NEWS FROM NACL

The Outside Character by Rosaruby Glaberman

In the beginning of November 2001 a group of nine people including Brad Krumholz and Tannis Kowalchuck of NACL assembled at Clemete Soto Velez (CSV), a successful community theatre center, in the lower east side of Manhattan island to start on the first phase of the next North American Cultural Laboratory performance/training. The training began as a way to find people to create the next NACL performance, which was pre-planned to be outside. I, being one of the nine, entered CSV having no previous knowledge of who my training partners would be.

We sat in silence, awkwardly looking around the hallway where we were gathered, small unofficial introductions were made. Then Brad, the director, opened the door said "hello everyone" and we directly began work. Later we learned that Brad had intentionally not introduced us to each other with the intention of letting the atmosphere of the new project develop on its own, a theme that in the next 6 months continually arose.

All of November we trained together in a large white room with a black floor, memorizing the crevasses on the wall, singing together, making individual actions and sequences, physically training, and taking trips to the MET for inspiration on character development. Anything was possible: all choices on movement and action originated from us and Brad would tweak our movement in a certain direction, like highlighting a sentence in a paragraph.

One special day the group, as a continuation of training our awareness and reactions to the environment, ventured into Chinatown. We walked with knowledge of the exact location of each other, we ran dodging between people's bodies. I was glowing, I felt the world shift a little to the left, colors became enhanced, movement took on multiple levels of complexity and meaning, but most of all I began to notice and feel a very interesting dynamic with the people on the street, a feeling that would continue to evolve as the outdoor show Invisible Neighborhood developed. I was acutely aware of the different types of reactions people on the street had to seeing a group of people acting very different from the other people surrounding them.

In December the first phase of the project ended and it was decided who would continue on with the actual making of the play. In the beginning of January two of the seven previous continued on: Aaron Weiner and myself. Later we were joined by David Frydrychowski and Laura May. From there we dove into a serious daily training with each other, 6pm-10pm Tuesday - Friday, and 9am-12pm Saturday. Silently, we worked developing actions individually based on specific tasks Brad gave us. Creatures and Characters began to emerge and enrich the room. Subconsciously, we worked and communicated with each other, wondering what was taking place, what was forming. At this point it was only known that we six people were working on an outside performance with two stilt characters and three ground travelers.

Little by little it emerged who these people were: a storyteller, a foreigner, a monk, a knight, and a beast. These characters were developed solitarily yet mixed in a room together living and developing and slowly they began to meet each other. Flashes of costumes and props appeared, a fan, a bucket, a stick, yellow cowboy boots, a scarf, a robe, and black feathers sewn together. Each new thing forming a feeling inside our stomachs of what we might be.

Then it became time to let these characters walk outside. It was magical-- five characters exploring an empty parking lot that looked out over a busy pedestrian street, trying to find who they were and what their purpose was. I remember walking outside for the first time and waving my scarf in the air above brick apartment buildings. I felt as though I was entering the mystical, ancient, and at points grossly hard world of the circus street performer. Outside we no longer had the luxuries of the characters we created isolated in a room; we were solely actors on the street: objects for the heart and fear of a child or a smile and a laugh from an understanding adult. We began to move together and speak directly to each other, a definite story emerged and continually developed during performances due to the natural growth of the characters and the reactions of the outdoor audience.

We performed in parks in Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, various locations upstate New York, Philadelphia, and Eastern Europe. Each place we performed was unique because the show took on new levels of meaning depending on who was there watching and what the architecture and natural life of the place was in different parks or cities. What it meant to perform on the streets of Bulgaria with very poor children watching was completely different from performing on the lawn outside the NACL Theatre in Highland Lake, New York, to an audience full of theatre colleagues.

On the street you are raw. In the open you are vulnerable to the public?s preconceived conception of what an outside performer is, be it positive or negative. Some days we stuck out, all eyes on us. Other days we melted into the busy chaos of the exciting New York street. But each time I knew we were contributing something valid to the mix of everyday life. We were called freaks. We were admired and given precious gifts. The public has no obligation to the street performer they happen upon: either they are drawn in by the fantasy, or they aren't. But one thing is for certain-- my character never knew who she was until I looked at the eyes of my audience, for it was they who told me who I was.

