Week One Workshops

July 3rd:

Mark Fleishman, South African collaborator on Common Plants, introduced Artist Participants Kati Francis, Ndoni Khanyile, Jackie Maanyapelo, Ntokozo Madlala, Mfundo Tshazibane, Faniswa Yisa, and Magnet Theatre members Jennie Reznek and Mandla Mbothwe who would participate/observe the Week One work in order to learn Judith Rudakoff’s Four Elements methodology in anticipation of the ongoing work in Week Two (where Reznek would participate in further workshops incorporating Rudakoff’s Lomogram Image Cards and dramaturgical process and Mbothwe would facilitate a youth group workshop incorporating and evolving The Four Elements to field test their efficacy with a non-professional community group).

MThe mandate and process of the Common Plants project was also explained and Fleishman then delivered the basics of The Four Elements dramaturgical process as conceived by Rudakoff. Fleishman introduced the central research questions which he and Rudakoff had proposed in response to the ongoing work begun in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada in February 2006 and as developed through the discussions on the Common Ground Forum on the Common Plants website: What is home? Where is home? Is home a place or a state of mind? Is home where you are or where you come from? How many homes do you have?
In the ensuing discussion one of the major aspects of the responses was the sense of participants being between homes, in transit, shifting from one home space to another. All Artist Participants had or were experiencing a series of homes, sometimes simultaneously. Mbothwe offered the insight that the answers to the research questions would change “depending on where you are and who is asking.” Tshazibane responded that he doesn’t “look like where I’m from.”. Francis proposed that “Home is where Mom is.” Yisa considered that “Nobody is from Khayelitsha, but I have lived there most of my life.”
MFrom the discussion, it became evident that in many African traditions, home is where your father is from. When there is no father in your life, how does this affect your sense of home and belonging? With absent fathers being a common theme, the participants reviewed how they all connected the notion of home with their mothers, in contradiction to tradition. This also raised the issue: what happens when the mother is no longer there? In isiXhosa, the South African language spoken by many of the Artist Participants, the question “Where is home?” would be expressed as “Where is your umbilical chord [buried]?” (iphi inkaba yakho?) or “Where has your umbilical chord fallen?’ (inkaba yakho iwele phi?), because traditionally, after a child is born, the chord is buried in the earth of the home to root the child. For urban Africans, the place they live is generally not their traditional family home and to accommodate this, the ritual has changed. Now, Mbothwe explained, to fulfill the ritual, the chord is buried in or near the Township home and the words spoken are altered to apologize to the ancestors for burying the chord in the wrong place.
MIn the discussion, the issue of burial was raised repeatedly. Upon death, African tradition requires burial in the traditional home location, the place where the ancestors came from. Many young people who die in or around Cape Town as a result of HIV/AIDS or gang-related violence are then taken to the Eastern Cape despite having been born and having lived their entire lives in Cape Town in the Western Cape.

MFleishman set the task of writing a text-based monologue “about home” supporting the idea of home as either a place or a concept or both. In addition to this prompt, each Artist Participant was required to select one or a combination of Elements to imbue the monologue with characteristics, and to find a voice/character for the monologue that reflected the chosen element/s.

July 4th:

The day began with each Artist Participant reading their Element/Home monologue. Fleishman then posed the question: what is an image? Responses included “A moment of experience” (Mbothwe), “A picture” (Madlala) and Reznek’s observation that an image might be “a specific, concrete expression.” Fleishman then continued the exploration of image by introducing the concepts of contraction/compression (a great deal of information condensed into a small amount of space and time); an object described in terms of something else, with meaning moving backwards and forwards between the object and what it is being compared with; an intense sensory/textural response to the world.
MIn addition to the question of delineating what images are, Fleishman asked: How does a theatrical image differ from other types of images? This lead to general agreement by the Artist Participants that the distinction was based on physical presence.

MThe Artist Participants were then charged to compile a list of images that evoked “home”. The images were then to be affiliated with one of the Four Elements. In reviewing the categorized images, Fleishman asked each Artist Participant: Is there an element/s that dominates your list of images? If so, is this element the same or different from the element you chose to inspire your initial text-based monologue?
Most Artist Participants experienced affiliation with a different Primary Element in the first exercise and this second exercise. Fleishman suggested that this might be an example of images in dialogue (elements in active relationships) within the complexity of the concept of home, or, perhaps, a misperception that shifted as familiarity with the Elements grew.
MReznek then facilitated a physical workshop session incorporating her experiential filter (Four Elements as taught to her by Jacques Lecoq) which assisted Artist Participants to explore how the Four Elements affect and shape the body in the physical space with respect to such aspects as direction, weight, tempo, rhythm, degrees of tension and relaxation.
MAs the next workshop task, Fleishman introduced another of Rudakoff’s exercises, asking the Artist Participants to select an item that represents “home” to them, and relating it to one of the Elements in a metaphoric or imagistic way. Rudakoff’s method asks participants to select an object that they would save in a fire, or take if they were given ten minutes to leave their home. Fleishman further characterized the object as something important and central to the individual’s life. Further utilizing Rudakoff’s methodology, Fleishman instructed the Artist Participants to write an Image Flash, a chronicle of images inspired by the object for later use which is compiled by writing a list of ideas without explaining them, describing them or telling the story that makes the image relevant. Each image must begin with the sentence fragment “There are stories about…” but the stories must not yet be told. Fleishman then included the second part of the exercise: that each Artist Participant must write a second Image Flash piece chronicling ideas for stories derived from the concept of “home” at a particular moment in time, including one additional sentence fragment other than “There are stories about…”

