreciate that she is relatively easy to work with and makes up for her lack of contribution in terms of cooperativity.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

sick 4 rehearsal

I was sick with a 101 degree fever all weekend, and stayed home from our rehearsal today, which majorly sucked. However, Kat, Emily H., and Jaden worked together to create this really cool puppetry-inspired piece. I’ve only read its description on our google docs and from what they have told me, so I’m very excited to be back and see this on its feet. 3/6 of our transformations are fully realized, and while I’m still nervous about our impending deadline, it feels really good to know we’re essentially halfway there.

The girls also created a props list and assigned people to purchase different items, which is the type of technically detailed practical work I struggle with and we need. I think this piece is going to be more technically advanced than we thought, because it still needs lots of sound and lighting cues even though we aren’t using the projector or anything. I’m worried about all of the elements coming together smoothly, but I’m ready to catch up with what I’ve missed and I’m feeling increasingly proud of the work we’ve done.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

questions to ask when creating (as transcribed by Emily H.):

Point of View:

Whose story is it?

How does the theme/subject matter chance according to who tells the story?

Is the storyteller seen? Implied? Embedded?

Who is asking the question?

Storytelling Techniques:

How are you telling the story?

What’s the genre?

How can you employ forms from other genres?

Ballet/puppetry/historical greek chorus/vaudeville/lip sync/table top

Scale:

How to use objects or ideas that are VERY big or VERY small and how to switch between those two.

Architecture:

How are you using available space?

How can you wake up the space you’re using?

Audience:

What is the relationship of the actors to the audience?

How should the audience feel? Are they peeping toms? Are they a jury?

What is their role at said event?

Framing Devices:

What creates borders/edges around the playing space?

How do you interact with those borders? How and when do you change those borders?

Light and Color:

You should probably have some

Or have none, but be intentional about that

Languages:

How do you communicate?

Verbal speech?

Written text?

Character:

What defines a character?

Where does the character emerge from?

Playworld:

What is your play world?

Arena? Landscape? Playground? World of play?

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

scratch rehearsal + performance

Our scratch performance was Monday, and we had concretely prepared little to nothing, so we met Sunday night to work it all out and throw something together that was useable. Emma said it did not have to be linear or structured, so we decided to choreograph two transformations and perfect them. Even though Emily H. was unable to make rehearsal, she still contributed so, so much and created an opening dialogue for us that was an absolute lifesaver. I think Emily H., Kat, and I have kind of assumed roles as leaders, and Emily was missed deeply at rehearsal, but I know she is dealing with a personal event and hope she’s doing okay.

After picking a song to put under Emily’s opening text and writing a bit of an intro for the disembodied male voice, we decided to work on the transformations of the Wife and the Bitch. These took a while to figure out, but I’m really proud of the Wife’s transformation. We had mentioned vintage sexist ads in a much earlier meeting, and it came up again today, so Emily found a housewife handbook from the 1950’s and we spliced it with a bunch of modern blog entries about marriage that Kat had found in her character research to emphasize our question. We decided the wife’s transformation would be a sort of unraveling of her facade, and I choreographed a dance to a song Claire put on our playlist. Then we used some contact improv and choreography from stage combat to make the scene dark, and ended up with a really cool piece that felt like it had a kind of tangible danger to it. We haven’t exactly figured out where our audience will be, but this piece leaves the stage and travels through the space, which I’m hoping will make people uncomfortable and make them feel complicit in violence against women. The idea of intentionally choosing where is onstage and where is offstage was something we played with a lot, and I think our piece feels very intimate at the moment which is exciting.

