So, one of the many reasons I haven’t put up anything here in a while is, of course, the fact that holidays take me out of commission for a while. However, holiday recovery has been accomplished for a while now and I still haven’t put anything up.

The reason has more to do with the fact that I haven’t been able to sleep well for months. I have actually no idea why this wave of insomnia has hit, I didn’t significantly change anything about my life when this started, strangely suddenly, in September. (Just woke up in the middle of one night without any trouble going to sleep before)

September was not a good month for insomnia to start, although possibly appropriate since we were rehearsing Dracula at the time. I though it might have something to do with that project, but the insomnia has continued well after the vampires went to sleep. Since then, it’s been varying in intensity for a while. I don’t have the problem where I can’t sleep at all, I do sleep. It’s more along the lines of waking up repeatedly in the night and a general degradation of the quality and type of sleep occurring.

You can imagine that this has had a detrimental effect on concentration and energy levels. Depending on how things were going on a given week, I was not a necessarily safe person to have around the studio for a while. People got bruises to prove it. The problem eventually drove me to try medicating myself (sleeping pills) which had mixed success. For those of you who know my aversion to consuming medication, that tells you how extreme the problem got.

Sleeping pills only shut your body down, which was apparently not my problem. I also apparently don’t like shutting myself down artificially because the first few nights I took sleeping aids, I fought them off and woke myself up, which was super-creepy. I also had trouble waking up because the pills keep you down for a certain amount of time, whether your body wants to be down or not.

So, on the advice of a neuro-biologist friend of mine (cool friend to have, I say), a few days ago I switched to using melatonin, which is the chemical your brain uses to tell itself to go to sleep.

Which brings me to why I’m writing today – I have energy! A couple days of going to bed because my brain tells me to is great. It’s still hard to get out of bed in the morning, but that is starting to fade as I get further from pill-induced habit.

Yay for modern science! Now I can see if the melatonin will get me into some good sleeping habits and I can go to sleep completely drug-free. Also, now that I have energy maybe I can try to figure out why I started having this trouble in the first place.

We’ll see.

And now, over a year later, we’re in the final rehearsal stage for PUSH’s re-telling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Our version of Dracula departs from the original novel for mostly practical reasons. We don’t have the numbers to fill out Stokers’ main cast, much less all the supporting roles. We also don’t have a good way of staging a weeks-long cross-European chase with trains and boats. At least, no way that wouldn’t leave the audience catatonic from intense boredom.

The central liberty we’ve taken with the story is to tell it from the perspective of the madman Renfield. In Stoker’s novel, Renfield is a sort of motion sensor for Dracula, his actions parallel Dracula’s movement and desires. Renfield also serves a crucial plot point by becoming the weak link in the defense of the asylum he is housed inside. A local writer/actor and friend of ours, Danny Hoskins, wrote and speaks Renfield’s part on stage with us as we alternately become his nightmares, fantasies and actual characters.

(YouTube doesn’t seem to be working with me today. Video’s are here.)

On the spiritual side of things, Dracula is an interesting story to tell. There have been a lot of sidelong glances from many church friends who ask “Why Dracula? Isn’t it all about EVIL?” The short answer is: yes it is. Our ‘Dracula’ is a story about absolute evil. In a society where morality is more of an opinion than a standard, we felt this would be a particularly compelling idea. It breaks the social norm and makes our vampire story a bit different what pop culture is producing. It’s a conversation point, which is what we always hope will occur when people watch PUSH perform.

We’re pretty excited about Dracula, if you couldn’t tell. This is by far the biggest project we’ve ever worked on – the show is almost an hour long. It’s also a chance for us to merge the many worlds PUSH draws our art form from. The narrative of Dracula draws out our classical story-telling mime background. The horror element allows us to indulge the more extreme movement training. There’s even a moment where I get to bring out some of my old circus training and hang from the ceiling.

We’ve got more videos and pictures up on our Facebook page if you want to take a look (which I’m sure you do). We’re using social networking pretty heavily for this show, so there will be plenty of updates before the show goes up.

