croquet bellport

Rex Stewart croquet

impermanent wickets

In my family croquet is a cutthroat sport.  At the Farmhouse in the White Mountains, we have a rectangular lawn (croquet court-sized) that sits above a very steep hill.  If you accidentally hit your ball over the edge (or if someone sends you), you lose as many turns as it takes to recover your ball from the Sleeping Beauty deep briers.
There is a subset of Love family croquet developed by my Seattle cousins that involves elaborate obstacle course play.  Hoops at times disintegrate throughout the round of play.  It gets tricky.

A thing that is coming up in rehearsal is When to Begin. Going through poems about how we pick ourselves up time and again, (like painted moths/ have wandered the blue sky, and died again), it seems that the key is not so much to start as it is to catch the crest of a wave. Finding the time to begin speaking or the time to commence movement should feel more like riding a wave. It’s a response to a continuous thing that remains connected to its past and future. How this is relevant: we should try to feel the collective breath and catch the wave whenever we can.  Punctuation should feel like a crashing wave (sharp but still part of a continuing cycle), not like hitting a wall.  xoJojo

Imagine: these people. in plastic. in the park… GET EXCITED!

-AT

Connectivity*

Bryant in the Park rehearsal Saturday was tremendously fun (as was going to my other job streaked with dirt/grass stains). Not only was the work exciting (yay physical theater!), it brought up a lot of interesting thoughts about maintaining tension/attention (attension?) in open spaces — especially open spaces as surrounded by hubbub as Bryant Park is. How do we create impact?  We’ve got a lot of area to hold together.  Things that are cool: synchronized movement, clean and concise actions, contrasts.  As our expanded cast works together more, I feel like we will connect more, and the more we are reacting to each other, the more we will stand out. Clarifying our own physical energy will help us to direct this energy and create something the audience will not just see but watch.

Back from Europe and back on the blog,
xoxoJojo

*In Japan, electrical wires are above ground.  I’ve been told it has something to do with frequency of earthquakes and necessity of accessibility.  Regardless, I find them beautiful.  There is something disarming about the obvious evidence of electricity charging an entire city.