Inside outside
From Sunday, August 17 to Sunday, August 24, Stuart Pimsler and Suzanne Costello, along with five company dancers—Brian J. Evans, Cade Holmseth, Roxane Wallace, Laura Seth Virtucio, and Kari Mosel—videographer V. Paul Virtucio, and dramaturg Liz Engelman retreated to the seclusion of the Tofte Lake Center at Norm’s Fish Camp to reimagine, revise and rework Rooms of Disquiet. Inspired by several short stories by Franz Kafka, Rooms explores the boundaries of secret desires, and the consequences when dreams are transformed into actions.
Tofte Lake Center (Web site), founded by Liz Engelman and co-directed with Michael Bigelow Dixon, is an educational enterprise for artists wishing to expand and deepen their creative potential in a natural setting.
The cast of characters
Suzanne Costello (Dancer): A dreamer, fragile, broken, yet maintains an almost childlike sense of wonder which clouds her judgment.
Liz Engelman (Dramaturg): Outdoorsy, active, curious, playful, thoughtful, supportive, organized.
Brian J. Evans (Dancer): Athletic build, open, curious, ambitious, helpful, considerate, humble. Always learning, hopeful.
Cade Holmseth (Dancer): A repressed soul and social misfit who desperately wants to connect to another.
Kari Mosel (Dancer): Small/short, alert, standoffish, shy, anxious, frightened, scarred (emotionally), doubtful, slightly crazy, attracted to shiny objects, usually lost in her own inner world, rarely wears shoes, likes to process things while physically feeling objects, talks to herself.
Stuart Pimsler (Director): Offers suggestions about the possible secrets and motivations inspiring the actions of each character. What is at stake for each of these individuals? What do they want from each other? Enjoys lighting the fire and stirring the pot. A bit of a troublemaker.
Laura Selle Virtucio (Dancer): Dutiful, on time, made-up, passionate, intelligent, caring, dramatic when called for, but she has lost herself along the way.
Roxanne Wallace (Dancer): Solid, built, sturdy. She is strong physically and mentally. Grounded, rooted, but maybe a little because fate pounded her down into the earth.
Through the residency at Tofte Lake Center, Rooms of Disquiet transformed into a dance/theater piece specific to the Center’s grounds and facilities—on decks and docks, in cabins, on roads– with the audience following the performers and action throughout the grounds.
To start the process off, we asked everyone to complete the sentence: “Before we begin, I assume that...” Then, in the middle, they continued, “I am surprised by...” And at the end, they responded to the prompt: “Now I know that...”
We thank them all for allowing us an uncensored look into a unique rehearsal experience.
Before we begin, I assume that...
LAURA SELLE VIRTUCIO: This work is going to be incredibly challenging for many of the dancers in our company due to the acting focus... I assume that the nervousness I feel is because we are all changing parts; we are adding people; and we are in a new space. Will we destroy the original work?
I assume that my preciousness and fear about this work is because I can’t seem to assume that we will make it better? Why do I assume we will kill it rather than make it better?
STUART PIMSLER: I should at least know the definition of the word retreat, given that is what we are referring to—that’s what we are doing here—having a company retreat. I know that retreat means to change direction. At times, reverse course. I don’t want to think of it as going backward. I like the idea of rethinking the way we have been going but rethinking it voluntarily.
CADE HOLMSETH: This play is going to test myself and a couple of others in the company to reach for a different understanding of interaction with each other. I have very little theater experience or training and am more focused in the physical realm.
I think that being away from normal life is going to be a great way to get out of my head and focus on the work. Since we are remounting an old piece, I have a little trouble believing that there will be a whole lot of creation as much as refining. To me, creation is the type of thing done well in an intense week of work whereas refining is best done over time by taking space and coming back with a fresh perspective.
LIZ ENGELMAN: This process will be strongly influenced and affected by this property and the surroundings, and the resulting work in progress would not have been possible in a rehearsal space in Minneapolis.
ROXANE WALLACE: We will get more out of the work done—or at least as much—over dinner talk than in proper rehearsals. We will have time to think, dream, wake up, and come together in, around, and about the work.
KARI MOSEL: This project will challenge me to become more vocal and patient with myself, and Stuart will want to push me harder every rehearsal because I am the newest and most inexperienced with acting. I assume I will get frustrated at least several times.
SUZANNE COSTELLO: Everything about this play may change based on new performers, new process, non-studioesque space, different time in history, new time in my life.
STUART: I am lighter here—just the bare essential of what I need to make the work happen—my partner, my company, two great people who support our efforts and a place that is unfamiliar to me. I am dropped into this paradise for a finite period of time where anything is possible. I can be easier on myself regarding self-judgment and hopefully get back to the very primary, clear motivation for making work—a curiosity about what I don’t know about a given moment, a certain issue, something that I am chewing on that I know or will come to see as relating to something in my life.
LAURA: I will now assume nothing and enter this process openly. I will try to dig in and find the work anew and let go of what was. I assume nothing.
After two days of work around a table, one day of laying the previous scenes on to the new space, and a day for a stumble thru, everyone sat down to address the second prompt:
In the middle of the process, I am surprised by...
