A BOOK REPORT on
THE BOOK OF MANY DAYS,
Chapter 1

By Tannis Kowalchuk

 

On October 11, 2005, NACL began an actor training and theatre research project called The Book of Many Days. The following document is a report on the first chapter.

The Book of Many Days is devoted to pure theatre research.  We are focusing on the development of our performer training (physical and vocal/song work), and on the study of a variety of multi-disciplinary research. We have opened our doors and have invited participation and exchange between NACL, past collaborators, and interested members of our community.  We are not making material for the next NACL play, rather, we are asking new questions about our current training and we are learning new things for the sake of learning new things.  We think of it as a "Structured Sabbatical," as we have no goal to produce or market what we make or learn during this period, rather it is a time for expansion, learning, and creative regeneration.

The Book of Many Days runs from 9 AM-12 Noon, Tuesdays to Saturdays at NACL Theatre in Highland Lake, NY.  From 9-10:30 we focus on pure physical and vocal training led by Tannis Kowalchuk and Brad Krumholz. At 10:30, we study that day's research topic.  This is a sample from the evolving list of study topics:

Scene study, stilt walking, radio drama creations, disguises, Shakespeare, reading, creative writing, directing, dance, games, improvisation, song composition, clown, videography, scene composition, working with objects, reading music, visual art, puppetry, Pilates, lighting design, poetry, field trips.

Sometimes these topics are led by the group, and sometimes by a participant if it is their expertise.  Expert/participants have so far included local artist Karen Smythe leading visual art, Vickie Diesher on creative writing, and Ophra Wolf on dance.  A journal, or a Book of Days, is being kept to record each day's work.  Participants sleep over at the NACL residence. Others, if they live in the area, leave after the work session or lunch.

The Book of Many Days Project Schedule: 

Chapter 1
Begin Tuesday, October 11^th to Wed., October 26  -- Completed
Chapter 2
Tuesday November 15 to Saturday, November 19
Chapter 3
Tuesday, November 29 to Thursday, December 22
Chapter 4
Tuesday, January 3 to Saturday, February 4

The Book of Many Days, Chapter One
Personal Reports by the Participants

Tannis Kowalchuk

About six months ago, I began to feel the serpentine coil of fatigue un-ravel inside my belly. I had not stopped being NACL executive director, festival producer, cook, host, actress, grant-writer, tour manager, and residence keeper since 2000.

Last winter, while performing in New Hampshire, I learned about The Shakers.  What interested me in the Shakers was their self-sufficiency, their unique combination of capitalism and communism, and their balance of work, religion, and play.  They lived communally, grew their own food, sold their hand-made crafts, tools, and furniture, they shared work, profit, and property, all the while remaining devoted to their spiritual practice.  Like the Shakers, I wished to better integrate, into daily life, what was artistically/spiritually important to me.  I also am keenly interested in developing a self-sufficient, bartering, and sustainable community--- but that's for the next social studies project! 

In New Hampshire I got an idea for a sabbatical project for myself.  I came up with the title, The Book of Many Days.  What is a Book of Days exactly? A Book of Days is a journal or diary.  The Shakers kept a Book of Days to record daily events.  So did monks and nuns, ship's crews, explorers, and other collectives who shared lives or who embarked on adventures together.  I thought this would be a good title and model for my sabbatical project and I invited others along for the ride. 

The first quarter of the project is done.  I am happy to be training again (especially without the intention of building a show, integrating new company members, or teaching).  Some days I have no clue what to do or what might happen and that is very exciting. I am asking new questions.  I have given myself a chance to surprise myself, get scared, embarrassed, delighted.  Each new day makes me proud and thankful to be in the room with the others who came to work because they had to as well.  Each day of The Book of Many Days is a gift.  It is a new freedom.

