Across the Universe

I think as homework y'all should get your hands on a copy of Julie Taymor's Across the Universe. It is really incredible as a piece of work. A film clearly directed by a theatre maker. And something I think we might be able to take some inspiration from in its fluid movement between text, music, and film collage. Also in its generally interdisciplinary nature. I recommend watching it again with the directors commentary because Taymor and the composer and choreographer talk about the process. It is very informative and exciting.

Anyway. It made me really consider if we want to kind of throw this story into the pan and boil it down to the images. What is Cupid? Who would be a cupid in our understanding of that job? What is Aphrodite? What is the separating of the grains? and the ants that come to help? We have all talked about this. But it suddenly felt a bit more clear to me.

An Idea from Ben...

What if, as an exercise, we told the entire play as quotes from love letters/emails...our own and other peoples'?

Dunno about you, but I've got some we could draw on...

The ARC of the psyche project

Phase I - Spring 2008
Exploratory/Generative Phase
Goal: To start work together as an ensemble
To begin to get to know the world of our play
To generate images, sounds, scenes, characters, text

Phase II: Summer Intensive 2008
Intense generative phase
FINALS WEEK, 25 hours over 5 days
Goal: To generate a massive amount of images, sounds, scenes, text.
To have a lot of our raw material.

Phase III: Fall 2008
Shaping Phase
Goal: To meet 3 hours/week ON A WEEKDAY before 6:00 PM. To have our whole team onboard. To begin to clarify who will be wearing what hats in the final production.
To take all of the material we have generated in the Spring and find the story shape of it -- to arrange it, throw chunks out, figure out where we need to add something. To create a working full draft of the script.

Phase IV: Fall Intensive 2008
Honing Script Phase
FALL FINALS WEEK
20-25 hours over 4-5 days
Goal: To spend the week in full workshop mode, doing more detailed rewrites/reworkings, so that at the end of the week we have our solid nearly-final draft and a clear idea of what needs to be fixed or rewritten during Spring semester. To really start REHEARSING what we have.

Phase V: Spring Intensive 2009* (tentative, depends on MFA Actor Show commitments)
Detailed Script Phase
15-20 hours over 2-3 days, the weekend before classes start
Goal: To implement and explore changes that have been worked on during break as a result of Phase IV. To hone our draft and push hard into rehearsal phase.

Phase VI: Spring 2009
Crunch Time
Goal: To rehearse 3-4 hours a week and really perfect what we want to show (we hope during New Works).