Catching my breath
"Unless someone is being altered, it'll still feel as if nothing is happening." - 77. Impro for Storytellers, Keith Johnstone
I spent a lot of this week in an eerie, elated suspension - waiting for the reality of this year to finally come crashing down on me. It evaded me on the plane (where I tried to coax it out by writing myself a goodbye letter and tucking it into the seat pocket), in my first few days in Edmonton and even during my first volunteer shift at Improvaganza. Now, a week in, it's finally hitting me in alternating waves of overwhelming enthusiasm and insecurity.
Since this is my first offical post on the road - hi! I'm here, I'm safe, I'm learning, I've had the incredible luck of staying with extraordinary humans who are showing me their city with more warmth and generosity than I could ever have hoped for. I'm spending my mornings reading, stretching, organizing, planning, and my evenings volunteering at the Improv Festival downtown and watching shows. Tonight is a group I've been looking forward to all week - I Bugiardini from Italy with their improvised silent film! With two shows a night and as many as four groups per show, I've already gotten to see quite a range of styles and improvisers and games, which has been absolutely incredible - soaking all of this in has been a great way to start my year. I'm finding myself really drawn to performers and groups who are especially embodied, who commit whole-heartedly to physicality and who use silence in dynamic ways. In the book I'm reading right now, Keith Johnstone says that an improv performance should be just as enjoyable to someone who doesn't speak the language - he says that in good theatre, performers are altered by what is said, and a spectator doesn't need to understand the language to understand that on a visceral, narrative level. I'll have to see where my mind/heart is after the class I'm taking in Calgary in a few weeks, but right now I'm sort of feeling mime and physical theatre as the next direction I'd like to explore. Especially because I'm having a hard time embodying the liminal / confusing space of being a "part time" wheelchair user and thinking about what that could mean for me as a performer. I'm looking forward to chatting and working with CRIPSiE next week - an integrated dance company in Edmonton - because I think that will give me some models and ideas for starting to process that.
Feeling so many things right now, trying to strike precarious balances of taking care of myself and pushing myself, of watching and trying, talking and listening, planning and letting go, missing people and opening to people, resting and doing. Almost always feeling supremely awkward. I often find myself holding my breath, (for what, I'm not sure). One thing I am sure of: I'm definitely being altered.
