Hello from a lazy blogger! I’ve gotten progressively more and more wrapped up in the work and the world here, which isn’t too surprising, I suppose. This is a pretty enveloping place.

I’ve just written and deleted about six different starting sentences. It’s a little hard to know how to begin. I’ll ramble for a little bit before I have anything to say…

I think I already wrote that Tuesday’s run was brutal. Wednesday, we assembled for the run, sore, battered, and many of us flat-out fearing it. But–miracle of miracles! We did a nice, gentle, 20-minute jog, and came back to the farm–I think they knew we needed a bit of a letup, as blisters ripened and ankles protested on the third day of hard-core training. We played some focus games, and then then turned us loose on the TOYS.

I’ve never approached working with big objects in quite this manner before. It was done in the same style as the evening trainings–led by company members in separate groups, with very little talking except when absolutely essential for safety reasons, and much demonstration–and they encouraged sheer experimentation, getting familiar with the objects, using them in ways they were not intended to be used, testing their limits, getting comfortable, in a highly-energetic, constant-motion kind of way. There are a few giant spools that we stand and walk on, rolling all over the place; a big ball to walk on in any direction; teeter totters to walk and jump and dance on; stilts; aerial silks descending from the ceiling of the space to climb and dance on; and two big gym wheels made out of cow troughs that we’ve been balancing on the edges of, though it’s clear that it’s possible to get inside them and roll around in them, which I’m not sure if they’ll let us do. A company member will attend us as we play on these things for long enough to be assured that we become comfortable with them and aren’t going to break our necks, and then they let us go to town, spotting us and making occasional proposals by physically demonstrating something we hadn’t thought of, encouraging us when we fall, and keeping us in training mode lest we stop paying acute attention to what is going on around us.

What I mean by training mode is the meat of what I’m learning here. I already know as I try to form the words in my head that I’m going to do a bad job of articulating this. The company members are in constant motion. When they are waiting to use an object, they move with it, flowing around it, keeping it constantly in their attention. This is how they work; by keeping the fires going physically and mentally, and whatever impulse happens to surface is immediately employed, almost by default. When you are really training, it’s pretty much physically impossible to space out; so much is going on. I think this is part of how they tap themselves, their capabilities, and their subconscious sense of what the next beat in the scene is, at any given moment.

So if there’s ever a hesitation in any of us, an indication of less-than-perfect presence, they pull us away from the objects and push us to keep moving, pushing the limits of what we’re physically capable of enduring, jumping, running, doing push-ups, collapsing to the ground and popping back up–to keep that flow constantly moving inside. Matthew, who I think I’ve mentioned before is directing the training program, says something along the lines of learning to maintain the sense of constant motion and attention for longer and longer periods of time–and when we lose it, we stop what we’re doing and return to the training.

I’m starting to see this working. We’re developing individual little two-minute pieces on our own, and I had been stuck. I brought some songs that I had been thinking of choreography for, and the first time we had time to work on them alone, I felt completely dry of ideas. But on Thursday, we had time to work with company members on our pieces, and I had a conversation with Hannah, my assigned mentor. She asked me, “and have you tried moving to them yet?” duh. I was embarrassed to admit that I had only done visualizing and conceptualizing and very little actual moving. So I took my ipod out into the meadow and I trained to the songs, improvising choreography but mostly just moving with my whole energy and attention without worrying too much about what I came up with. And–the floodgates opened. I had a whole new way of looking at the material, a dynamic sense of where it was going, and a zillion zillion ideas for how to proceed. I couldn’t stop writing things down after that. I’m also breaking down my fears about things not being smart or good enough or worth pursuing, and with a more generous attitude toward the material, the underdeveloped ideas actually have a chance to grow and mature and turn into something that is worth the vague, undefined but glorious notion I have in my head.