Let’s try this: I joined a local Rochester community of traceur’s this summer. “What’s a traceur?” That’s the word French-speakers use to describe a person who practices parkour (also a French word – I guess the French get to name things that Frenchmen invent.) Parkour is a bit more difficult to define than traceur (and I kinda cheated with that one, anyway). You can check out the group here: Rochester Parkour

There are several ways to define parkour. First off, it’s a non-competitive sport. It’s all about community; pushing yourself and encouraging others to increase their ability. There are flashier spin-off sports like free-running that aim for more spectacular movements, but parkour focuses on efficiency and economy of motion. Parkour is also described as training the ‘flight’ portion of our ‘fight or flight’ response. Martial arts will train you to confront someone, parkour will train you to get away, unless you’re being chased by James Bond. In which case, your best course of action is to become an iconic arch-villain and hope to be resurrected in a future movie. (See the Casino Royale opening for a traceur who did not apply the appropriate response).

Aside from escaping super-agents, parkour has been a great addition to my life. I still love to perform and move with PUSH, don’t get me wrong. There’s just something about the lack of pressure with parkour that is very freeing. Freedom is the key word, actually. I’m free to have fun with it,the movement itself is meant to provide freedom in an environment and leaping up and off a 10-ft wall is probably the next best thing to flying.

And even though that last stunt may sound kinda dangerous, the guys at group (and girls, too) are very good at controlling the safety factor. You never do anything that you aren’t comfortable with, and there’s always someone around to watch you or help you achieve a new skill.

Oh yeah, the people are pretty fascinating, too. Most of the traceurs are local college students, which probably isn’t a great surprise, but there are also a lot of locals who spend their weekends and free time training. All ages,too. It’s a pretty cool thing.

I do end up with a higher number of scrapes and bruises than I would have otherwise, but I have yet to see or hear of anyone in our group picking up any injury worse than a sprained ankle. Plus, the scrapes are just added manly/cool factor: “How’d you get that nasty scrape?” “Jumping up a 10-ft wall and then Kong-vaulting over a 5 -ft long concrete block.”

Totally worth the 3″ scratch on my arm.

All photos are courtesy of Graham Musler. They were taken this summer during one of our training sessions at Manhattan Square Park.

Well, not entirely “oops”. I realized I would have a more stable frame of mind this week, so I decided to wait until I could collect some thoughts to share. My church (Mosaic) just finished our annual church retreat this past weekend and PUSH began company classes this Tuesday, so my end-of-summer funk has now lifted.

I get all funky towards the end of summer because I run out of things to do. I don’t exactly have an affluent lifestyle, so when work takes off halfway through the summer I end up with a lot of free time and even more inertia. This only lasts about a month, but it feels like forever and a day to me.

Luckily this is all past and I’m now viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses again – at least until the end of the year when they’ll become frost-tinted glasses.

I’m going to try something ‘new-ish’ on this go-around of posting, too. Instead
of making one massive post that I don’t want to write and no one wants to read, I’ll be chopping this up into bits over the next few days. This should make Chad very happy since I’ll be using that ‘delay post’ button to do this.

So without further ado, here’s the preview!

Dracula

PUSH is rocking the house this Fall with our most ambitious work to date – a one-act retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Videos and pictures will be upcoming.

New Hobby

This summer was actually productive at times. I’ve found a new hobby on the weekends by training with a local parkour group. Great fun and kept me in shape in the off season! I need to keep talking about this subject because formatting problems are messing with the heading below… still not there… there we go!

Promotion

I’m a full-blooded member of the PUSH company this year! No more intern/trainee status for me!

Catch y’all later!

Anyway, Chad asked for something to explain the last few months of my life. This is slightly humorous since I actually saw Chad back in April, so he knows about half of what I’m about to relate. I’ve edited things down ‘cuz these were a couple of packed months.

