It's been a longtime since I've updated this blog, despite my half hearted efforts to get my fellow rAiz'n members to blog. I figure I will lead by example and do some blogging myself and hopefully others will follow suit.
Last night was our Wychword Play Reading Series and it was a success. After a few readings we had done which were successful in content, but not necessarily in attendance (except for the famed Dutchman Reading which Cara single-handedly made a success), it was a nice to see a full audience of our friendly theatre folk in attendance. Jajube did a great job of directing and hosting and producing (we had too many chairs even!). Big ups to Navneet for physical labour and being Rinzing in her absence.
What I am learning more and more about getting people to attend events is the personal touch needs to be brought back. As much as email and facebook are great ways to promote, a good old fashioned phone call or in person visit goes a long way! This is how we got bums in seats for our reading and how I have been approaching my work in outreach.
We were all reading from our own pieces last night. There was a reading of Maxine's Keen, I read my piece, Last Dance, Marika read from her piece MULATTO NATION and Tanya performed her interactive piece, Biography Live. What struck me about all of the work was how we all infused so much of ourselves and our experiences into our creations. All of the pieces had a very personal resonance and I could even see shades of ideas we've explored in workshops emerging.
It's interesting because last year, it was sometimes unclear as to what we, the ensemble were doing. Especially during salon time which ended up at times being more talk and food more than anything else (what happened to the food!), but it is clear to me more than ever that this ensemble is about igniting our own individual creative sparks and giving us the support in order to feel comfortable taking a leap. So although, we sometimes don't have tangible to dos, just meeting on a regular basis is enough. As Deidre said (and I am para phrasing/this is not verbatim at all), how do you create an ensemble? You throw a group of creative people in a room (regularly) and see what happens.
What is happening for me is I am beginning to find my voice as a creator (individually and collectively), I am feeling motivated to create AND more importantly, I feel like I have some methodology and a community to support it. My piece has a long way to go, but I have taken the first step. Can't wait to see how everyone else's work progresses as well! Some of us are in the upcoming rock.paper.sistahz festival. Exciting!
Our next reading will be in April where we will be workshopping our piece defin8, which hopefully will be in rps as I am still working this out with ahdri. We will be blogging about this cre8tion (couldn't help it!) process.
Sedina
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