access & altering
It's hard to write a basic update on my project and my life right now without sounding super dramatic, because honestly each moment I spend in public is such a performance, and often a dramedy. Before getting here I "knew" that Montréal is not a particularly accessible city, but as a new wheeler (I had barely gotten acquainted with Stella at home and had never taken her on the road before this adventure), I had absolutely no idea what that really meant and how that would affect me. Needless to say, I was super underprepared and overwhelmed. There's a lot that's worth saying about access, difference, anxiety, communication, and all this other loaded stuff that has come up and I don't have the time or energy to recount it at the moment. But I probably will some time.
As I've written before, I spent a lot of time at the Moose thinking about this idea of allowing yourself / your character to be altered by what is offered to them. Recieving each word or movement that a scene partner gives you as a chance for you to experience a genuine emotional response, a potential for change, opening up to the vulnerability of that. Joëlle (who works in Applied Improv, so this especially makes sense) pointed out to me that this is exactly what has unfolded in life: Montréal gave me an altering offer, and being emotionally affected by that, being changed by it, is what allows the story to progress.
Basically I was off-the-charts anxious about committing to stay here for six weeks when accessible transit is such that I've barely been able to get downtown without a fiasco of some kind so far. Hopefully all of this would be doable (if difficult) as a local if you've got the the know-how and French skills, but at the deadline for class registration it just really did not seem feasible. So I dropped the classes I was planning to take, chopped off my hair, cracked open a new journal and started developing original material for a performance piece drawing from a lot of this (and other) chaos. I have no idea where this scene/adventure/life is going; my plans are SUPER up in the air. Improvisation to the bone!
I'm just starting to think about what is next for me. I will be in Germany by the end of October and may head to Europe sooner than that, depending on what is in the works improv-wise. I'd welcome hearing from people about any contacts or ideas for possible directions to take (right now I am particularly interested in learning clowning, fooling, life games, or puppetry as applied to improv, but of course open to anything). All in all, I've mentioned to a few people that although this transition has been rough, I feel it's oddly what I needed and right when I needed it. I am learning some tough lessons in a really gorgeous place with some really good friends... I feel really lucky. I now have a MUCH clearer sense about what accessibility / inaccessibility means for me, and what I need to do in order to be prepared to improvise with that when I encounter difficulty in the future. Thinking lots about that endless balance between chaos and structure, spontaneity and planning, cultivating comfort in some ways in order to be able to constantly engage with discomfort in others. Learning learning learning. So much love and gratitude!