After this, we began the dog transformation, which we really struggled with for a while. Kat and I had a debate with Jaden about using found text, because some parties wanted to use a pre-existing monologue from a play and some of us felt like that wouldn’t be helpful. Emily H. again saved the day and compiled a list of Trump tweets/quotes about women, which we then organized into a list we would read while the dog transformation happens alone onstage. We decided to play with audience responsibility again by sitting in the audience and asking them to read tweets out loud while the woman in front of them becomes increasingly distraught. I’m really worried about how this will go because we put it together so last-minute, but I feel really good about the actual content we created and we can always polish/edit later.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to work with everyone’s schedules and locations, as we all live in different buildings and people travel on weekends and I feel like we aren’t communicating as well as we should be. One of our teammates showed up to this rehearsal about two hours late and left early, which was really frustrating as she missed the majority of what we did and did not contribute much, so we basically just ended up assigning her lighting cues for now and will work her in later. I’m nervous about tomorrow, but I’m excited for our group to be reunited in full and continue working off of this launchpad we’ve made.

In class Monday, we played a new game similar to Bibbity Bibbity Bop before launching into a game of Duck Duck Goose (this game makes me so nervous I am always afraid of getting hurt). Then, the scratch performances.

Our piece actually went really well, and I’m impressed by how we managed to come together. No, it wasn’t fluid or clean, but we had managed to use most of the text that Emily H. had so wonderfully compiled, and we explored our question and set the tone for the rest of our piece in a way that was really exciting. It felt as though we’ve finally got the ball rolling in the direction we want it to go. I’d been worried these past few weeks that the other team’s piece would be much more put together than ours because they’ve been rehearsing regularly and have a solid body of work to go off of, and we’ve seen their work and it looks amazing. Today, their piece was as incredible as I expected, but I didn’t compare our works, which I took as a sign I was also proud of our work! I think their piece is very clean and technologically advanced, and I’m excited to see it push the limits a little bit more in terms of content, because right now it seems heartfelt, beautiful, and safe. Their feedback for us was really great, and we were challenged to clean up our tech, decide the role of our audience, and how we will blend all of our elements together.

Overall, today’s class was really productive and a gratifying sign both pieces are headed in exciting, promising directions. There is something so incredible about creating original work, and today was a great reminder of that.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

day nine: sleep-deprived but productive

Today’s class was weird, partially because it’s not a usual day/time for class and partially because we were in a much more limited space. I think our energy was off for class today, the task set before us was daunting, and we again found ourselves stuck on talking instead of doing.

After a game of King John, we were put in our groups and given 20 minutes to play with a series of rules (ie. 10 seconds of stillness, one movement repeated 15 times, maximum 6 lines of text, object revelation, etc.). While we talked a lot for this, we eventually got into a groove and created a piece I was really proud of using some of the text Emma gave our group earlier. Our piece began with five of us doing a series of movements we associate with typical female behavior (hair flip, leg cross, nail examine) before noticing the odd woman out. Then, we pinned her down and coated her in lipstick. Dark beauty is something I’m really fascinated by, and I hope the dark underbelly of normal behaviors/the evil behind all of the glitz and glamour is something we continue to explore in our piece.

After this, we moved into a subtext exercise that we played with for the majority of the class, in which we asked different women interview questions and they answered in character while we wrote their internal thoughts as subtext. This was really interesting to me and we got a lot of useful content, especially as we worked with the women both individually and in relation to one another. However, I think we might have gone on with this exercise for too long as it is the closest exercise to talking over action and I am hyper-aware of our tendency to fall into discussion.

After this, we worked in tableau, which is nice and quick and allowed us to play with a lot of options. We had one girl stand and watch as the rest of us formed poses as her character, we had all of the characters interacting, and we had our interview trios interact. It was a really great way to explore our characters dynamics that forced us to act quickly and not overthink.

