Lavernes and Shirleys

One, two, three, four individual week-long retreats this summer to create "______."  (Still looking for that title.)  And if I said our week in August made work horses out of us, this past September week doubled that.  Gone were the long lunches and savory naps of yester-week.  The goal: our first sharing with invited guests for a feel of the flow and content of our production.  The spaces were set, the props buffed, the text roughly rehearsed, food prepared, on your mark, get set, and go now.  Makin' our dreams come true.  (We even have a factory worker scene to boot.)  Doin' it our way.

Schlemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated!
-Melanie

Our Night

Some images from last night's sharing...

Yarn

This night is founded (partly) on yarn.  Webs of yarn, yarn in many colors, journeys with yarn, remnants of yarn.  We have invited an audience with whom to share our work-in-progress, and tonight will be the first night that outsiders will witness an Ochlos creation in our new home.  Our laboratory took a morsel of an idea this past winter, of a 400-year-old king clinging to his crumbling empire, from Eugene Ionesco's absurdist play, Exit the King.  We talked of life, fear of death, allowing the aging process, loss.  We spoke of tyrants and dictators, repressed peoples and refugees, and of the empowered and daring.  We shared ideas on faith, hope, tarot and ritual.  We arrived this September with a journey to share with an audience, and it takes us through a physical world that a good amount of yarn also inhabits.  Beautiful, colorful yarn, coming out of my ears.  I don't mind; I could spend all day with this yarn.

-Melanie

Blackberries

Blackberries are everywhere now, and on oatmeal with goat milk, brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon it"s an indulgent, indulgent thing.  The abundance of Summer-Autumn. As I set up one of our "stages" in a corner of the property, I saw the blackberries peeking through the wire fence. The beautiful irony of this is that the scene taking place in this spot is like an oasis of hope and creation within a world of depletion and tyranny.

Design

Ochlos projects are typically simple, as far as the technical aspects are concerned.  This week we began adding a new dimension to "us" with the planning of scenery and props.  We've actually got some pretty crafty and visually artistic professionals in our midst of Four Strong Women.  So we dedicated a few straight days to the building of a large puppet, among other projects.  I fully endorse physical work when your mental capacities are on their way to fried.  How satisfying to see the concrete results, and to experience a healthy mix of intellectual creation with manual labor in creating a piece of theatre.

Theatre Makers are we: actors-writers-directors-producers-designers!
-Melanie

Them Apples

It's apple season in Sebastopol and I feel like we're swimming in a sea of Gravensteins this week.  The trees in the orchard on the property are filled with bright red balls and the ground is polka dotted with red, green and yellow splotches, like a live Pollock piece (but with the splatters only, not the smears...).

I love reaching up and plucking an apple from a tree.  The feeling of it quietly popping off the branch is so satisfying that I want to stand there and pluck again and again.

In the afternoon the sun-scorched hill smells like apples baking in the kitchen.  Simply wonderful.  And in the night, lying in my tent, every few minutes lets out a loud THUNK as another apple plops to the ground.  Abundance.

In the kitchen we are baking: apple crisp, apple tart, apple crumble. If only we could live on apples as our staple, we'd never go hungry this autumn.

Speaking of autumn, as I walked through the kitchen earlier this week while one of our deserts was cooking, I smelled the upcoming season for the first time.  A scent of fall and I suddenly imagined crisp weather, warm sweaters and cozy fires.  And I realized, I'm ready!

-Melanie

Ambulatory Theatre

This August week we've been working at a level of productivity heretofore unmatched in Ochlos history!  We're on a downward slope of momentum, founded on our work in June and July, and a script is coming together quickly.  As collaborators always say looking back, I never would have imagined our project would evolve into what it is now.  When this property in Sebastopol became our new creative residence I imagined performing in the barn, and that in itself was a dream come true.  But now we have in our hands quite an epic journey, taking the audience to almost a dozen locations throughout the property.  It is undoubtedly site specific, not meant to be performed elsewhere, and just as original music can deepen a theatrical experience, so too can an intentional location, in a powerful way.  Not only are we outdoors, among the birds, the wind and the trees, but we have an active experience to share with our audience.  With an audience engaged in this way, not only do we avoid numb behinds, but there is real potential for making an honest connection.

-Melanie

Puppies!

As our last full day of work for this month, and the first time since last weekend that all four of us were able to work together all day, we pulled together and got some good stuff accomplished.

Yoga first, breakfast, the making & jarring of plum jam from plum trees on the property (all the while brainstorming scene work), and a good two hours improvising a scene in one corner of the lower yard. Afterwards we came inside with really awesome lunch salads and our laptops, to log the text we'd just come up with and research some ideas that came out of that scene work.  How funny to see four ladies in one living room, each on their own computer.

What came next is what I believe could make any company more productive and all workers more healthy: we took a nap.  A couple of us outside in lounge chairs, the others in the house.  What a beautiful day for a nap.

We headed back up to the barn to play with how we would present a collection of stories in another scene.  We were well into it when Carol's husband yelled her name with an urgency that brought us all to our feet, heading to the door.  "What?!" Carol yelled back.  "Puppies!" was his reply.  Their pregnant Malinois was giving birth two days early.  One black puppy with his umbilical cord hanging off of him was present.  It's been a couple hours now and we're still waiting for more, with champagne glasses lined up on the counter to celebrate.