March

Picking up from February (yes it’s been that long), I move right into March. I don’t really remember much of March at this point. Let me check my calendar, one moment…

Ok, it appears the highlights of March were our performance at Roberts Weslyan College. Roberts is kind of a homecoming show for PUSH. The weekend after we performed a group of Roberts guys actually parodied us at a talent show – after weeks of practice and rehearsals – as ‘PULL Physical Theatre’. They’re even on YouTube:

Yes, they stole our logo, too.

April

My calendar tells me that April was when Chad saw me. April was also the month of residencies. PUSH was teaching multiple classes at a local high school the entire month, slowly retiring one project after another as the month drew to a close. Darren and I also taught a bullying residency during this month, which was awesome. We had a group of 3rd and 4th grade boys who were either ‘bullies’ themselves or were being pushed to a breaking point as a result of being bullied. With all of the out-of-studio work, we had a really wacky schedule. We ended up rehearsing mainly in between classes at the high school since they had a dance studio available for us.

To make scheduling even more difficult, I took a week off to travel down to Mississippi, where I saw Chad. My main reason for this trip was to participate in an even for my mentor, Dr. Lou (not to see Chad, unfortunately). Dr. Lou asked me to be present at a book signing and literacy event he organized for the re-publication of his novel Wind of Destiny. This was a great reunion of old friends and generally a pretty fun excuse to get warm for a few days (Spring is a rather confused season in upstate NY). I also put on mime make-up for the first time in 2 years at that event. I managed to remember enough to not embarrass myself.

May

I was glad to get to May because it meant a return to a more regular schedule… sorta.

Our company got back into our regular studio routine, but we were in earnest rehearsals for our Geva run which started at the end of the month. Adding to the stress were the displacement of one of the company from her apartment via basement fire and smoke damage and the end of the year crunch of school performances. Johanna (the fire displace-ee) was also working on costumes for our Dracula trailer, so she lost a lot of time by being evicted from her own space.

Our end of the year crunch is interesting enough to bear mention as well. It turns out that PUSH is essentially in league of its (our?) own when it comes to arts in education around Rochester. This has prompted a curious circumstance at the end of this particular year. You don’t need me to tell you schools have lost a lot of arts funding this year; but this has actually benefited PUSH (weird, right?). What happens is this: schools waited until then end of the year to find out how much of their budget was left over for arts education. Then, because they didn’t have a whole lot, the schools decided to spend what they had on a proven quality program. We’ve actually ended up with the same or even more work than we had last year!

GEVA

So this is the big event that ended May and began June. Honestly, I’m still not really sure how it got to be so far into June… Or am I surprised it’s still June? I can’t remember.

Basically, this was a two-weekend run with a week of tech before hand. It was fun to be back since we had such a good experience last year. We premiered two new works and performed a trailer for a third during this run. The new pieces were “Time” and “Flight 1549″. “Time” is an exploration of the shifting perspective of time during track and field events and set to voices of professional athletes describing their personal experiences. “Flight 1549″ is based on the successful emergency landing in the Hudson river in January of this year. The piece is set to the cockpit tapes of the pilot and ground control calmly discussing the emergency until radar contact is lost. We become alternately the birds that caused the accident, the plane itself and the passengers inside.

The trailer we debuted was for “Dracula: The Shape of Evil”, which is a one-act length work we are working on for this Halloween. I’ve put a couple pictures of the trailer up here, so if you were wondering, that’s what they’re from.

On a personal note, on top of the tech rehearsals and run of the show, I had 12 consecutive days of family in town and then two days of friends from out of town later on. I loved seeing everyone, but I was most definitively exhausted by the end of the run – which was this past Sunday.

There! I have now bridged a four month gab in internet gabbiness. As a further note to appease the Chad-like folks out there. I do think about writing things a good b

Yet another month passes in whirl of activity. February was spent attempting to hang on while we worked on a month-long teaching residency in a local school. I had a great time, but so many things got sucked out the open window I’m still trying to catch them weeks later.

