Notes

I want to write about my experience creating and performing and being part of The Persians.
I began volunteering last week. Rehearsals ran from Monday to Wednesday, with the show opening and Thursday and performacnes going on until Sunday. There were 5 performances total.

I really want to talk about the experiences I had, which included being in different numbers and acts, but besdies just being in them the larger experience... of the physical struggle to uphold and move the puppets, working with an outside eye, witnessing all aspects of the process and the work of others. Being a member of a group. Okay, so how to start...

Let's circumvent all of these qualifiers such as amazing interesting fascinating meaningful and get to the heart of what we want, which might actually require us to go deeply into those qualifiers until something better emerges. So okay. I had a great time, yeah it was actually a lot and complicated ad stuff... so I was in many acts, such as the horse act, the chair act, one of the libations, an elbow in the blue scene, and of course a puppeteer and body in the white scene. I also had a line in that scene. And shined a light. What was cool was to feel like I have relatively "small" parts, and to enjoy that relative smallness among many... something as simple as opening one side of the red curtain in order to serve the libation... it felt extraordinarily important you know? One thing led into another... and the storyline, richly woven with Peter's hands unfolds and we are the one of the means through which it unfolds. but so many of them that together they

Chair scene:
Intense stomping and hiding, deep honor, physical struggle of holding a simple cardboard chair while concealing self, and following every breath of the leader to be completely in sync. Being in that collective, complete collective. Forced to hear every word of the messenger, and their wailing desperate song. We respond to it. I find myself getting emotional but no time to wallow, to think. Only to be and do. I am lucky enough to leave after we kneel and cry, leave to the bell and breathe. Everyone else becomes a clown and destroys the world. I am lucky because I get to witness this destruction, this painful destruction, witness Savana's words to Clairs piercing precise movement. Collaboration, says Peter. When teh world does end and everyone dies, I am the first to enter, carrying the curtain with Alice. This is also a collaboration. I move the curtain slowly right up to the first body and stop. Together, we open it, revealing the libators. The libation ahppens and I serve it, I can't help but revel in Genvieve and John's uncomparable honoring of the dead. It is beyond beautiful. It is the only hope we have. Peter squeels the solvent glue and the scene ends. I prepare to carry the blue mama in and become an elbow, a collaborative elbow. This is perhap the most challenging part I had of the performance, to support a simple cloth in the air with both of my hands, to create tension all the while consealing myself and being completely together with Paul, the other pupetter. Alicia helped me by holding the cloth when I was tired, letting me switch my hands. Again, we are allowed, we are exposed to the words of the scene whihc by the end of the rehearsals I memorize: thousands on thousands... thousands on thousdands... it would take weeks to say all of their names... how can this not hit you? Not affect your performance? How can you performacne not be in relationship to this all? When we go down and the libations are now sung to us, it is a nice moment of rest of contamplation of simple being. What happpens whan the pupetter lies still, the puppet resting over them?
We go back stage. I'm always the first one off but I don't rush to carry puppets off right away. There's no need to... perhaps next time I would though. Instead I paus and tune to the motion that is happening, figuring out where I might be of most usefulness. When I am handed soemthing I deliver it. I rearrange what needs to be and the white saga begins. This envolves not just waiting, but close paying attention. The scenes are so simple that it doesn't take much effort to be carred away emotionally by the songs, the chapters, the unfolding parts of the tapestry. Everyone eventually rises and then we slowly start to improvise. I remember when I was lost. Now this lostness doesn't bother me. I allow myself to listen, to be still, to do less and less, to not worry about being seen. I follow, sometimes I notice someone following me. When Maura sna Josh's chapter begins, I make myself invisible, again, background to their act. it is my way of collaborating. We improvise more, I say my lines, then listen. I realize now how important, no not how important but how listening necessitates and creates itself; you must listen for cues, the cues make themselves heard and you follow. When the final squeal happens and i crawl to my light, once again I am but a small body in the ocean of Mathew's aria, lying still, waiting for my cue. Whatever meaning you see from the outside, I am simply me, the puppet, the member. I light my light when it is time and hold, fiercely collaborating with the audience by trying to do the impossible: iluminate the revolving painting, and not their eyes. This impossibility is my dance. When homosapiens tap me, there is no performance in my getting up. I get up and abandon taht which is already gone, I rise and awaken to face the audience for the first time. Amelia shares with us, all of us that which we simply hear and accept: humanity's hands, pleading for life. We hold it, and then we bow.