What's the blog equivalent of a latergram?

That's a great set up for joke, but sadly I don't have one.

It's a real question.

No?

Basically a cool thing happened at the beginning of February, I wrote 3/4ths of a post about it and Blogger is convinced it never happened.

Curse you interwebs!

As I was:

In my last post I mentioned (in a fly-by, passing sort of way) that virtually all my time in the gorgeous, magical town of San Miniato is spent either making masks or playing masks. Some of the masks we play are ones we've made ourselves, and many are made by Matteo Destro (master maskmaker and head of this program). But we started with the Neutral Mask. If you've never heard of the Neutral Mask, you are probably not a Lecoq nerd, but otherwise you're okay. Bottom line: this mask is a remarkable training tool for the physical performer. Humbling, clarifying, full of beauty, and many other words as well. Anyway, the Neutral masks we use were made by Donato Sartori; masks that are descendants of the neutral masks his father, Amleto Sartori, created for Jacques Lecoq.

Yeah, okay, I'm not even scratching the surface here, so let's agree to treat the aforementioned as a placeholder for the Lecoq/Sartori lecture that I am not remotely qualified to give, and simply focus on the upshot: the Sartori family and the influence of their work is a big deal. Other people copy the Sartori Neutral Mask, but it's darn close to universally agreed that there is nothing like the real thing. I mean, look:

Neutral Masks by Donato Sartori. Beautiful, no?

Sartori is also the benchmark (The benchmark? What's higher than a benchmark...the gold standard? The definitive? Talking about this stuff is freaking hard.) for masks in the Commedia dell'Arte style.

Marco Zopello as Arlecchino in a Donato Sartori mask. Ba-Bam.

Armed with even this tiny tiny sliver of information about the formidable Sartori legacy, it may not surprise you at all that their work has a museum dedicated to it. The Museo Internazionale della Maschera Amleto e Donato Sartori is located in Abano Terme, in the province of Padova (likely Padua to y'all American folks), adjacent to the city of Padova, which also happens to be the hometown of both Paola and Matteo, and just a few hours from San Miniato by car...

So it came to pass that a field trip to the Sartori museum was arranged for the Sunday between weeks four and five of the eleven week program.

Why on a Sunday?

Well, our regular classes are on weekdays, so an event out of town on a Sunday means we don't miss any. Fine and good. Owhever, Padova is also next door to Venezia, and it was the last weekend of Carnivale. 

My life, you guys.

So, of course, we packed a van and a large car with thirteen people and drove to Padova Friday evening, crashed with an assortment of Atelier connections Friday night, and then Saturday morn we all met up again in good old Venezia, at the height of Carnevale. I didn't grab any photos of the Carnevale masks I encountered, but suffice it to say that I am now far harder to impress than I was before Matteo exploded my brain for a month.

No costume this time around, but my butterfly earrings from Andre made it back to their roots. 

Blue button boots! Venezia, why you gotta tease me like this?

After wearing ourselves out stomping all through the Venetian fesitivites, we headed back to Mestre, where Paola's friend Annarosa hosted us all for dinner, and made us ALL THE DELICIOUS THINGS. I ate them all and took no photos. Radicchio cannot possibly really be that amazing. And perfect risotto. And vegan, gluten-free gnocchi that even I would eat forever. Yes. I know. It makes no sense, but there it is. 

Then on Sunday morning there was even time to see a bit of Padova before we raced off to our appointment with Mask-topia.

Here is Sara, our hostess. Alum of Helikos and the School-for-Theatre-Creators, and provider of my greatest Italian coffee and pastry experience yet. Which is saying something. Also, she's just plain lovely.

It is the last Sunday of Fritelle, seasonal fried and filled italian pastry of deliciousness. If I don't die of overeating today I am likely to die pining for them in the near future...

Then at last, the Museum. No pictures allowed inside, but basically, wow. Paola Sartori herself led the tour (oh yeah, Matteo and Paola totally know the Sartori family and have worked with them, etc. Because obviously.) and even though the museum is relatively small in size, I suspect it will require several more visits before I feel I've even started to take it all in.