July 5th:

To begin the work day, each Artist Participant read their Image Flash exercises aloud. They were intense, rich in imagery, compressed and contained. The focus of the exercise had evolved the writing and ideas of the day before to a measureable extent.
MFleishman introduced the idea of improvisation based on the objects that had been selected. He also suggested that objects have both material aspects (texture in the phenomenological sense), functional aspects (how they are used in the world) and symbolic aspects (what they might represent in an imaginative sense and how they might be interpreted by different people in different places).
MA group discussion ensued about the nature of time and its relationship to performance. The building of performed action requires choices, rhythm, and an understanding of the distinction between “hold the moment” (a vertical drop into experience) and “release the moment and move forward” (a horizontal development of the narrative).
MFleishman then assigned the next task: create a soundscape of “home” using only voice and sound produced by/on your own body, and allow the soundscape to incorporate and be influenced by The Four Element work. These soundscapes were then performed individually as the other group members listened with eyes closed. Much richness and texture and image emerged from this exercise.
MThe second task of the day was from Rudakoff’s methodology and related as well to an exercise that Fleishman uses with slightly different vocabulary: choose five artifacts of “home” and place them in a container constructed to also evoke home. The Artist Participants were given the evening to create this themed collage (Image Container) and asked to perform rather than present the work the next day.

July 6th:

The day began with performances of the Image Containers. At this stage of the process, the work usually becomes detailed, specific, evocative and at a level deep enough to sustain a performance. In this case, each Image Container performance provided the prototype for the Creative Response presentations that would develop next.
MThis exercise always raises a great deal of emotional investment. More than simply introducing artifacts, or listing images, it takes the process work to a different level that requires the Artist Participant both to invest/commit to the work and to go to deep emotional places to access the truth of the importance and connectivity of the artifact within the landscape, home.

MIdentity and how it is connected to home fuelled the discussion that followed this set of Image Container performances. The Artist Participants acknowledged the increasing emotionality of the work and its intensity, which was difficult to embrace. Painful memories became important to share in order to honour them and work with them. (In Week Two, Rudakoff would offer the image of “baggage” which people carry: if you open the baggage, unpack it and acknowledge what you are carrying, the baggage doesn’t disappear. Rather, it becomes far lighter. Transform the baggage rather than try to lose it was her suggestion, referencing one definition of magic as energy and will directed at change. Transformation of the baggage into, for example, the trail of a kite, its rudder, that permits direction and movement.)
Tshazibane offered the insight that “painful memories keep you warm” as the difficulty of fulfilling this task became apparent in the presentations. The Artist Participants agreed that the emotionality was a positive though challenging aspect of the work and embraced it fully. Participants, in discussing their artifacts and home talked about how the objects carried weight, history, stories that were readily available though not easy to work with. The Artist Participants explained that the difficult nature of the work was part of a journey of discovery: they were visiting places they had in the past avoided. They were having conversations with parents that they had not had before. They were facing challenges that had been hidden from view though carried within and omni-present. Tshazibane raised the point that in the Xhosa tradition, if you leave on a journey, home must be your departure point as well as the first place to which you return before going anywere else. The group shared the isiXhosa expression “a bird does fly away but will always return to the earth [to feed]” (Intaka ibhabha ibuyele ezantsi emhlabeni) which offered another imagistic interpretation of this tradition.

MFleishman then set the next task: create a five minute presentation inspired by and based on your idea of “home”, incorporating any or all aspects of the work undertaken throughout the week. A discussion ensued about the role and concept of landscape and how it might be used in this task as a structural frame for the work. Fleishman referenced Gertrude Stein’s notion of a play not telling a story but rather forming a landscape. He further suggested that landscape is both physical and psychological/conceptual (external and internal), as well as being interactive, and introduced Maurice Maeterlinck’s idea of static theatre in which “contemplation replaces action as the essence of tragedy” and Wagner’s idea of time becoming space.
MThe remainder of July 6th was spent working on the Creative Response presentations.

July 7th:

The workshop day was spent with the Artistic Participants evolving the Creative Response presentations with Fleishman and Reznek.

Week One | Week Two | Youth Workshops