This exercise was short, and we ended with a 1x1 scale story of a virgin transforming into a slut. This piece was also really enjoyable, but I could tell my exhaustion was kicking in towards the end of class as I felt increasingly distant from the pieces we were making. I’m exhausted and still worried about the (26!) days leading up to our performance, but I think today forced us to sit down and work out things we hadn’t yet. Today forced us to just accept our established universe and create within it, and we made a lot of usable content I think can be transferred in some way or another into our final product.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

day eight: soundscapes

This class was an exploration of sound and music that I found really engaging, and I continue to enjoy the way we explore the various sensory elements of creating a piece. After another word-association-brain-dump, we were split into groups and given a text meant to inspire our choices in sound. I love listening to other people’s music tastes because I think it gives a great insight into their personalities, and we settled on an instrumental piece from The Inheritance because it was somewhat unexpected and allowed for us to speak over it with a sense of drama and rhythm; however, in terms of songs presented, I thought Emily H.’s song “O Superman” was the most interesting, and I listened to by myself it after class. This piece seemed like one of the easier pieces we’ve made in class, as we had a limited amount of time and essentially just read the piece out loud, altering who said what and when as our main element. Though it was straightforward, I think it was effective and we got positive feedback about the words we chose to emphasize and our use of sound/language.

Then we focused on making our own sounds, which was really interesting, and I really liked the ideas presented by my group, from playing with our placement in the space to the actual rhythm and emotion of the piece. It became a sort of STOMP-esque soundscape, with layers of footsteps and whispers and tears and scratches that I felt really good about. Tori and Hannah are some of my favorite people to work with, and it felt nice to just listen and do what people suggested and hear how we played off of one another.

After this we had a brief group meeting, and decided to embrace this use of sound and each send 3-5 songs that inspire us about our piece. I put them all into one playlist and listened to it for the rest of the day (JAMZ on JAMZ), and hearing everyone’s music honestly provided a lot of ideas to launch off of for our piece. Emma also challenged us to come to class tomorrow with some of the exercises we’ve done in class in mind to explore further.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

out-of-class meeting

Our first meeting outside of class was exactly that: a lot of firsts. This meeting really seemed like it was punctuated by uncertainty, and consisted mostly of working out details of our pageant structure and how exactly we want this piece to come across. We figured out the general energy of the piece and began to figure out which characters we wanted to directly compare to one another or at least have some type of connection (ie. slut and virgin). I feel like a good majority of our group is contributing equally, and we have each assumed relative roles (ie. Emily H. keeps us focused and organized, Claire offers suggestions for technical production, etc.), but I do feel as though not everyone is contributing equally and I’m worried about five of us having to compensate for a weak link, which may not be the best attitude to have about an ensemble, but it is my current attitude.

We debated between having a linear plot with a beginning/middle/end, but I worried about our time limit and that the details of the beauty pageant might distract from the point we’re trying to make artistically and suggested we just focus on the interview portion and use repetition as a plot device that we can break/play with as each character transforms. Emily H. and I had a bit of a debate about including things like the swimsuit portion, but I generally think it was a productive dialogue and we managed to communicate differing opinions without ever slipping into aggression or hostility, which I really valued and took as a sign our group will be able to work past differences well.

I really loved the transformations we began to play with, and Emily H. took notes so we could have a reference point later in the process which my goldfish-length memory will deeply appreciate down the road. I am continuously worried about the ticking clock and I can feel us getting stuck in a rut of talking instead of doing, but I know I’m not doing anything to help us out of that rut so I am fully responsible. I’m happy about the roots we’ve put down for our piece, and I’m curious to see how we use our voices and what we’re going to say. I hope it will create the effect we want it to create, and I am equal parts nervous and excited.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

day seven: so it goes.

The tone of class has started to shift from learning to doing within our groups, and we meet outside of class in an effort to start to explore our Question, Anchor, and Skeleton before break. After a lot of debate, discussion, and refining, we reached the conclusion that our question was “What do you see? What do I see?” in relation to women’s bodies and the perceptions of modern beauty. Our anchor was going to be mirrors, as it was something several of us included in our inspiring works of art, and our skeleton was going to a be a beauty pageant in which we compete as stereotypical female tropes for the role of “Miss Perfect Woman.”