Sculpture from the museum courtyard, the only Sartori work on the premises that is fair game for photographs. Much detail is lost in the photo, but you still get a sense of the total expressiveness of body, the beauty of his lines, and more.  

Anyway, just another reason I'm so grateful to be studying this stuff in the birthplace of so much of it. Padova, I am not done with you. This is just goodbye for now.

Built to Roam

Once again I find myself with a long gap between this post and my last. As such, please imagine the following interstitial narrative being delivered by Westbrook Van Voorhis:

When we last left our (anti-)heroine Repocket Pingree the first, B. Cumberbatch was about to give his penultimate evening performance as Hamlet. (Two sentence review: Yes. Cumberbatch is every bit as mesmerising a performer as one could wish, and being ten feet away from the opening action of the show is a feeling our Repocket will surely never forget.) Over the following two weeks, she completed and submitted her final MA thesis paper on Western Bunraku Puppetry, and only a few days after that, spent the weekend in Leicester, performing in the world's quickest theatre festival.

At which point, in rapid succession, she moved out of her London digs, flew home to the Bay in time for the Memorial Service of her beloved Grandma Virginia, and spent a wonderful winter holiday jam-packed with family, friends, theatergoing, auditions, and looking after an awesome dog named Maggie, at which point she temporarily moved to Italy.

No freaking way.

Right. So. Now is probably as good a time as any to explain that I've managed to extend my studies abroad to include three months training with a program called ATELIER in Tuscany. It's an opportunity for which I must, once again, thank my trusty Circus Boys, for pointing me firmly in the direction of Matteo Destro, an expert movement theatre maker, teacher, and director, who is also a master mask maker. Because I am, perhaps, the luckiest girl ever to live, the timing worked out such that I was invited to join the inaugural class of the Mask Movement Theatre program in San Miniato Alto and the dates fell in exactly the right place to enable my attendance. I'll go into more detail about the program itself and why it is rad beyond belief in future posts, but for now let me briefly break down the current awesomeness that is my life.

1) Location location location.

This is the Palazzo Ceccherelli. A legit 15th Century palace. Also, my front door.

I have a studio apartment in a palace, guys. Whose life is this, anyway?

Pay no attention, it's only the view from the balcony. Holy S#%&balls.

The stairwell is full of beautiful old screens, one even had a bird for Mama. (Hi Mom!)

Also, the neighborhood is pretty okay:

Random window. I have no idea.

So, yeah. Magical setting? Check. 

2) My comrades. 

There are ten students: from the U.S. myself (CA), Paige (CO), Joe, Brian, Rachel (NY, via Chicago, IL), Frieda (CA, via France), Beth from Australia, Richard from England, Andreas from Sweden, and Piotr from Poland. I already cannot imagine my life without each member of our new ensemble, and I'm consistently confounded by everyone's talent and intelligence, moved by everyone's generosity, and reduced to tears by their sheer hilariousness. 

In which Joe attempts to find homes for the orphans at the laundromat...

There's also so much I can learn from this group outside of our actual classes, easiest example being that some form of music jamming happens virtually every night. The following video is of an impromptu song we recorded two nights ago for Paige's dad's birthday. Left to right is Richard, Brian (in the back), Piotr (in a blanket, our heating issues have since been resolved, huzzah), myself, and Paige. Shout out to Beth, who can operate a camera amazingly steadily and silently given that she was totally cracking up...

Not a flawless rendition, by any stretch, but I think the heart comes through. I'm excited to see where we can take future musical collaborations.

 3) The faculty.

Our "pedagogic knights" (Beth's joke, may only be funny to us), are Matteo Destro, Paola Coletto, Ned Brauer, and Alay Arzelus Makazaga all of whom studied with École International Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq when Lecoq himself was still teaching. Their extreme expertise, clarity of purpose, and unflinching candour are matched with remarkable kindness and wry humor at all times.

Like I was saying, lucky.

Matteo and Paula wearing each others glasses at lunch. These guys are wildly formidable badasses, people, and they are this cute ALL THE TIME. Killing me with win.

4) The work.

Our mornings are spent learning techniques of physical theatre, and developing our skills playing masks. This week was Neutral Masks, next week we'll add playing Larval Masks. No photos of the work itself yet, but hopefully soon. Suffice it to say the work is humbling, inspiring, and extraordinary.

