Woah... so this is the end of week 1. It's been mental busy and I have barely been able to publicise our activities on facebook, have completely ignored twitter and haven't really managed to post on the blog.
I have to say I am very proud of what we have achieved so far. The group seem to be getting along quite well, everybody is proactive and happy to share the housework, knowledge, personal space and stories. Sometimes it's hard to share the same roof with family, let alone with complete strangers, but we haven't had any problems at home so far. We actually got to the conclusion that hanging each others' underwear after washing is part of our personal development experience.
Aaaanyway...! Last time I wrote here I had sent the group out on a project to revisit some place they'd liked on the tours and come back with an image that captured the essence of the border for them. They went back to the street market between the two cities and made some very interesting observations, contrasting and comparing the two sides of the market. Their insights into this were very unusual for the natives among us, because the market is always treated pragmatically by us. We pass by it every day, back and forth between Brazil and Uruguay, we go there to get cheap watch batteries and socks, and we complain that they have ruined what was once a nice square. We natives knew that the Uruguayan stalls had been moved and are now more organised, but we hadn't realised they are starker, less organic and more dull than the Brazilian stalls, still personalised, chaotic, colourful and creative. We will go back to these images later on.
We also had our first few practical workshops this week. I'm very happy to see that the group responds really well to direction and aren't shy of challenges. I did a workshop about notions of transculturalism and exchange, with some exercises on composition, and then we also had the pleasure to have Tanise Carrali (Cia. P com P de Teatro - Brazil) and Michel Croz (Taller Teatro Independiente - Uruguay) leading workshops on street performance, traditional dances and border philosophy/aesthetics. I've had to provide interpretation for these and after 4pm on Friday afternoon my brain stopped functioning, after a week of constantly working in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. I felt incredibly tired and the group noticed this, and those who have known me for a while also know I don't like showing any signs of weakness, but that couldn't be helped. I don't think it hindered the work because Michel sent them out to carry out a task in the Park and we agreed it was better to leave them to digest all the information gathered there and elaborate their task for next week - which also allowed me to recover from the intensive translating.
Our first barter session was on Saturday afternoon, and I asked the girls to get together in the morning and prepare something to show, while I rehearsed Andy's piece with him. Andy is here to shoot the documentary and therefore focused on getting the filming right, thinking about how he is going to script and edit this, which means he's been missing out much of what's being discussed. He was telling me this is a bit frustrating because of his own background in performance, which is a subject close to his heart, so when he asked me if he could show something of his own at the barter I agreed right away and helped him prepare. Unfortunately there weren't many people turning up to barter with us, but we had a handful of school kids who were a bit shy to start with, but once they got going, turned out to be a rather enthusiastic and creative bunch. One of them played the recorder and had a bit of a jam with Gwen and her accordion. Then they were happy to teach the girls to dance chamamé, one of our folk dances, and Gwen taught them some basic ceilidh steps. They all had a dance-off going over various Latin rhythms and a couple of Scottish songs, which was great to break the ice. Then I asked the girls to perform the piece they had devised in the morning and I was very glad to see bits of everything we had worked with during the week in there. They constructed a structure with a couple of broken tree branches found in the back garden and weaved bits of wool around them as they told their personal tales. The wool was inspired on the first exercise of my transculturalism workshop and proved an effective tool to build real or metaphorical images on stage. Some of them used the pieces they had come up with as a result of the composition exercise, some of them referred to images they had seen on the tours, and some of them used ideas or objects they had used on Tanise and Michel's workshops. The piece they devised was just a scratch, but everyone could easily see it as an excellent start of something, should they decide they want to elaborate on that from now on. Andy ended up not dong his piece because we ran out of time. However, we were invited to a dinner party at Tanise's house in the evening and had a mini barter session there, as her whole company were there, as well as some of her students. They showed us some dance pieces they had rehearsed and then Andy got to do his performance, which was great because he really wanted to show it to the P com P guys, as they are the local street performers. It seemed to go down really well, and we all had loads of fun.
Today was our day off, so Patricia and I took them to the lake for a walk and then we went to see the Brazilian Marines band, which includes a pipe band (!) who performed at the Edinburgh Tattoo in 2011. And yes, it was bizarre to be watching a Brazilian pipe band playing Scotland the Brave in a shop in Uruguay.
We are all quite tired, so tomorrow will be a lighter day again. Eli is going to get us to do some yoga exercises in the morning, Andy and I are going to interview a Uruguayan juggler and then I'm going to send them off on another field experiment, which I'm looking forward to. Bring on week 2!