Sarah Dey Hirshan

Adventure into the unknown has been a reoccurring theme in this past week's work with the Book of Many Days.  As often happens, I have to hear a thing many times from many sources before I can really catch it's meaning.   We go into the chilly theatre at 9am.  We are all here as students, and some days we will all work as teachers as well.  The first half of the morning is spent on NACL's physical and vocal training led by Brad and Tannis.  The second half is devoted to exploring an artistic discipline, led by a practitioner in that field, one that is often something few of us have ever tried before.  We have a long list of things we hope to try between now and March. There has been a very healthy mixture of sincere, focused learning and a good sense of humor regarding the awkwardness and sometimes embarrassment of being a beginner.  This second half of the morning has been going much as I'd imagined when Tannis described the project to me last spring.  She spoke of wanting to search in new directions in order to feed the creative spirit.  What has surprised me has been the way our search into the unknown has carried over to the training we do in the first hour and a half of our mornings.  Some of us have spent many years pursuing this training while others have only begun last week, but I see everyone striving to work with a beginner's mind, keeping a light hold on acquired skills, using them only as tools for searching and not as the goals of the work themselves.  Having spent three years with NACL I find myself being seduced by a new feeling of comfort and familiarity with some of the exercises we do.  I desire a feeling of ownership over an exercise.  I look for a finished product within myself.  Instead of searching for the unknown I find myself looking for the "right answer," like a perfect solid statue of technique that I will only have to keep the dust and cobwebs away from but never change.  It takes many days of hearing Tannis talk about wanting to find a brand new way to explore working with the center, or Brad saying that he found some new ways to work with his voice before I finally catch on.  This is a time we have set aside to walk into the dark and cobwebbed places we are often too afraid of when under the pressure of delivering a finished product.   The beginner's mind is infectious; it grows in us the desire to make the familiar strange.  I hope that this new desire will be able to withstand the sand traps of habit and security when we begin to work on our next production.  I feel that during the Book of Many Days I will gather many new skills and interests through our multi-disciplinary research, but above all I believe that where the training truly lies is in instilling in each of us a beginner's mind and an adventurer's heart.

Brad Krumholz

I have been leading the Animal Work, and Tannis has been leading the Vegetable Work, with the exception of one day, in which we switched.  Actually, we haven't been referring to our morning activities as "Animal Work" or "Vegetable Work." This is significant, in that the work has been, for me, a period of re-evaluation and re-discovery.  We have been taking steps into familiar territory, but it is as if we are purposefully forgetting things, trying as much as possible not to take anything for granted.  "We have done this exercise before, but this time, let's really try to understand what it contains, and eliminate any unnecessary, habitual elements."

We approach everything from a vantage point of unfamiliarity, wiping our memories clean, in order to find something inside that we had never known, or suspected.

Also, though,  I have been in a position of teaching and leadership.  This has been tricky and exciting.  It's like I am leading an expedition into a jungle.  I have never been into this particular jungle, but I have been in jungles before, many of them, and I am aware of their features, inhabitants, dangers, and signs.  And I have survived them and found my way through.  This new jungle is very unknown, but it is a jungle, and so there is still something familiar about it for me.  I am the leader.  I am qualified and confident.  I am responsible to teach the new explorers among us the ways of all jungles, even as we explore the specifics of this one for the first time, together.

We are joined by Ophra Wolf, Sarah Dey Hirshan, Vickie Deisher.  Each has a very different point of entry and orientation.  Sarah has been working with us, with me, for the past 3 years.  She is familiar with the work we do, she has been learning and exploring for some time, and so it must be interesting for her to be reexamining what seems like familiar territory and finding that it is, in fact, full of unknown secrets-- in fact, that it always will be.

Ophra is hungry and new. She is disoriented and is wisely using that disorientation as a strange sort of compass, to find her way in this new terrain.  She is a dancer and has great control of and understanding of her body and the way it moves.  But this is a new work, and demands a certain patience with herself, with her new teachers, and a willingness to accept the surprises she finds in herself.  She is bearing up well.

Vickie is entirely new and totally inexperienced with anything like this kind of work. It is so unfamiliar to her that she may not even know what she is looking for, or why she is even doing it. For me, that is her business; I trust the instincts that have led her to participate so fully and consistently, and I am glad to have this chance to meet her inside of work and play.

The vocal explorations have been very exciting for me.  It has been some time since I have revisited this realm.  I always did find it fruitful and exciting, but how can I explain the feeling of life and pure vitality that I feel as I explore the full range of my voice?  The voice is directly connected to all aspects of our personality, individuality, hopes, joys, sorrows, fears.  This time that I have had to explore the possibilities of my own voice has been a great gift to me.

My sense is that this is true for the others, too. Although, if one is unaccustomed to the powers of the voice, it can be intimidating, for the very same reasons that it can be joyful.

The second hour and a half of each day has been less deeply fulfilling for me.  I have certainly enjoyed exploring the topics of each day, but I am always left wanting.  We went into this process knowing that we would only be tasting these topics, and not immersing ourselves in them fully.  But, I feel dilettantish.  In a way, I would rather have three hours to explore the Animal and Vegetable work than only touch upon the basics of various disciplines for half of our time each day.  But, rather than mourn too much, I am using the "Topics" time as a spark, a reminder.  There is a world of possibilities of things to learn and explore.  This is like a taster-sampler at a restaurant.  When I am through, I will have tasted many delicacies, and if I find the drive in me, I can choose to go deeper into any one or more of these disciplines as my search continues into the future.

