Wow.

It’s remarkable how easily hundreds of hours of research and application can shift to the back of one’s mind, given time. But that’s exactly what has happened to me, having almost totally forgotten about this project blog until an insightful comment was posted just a few hours ago, and a quick look at my website statistics revealed an impressive (and growing!) readership almost five years since my last update!

So where am I now? In Los Angeles, pursuing my acting career. I’ve appeared in short and feature-length indies, commercial projects, and even a video game.  I have an online business dedicated toward marketing creative professionals through websites and show reels.  I edit and color-correct films, personal projects, and stock footage.  I tutor children in reading and language comprehension.  With my screenplay concept, I won a scholarship to an 8-week screenwriting intensive with the New York Film Academy.  I’ve also directed, co-produced, and edited an original web series with my good friend and fellow Elon University alumnus, Mark St. Cyr.  The web series is called The Verge, now an official selection at six web festivals around the country and featured in Backstage Magazine.  The Verge is viewable in its entirety on YouTube.

Last night, interestingly enough, I was on a film set in Burbank where I met an actress and dancer who was familiar with the Viewpoints, and we launched into a discussion of the different physical vocabularies and how they inspired our artistic choices.  The arts community has always been intimate, and I am constantly reminded how we are all connected to each other.

But what about The Viewpoints Project? Did it ever happen?  The answer is YES! The project, for me at least, was a tremendous success.  By teaching, I learned. And by watching my students grow, and find their bliss in a creative process that had enraptured me five years ago with SITI Company, I was encouraged and emboldened.  Highlights from my students’ final presentation in February 2011 is viewable on YouTube:

I graduated from Elon University in May 2011, and moved straight out to California.  The Verge was filmed in New York City, and I’ve returned to North Carolina many times to visit friends and family. But I haven’t acted on stage since Ajax (directed by my Viewpoints Project mentor, Professor Kirby Wahl) closed in April 2011.  Theatre has not been my focus in LA, but I certainly miss (and at times, long for!) the experience.  And perhaps the next time I am in Asheville, I will pay a return visit to Asheville Butoh.  From their website, it appears Julie Becton Gillum’s inspiring work is alive and thriving.

Ensemble can happen anywhere: on a stage, on a film set, in the work place, even in the company of strangers.  No matter where I am or what I’m doing, this experience has forever changed me.  Its influences is perpetual and unpredictable.  And it serves as a reminder, as I’m sure Anne Bogart would encourage, to always be training.

Happy Thanksgiving (just about)!  It has been a busy month for me since my last update, but progress is occurring in almost every aspect of my life.  The last few weeks have been an exercise in trial and error and I have learned so much.  Now I have a chance to enjoy a break, savor some rest, and contemplate what I have learned.

This past weekend, I attended a Butoh Workshop at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina.  This all came about because by pure chance, while researching Butoh for my structural analysis paper, I happened to find a link to an Asheville-based website devoted to Butoh.  The three hour workshop fit my schedule and was a drivable distance, so I decided to go for it.

Julie Becton Gillum, a dancer with more than 40 years of experience behind her and who had studied in Japan with the living masters of Butoh this past summer, led about thirty of us students through the workshop.  We warmed up together and “danced.” It was a wonderfully freeing experience, because instead of being locked into the vocabulary of modern dance movement, we were free to create our own vocabulary.  No movement was restricted, and thus the only barrier on our ability to physically express ourselves was our own inhibitions.

This removal of a set vocabulary or system of movement, and this embracing of physical freedom, kept bringing me back to the training I had received this summer in Suzuki and Viewpoints with the SITI Company.  In particular, Barney O’Hanlon’s words kept echoing through my head: “Dance is simply conscious movement.” But the remarkable thing about Butoh is (and I couldn’t have grasped this from merely reading about it, I had to experience it) there comes a point during your dance where your movement is barely conscious.  At times during the workshop, I was becoming so in-tune with listening to my body, listening to the impulses that moved me from within on a visceral and even animalistic level (instead of an intellectual one), that I began to move in ways that surprised or even shocked my own senses.  I had a new Viewpoint.