In class today, after a few rounds of keepy-uppy, King John, and Big Booty, Emma heard our pitch and gave us feedback about our anchor/question/skeleton, which I don’t think we had fully understood in concept. Eventually, we realized that the beauty pageant is our anchor and the female tropes are our skeleton/structure, and we cut mirrors as a major theme before forming our final question: “To what extent is language a weapon of the patriarchy?,” which is more badass than I even thought possible. After forming this much more detailed question (with a lot of help from Emma), we could finally hone in on what exact aspect of the female experience we wanted to explore, and we decided to focus on the more subtle ways sexism permeates modern language, and how it’s much more covert than the more obvious misogyny of previous generations but it’s still there.

After this, we decided which tropes we wanted to focus on and created a loose cast list, settling on the Slut (Claire), the Virgin (Emily T.), the Mother (Emily H.), the Wife (Kat), the Bitch (me), and the Dog (Jaden). This was probably around where we started to lose our steam as a group, as Emma challenged us to get on our feet and create something based off of our conversation. It was difficult to shift from completely thought-and-word-based exercise to physically executing those ideas, especially as there were no rules imposed. We spent a really long time at the whiteboard word-associating before finally starting to work. I think we spent too long at the whiteboard, which was a problem I definitely contributed to, and we came up short when we weren’t using our words. After this, we began to play with some tableaus and experimenting with power before settling on exploring the slut narrative, which we played with, but did not come to anything concrete.

Our work today in terms of physical production wasn’t great, and I’m worried that that inability to physically translate what we’ve written will continue throughout our rehearsal process. Outside of that however, we figured out a lot of structural technicalities we hadn’t yet, and I really enjoy our group as a whole. The task of creating such an extensive piece in such a short amount of time is truly daunting, and I think we’re all beginning to hear the clock ticking down.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

day six: fairytales and fine art

Today was another really great day! We started out strong with a game of keepy-uppy. I (semi-jokingly) suggested we set our goal for 57 hits, and we surprisingly broke our record and made it to 60! We messed with our usual volume/space/intensity with little effect, and I don’t know how we did it, but we did. Then we played a new game of overlapping concentration, in which we threw three balls around our circle in set patterns with set verbal answers (favorite place, favorite food, favorite movie), and then continued these patterns in different overlapping rhythms. I really love games that require concentration and are focused one words/patterns, so this was a new favorite, though I occasionally got frustrated when I felt like some people didn’t understand the game or weren’t aware of the status of the balls around them.

After this, we transitioned into a sort of middle state between game-time and devising-time by being divided into groups and tasked with creating our own game using a provided array of objects. This proved harder than I thought, and we struggled with finding a game that was interesting and high-stakes and original. However, there was a lot less pressure with these games than with our usual created pieces, and it was really nice workshopping the different games as a class because a) we got to play games and b) we got suggestions for our game from outside perspectives that totally solved all of the problems we had gotten stuck on (I loved the beanbag game especially). I think we are a really unique class, and when we’re in the right collective headspace, it’s so cool to see our complimentary strengths and weaknesses come together.

We continued our play with objects, dividing into two groups of six and being tasked with telling a tabletop fairytale using a folding table as our stage and a random assortment of objects for our characters/props/setting. Remembering what we struggled with in the epic story exercise, we decided to choose a simple narrative and instead dedicate our energy to the unconventional staging. We settled on the story of The Three Little Pigs, and fully embraced the suggestion that we change the narrative into a villain story, focusing instead on the Big Bad Wolf’s story. While we were playing, it kind of transformed into a feminist story and the three little pigs became an interesting conversation about catcalling, collegiate greek life, and powerful women. I thought it was awesome, and I felt like there was a ton of equal contribution both in terms of content and production. I had a lot of fun working with my group, and I loved seeing the other group’s fairytale because they did a lot of fascinating continuous movement.

