Nebunele.com

Man, why I always gotta be so tired all the time?!

Training was utterly awesome tonight. I was dreading it, and as it began I was feeling exhausted and unhappy about trying to make it through…but students were mostly leading tonight. And at one point I looked up and realized that I was in front, that everyone was still, that for the first time I had the chance to lead the entire roomful of people. And…I…had…so…much…FUN! It’s like somebody flipped a switch–I went from dragging and suffering in the first fifteen minutes to totally abandoning myself to it for the rest of the night. I barely noticed that sweat was pouring off me in greater quantities than ever. I got to participate in some beautiful moments, actually using the stuff they’re telling us all day, actually living and breathing it and reaping the rewards. As Matthew says: we don’t know anything. We only ever stumble across the truth. But I tripped over it and fell flat on my face tonight, and I loved it and it was GREAT. Tonight was the first training when, as it ended, I thought, “Already?”

Off to bed with me! But thank you all for your awesome notes–sometimes when I don’t have time to write I have time to read, and I sneak off to the computer for a minute, and your encouragement keeps me sane. Y’all rock.

This morning was a little hopeful. We did a training that involved a lot of standing on one foot, reaching as far as possible one way with the foot in the air and as far as possible in the other direction with both arms, bending and straightening the knee, in taut slow motion. With all of what Matthew said last night about the autonomy of the actor, and being true to the impulse and not necessarily the form, buzzing around in my head, I had flashes of really being able to take myself somewhere else, particularly when I was leading a few people. It’s funny how it takes that responsibility to get us to “fluff up”, as Robyn and Steve used to put it–to actually do your fullest instead of just what you think it is–but then, of course, there are the moments of pain and the giving up and the exhausting work of trying to find it again.

I’m thinking that this blog is going to start sounding more and more alien to people who are not here. I write this stuff down and it all means one thing in my head, but I’m lacking objectivity in a serious way, right about now. My leg is nearly all the way better, thank goodness. I have acquired some new bug bites. My poor beleagured feet–I think I need a foot massage and a pedicure when I return to civilization, as a thank-you to them for putting up with all this. They are sore, bruised and battered, blistered and stiff, and often feel somewhat remote from me–they’re taking all the punishment here, while all the stuff on top floats around.

I’m cooking dinner tonight, whee! Chicken wings, I guess, and potato salad.

All right, I suppose I should be doing some of the research I’m supposed to be getting accomplished. Slowly climbing out of the frustration. We had a design workshop today and when I mentioned my fears, Carrol (our design mistress) reminded me that I’m out here on a beautiful farm doing lots of physical stuff and that I should relax about it all. That helped. I’m only here to learn what I can learn. And it’s fun! Even when it’s hard, it rocks. If I could go home any time I wanted, I’d stay here for months.

lalalalalearning,
Alissa

Two days! wow! it feels like two weeks, again, since I last posted…

So I paid for my Saturday night insomnia by waking up late on Sunday (after finally getting to sleep at like 6am) and not having time to stretch properly before soccer…and whaddya know, in the fourth 7-minute game, I pull a muscle in my right thigh. I was having a blast playing soccer, too, and I had been looking forward to Sunday’s unusual schedule, and the pain, surprise and disappointment conspired to make me a grumpy Alissa for most of Sunday. We’ve been working on individual Etudes, which we presented on Sunday night–those all seemed oddly incomplete. We’re continuing to work on them, but I’m just not sure where to take mine, and I’m starting to not like working on it. Well.

Yesterday we also started learning a new matial art–not sure how it’s spelled. Arnice? It’s a Phillipine knife-fighting style, which is super fun.

This morning’s run was rough on me, because of my injured thigh. I had to take it really slow, learn to find a way to run that didn’t hurt my leg, and I got immensely frustrated knowing that I would be capable of running faster and farther but instead had to lag behind the whole group, doing a third of the run that they did and running largely alone (but with Carlos’s patient tutelage and support re: how not to exacerbate my injury.) At this point in the morning, my injury, lack of sleep, and utter frustration in working on my piece contributed to a total breakdown in this morning’s training. We were working with our etudes, exploring them with partners, and I felt like I didn’t have any ideas or strength or bravery or even desire to work. Matthew kept trying to get me to explode, to make fireballs of energy and push them into my work, but by that point I was spending most of my energy just holding back tears. I worked in a half-assed way for a while, then realized how much work it was to not cry, so I let it go and sobbed, which freed up a ton of energy for working on the balancing beam and the aerial silk that are part of my piece. I cried and worked for the rest of training, unable and not even trying any more to stop, working on using my emotion to fuel the work I was doing. Sometimes it worked; but I’m sorry to say that most of it was just a slog, and I was relieved when training finally ended. I was happy that the people around me noted that I was crying, saw that I was still working, and didn’t make a big deal out of my tears; Matthew said a few things to me afterward about how it doesn’t have to get in my way, which I heard with weariness. This place is one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever encountered.