I have to say I am very proud of what we have achieved so far. The group seem to be getting along quite well, everybody is proactive and happy to share the housework, knowledge, personal space and stories. Sometimes it's hard to share the same roof with family, let alone with complete strangers, but we haven't had any problems at home so far. We actually got to the conclusion that hanging each others' underwear after washing is part of our personal development experience.
Aaaanyway...! Last time I wrote here I had sent the group out on a project to revisit some place they'd liked on the tours and come back with an image that captured the essence of the border for them. They went back to the street market between the two cities and made some very interesting observations, contrasting and comparing the two sides of the market. Their insights into this were very unusual for the natives among us, because the market is always treated pragmatically by us. We pass by it every day, back and forth between Brazil and Uruguay, we go there to get cheap watch batteries and socks, and we complain that they have ruined what was once a nice square. We natives knew that the Uruguayan stalls had been moved and are now more organised, but we hadn't realised they are starker, less organic and more dull than the Brazilian stalls, still personalised, chaotic, colourful and creative. We will go back to these images later on.
We also had our first few practical workshops this week. I'm very happy to see that the group responds really well to direction and aren't shy of challenges. I did a workshop about notions of transculturalism and exchange, with some exercises on composition, and then we also had the pleasure to have Tanise Carrali (Cia. P com P de Teatro - Brazil) and Michel Croz (Taller Teatro Independiente - Uruguay) leading workshops on street performance, traditional dances and border philosophy/aesthetics. I've had to provide interpretation for these and after 4pm on Friday afternoon my brain stopped functioning, after a week of constantly working in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. I felt incredibly tired and the group noticed this, and those who have known me for a while also know I don't like showing any signs of weakness, but that couldn't be helped. I don't think it hindered the work because Michel sent them out to carry out a task in the Park and we agreed it was better to leave them to digest all the information gathered there and elaborate their task for next week - which also allowed me to recover from the intensive translating.
Our first barter session was on Saturday afternoon, and I asked the girls to get together in the morning and prepare something to show, while I rehearsed Andy's piece with him. Andy is here to shoot the documentary and therefore focused on getting the filming right, thinking about how he is going to script and edit this, which means he's been missing out much of what's being discussed. He was telling me this is a bit frustrating because of his own background in performance, which is a subject close to his heart, so when he asked me if he could show something of his own at the barter I agreed right away and helped him prepare. Unfortunately there weren't many people turning up to barter with us, but we had a handful of school kids who were a bit shy to start with, but once they got going, turned out to be a rather enthusiastic and creative bunch. One of them played the recorder and had a bit of a jam with Gwen and her accordion. Then they were happy to teach the girls to dance chamamé, one of our folk dances, and Gwen taught them some basic ceilidh steps. They all had a dance-off going over various Latin rhythms and a couple of Scottish songs, which was great to break the ice. Then I asked the girls to perform the piece they had devised in the morning and I was very glad to see bits of everything we had worked with during the week in there. They constructed a structure with a couple of broken tree branches found in the back garden and weaved bits of wool around them as they told their personal tales. The wool was inspired on the first exercise of my transculturalism workshop and proved an effective tool to build real or metaphorical images on stage. Some of them used the pieces they had come up with as a result of the composition exercise, some of them referred to images they had seen on the tours, and some of them used ideas or objects they had used on Tanise and Michel's workshops. The piece they devised was just a scratch, but everyone could easily see it as an excellent start of something, should they decide they want to elaborate on that from now on. Andy ended up not dong his piece because we ran out of time. However, we were invited to a dinner party at Tanise's house in the evening and had a mini barter session there, as her whole company were there, as well as some of her students. They showed us some dance pieces they had rehearsed and then Andy got to do his performance, which was great because he really wanted to show it to the P com P guys, as they are the local street performers. It seemed to go down really well, and we all had loads of fun.
Today was our day off, so Patricia and I took them to the lake for a walk and then we went to see the Brazilian Marines band, which includes a pipe band (!) who performed at the Edinburgh Tattoo in 2011. And yes, it was bizarre to be watching a Brazilian pipe band playing Scotland the Brave in a shop in Uruguay.
We are all quite tired, so tomorrow will be a lighter day again. Eli is going to get us to do some yoga exercises in the morning, Andy and I are going to interview a Uruguayan juggler and then I'm going to send them off on another field experiment, which I'm looking forward to. Bring on week 2!
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