enjoying this wonderful expression of art that art.party.theater.company has put together / wet! / Summer is fun, Run, Summer is togetherness, summer is love and enjoying the outdoors / Bright Sunny days / mosquito bites & burned skin / croquet! / Fotzch / Bryant in the park! / FUN / framed by others / watermelon / COOL! / FUN & GOOD / sticky / ice cream / FREEDOM! / stickie / FUN! / This summer was dream for me. Because I’m NY. I’m from Turkey I liked NY. I enjoy it and I want to come back. But I don’t have enough facility…I hope everything bes good… / relaxing / I want to (cinema acting actress) fame, my dream fame and happy, peace / BBQ Time! / HUMID / sticky / love u Jacob <3 <3 Exhilerating Malky Appeldorfer / promising / SumMeR\…Summer\SUMMEr / miracle! /red fresh tomatoes <3 / Soon to be fall so that it can one day be summer again /vacation from school / Poppies / fun / Ripening / A Great Time us the year / Outdoors Meeting /Swimming in the Ocean / Cool Hot Red Spandex on a Friday Night / Pleasant walks in green fields–short life passages full of dreams that die too quickly– Learning us to dream again / Freedom / not being in the library! / hot weather / happiness, hope, love, family / india.chennai 2009 / beautiful / Celebration and Birthdays / The Summer Is Good / Vacation / the hotdog dance / FREE / long joyful day / the shade of leafy trees, fire flies, peepers, meteor showers / Wema mith nice legs / the warmest months of the year / evenings in the park / Sunshine summershine / Life / a good season. even though it’s hot / a cut that’s healed / possibilities / cicadas / Love & Bryan Park / awesome / bare skin in the hot sun / amazing nightfalls / Magic, in NYC as in Paris. A French Guy / the blow out of mental stress / Hope / fun / Gazpacho! Palomino. / beauty and warmth / hat / It’s a song! Summertime; or summertimes makes me feel fine, Blowing thru the jasmine of my mind / New Beginning! Open Air, Water, AC, Adjustment, Travel, Air, Sun, Shorts, Love, Hate, Heat, Skin, Friends, NYC, Pain / fun in Bryant Park! / vacation / Becky Keren / Fun with friends! / HOT! / fresh green smells and carefree winds / AWESOME paradise / I LiKE THiS SUMEr / hot / Almost Over / smoky / Beer\Beach\Best Bugs / Hot & Lovely / short skirts & motorcycles / Butt sweat / Sexy!! / barefoot / sweaty / for doing the things you thought about all winter. / beach sand between my toes / non-existant / FireFlies / sultry / SLUTTY / Beer-B-Q / naked / Magical & Exciting / HOT / SANGRIA / lazy / endless / SUN / helt harlig! / finally here! / SUN / anti-winter <3 / Summer (IN NEW YORK) is…CREATIVE EXPRESSION IN UNEXPECTED PLACES / Enjoying all outdoor activities / the rays of the shining sun, awaits to light us all and give brightness to mankind / breezy possibilities. sunny glimpses of hope anew. lingering moments. / [picture of sun] / Bumblebees. / Hot / Time of love and relaxing season / really Fun Fa [pictures of people, sun and trees] / Fleetingly Delicious / Family Fun! / CORN & TOMATOES! / I Voixing this Summer / LemonADe [picture of lemonade] / FANTASTIC! / OutDoorSie / MARVEL UPON MARVEL WITH ICE CREAM

Watching great actors at the Stratford festival in Canada, I realized something very important: the art is not only in the details (as the saying goes), but also in the journey. In our own lives, we don’t have the time to slow down and examine our own journeys- often its hard to tell how we got from point A to point B. But in great theater, each character’s journey is easy to see- from puritan to whore (Win Littlewit in Bartholemew Fair by Jonson*) or from betrayed acolyte to leader of a city (Antony in Julius Caesar**). And it is thrilling and cathartic to be able to imagine that events occur in a linear progression, or that one action dictates another. The fun is in seeing how long the journey can stretch out (in the words of Stephen Daldry: “have a longer journey”).

Taken to an extreme, every prop that is dealt with also necessitates a journey- from picking up a notebook, to opening its pages, to reading, to discovering, to holding, to closing, to putting down (etc). One of my most indelible theatrical memories is watching Martha Henry in Stratford’s production of Ghosts drop a stack of papers upon a discovery. The papers became her interior life, and dropping them became part of her journey.

This is a topic for another blog post (how do different characters hold things), but I’d like to also put on the “MUST SEE” list: Jonathan Goad’s performance as Antony in JULIUS CAESAR, and the inventive (and ‘art.party-esque’) Antoni Cimolino’s production of BARTHOLEMEW FAIR at the Stratford Festival.

Oh, and we’ve got a show tomorrow!

Party on,

m

…theater in the park / s(hot) / a cold Adirondack lake… and most of the folks at the office on vacation / sticky / MARAVILHOSO / green & yellow / freedom / when you feel fresh, new, and full of energy and dreams / a sun shimmering / a fabulous day in the park / my most favorite season / rain falling on a garden / les etoiles filantes dans les nuits d’aout / fun / nice!!! / the months of june, july, and august / a new beginning / a passion / skon! / fading inot nothingness / BBQ! / [gibberish] / fresh fruit / croquet / magnificent for the (outdoor) activity / sexy / a time to stand with Barack on health care / a Brazilian wax / not winter / blue sky, green grass, peace & love / splendid / the smell of fresh cut grass / vacation time / how my soul feels everyday / for winners! / a time when the world shines / the prefiguration of eternal beauty / standing on a chair. acting serious. / sitting on my grandma’s porch drinkin’ lemonade / nisa & minajo / me / beautiful / floating through life / <3 / sunny days / ice cream / here!

Summer is….

August 14th and August 21st  at 5:30pm in Bryant Park.

http://gothamist.com/2009/08/08/early_addition_353.php

Bryant in the Park cast

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.

email artpartytheatercompany@gmail.com for tickets