working it out

Grey, mostly overcast day today, considerably colder than it was yesterday.We were back in our first working day today, refreshing our memories and throwing out a lot of new ideas. During our last work session in April, our exploration of "identity" led us to these thoughts:

Identity is a construct that is fluid and changes based on context. In other words, in the absence of relationship (whether with another individual or with any other entity) identity is moot. One identifies him/herself IN RELATION to an‘other’ -- the ‘other‘ is essential for the process of definition. The other can be an individual, a culture, the state, an institution, God, any other entity; anything that exists outside the self.

Identity functions on several levels – the personal, the socio-political, and the virtual. Identity may be forced upon an individual from the outside, or can be internally generated by the individual. The act of imposing identity begins with the impulse, whether external or internal, to examine , define, or label the individual. The process of constructing an identity to interface with the ‘other’ eventually becomes a process of compartmentalization, categorization and ultimately, fragmentation. The constructed identity (or avatar) can never be/represent the whole that is the person.

American Identity

As “Americans” we are citizens of a nation of immigrants. The mythology of the American Dream is founded on the belief in the freedom to succeed through hard work, without the constraints imposed by class, caste, race, or ethnicity. The reality is that we are essentially a nation of “others” attempting to establish a community and stake claim to our piece of the American Pie. The question of cultural/ethnic/racial identity becomes an imperative which sparks great anxiety, segregation, pride, confusion, contention and dissension. Name, race, facial and physical features are not definitive markers but become elusive signifiers of identification. The question that is repeatedly asked of us is: Where are you from? As if the subject cannot be a person of native origin or does not belong here. As Americans, displacement seems to be part of the given circumstances. Within that, hierarchies and power struggles emerge.

From here, we were filtering through some other ideas -- What is the theatrical identity, theatrical tradition in the U.S., and how do we as artists set ourselves in relation to these?
We shared a bunch of classic American movie clips with each other, since the tradition of cinema, we felt, was one of the strongest performance traditions in this country. Here are some highlights:






We also had this amazing swath of creme colored gauze fabric, which we were playing around with, veiling/unveiling, imprisoning, dragging each other's bodies across the floor with.

In the evening we got to see Our Town in the Globe Theater. It was very chilly in the evening, but beautiful. One of my favorite plays, actually, and one of my favorite playwrights. In fact the production of The Skin of Our Teeth that we put on in high school may have been one of the reasons I continued to pursue theater. Anyway, in the Globe, during the black outs, you could see the stars filling out the sky. Beautiful.