KARI: The fact that I am the only one that ended up in the water!
BRIAN J. LEWIS: The bugs! Oooh, I hate bugs, much more than I thought—not all, of course, just the ones that “bug” me.
STUART: The ways in which Suzanne, Laura, Roxane, Cade, Kari, and Brian continue to unfold new places for themselves—not unfold—demand new possibilities for themselves as they explore character, motivation, and the worlds we create. My obsessions about any particular, unturned stone would not be moved very much without these amazing artists. They really do have my back.
BRIAN: The seamlessness of transition from this year to last... It’s like no time has passed and the chemistry is still present among us.
LIZ: How finely the script is analyzed, how open the community is to one another’s opinions and suggestions.
LAURA: How personally I am taking this process—how the limitation of ego confuses, sometimes blocks, clear communication. Bringing increased vulnerability. I am surprised to feel extremely vulnerable.
CADE: The lack of abandon... There are moments where we see each other in the plain light of every day. The moments of rehearsal have been adding up to an intensity where I have been identifying with how creepy my character is. “At night, the smoothness is gone. Deep creases everywhere.” I find myself lost by the end, and out of control.
SUZANNE: I am surprised to be in this role, and I am surprised that I like it.
STUART: How the logic of creation will forever, for me, remain as that frightening wisp of a moment where my intentions and letting go joust to eventually surrender in the odd violence of creation.
How quickly the incomprehensible becomes clear.
ROXANE: How very quickly we have switched from being process-oriented to product-oriented. It felt really cool to be all around a table a few days ago, digging in to the piece. We looked at scenes and discussed character and relationships between characters—all that stuff was so exciting and interesting. There are new people with ideas and opinions about the characters that I hadn’t heard before. That part of the work felt great. I don’t like the shift that was made so very suddenly once it was decided we had “A SHOW,” and we had to just switch to making “A SHOW” for “THE AUDIENCE.” ... I felt like we were all connected and making a group investigation to answer questions that are bigger about these people in the story as well as the story itself. Now it feels like we are just solving issues about how this showing is going to work Saturday and then we leave the next day.
LAURA: How the pressure of the upcoming performance has cut the creative exploration we set out to do. The last few days we began to really clarify the script and character and suddenly that work seems to have been thrown out as we enter the performance mode. I am surprised to feel let down by this; I had hoped to make the work clearer. Have we?
SUZANNE: Finding the perfect costume pieces we needed in the one antique clothing store in town!
On the final morning of the retreat—after a full day dress rehearsal, an evening performance for a roving audience of twenty Ely, Minneosta, citizens, a post-show audience talkback, and a dinner that lasted long in to the night—the group gathered their final thoughts:
At the end, now I know...
KARI: When allowed to be in a large stage/Fish Camp, the audience—without realizing it—becomes a part of the play.
BRIAN: A wonderful way to realize life on a stage—when you yourself realize that you indeed are a participant in the story/script.
LIZ: There is something inherently profound about performing work site specifically and allowing the audience to participate in a way, giving them an experience of the piece that is like no other investment or involvement they’ve experienced before.
ROXANE: Mosquito repellent works when you use it properly.
CADE: Seclusion can be as much or more of a driving force for creation as beauty.
LAURA: Being tied to a city of daily commutes, going job to job puts a certain twist on process—my mind changes focus so many times in a day that it can be challenging to truly invest and be present in process at times. Being here, this week, brought new twists that I’d never experienced. Process becomes like a petrie dish, all the beauty, tension, anguish, & discovery was daily and somehow seemed more fulfilling and more mine. My place in the work, my contributions seemed clearer; I went through the week with awful moments of pure negativity, found my way to insight, appreciation, and desire. Eating together, playing together, creating together allowed for this.
ROXANE: I really do like/love these people who were here, these folks that together made this trip are good and fun and talented and just incredibly smart. On top of that they are accepting of how I am not like them in some ways...
STUART: My work and its idiosyncratic creative process can be filtered through other templates of discovery, and survive—perhaps become clearer without sacrificing certain intentions.
Confusion doesn’t have to be debilitating and can become a useful window to clarification and organization.
Physical behavior can flow from dialogue in a particular moment and feel seamless.
SUZANNE: Tenacious attention to language can assist/illuminate/clarify the overarching meaning of a moment, a scene, a character, a play. I know now that I want to apply the same rigor to choices in gesture and movement.
LIZ: Story is built and accumulated through patterns and repetitions—Kari through windows, a mention of a red dress and a party, seeing a red dress.
KARI: It may not matter if everyone has the same interpretation of the story.
LAURA: The performance push/focus that annoyed me mid-week was a catalyst forcing the work to change and to the clarity I had hoped for. It forced us to put these characters in rooms, in water, in site-specific spaces that enhanced the story and deepened character.
LIZ: Theatre is indeed ephemeral, in and of the moment, experienced and lost. Kari dancing on the dock was majestic, magical, otherworldly, and completely real. And now its gone, but for in my mind...
CADE: I have a theatrical talent I need to explore and harness, and at the same time I still have so much to learn before that can ever be realized. ❦