I must go to bed soon–it’s two–but the other stuff we did today: more music, more Tae Kwan Doe (which is getting really really fun, and was the thing today that put me back in a good mood; plus it seemed to help my leg, which is more healed now than it was) and the evening training, which was long and hard today. It started out fine, but I quickly ran out of life force for pushing myself into new freedoms. I fell into a pattern of joining groups and simply mimicking whatever was happening, which was mostly boring and sweaty and disappointing. I think I wasn’t the only one, though, because Matthew gave the group a talking-to tonight about taking responsibility for making our own energy, for claiming autonomy, for (I like this one) fooling ourselves into being free, which he claims gets harder, not easier, as we continue to do the training.

We also have myriad assignments now; to keep lists of good moments in training, to formulate questions to have in mind before entering the training, to watch a particular movie out in the pavilion, the reread the text we’re working on, to practice the song we’re learning in music. My despairing mind says “But!–” But we work from ten in the morning until one o’ clock at night, with three 30-90 minute breaks that are mostly consumed with eating, cleaning, and tending to our sore muscles and blisters, and a little bit of relaxing. If you wonder why my blogging has gotten more sporadic…

sigh. You can tell that I’m tired and a little overwhelmed today. What made sense about the training to me a few days ago seems hazy again. What are we but a bunch of adults acting goofy in a room together? Oh, why did I choose theatre?

‘Kay, enough whining. Like I said…big challenge. But at least I’m high on endorphins most of the time here. And the martial arts stuff is pure physical joy; nothing ambiguous about it, just do the move. Do it this way. Try again, harder. I think they throw that stuff in there just to keep us balanced.

Love and frustration from a girl who needs to go to bed! Whee!
Alissa

It’s nearly 5 am, and I’ve been tossing and turning since going to bed at 12:30. I finally gave up and got up and made some tea–too much torture to listen to my roommates breathing peacefully. There’s a mosquito hawk beating itself against the monitor as I type this, which is only slightly disturbing.

Jeez! This is my third night of difficult sleep here. You would think, with all the crazy physical activity, that I would conk out every night. Tonight is the worst, though, maybe because yesterday was a day off and I didn’t break a sweat even once. I probably should have, since my body’s used to that now. In fact, that’s even one of my artist rules! Argh! That’ll show me to break ‘em.

My brain is buzzing–about the piece I’m working on, about the people at Double Edge, about home, about why I can’t seem to fall asleep, about the mosquito bites I seem to have acquired on the top of my foot that I’m trying not to scratch. I keep trying to focus on my breathing, to relax each part of my body sequentially, to breathe deeply, but nothing seems to be working. Tomorrow (today) is going to murder me. Grrr.

Hannah just walked past and gave me a sleepy quizzical look before heading off to the bathroom. On her way back, she asked if I was ok. It’s a good question–I feel good, actually, if frustrated about the whole sleeping thing. Very alert. Sigh.

While I’m here, things I forgot to mention in the last post: After training yesterday (well, Friday) morning, we headed straight for the pond and jumped in, which was wonderfully cold (the day was the hottest we’ve had yet). I worked in the garden on Wednesday or Thursday, I forget, and we mulched two plots and chatted about the native flora, and that was awfully fun. I got a little sunburn on my face that’s starting to peel now, which is decidedly unattractive. J., one of the girls here taking the intensive, is teaching me to spin poi during our breaks. Um…my feet feel like abused clubs, uncomfortable and remote from me, between the repeat-offender blisters and the soreness and the mosquito bites. The lake in Ashfield is really nice to walk around. We’re playing soccer instead of our run tomorrow morning, yay!

I’ve been watching for unusual dreams, but nothing particularly bizarre yet. I did have one dream where I was alone in a movie theatre, watching a film about a spy girl in fishnets and a shiny trenchcoat running away from the bad guys in an urban landscape. Later in the dream I was driving through a tunnel at high speeds, getting away from bad guys myself. It was very sexy.

I did have one fascinating dream the week before I came here, though. I dreamt I was in some city like New Orleans that I associate with a certain amount of mysticism. I was changing in the dressing room of a clothing store, trying something on, when a shimmery white patch appeared in the air before me. It was fuzzy, but I understood that it was a magic path that I could follow. I walked into it, straight through the wall of the dressing room, and into a room where there was a wise old woman holding a chicken bone. She directed me to continue following the path out to the end of the hallway where there was a mirror, and that I was to go through the mirror. I followed her instructions. Once through the mirror, I looked around; this world was exactly the same as the one I had left. An empty hallway, just backwards. Anticlimactic, and the shimmery path was gone.