Ophra Wolf

I landed inside the Book of Many Days before I had fully landed back in New York. Or maybe landed isn't the word: I was flying around the studio, flexing my attention and my calves only a day after I had been flying across the world, returning from my visit to Israel. The first week of work was both exhilarating and challenging. The physical work, led by Brad, felt like a long awaited feast for my senses, but the voice work was (and still is) challenging for me on so many different levels. During the second of half of the first day, Tannis suggested that we do composition, using the Aspects technique. I felt lost and out of my element, and was having a hard time coming up with anything that I liked. I played with a chair-- somehow having a prop was comforting. On the second day, Vickie joined us for the training, and began her own work on a composition. At the end of the session, Tannis and Brad showed their pieces, and I decided to find the courage to show mine as well. There wasn't time for feedback, and perhaps there wasn't enough clarity about how to go about feedback yet: for the first half of the day I am in the role of student, and for the second half in the role of colleague, but negotiating that transition is not so simple. The third (and last day for me) of the first week happened to fall on Yom Kippur, and the work was especially hard for me. Part way through the voice work, I could no longer deny my tears, nor did I seem able to stop them. I did not participate for the rest of the day, and though I wanted nothing more than to bury myself underground or under a blanket, Brad and Tannis insisted that I stay in the theater.

Coming in to the second week, I think I was able to appreciate Brad and Tannis's insistence-- I felt safer, and was prepared to continue working despite the inevitable obstacles that were awaiting me. I spent the first two afternoons of the second week on stilts, which was exhilarating and which left me with an appetite for more more more. Clearly I am more comfortable with the physical aspects of the work, and the voice work is painful in a way that I don't associate with anything that muscle soreness could bring on, but I keep trying. On the third day, with Sarah and Vickie present, we went through the training in reversed roles: Tannis led the movement, and Brad the voice work. Then we played Four Corners. I was skeptical of the simultaneous meeting at the center of the square, but the game was so compelling and left me feeling so awake and sharp that I am looking forward to playing again.

By the third and last week I was in a very different place than when I had begun. Having done an intensive workshop for personal trainers over the weekend, I was aware of how much the work was lending to my everyday life: I was able to hold my attention for longer, and I was quicker to respond and engage with my environment. I was also starting to feel more at ease at the Lakewood House and with the transition between student to colleague to friend and guest that took place every day. Tannis said she noticed an improvement in my voice work, and even though I still found it challenging, I was no longer in danger of being stopped in my tracks by that challenge. And working on the Plastiques with Brad on the last day, I felt both relaxed and attentive, and being relaxed allowed me to really enjoy the work. For the second half of the first day, we worked on disguises, and while we had only limited resources, we all transformed into characters very unlike ourselves. There are some very funny pictures to show for our hard work! The next day was my turn to lead the second part, and I prepared an "experimental" dance class for my two attentive students, Brad and Tannis. I left back for the city that afternoon already waiting for the next chapter. I made a long list of things I wanted to write about for myself concerning my personal discoveries, but I think that the greatest discovery was that I was engaging in self-discovery and I was actually beginning to enjoy it. That is a great step for me, to feel safe and accepting of my own process-- and I am sure it has everything to do with my trust in Brad and Tannis and with their willingness to share and be open about their own process.

Victoria Diesher

As someone with no real experience in the acting world I was filled with trepidation, but excited, about getting involved in The Book Of Many Days.  Initially it was definitely nerve wracking and completely foreign to participate in daily movement and voice exercises, but it quickly became exhilarating and inspiring.  I have moved my body and used my voice in ways I never conceived of before.  As a result I have found someone braver and more adventurous inside of myself.  Even scarier was composing a short piece to perform in front of the group.  However, with strong support and great instruction I was able to do this too, with confidence.  I have also been able to use my own experience as a poet to guide the group in a writing exercise.  This has opened up new territory for me as well.  Tannis and Brad are wonderful at what they do and it is a true delight to work with them.  Each day I have left the three-hour session with something to think about and build on.  The work has been totally fulfilling.  One cannot imagine how participating in the practice of theater will translate until they have immersed themself in it, and I am grateful to have had this wonderful opportunity right here in Sullivan County.