Perhaps that seems a bit of a contrived tie-in to my research, but I will try to argue my point: Anne Bogart’s system of Viewpoints are a way of breaking down and experiencing time and space, theatrically, within the context of the ensemble.  To achieve the level of precision and specificity, on an individual and group basis, that Viewpoints requires, you have to get out of your own way.  You have to listen, you have to embrace all possibilities, and only then can you make a choice.  The conscious movement that Barney talked about at SITI was the product of all that precision, specificity, and listening – it was a conscious choice in reaction to infinite possibilities.  And through the Butoh, I found that my choices became easier and easier to make and (based on the reactions of the Julie and others in the workshop) more and more compelling.  I achieved a state of such careful listening that my body was one step ahead of my mind, and consequently, I was free to create with an unimpeded physical imagination.

This is a powerful and useful tool at the disposal of the performing artist – the ability to lead with the body, to kinesthetically respond instead of intellectually.  If the body leads, the mind will follow.  Because of this, my experience with Butoh has been phenomenally helpful in not only improving my acting and my appreciation for dance and movement, but also in my understanding of the efficacy of Viewpoints in building a dynamic and compelling ensemble of actors!

Butoh is a Japanese dance form which first developed in the aftermath of World War II, in many ways a rebellion of Japan’s youth culture against the horrors and devastation of the war.  The style (and perhaps more accurately, the philosophy) of Butoh was first developed by Tatsumi Hijikata as a reaction against the more traditional theatrical styles of Noh and Western forms of dance.  The form was so shocking when it first appeared in the late ’50s and early ’60s that it was initially banned in many Japanese theatrical venues.  Hijikata’s work continued, however, and the form began to attract international attention.  It is popular among street performers, practitioners of political or social theatre (similar in some ways to Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed), and many performers and choreographers who have become dissatisfied or felt restricted by the conventional protocols of dance.

In this way, I see similarities between Butoh’s emergence as a rebellion against traditional culture the same way as the Viewpoints emerged out of the Judson Church Movement in America – both these new forms of art simply ask the questions, “Why do we do this the way we do?” and “Are there other ways?”  Art is important because it is relevant to the culture that produces it.  Cultures are always changing, and so must art, if it is to grow and develop into something new and relevant.

Butoh’s cultural impact, much like the destruction of ideals for America’s youth during the Vietnam War and the struggles of the Civil Rights movement, manifested through the postmodern movement.  By examining the human condition through grotesque imagery and contortions of the body, Butoh both alienated and captivated its audiences through a disturbing manifestation of the emotions felt after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  This art was scary and it was intense, but it was certainly relevant.

Like the Viewpoints, this can be hard to visualize, so here is a short video of a solo Butoh dancer:

I find the video both terrifying and irresistible.  The sheer skill (the patience, focus, specificity, and control) of the performer is captivating.  I cannot take my eyes off him.  Again, just like the Viewpoints, the medium of Butoh allows a freedom from restriction and tradition, allowing the performer to connect to the audience out of a place of unimpeded emotional content.  But the emotional content comes from the doing (from the being), not from any contrived performance.  I can feel this honest energy very powerfully just watching the video, and I wasn’t even there!  Viewpoints, when done well (and I was fortunate enough to see some very moving examples of this at Skidmore this summer), is equally powerful and all encompassing.

For a current assignment for my Elon College Fellow seminar (which I am taking in addition to the private research conducted alongside my mentor), I am writing a structural analysis paper on Butoh in relationship to my research on Viewpoints.  I will share my research as I make more discoveries!

I think this an important question to ask, especially early on in this blog/journal: why an ensemble?  What does that even mean?  Is an ensemble just a group of people working on the same project, or is it something more?

Have you ever heard anyone refer to a movie or play as having a “great ensemble cast?”  I used to find this confusing, because I thought it seemed redundant.  I would think to myself, “Well, every movie and play has “an ensemble cast” assuming the piece has more than one actor in it.  But I realized that when people say a film has a great ensemble cast, they are usually referring to the caliber or fame of the individual actors within the cast not, the cast as a whole (as a specific entity).  This doesn’t seem right, to me at least.

So after looking up the world “ensemble,” I was interested to find some contrasting definitions:

• a group of musicians playing or singing together; “a string ensemble”
• a cast other than the principals
• corps de ballet: the chorus of a ballet company
• an assemblage of parts or details (as in a work of art) considered as forming a whole
• a group of players performing as a team
• a group of separate things that contribute to a coordinated whole; a coordinated costume or outfit; a suite; a group of musicians, dancers etc.