After this, we split into our final project groups and presented our homework (collecting images and text that inspire us about our topic). I absolutely loved this homework and legitimately spent upwards of three hours scrolling through Pinterest and different art sites looking for things that inspire me; I love collecting images and being asked to share pieces that stimulate me was really exciting. My favorite part, however, was seeing what inspired everyone else and how each of us is approaching this topic. We were introduced to the Question, the Anchor, and the Skeleton with which we will be constructing our piece, and I really like how this class has thus far given us rules in which we can play, rather than just dropping us in the deep end without any structure. I’m excited to see how our piece forms and what route it ends up taking, and I’m excited to see how our artistic voices interact.

[closeencountersofthedevisedkind]

day five: a damn good day

Our last Wednesday class was a really nice redemption from the weird dysphoria of Monday. Not only did we meet and surpass! our record of keepy-uppy (I lost count around 50 because we were challenged not to count out loud), but we tried a new traveling iteration and continued playing my favorite King John. The new version of keepy-uppy was interesting because we didn’t feel bad for messing up, even though we technically never met our goal of three passes across the room. Perhaps it was because it was a new game or perhaps it was because it was a new day, but there felt like there was room to safely make mistakes today, which felt really nice as I knew we would be exploring something new today. I like feeling like I can mess up and feel uncertain and still be accepted because I know we’re learning and creating and nothing is ever going to be perfect.

We returned to our viewpoints exercise, moving around the space and listening to the bodies around us, picking up movements we liked, and playing with speed/tempo/stillness. It felt like we had hit a reset button and were working collectively as an ensemble again; it was nice for me to have to retrain my brain to listen to the space around me both in terms of literal bodies and in terms of abstract energy.

After this, we were split into smaller groups (my queens Emily H., Kat, and Jaden) and given a book of photography, which we were to look through and choose our three favorites that evoked an emotional response. We were given Nan Goldin, and I was immediately excited as she is one of my favorite photographers and I took it as a good omen that we were going to be inspired to make something badass. I think I like being inspired by visuals much more than text, as I am a visual learner and think a lot in terms of color/light moreso than words, so this exercise was really stimulating to me. We analyzed the images in terms of line, shape, dynamism, and atmosphere, which was interesting because there was so much to look at. I personally loved discussing the less concrete meanings portrayed in the images, and it was interesting to see how our personal views were reflected in what we found in the image, even though we only got through two images. For example, one of the images is a really intimate scene that I related to a lot because it reminded me of a past relationship and I applied the feelings I had about that relationship to that image, while one of my teammates who hasn’t been in a relationship before offered an entirely different and interesting perspective on the image.

After this, we were tasked to choose one of the images and create a piece inspired by it. We chose the intimate scene of a naked woman covering herself on a bed, turned away from her partially-clothed lover, who is reading the paper and seemingly disengaged. This picture was the one we discussed the most as it carried a different emotional weight with each of us, and I think our creative process reflected that. We all listened to each other and had a really great balance of give and take. It felt like we were all on a team working towards the same goal. At the end of the day when we presented, I loved seeing everyone else’s pieces, but I felt so so proud of our piece. That little voice that always makes me compare myself to others was gone because I loved our work

Finally, we got into our final groups and received some texts personally compiled by Emma relating to our topic. I think most of them were angry or aggressive, in a call-to-action way, which I kind of loved. I hope to transfer this sense of danger and empowerment into our piece as I think it has the potential to be really f*cking cool. I loved that we were all drawn to different texts and think we each have distinct voices that demand to be heard in our piece. Hell hath no fury like a woman’s anger.

Today was probably my favorite day of class to date and I was really, really proud of the work we did. Knowing that this group is a significant portion of our final group is really promising because I was so excited by the work we did and how we equally contributed to it with unique perspectives and a shared respect. I hope this level of passion and harmony continues into our piece, and I love creating art with this awesome women!