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What Laura has to say about the European tour by Laura May

In May we went to Eastern Europe with Invisible Neighborhood. We had been invited to some festivals and to do a performance and an exchange with Dah Theatar in Belgrade, so off we went with our stilts and our hoop skirts and our sticks and buckets.

The itinerary was: Belgrade for four days with Dah; three towns in Bulgaria - Russe in the north, Targovishte in the middle and Varna on the coast of the Black Sea; a week at the Sibiu Festival in Romania. In Russe the producer of the festival of which we were part interviewed each of us for her documentary and she asked what do we hope for, or what is important about our work for us. I answered "joy": I do it for the joy of seeing people's surprise and delight. I do it for the joy of creating a small change in the big world. I do it for the joy of the magic of stilts and the way they transform the space and transform me and the spectator both into children. Or the joy of the way children recognize me as one of them. And the joy of being free in the world to choose to do this thing and no other thing....

And so to my point: in Eastern Europe there was a lot of joy for me. Because the folks there have been isolated and shut in for a long time, culturally, they were very pleased to be able to bring us to their festivals and then they were very charged up by what we brought.

There is still something subversive (or suggestive of subversion) about street performance in Eastern Europe. It's not unusual to see a dancing bear and an accordion player, but the sight of a theatre troupe is quite unexpected. I think the thing is the telling of public stories that are not the stories of those in power; telling our own stories, right there in the street, noisily, in bright costumes.

The other thing, of course, is our being from America and therefore I suppose representing something (or several things). But people seemed remarkably willing to take us as individuals without dwelling on the baggage of America and what that signifies these days. We felt very welcome and appreciated, even in Belgrade next to the holes made by NATO bombs....

Our first performance was in Belgrade and the space was much smaller than what we had rehearsed in. The audience was packed into the little square and people were hanging out of their apartment windows across the street to see us and there was this powerful feeling of event - of something actually happening!

We are so unused to that in North America - audiences are jaded, or they are polite, well trained. One doesn't often get the feeling in NYC, for example, that one is changing anybody's life. But in Europe I really did have that feeling: that we were doing something, that it was important, that people cared.

When we were rehearsing in Belgrade a man from a bar brought us popsicles: he'd seen us and wanted to thank us for being there! A homeless man gave Rosaruby his money. In Targovishte a woman gave us her earrings - pressed them into our hands, thanking us... Maybe she was a nutcase, but the feeling that we were doing something real persisted throughout the tour. Even in Romania in the midst of a large festival the performance felt vital, startling, joyous.

So I would say now to the question what do I hope for from my work, I hope for it to be that way again and always. I hope for it to be exciting and to generate excitement. I hope for it to matter.

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WORKING OUT OF ISOLATION -- A SUMMER AT NACL by Alex McLean

My company, Number Eleven Theatre (from Toronto, Canada), was in residence at NACL Catskills for eight weeks this summer. Our primary objective was to begin creating a new performance. While doing so, we participated in numerous activities particular to where we were-- we swam in the lake, we worked in the yard and on the theatre, we shared meals, we prepared for the Catskill Festival of New Theatre. Our days were full and that fullness fed our work.

When we crossed the Canadian border in June, we explained to customs officials that we were on a "professional retreat." Often, I spoke of working in "relative isolation" in Highland Lake. The more I consider it, however, the less satisfied I am with this choice of words. I think of past rehearsal halls, overpriced rooms in the city without windows or proper air circulation. Out of necessity, such rooms are designed to shut out all that is around them. That is isolation. You leave rehearsal and return to the world that has been totally oblivious to your day's activity. You are working alone.

This summer we were in the company of artists whose pursuits are similar to our own. On several occasions we were able to train together, to sing, to converse into the night. For me, work becomes tangible in such a situation. You see the effect of your practice on the people around you and, equally, their influence resounds in what you do. I remember sitting on the theatre floor during one of our rehearsals, with sunlight and bird sounds entering the room through an open window. I was memorizing text and I heard a sound over my shoulder. I turned to see one of the Invisible Neighborhood stilt characters moving past the window outside. This is not isolation. My favorite moments of this past summer are akin to many of my favorite moments in theatre, when you realize that you are surrounded by activity, by the energy of people at work. You cannot help but participate in what is around you; you are not retreating.

This summer we were permitted entrance into an ongoing dialogue between a theatre and its natural surroundings, its surrounding community, a dialogue between collaborators and like-minded artists. It is rare and it is a privilege that we won't forget.

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