Update on Choreography & Writing + Ian's Vignette

Hey guys,

The Choreography & Writing group met at Whitney’s place last Thursday for a brainstorm session. What they came up with (I arrived in the middle of the meeting when most of the ideas had already been exhausted) was that the 15 minutes allotted to the performance should be divided up into 5 separate vignettes that express a particular theme, with transitions in between. The vignettes are each roughly 2 minutes long and transition will be just over a minute apiece, although this may be subject to change depending upon what we decide in our meeting this Thursday. Anyhow, the themes are as follows: (1) dinner, (2) constraint, (3) child/isolation, (4) lovers, and (5) invading privacy. The transition ideas are still in the rough, but some of the spontaneous ideas we came up with involved: (1) general wanton playfulness, (2) moving beds, and (3) exorcism/chanting. We will clarify our transitions in the next meeting when we all bring our finalized vignettes – it’s hard to use cement without the bricks in place. That being said, I just finished my vignette and thought it would be nice to share it with you all. Enjoy!

Vignette of Isolation
By: Ian Gerald King
Approximate time: 2 minutes

Characters
· 6 individuals

- 1 individual is to emulate the role of a ‘child’

- 5 individuals are to emulate the role of ‘adults’

Scene 1

· The scene begins with the adults surrounding the child in his bed, in the upper right corner of the stage. The adults make comforting gestures despite not actually caring for the child.
· Immediately, the adults congregate in the lower left corner of the stage to partake in ‘adult affairs.’ They face each other in a circular arrangement and engage in interaction.
· Gestures should reflect feigned sophistication and several should occasionally sip from an imaginary glass of wine.
· The whole time the child is not sleeping. He is restless in his bed, tossing and turning and unable to sleep. Eventually he stops writhing and technically falls asleep (although he is not aware of this – perhaps an element of dramatic irony could manifest itself if the audience can catch on to the subtleties). Following the cessation of movement the child turns his head and stares blankly at the adults (this is the beginning of his dream phase, one which he is not consciously aware of). He lowers the blanket to his waist, sits up and points at the group of adults with his right arm.
· When the child points at the group of adults, both the adults and the child freeze into a tableau. Hold for 10 seconds and then commence Scene 2

Scene 2

· The child lowers his pointing arm, gets out of bed and begins walking in a straight line towards the audience. Once reaching the periphery of the stage, the child turns to his right and begins walking towards the group of adults.
· The general motion of the child should be slow and sombre. Hands held behind his back, head looking towards the floor, feet dragging, and overall depression permeating.
· Throughout the duration of the child’s progress towards the adults, they should be maintaining spontaneous and natural interaction. Some hugs here, some laughs there, and a general comfortable atmosphere should persist. They should appear as though they have known each other for years.
· When the child approaches the group he taps the shoulder of the closest adult he comes into contact with. When the tap occurs, the adult being tapped freezes into a tableau. When the other adults see him freezing, they too freeze into a tableau.
· Perplexed at this phenomena, the child’s depression turns into frustration and anxiety. Proceed to Scene 3.

Scene 3

· Frustrated, yet entirely curious as to the nature of the phenomena presented before him, the child begins walking counter clockwise around the group of adults. As he walks around them he pokes and taps them as if they were statues – frustration increases as he comes closer to the point of origin from where the circuitous route began.
o The child doesn’t just tap shoulders and whatnot – he’s a child, what do children do? He’ll maybe step on one’s foot, tug at hair, cling on to one’s leg, and perhaps crawl between someone’s legs, followed by head-butting another in the chest: basically, complete randomness. This should be entirely spontaneous and must, above all else, look natural.
· Once he reaches his point of origin, the frustration turns back into depression and he miserably stumbles into the center of the circle. Then, he lays on the floor, curls up into a fetal position on his left side while facing towards the general direction of the bed. Commence Scene 4.

Scene 4

· 5 seconds after the child lies on the floor, the adults unfreeze and begin to end their get-together. They shake hands, and wave – completely ignorant of the child laying on the floor between them, as their eyes should never look down – and begin to break up into groups.
· The group breaks are hard to describe in words, so hopefully the diagram will facilitate the description. Basically, they face outward and begin as follows:
o One individual, closest to the bottom left corner stays in his position after turning180 and gets down on one knee. He/She should begin to assume a pondering position. For example, left knee down, right knee up, right elbow resting on right knee, chin resting on right clenched fist, head slightly tilted to the right, and looking ponderously into space. (this will have implications later on).
o One set of two individuals (“1” in diagram) walks several steps past the center of the stage and faces the wall with their right sides exposed to the audience. There should be general connection between the two to identify them as a pair (i.e. one person’s arm around the other’s shoulder – nothing too intimate that will make the participants feel awkward but enough for interaction’s sake)
o The other set of individuals (“2” in diagram) walks diagonally towards the bed and stop just before reaching the center of the stage, with their backs to the audience. Once again, there should be some sort of interaction that defines the two as a pair, yet it must be different from the previous group (i.e. holding hands/linking arms, sitting down together.
§ Overall, the two groups should display a sense of togetherness, which the child so greatly desires.
· 5 seconds after the adults have frozen into their tableaus, the child gets up and begins Scene 5.

Scene 5
· No longer depressed or frustrated, the child should exude a general air of indifference, like a hedonist, who, having enjoyed a vice to its utmost extent finds all his pleasures cloyed in the end.
· First, he observes the pondering man curiously and turns around to walk towards the group that has their backs to the audiences. Next, after eyeing the first group, he proceeds to the second group with the same disinterest and then proceeds to go to bed.
o He should resemble someone at a museum who is not intrigued by what he sees.
· When gets to bed, he rolls over on his left side and faces away from the audience. Scene 6 then gets underway.

Scene 6
· 5 seconds after the child falls ‘asleep’ (in which case he is waking up to reality – a subtle paradox, if you will) the pondering man stands up, turns around and walks directly towards the child’s bed. The walking motion should be confident, imbued with purpose, and yet not too fast.
· The adult lies down back to back with the child, although in an inverse position: his feet are at the child’s head while his head is at the child’s feet, his face is towards the audience, whereas the child’s is away from the audience.

The End --> Transition into another vignette.