Capstone Weekly Reflection 8- 9/11/2018

The shape and scope of this project has shifted significantly since its original conception so I feel it is an important step for myself and for this process to step back in order to view this piece holistically and how it has transformed moving forward. I will attempt to isolate the moments that informed these decisions as specifically as possible however I recognize that this may prove somewhat difficult given the sense of fluidity and depth this process has taken.

The major shift in this process is the desire to use the capstone project as an investigation into the process of writing as a performer. I am no longer invested in the creation of a performance, purely for the sake of my own investment with engaging with the ideas and themes of this project as deeply as possible. Specifically, my desire is to formulate a script as intensely as possible and make use of this process as a means of isolating my engagements with toxic masculinity and this exercise of reframing my understanding of myself and my being.

The decision for shifting the scope of this project came to the surface as a result of the rehearsal experiment or laboratory which I conducted last week Friday. The session was a success in the sense of promoting a new level of intensity and focus in revisiting my scene writing that week and keeping in mind the discoveries taken place in the room for my own interest and understanding of design in order to engage with the topics of this project. This process of understanding research contextually, its application in writing and its articulation in movement experiments and laboratories is new way for myself with engaging with performance that doesn’t necessarily manifest itself as a fully staged production. In thinking of the ways patriarchal masculinity produces itself in culture, perhaps viewing finished, fully fleshed out and articulated performances with clear thoughts as determined by their use value, ideas laid out by bell hooks in her seminal novel The Will to Change, through theatre is itself a kind of masculinist understanding of performance. This idea of interbeing raised by hooks in her text lends itself, as a process for making work, that is far more interconnected and interrelated whereby process is viewed as a conversation for understanding ideas in relation to others as opposed to a single overarching viewpoint dominating the discussion of a cohesive performance, something that has probably informed the desire for this capstone to be about my understanding of process for making work as opposed to a finished product.

The question for myself thus becomes how can I make this project as clear as possible in terms of the questions I am presenting to collaborators and how this project is engaging with this process. Arranging regularly scheduled daily writing sessions, weekly movement laboratories and conversations with my Stage Manager, Isabel Rios and my designers, Keira Simmons and Leslie Gray to check in about scenes and how these are woven into the laboratory process, reflections and archiving of work that is informing the writing of scenes, as well as recording and processing of laboratory materials are perhaps, for myself the primary means of experiencing this capstone process as deeply as possible and an exciting prospect for the remainder of this process.