I wandered into the next room, and encountered a somewhat grizzled man, older than me but not older than forty-five or fifty, who I didn’t trust. I also understood in the dream that he was myself, the representative of me in this mirror world, and that we should stick together. We found ourselves in what looked like the seafood section of a grocery store, with lobsters lined up on a big bed of ice. There was no one else around, and it was cold in there.

Suddenly, my counterpart started to get strangely stupid. He was staggering a little, and speaking very slowly with little sense…I think he said “loooobsssssterrrr” and then he was stooping and clutching his chest. I was worried about him, since after all he was me, and asked him what was wrong. He came staggering toward me and said that he was hatching. I asked if he was hatching something, and he said yes; then he started pushing on my stomach. I asked if it was me he was hatching, and he said yes, and so with some trepidation I looked around for a couch or somewhere comfortable on which to allow myself to split open so that something could emerge.

That’s when I woke up. Pretty obviously symbolic, eh? On the whole, I think promising, despite the vague anxiety I felt once I met my mirror-self.

It’s 5:16 now, completely light out, and it just started pouring. I’m not even a little bit sleepy, despite the warm herbal tea I’m drinking, despite the soothing rain sounds. Maybe I’ll go stretch in the space or something.

Thanks for keeping me company in the lonely dawn hours!

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

Fewer breaks for blogging today, and so much to write that I can’t possibly squeeze it all in. I woke up this morning more sore in more places than I have EVER been in my life. First thing we do–another run. The last one was painful; this one was almost impossible. I thought I might vomit or cry, but thankfully did neither. Learned two important things from this crazy theatre: Every step goes up, not down, and goofing around, doing crazy things with your arms, and singing all helps the running. We sang in the forest halfway through, ducking under branches and crossing a stream. It’s pretty beautiful here.

Learning a new, super-complex song in music; today I cooked dinner under the watchful eye of one of the company members; we had some time to do individual work, and I took a walk and wrote some (the sun came out today at last) and then, of course, the nightly training session, which I’ve just gotten out of.

I haven’t described these sessions yet. They are sort of the most “theatery” thing that we’ve done here so far, but they are as physically intense as the running, just in more parts of the body. We have them every night, and they go between 3-4 hours. They’re conducted in a follow-the-leader sort of fashion so far; we begin by doing something strenuous over and over, like jumping on one foot with our arms over our heads until the point when it feels like death or collapse is imminent. This will gradually evolve into a long group improvisation, using pieces of the movement vocabulary we started with; Sunday’s focused on legs (LOTS of jumping) last night’s was about arms (holding arms up, out, moving them in very fast circles; no rest for a LOOONG time, till your muscles are screaming); and tonight seemed focused on abs (lying on our back, popping torso and legs up simultaneously, holding them there and waving our arms till the burn is explosive.) Groups will splinter off, relate to other groups in an aggressive or meek or flirtatious or wondering way. Little stories emerge. It’s a little like viewpoints, but with lots more sweating. Everyone here is totally focused in the studio, and it’s easy to throw yourself in to even the goofiest parts of the work.

One of the things I can’t remember if I’ve written about or not; the group avoids talking in the Space. If something can be communicated nonverbally, it will be. They hold their training places as sacred, and maintain them meticulously; the floors are clean, the stuff is organized and has its place, and god save the forgetful student who should leave their water bottle behind. I’ve encountered this attitude before, and the Farm is so beautiful I can’t help but admit that it seems to be working. But then–isn’t there something to be gained by means of a certain familiarity, too? The most treasured members of my family are ones who I know will forgive me for a minor lapse in courtesy, and who I won’t hold to any formal code of conduct; can’t a tiny little bit of taking for granted make for a little more intimacy? But certainly, there should be respect and care…maybe that’s all it is. I’m just leery of rules, I guess. I’ll see what happens when I really see the space in action, when we’re in rehearsal instead of training. That’s when it’ll become clearer what this attitude is about.

All right, others are clamoring for the computer! I’m not even going to proofread this, just hit publish…g’night!

…is hard. Wow. A little bewildering. I like it, I think…but it’s funny that I was lovin’ life while we were learning kicks and punches in mid-air and then, when faced with a sparring partner (well, not sparring, we were doing one-steps–just one attack, and its defense and counterattack) I got really embarrassed. Turns out, it’s really intimidating for me to even pretend to punch someone. I forgot everything and I kept giggling and apologizing. This is good for me, I think.

I kept thinking about what Steve Pearson told me when I was learning to walk a tightrope in the Pacific Performance Project Suzuki intensive a few years ago. I was having trouble getting across the rope, wobbling, falling, laughing about it, etc., when he finally said to me, “Alissa. Pretend that you are a professional tightrope walker.” And I straightened up and got farther along the rope than I had to date, and the next time I tried, I crossed it. We do ourselves so much harm just by thinking “I’m not good at this.” Thinking I was a professional didn’t make me one, but it did counteract the sabotage I was conducting on myself by deciding I was bad.