It would take me hours to write everything we’re doing here. Tae Kwan Doe is getting easier, and we’re sparring now! And it’s fun! The rhythms and harmonies we’re learning in music are getting more and more complex. We’ve started to do instrumental work–did I write about this before?–and I ended up not bringing my guitar, so I’m working on the piano, which is super fun, and improvising vocally to accompany myself. Brian, the music director here, has turned a roomful of folks with grade-school-level instrumental abilities into a cohesive group that can jam together, which is something I’ve never felt confident enough in my grasp of the music to do before, even when I was taking lessons. Maybe especially when I was taking lessons.

What else? Yesterday we ended early, at about 5:30pm, and had the night and all of today off. Yesterday we did laundry, a few of us went into town and had dinner and beers at the Lakehouse; last night the students were all hanging out in the Milkroom (the communal kitchen/hang-out space; this used to be a dairy farm, and it’s the room where the cows were milked (much remodeled now, of course)) singing and dancing with the one real guitar player in the bunch. Kevin, one of the students, can sing “Hit me Baby One More Time” in German, to our endless amusement. I had a long chat over a bottle of wine with Adam, one of the company members from England, about theatre and life on the Farm and art in response to an audience. Today, just hung out and chatted with fellow intensive students, went as far as Northampton and bought two pairs of shorts for training, since I didn’t bring any good shorts with me. Had a sushi dinner. Funny to have spent a week without leaving this piece of property, and then visit two towns in the course of a day and a half.

We go running every morning. Yesterday, we ran up and down a steep hill in tall grass, carrying big armloads of firewood and tossing it back and forth. Mom, I think you’d recognize these morning runs as Morning Pages, though they’re much more grueling; we run to clear the body, clear the mind, get the power and the focus moving forward to keep the day productive. I have twin blisters on the insides of my feet. I am constantly either sweaty or covered with a salty film of dried sweat, except for just before bed when I shower (it’s unbearable to get into bed as grimy as we get during the day.) We eat enormous amounts during our breaks in the overflowingly-stocked kitchen. Yesterday morning we did some partner acrobatics, which I was excited about, and it was our longest and most exhausting training period yet. The trainings have been getting steadily longer, and I’m noticing with pride that my stamina is already increasing; I can run for longer, jump for longer, work with a focused intention for longer, than maybe I have ever been able to. Those of you who have heard me lamenting that I’ll never be in as good of shape as I was when I was at Dell’Arte–I think I might be coming close by the end of this three-week period. I wonder if I’ll be able to maintain any of it at all, when I go back to normal life.

The thing about the training that frightens me is the next step. So far, we’ve been pushed beyond where we thought our physical limits were at the provocation of company members who are physical machines, who are comfortable with this life, who drag us on and encourage us and dare us and support us. But what the training asks of us is that we do this for ourselves. That we are our own cheering section, our own provocateurs…and my fear is that I cannot do this, that I will prove weak, that I will stop at the first or second or third time that I think “I cannot go any further…” The more value I see in this attitude, this way of life, the more I am afraid of not being able to hack it. It’s terrifying and painful, running the way we’ve been running, pushing ourselves the way we’ve been pushing ourselves, and the point is not to get in shape, though that’s a happy side effect. The point is to run until you have no energy for anything but the present moment. You must go more than you can every time, do more than you’re capable of every time, and not be afraid of being tired. This is what they ask of us. No matter how strong we get, the training asks us to do more than we can. One of the things one of the apprentices, Tom, said to me, keeps ringing in my head–that what he likes about the founders of this company is that they aren’t afraid of discomfort. It’s an attitude I both admire and fear.

Do I want to do this work enough to be uncomfortable? To seek discomfort?

Will I know the answer to that question by the end of this intensive?

Is everyone here wiser than Moses, or full of bullshit?

Something that’s often repeated to us is that Double Edge is not a source of answers, only questions.

There’s a novella more, but I’m hogging the computer. Thanks for your emails and comments; I got most of them today. Love from Massachusetts! Love from this crazy theatre-cult! I’m happy and nervous and crazy and creative and frazzled and inspired. I hope you are all well.

xoxo
Alissa