Our afternoons are mostly spent in the Atelier with Matteo, learning the art and craft of Maskmaking. We began last week studying the evolution of simple shapes...

Don't ask me what they are evolving into, it's a mystery.

 And simple faces...

My first little dudes in clay.

 And now we're casting each others faces to make our first full masks starting next week. Shabam.

Richard, mid-facecasting. The plaster makes each person's unique facial structure apparent. Love.

5) The reason I won't talk about again, but that's a big deal for me right now: Value for $. The ATELIER tuition price is less than one seventh of my MA tuition but is more than half the total taught hours of the same MA program (that's not taking into account that ATELIER has a stronger instructor/student ratio at almost all times and is better organized). My studio apartment in a palace costs much less than my super rent-controlled bedroom in Berkeley, and is one third the price of my room in zone 2 in London (all credit to Matteo as our amazing housing advocate, he is a miracle worker in more ways than one). Basically, theatre friends, this is the program you've been looking for. Come next year if you possibly can.

So, that's me. So SO freaking grateful to be here right now. Many thanks to my beloved Circus Boys, Peter and David, what an absurd bonus result to come of knowing people who are really already awesome enough. Incidentally, their brilliant original mask and circus show BOOM! (directed by Matteo Destro) plays Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley TONIGHT! If you are in the Bay Area and can make it happen you won't be sorry. Circus Boys rule.

That's all I have time for right this minute, but there will be more whenever I can tear myself away from all this learning. Ciao for now!

Today is a good day

Let's pretend you're caught up, shall we? 

It'll be fun, really.

Yesterday, I finally finished my final MA research project/presentation on the intersection of Actor, Ensemble Member and Maker in the art of Bunraku Puppetry. Like you do. (Ask me about it when I come home, it's bloody rad.)

After I had a pint with the lovely incoming MA class, and arranged to start crashing their Wednesday morning Lindy Hop class for the remainder of my time in London. Le score.

Niall met me at the pub, we walked back to the flat, his pal Jane came over, and Niall fed us homemade pork-chicken-leek pie, roasted carrots, and mashed potatoes with gravy. Heavenly.

Jane and Niall head off to a gig (term used by the English to mean live music event, natch. Not them performing or anything. Silly confused Americans.) It's around 7pm.

It is at this point that I say to myself:

Well, what the hell.

I clean up all the puppet making shenanigan remains in my room, pack some snacks, some pillows and a blanket into a large waterproof bag and set the alarm for 3am.

It's on.

The alarm wakes me up and I jump into cozy clothes, grab my things and trot to the bus in what still looks like the misty English nighttime. 

The bus is late.

The bus arrives, huzzah. 

As I board the bus and grab my Oyster card to swipe it, I discover that I have the wrong Oyster card. Not mine, my extra for guests, that has no money on it. Oh Lordy.

I'm sure it's in one these bags, right? 

I don't swipe the one I have, I just stand there at the front of the bus fishing helplessly, realizing it must not be there, somehow. (Note to the uninitiated: London buses will not take cash. Since I don't use a contactless card, oyster is it. And the nearest place to top up at this hour is a mile away. I'm about to confess and apologize and remove myself from the bus when he shuts the doors and starts the bus.

I kind of stand there in shock and at the next stop he tells me to move back out of the way of people boarding.

I guess it's 3:30am and he can't be bothered to deal with idiots. Halle-bloody-lujiah.

I get off the bus, and walk to the Barbican Centre, where there are already 36 people camped out in front of the darkened entrance. It is now 4:09am. 

Let's take stock. There are generally 30 day tickets, 10 standing room, and possibly a few returns made available to folks in the queue each day at 10:30am to see Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet.   Each person in the queue can buy up to two tickets (which they'll need to show picture id both to buy and to use, to discourage scalping). This means that, in all likelihood, only the first 20-25 people in line are likely to get tickets. If I join this line I will be number 37. Never gonna happen.

But I'm already here.

I get in line. 

Flash forward to 11:26am. I am at the front of the line, with roughly a hundred hopefuls standing behind me, and all the day tickets and standing room tickets have been sold. I've made new friends, played card games, loaned pillows, shared jokes and snacks and generally had a blast.