We just finished dinner, and there’s a break now before we do instrumental training. After that is the nighttime group training until one, and then we collapse into bed, or shower if we can stand up for that long. During these breaks, I find I don’t really know what to do with myself, which is why I keep returning to the computer; I’ve been writing too, but I can only do that for so long before getting distracted here. Plus my room is cold and the hallway where the computer is is less so. I’m sure I’ll adjust to life here soon enough and fill it with the busy leisure-ness of being at home, but for the moment I feel like a guest, and just lounging doesn’t feel like an option. And I didn’t bring any books, thinking I’d be too busy to read them…I suppose I could make friends. :-p Right. Off I go.

Love!
Alissa

Today’s half over, and it feels like I’ve been here for about a week. Except I still don’t know my way around. This morning we went running. In the rain. For an hour and a half. Oh yeah. It’s nice to keep going WAY past when I would have stopped, myself. And there was a time when I thought I wasn’t gonna be able to do it any more, and one of the company members, seeing me start to lag, came over and ran beside me and just gave me a lovely infusion of energy. So perky, these guys, like an hour-and-a-half run is just a brisk little stroll. but so, freshly rejuvinated, I soldiered on, and in not too long was flagging again. but it was ok–(I just discovered that this keyboard does not make capital b’s, c’s, or m’s, so forgive me if there are letters missing or mis-capitalizations)–we were heading toward home! So I used my last little ounce of strength to get me there. We jogged right up to the door–and turned around, and started running in the meadow. Auugh! So that goes on for a while. Every time I feel like I’m about to die, a company member comes running along beside me, and then I feel like it’s ok, like I can keep going. I realized that they do this as a matter of course–keep an eye on the whole group, give their energy and attention where it’s needed without saying a word. They’re healers, all of them. After one good burst, I thought I’d try it myself; a companion from the intensive was flagging, so I ran over and tried to share my energy with her. And, whaddya know–it worked, and rejuvinated me as well! This is a wonderful, wonderful group. It’s just a little internal shift, and you realize how much you’re capable of.

Then we jogged over to a bench, and sat down, and took off our shoes, and my heart rejoiced, because my legs were really starting to hurt. but no–shoes off, and then we were running barefoot in the muddy meadow, leaping back and forth over the little creek. It got fun again. my legs are gonna HURT tomorrow.

Then we took a lunch break and went to the little space (the Pavilion, they call it) for our music lesson with brian. We did some rhythm excercises, getting more and more complicated patterns going with our voices and hands and feet, and then practiced the song we had learned last night, and learned a new one.

now we have a little time before our Tae Kwon Do lesson at 4, so I thought I’d record my impressions to you. Who knows how long I’ll be keeping up this blog so attentively, but for now, this is really fun stuff to share. I’m gonna come back in badass shape.

Love from rainy Ashfield!
Alissa

After a night of flying and a few hours of driving in a car with a bunch of sleepy strangers who I’m about to go through theatre boot camp with, I arrived at paradise. The Farm is beautiful–they’ve renovated the old dairy farm structures to be spaces for communal living, and two barn spaces are absolutely beautiful wooden sweet-smelling rehearsal studios. The main one–referred to by company members just as The Space–is directly over our heads in the hostel-style rooms we’re sharing (three per–we’re gonna get to know each other!) There’s a vegetable garden and fresh eggs from the chickens. It rained all day. We cooked together, had a grand tour–double edge has been running for 25 years this year, and they’re very proud of what they’ve made of their environment, as they should be. There are 10 intensive participants, a couple of apprentices, and about 10 full company members about, and the whole operation is pervaded with a sense of groundedness, affection, and deep respect for the work of making theatre.

After dinner, with many of us having traveled overnight and not slept in a day and a half, they decided to take it easy on us–we only trained for about 2.5 hours tonight, from 7:30-10pm. I think I sweated my cold right out–we worked intensely physically (following the lead with company members’ hardcore physical improv–felt like a conditioning warmup, only it lasted 2 hours) and sang a beautiful little italian song about a grasshopper, in sweat-soaked 4-part harmony as we flung ourselves around the room.

It’s good here. I am physically exhausted and mentally charged and filled with well-being. Through my mind keeps running “how did I get lucky enough to end up here?”

The schedule for the week includes training every day from 10am-1am, with 1-hour breaks for lunch and dinner, and one extra afternoon break. Saturday’s our day off, and they’ve promised to organize some sort of excursion into the wonders of Western Massachusetts. They’re keeping us good ‘n busy.

The internet was down when I arrived, is working now. There’s one shared computer for all 10 intensive participants and not much free time, so my online time will probably be sporadic, but I’ll try to post when I can. In the meantime, love, happiness, and drowsiness from Ashfield.