Interesting, yes?  But it would seem to be the final definition that holds the most relevance to me: “a group of separate things that contribute to a coordinated whole.” This is what I think an ensemble in the theatre should be; not a discordant group of individuals within which each member is trying to accomplish his own objective his own way, but rather a group where the individuals contribute alongside the others to accomplish a common goal.  I think it is much more interesting to watch a group of people solve a problem together than competing with each other to see who can solve it first or better.  And I think an audience would agree, given the right situation.

In the 21st century United States (and increasingly so in many other parts of the world), we live in an incredibly individualist society that rewards getting ahead of the competition.  And I think, to some extent, this has even translated into the artistic world and into acting and the performing arts especially.  We are a culture obsessed with stars and names and titles, far more than we are a culture interested in groups, and organizations, and ensembles.  Star power has its place, but what good is one amazing actor in a cast of twenty?  Everyone needs to be listening, everyone needs to be looking out for the other.

Now it is true, some plays are more ensemble-driven than others.  Some plays have one or two people in them, others have fifty.  The importance of recognizing the ensemble in a group of actors is not just related to the size of the cast though, it is related to how we train, how we treat each other, and how we go about creating new work.  Ensemble is a process.  It starts before rehearsal begins, it continues throughout the run of a production, and hopefully it endures after a play has finished (then the opportunity for a continued community is created!)

I think it is important to consider the word ensemble and all of its implications, especially considering the society we live in today.  Individuality is not inherently a bad thing, but it can function as a disservice to a production if it blocks an ensemble from creating new work together and stunts the growth of an artistic community.  One of the greatest reasons I love Viewpoints is this commitment to the ensemble.  The moment it becomes just about you and you forget the other actors on stage, that is the moment the Viewpoints cease to work.  They are an important reminder to me of my own selfish habits as an actor, and they encourage me to consider how I can fit my ideas and creative impulses into the ensemble instead of trying to make the ensemble conform to me.

Hello!  This “blog” of sorts is serving as my online journal for my research into (and eventual implementation of) a “Viewpoints project” at Elon University.  This project is the focus of my undergraduate research for the Elon College Fellows, an academic honors program at Elon University.  After studying the viewpoints and training with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company this past summer, I have become interested in learning more about the Viewpoints, continuing to train in them, and sharing what I am learning with other actors and students in a college environment.

But what are the Viewpoints, you might be asking?  Well, if you go to some of the links on my blog, they will explain in more detail, but to give you a brief introduction, the Viewpoints were originally developed by choreographer Mary Overlie for deconstructing, analyzing, and recreating a performance.  Anne Bogart and Tina Landau later adapted these six viewpoints into nine viewpoints for actors.

Dealing with the relationship between space and time, the “Viewpoints” allow a group of actors to come together and create diverse and dyanmic work quickly and fluidly through improvisation and experimentation with tempo, duration, kinesthetic response, repetition, shape, gesture, architecture, spatial relationship, and topography.  There are also several additional vocal viewpoints.

This is perhaps hard to grasp and is certainly more easily experienced than told.  But if it helps, imagine a sculptor working with a block of marble.  Starting off, it would appear to most that there is nothing there, simply a block of stone which takes up space.  If we were told to carve something out of a slab of marble it could feel intimidating or even impossible.  But for the sculptor, if his mind is open, he can see the artistic shape begin to take form in the marble already.  He chips away at the marble slab, slowly freeing a dynamic figure.  As he carves into the space, he begins to make new discoveries: what was at first just a hand now has distinct fingers with several folded but two pointing straight forwards!  The sculptor experiments with lines and curves, and he observes the distance between one part of the sculpture and the other.  He examines the setting of the room within which the sculpture sits and how this architecture begins to affect the statue.  He plays with lines, angles, different levels, hard and soft surfaces, and feels the emotion all of this provokes in him.

Perhaps an unusual metaphor, but does it begin to give you an idea?

This blog is an experiment, as is the entire project.  The Viewpoints, by nature, are an experiment.  Anne Bogart and Tina Landau never expected this system to be a means to an end, but rather a means to discover, to explore the creativity and energy in a group, and by doing so, bring that group closer together.  The Viewpoints are all about where you are in any given moment and your conscious awareness of all that is happening in that moment.  By training actors to pay more attention to each other and their environment, the Viewpoints (at their best) create a very tangible energy that can be shared between actors and even an audience.

The Viewpoints are not a substitute for proper rehearsal technique, nor are they necessarily a performance technique in themselves, but they are a useful tool for building an ensemble.  It is my hope that as I continue to develop this project, I will find new opportunities to share this training with others and build an acting ensemble within the Elon campus community!