Retreat

I’m writing now because I have a few minutes and I keep thinking I ought to do this more. I’m gearing up to head out to a church leadership retreat tomorrow, which should be an interesting experience. The leadership style here is so different than anything else I’ve encountered. Not that it’s wild or uncanny, it just hasn’t fallen into my range of experience before. It’s been a long road to adjust and then appreciate how they work.

The attractive part of this is that PUSH works very much like Mosaic (my church), and I believe PUSH has one of the most sane approaches to living as a performance company I have ever seen. So if I can get a little deeper into why/how this system works, the better able I will be to utilize these concepts in my own career. I’m definitely looking forward to a little bit of life lesson-ing at the moment.

Just how cool can I be?

I can get into the newspaper! That’s how cool I can be!

This is an article published about our residency in February. I got the front and center picture because… well basically because I was teaching in the gym, which looked better than a cramped classroom. But do read – we taught complicated neuro-scientific principles about the relationship of art and the brain to fourth graders. Talk about challenge!

Webster 4th-graders work with PUSH Theatre

You wouldn’t expect the average fourth-grader to be familiar with neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran’s laws of art.

But at Schlegel Road Elementary School in Webster, 75 students are learning these concepts and putting them in motion, literally, as part of PUSH Physical Theatre’s monthlong residency at their school.

Theater company founders Darren and Heather Stevenson and fellow performers are teaching the fourth-graders to express ideas through pantomime, coordinated body movements and improvisation. Teachers say the students love it.

Part of the program’s success has to do with where the fourth-graders are developmentally: They’re physically strong and capable of self-control, but they haven’t yet fallen into the self-consciousness of adolescence.

“I think they’re really starting to feel comfortable expressing themselves,” said enrichment specialist Tracy Nail, who has helped coordinate the residency. “The kids are in that area where they trust each other enough to try things out.”

They now understand principles such as symmetry, metaphor, generic viewpoint, isolation and grouping, which are among the eight laws of art put forth by Ramachandran and philosopher William Hirstein in a scholarly paper from 1999. The rules help explain why art appeals to the human brain.

One class of Schlegel fourth-graders has come up with a complete routine illustrating each concept with their bodies. To show contrast, for example, half the group reaches over their heads on tiptoe and the other half crouches low. Then half the group runs in place, and the other half moves in slow motion.

Each of Schlegel’s three fourth-grade classes has its own routine.

The students will perform in front of the entire school Friday afternoon, and for their parents that night. PUSH will perform as well.

Fourth-graders Noah Cardella and Adrianna Visca, both 9, showed off some the moves they’ve learned in the past month: leaning on an imaginary table, being dragged away by a helium balloon, and putting their hands on an invisible wall.

Noah says his balance has improved, but only after working at it: “Practicing one night in my bathroom, I fell,” he said.

The PUSH residency at Schlegel was funded by a $5,000 grant from the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester.

STVEALE@DemocratandChronicle.com

A few updates…

Google Attack!

In a strange set of circumstances, I have apparently become he web’s leading authority on Jerzi Grotowski, according to Google anyway. Seriously. Type ‘Jerzi Grotowski’ into Google and see if my article on him isn’t first on the list or close to it. Unfortunately, if you Americanize his name to ‘Jerzy Grotowski’ it doesn’t work, so don’t do that!

In response to the attention I have re-written my Grotowski article. Most of the changes are actually corrections to the horrendous 11th hour grammar of the original. It is much easier to comprehend now. Points are followed through, thoughts do not flow over tall cliffs and sentences now finish in the appropriate places. Yay editing!

PUSH

PUSH was featured in a news article in our local paper, the Democrat and Chronicle. It has a short interview with my director, Darren Stevenson, and some video of some new choreography we’re working on. The link to the interview is here. Or if you just want the eye candy…

Yes, I did just call Darren ‘eye candy’. But it’s only skin deep… You should try working for him. It’s like working out and working – at the same time!