And there is still a return ticket for me.

Yes.

So here I am. I've gone home and napped and changed, and am back at the Barbican in their cafe. The show starts in fifteen minutes, and I've got plans to meet my new friends from Denver in the lobby at the interval.

Let's see what you got, Cumberbunnycat.

 

Running away to the circus...

As per usual, I must follow the call of the circus boys. Or, rather, boy. Or, rather, Peter. Well, technically, he didn't call me, he has no time for that, I found out he was performing in England while on a Skype call to Anandamayi in California where he has been staying...yes yes, hush. The circus calls!

You may remember Peter from my frequent FB posts about his new show in development, BOOM! (which is a collaboration with another beloved circus boy, David). Or you might remember that Peter is one third of the circus boys from my Parisienne blogging weekend in early December, while they were all studying Wutao and developing BOOM! in their off-hours. The show just closed a killer kickstarter so keep an eye out for them. It's going to be incredible, I'm sure.

Anyway, Peter is performing his internationally beloved solo show at Showzam in Blackpool, I am on a train, zipping north across the English plains, and I'll be there for the first show of his run tomorrow.

!!!

I feel strangely vindicated

I was about twenty feet from Tom Stoppard, when he was asked why, as Britains greatest living playwright, he waited nine years to write and premier his most recent play. His answer was long, smart, hilarious, and charming, and in the end he said "I didn't wait. I procrastinated." 

He was wearing burgundy and cream striped socks, he fessed up to procrastinating, and he wrote Arcadia. 

I'm done.

No, really, I'm not done. I'm on the bus now, en route to see Theatre de la Ville-Paris' touring production of Six Characters in Search of an Author. T'will be me first time seeing Pirandello staged, and a free ticket to boot. Le score.

Of course, I've only just left the Stoppard talk at the National, where I had a front-row-dead-center seat listening to Tom-motherloving-Stoppard, plus the endlessly delightful company of Alona Bach, with whom I shared a delicious post-talk Punschrulle and a pretty decent Plentille. Just sayin': the Frenchies will definitely have to pull out all the stops if they want to snag the "highlight of my evening" title. 

But, I mean, word on the street is they are badasses, so who knows.

Go Frenchies go.

Oy

Well, good thing I didn't get too carried away. FA's Othello was visually stunning, full of exciting choreographic moments, and, as soon as they started talking, it was like :-(

Boring.

Granted, I am an unabashed Shakespeare nerd, so my bar is high and all, but when  people are speaking Shakespeare's text and I find myself longing for them to stop talking and go back to dancing, there may be a problem.

Still, a really exciting night of Shakespeare-inspired dance, with the unexpectedly GLORIOUS boon of running into the lovely director M. Graham Smith. He's on a brief hiatus from teaching in Barcelona and will return home to SF in February. We had a delightful drink trading stories and then took the tube together most of the way home. Serendipity never ceases to amaze me. 

Flash forward to this morning, Niall (my flatmate) made crazy Mexican-Benedict-Burrito-Bizarre Deliciousness and ran off to the football game (the one with the round ball) and I'm off to the Clapton library to whip my research paper into shape. I'm armed with a latte and a bear hat. Necessity of Co-Bodily Presence here I come. Watch out.

Not pictured: Swedish marzipan roll.
...
It's serious homework, people. Desperate times and all that.

Differences

I'm sitting in the Lyric Hammersmith, waiting for the show to start. Frantic Assembly's adaptation of Othello. For all you San Franciscans, the Lyric is like an intimate version of ACT. Still pretty epic tho. Check it:

The word on the street is that most of the show takes place on that billiard table. No joke.

Yes yes my photos are awful. but you get what I'm driving at.

So here's the thing:

It's a sold out house, packed with HS and College kids. On Friday night. 

They are abuzz with anticipation. 

To see Othello.

Sexy Othello. But still.

I got the absolute last seat available in the orchestra and spent £30, the most I've spent yet on a ticket here, but still less than half what I would spend to see a comparable cast, with comparable production values, in a comparable venue in the Bay Area.

I think London may know a thing or two we don't.

Here we go. Let's see how they do...