Tchin tchin!
Melanie

Campin'

I'm sleeping in a humongous tent we have dubbed The Condo.

-Melanie

Dictators

Tonight we watched a documentary entitled "Kim Jongilia."  Some quotes that struck me from refugees who have escaped North Korea:

Referring to Kim Il-sung, leader of North Korea from 1948 until his death in 1994: "We believed he had superhuman powers, that he could fly."

After Kim Il-sung's death: "Without him, nothing could be right."

From a man who was raised by the people who killed his family: "Everything I thought I knew was a lie."

Tomorrow we watch a movie about Hitler's last days in the bunker.

-Melanie

Our Second Week is Here!

Weekly intensive #2!  Welcome, July!

Two of our gals are stuck in Friday summer commuter traffic, so I've got some yoga and relaxin' to do.  Our June week was about Clearing, Prepping, Purging, Cleansing, Beginning.

This week is...  Development.  Digging in.

Here we go!

-Melanie

The Magic of Breaking Bread

The crux of our meetings has always been breaking bread together.  And there's something very special about this, for a few reasons.  We each bring something to share and we usually don't plan what we'll eat. We just show up, and somehow every aspect necessary to create a complete meal happens to be there.  This time is also a buffer between our personal lives and our creative work. We catch up on each other's days and lives until we're satisfied, and then we move on to the "work."  Our work is what it is because of our mealtimes!  We gather because we want to be together, we want to enjoy each other and relish the moments we share.  We talk and talk and talk.  And there have been times when we don't even get to the rehearsing part yet we leave totally satisfied.  

This past week, spending each day together, we agreed we would take turns cooking a full meal each evening. I did worry, as I have on occasion in the past, that we wouldn't have the time. Time to do what we needed to do...  But what I discovered, as I always do, is that what we need to do gets done. Not just in a direct, checking-off-the-checklist way, but in a more profound, foundational way. You have to experience it. Perhaps you already know what I mean. You just have to experience it.

And the crazy thing about Allowing and Letting Go and Enjoying and Basking and Nourishing Yourself and Taking Time To Be With Others is this: Magic Happens.
We finished our week in a place of inspiration that we never would have imagined beforehand. We have a more focused direction to move into.  
We. Have. Achieved!

Cheers!
Melanie

Those Cobwebs

Eugene Ionesco has given us a trampoline in his Exit the King.

King: "My bedroom's full of cobwebs.  Go and brush them away."
Maid: "...I removed them all while your Majesty was still asleep. I can't think where they spring from. They keep on coming back."
Queen, to the Maid: "...Go and get rid of those cobwebs again."
King: "...Those cobwebs, disgusting!  They give you nightmares!"

Our major project during this first creative week was to make over our playing space.  The barn was sanded, de-cob-and-spider-webbed, washed, de-webbed again, painted, mopped, de-webbed, and then we moved back in with the spiders.  We pulled everything out of the space and put most of it back, but this time with intention.  Feng-shui-like.

Funny how the inspiration for our creative project bleeds into our reality.  Those cobwebs.  It's us and the spiders, our new co-op.  It's got character.

-Melanie

Symbol

The beginning of our new "O"

Summer of Kings

On the eve of the eve of our first retreat, I find myself living the questions we will be diving into this next week.

And oh, why not share what we're researching!  We begin with... Kings.  Exiting.  That will be the first hint. Indulging, clinging, falling... a few themes.  I'll let the other Ochlosians chime in for more.  What I really want to mention here is the grand theme of life and death.

This morning I said goodbye to our elderly family pet, and arrived at work to be greeted by my charge, an 8-month-old pup I've loved since the day we met.  What a stark contrast between the two.  What I experienced at home the last few days was a dragging on, a lingering and a feeling of stagnation, as well as confusion and turmoil regarding what to do, and the big question of WHEN.  Arriving at work this morning, all was easy and light.  Puppy wanted to be scratched on the tummy, and his hair was soft and fresh.  So easy to like, so easy to be with.  (Don't get me started on the guilt that this realization brought on...)  I could literally smell a difference between the two energies.  The aromas of stagnation and clarity, of helplessness and joy.

And here I am catapulted into our collaboration.

This will be our Summer of Kings.

-Melanie

The Summit

We had this idea.  And so we met to finalize our plans.  And this idea...well, it's really the best idea, I must say.

And what it is, is: rehearsal intensives.

We wanted to honor each others' personal lives rather than bludgeon any free time and energy we have to bits by committing to a more "mainstream" rehearsal and creation schedule.  And so, honoring this, we found we were lacking in time to gather together for our next creation. And then we found the cure: short, intensive periods of exploration-research-creation-experimentation-incubation-experience-work.

Three intensive weeks, one in each of the summer months, followed by a sharing in the fourth month.  No time for ongoing, predictable drudgery, but short bursts of energy followed by time for absorption. And from my understanding, we're allowed to strangle each other if this intimate time becomes a little too intimate.  What did we say?... Passionate Truth!

I think we are brilliant.

Respectfully posted by,
Melanie

Home

Well, here we are!
A new home in the country.
An orchard...
A stream...
A designer pigeon coop...
Mossy trees...
An old outhouse...
And a barn.
This is the dawning of a new age of Ochlos.
Time has passed and we have continued to gather.
Now, we have roots.

And creation is brewing...