Upcoming

Be on the lookout for a few articles coming up sometime soon. I’m working on an update to Darren’s “A Case for Physical Theatre” that will attempt to show specific examples of things PUSH does as a result of those ideas as well as the changes nine years have made to the company.

I’m also working on a couple research articles for our upcoming work on ‘Dracula’ that I’ll try to toss up here whenever they’re done.

‘Dracula’

Oh yeah, ‘Dracula’ itself has been postponed until Halloween. We’ll be doing a shorter run at Geva in June as a stop-gap and then coming back for a longer run over the ghouly holidays to present the Count in all his glory. Should be a lot of fun.

Well, that’s all for now!

I’ve been busy with PUSH this year (not a bad thing) which has given me much less time to do other things. However, There will probably be a little more online activity from in a few weeks. I’ve talked to Darren about some new things I’d like to be doing with PUSH and I’ll be trying them out over the next few weeks and months. I’ll let you know more when time gets closer happen.

Another hindrance is that my computer is currently powered by a cord I literally have to hold together. It broke a few months back, was repaired but has now broken again without hope of repair. I have ordered a new one, but I’ll be surviving on the broken version for a while.

And since typing takes two hands (one of which cannot be holding my broken cord together, I need to conserve my almost depleted battery!

Signing o………………………………………………………

The only background I’ll give out is that debate tournament are usually massive affairs where hundreds of people from different schools are competing all at once. Just keep that in mind.

Oh. You should also know this is a true story (the story, not the speech), and the trophy was enormous.

Here’s my Kevin’s essay – republished without his consent – but hey, you’re getting credit Kev!

“How I Won It”

Reclining coolly in a chair at the awards ceremony Jonathan thought back about the tournament that he had just won. His mind meandered through the most thrilling parts. His wandering mind dreamt up a speech. A speech he might say if they decided his award merited a speech. What would he say in this victory speech he pondered in his mind? He’d probably explain how he had won this tournament. Yes, that would be a wonderful speech.

It would start like this. “Hello everybody, my name is Jonathan Lowery, through hard work and extreme determination I won this tournament. For the benefit of other debaters I shall give a short explanation of how I triumphed over everyone else in this debate tournament.” That was a very catchy beginning to a speech. He smiled to himself as he dreamt up the explanation of his shocking victory “I was one of many participates who entered this tournament hoping to take away the big trophy. I fought my way through four matches in the preliminaries. My tireless efforts earned me a spot in the quarterfinals.” The preliminaries had been the hardest thing to win in the entire tournament, but he knew for sure that it was in the preliminaries that he had done his best debating.

“Through my hard work and ardent arguments in the preliminaries the officials decided to give me a bye for the quarterfinals. I went straight to the semifinals.” Shear luck Jonathan thought. That’s what got him through the quarterfinals without debating. “Once I reached the semifinals my prodigious reputation gave me the edge over my opponent. That edge combined with hard work earned me a spot in the finals.” Mr. Dulaney had almost had a stroke over the semifinals. Mr. Dulaney was enraged when he discovered it was against the rules to debate someone form your own school. He vehemently debated with the officials for ages over that rule. He wanted his students to debate for a spot in the finals. Eventually, Mr. Dulaney gave up and chose Jonathan for some arbitrary reason.

“Having so effectively progressed through the preceding rounds. My opponent became faint of heart and could not face me. All I had to do was wait for his argument to fall apart.” The other finalist had simply been unable to attend since he was taking the ACT the morning of the finals. So he had progressed through three rounds of debates sitting on bench in an empty cafeteria.

The speech was so ridiculous Jonathan didn’t bother to think up a conclusion. In the end he was glad that he was not required to give a speech for his award. Though, his imaginary speech would probably be a hit at parties especially if people knew the real story. That was where his speech belonged, in party. At that party he would tell people of his amazing triumph. How he had won a tournament through loopholes and dumb luck, yet, he thought, as he received his enormous trophy that would be a funny story speech to write down sometime. It would have a catchy title like “How I Won It.”