art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

44 art / vision / voice
became a lot more focused, like, “This is the script, this is what
we’re going to do. Everything we work toward from this moment
on is going to be stuff for the show.” So they really did have to pull
the reins in and get a bit more focused. They still had to learn lines,
and block the space, and rehearse it. And the intensity and the energy
rose up, too. The kids really rose to the challenge of being able to
hammer all these bits of writing and movement into a show that
they could put up in three weeks.
It was fascinating then, because we got to see how the stuff we’d
done before could actually go into the show. We were actually able
to filter through all that stuff—the bits of dialogue, the movements
that grew out of the exercises—and figure out how to use it.
elsa It was cool, because I don’t have to say I performed this play written
by this person. I can say I performed this play which I wrote, in which
me and other people had a lot of input, we all had input in the
script. It’s really different to write something and then act it out. It’s
really good. It’s great to know that you’re acting something that you
go through, that’s going on.
We’d do writing exercises to create the material for the show. It
was a lot of fun, and a lot of people who saw the show said that it is
what normally kids, teenagers our age, go through every day. That
was really eye opening, the fact that we didn’t try to put that out
there for their eyes, but they saw it in the production anyway.
The movement worked the same way, it grew out of the exercises.
We’d do impulse exchange. That’s where a lot of our writing came from
that ended up in the script. There were a lot of people from
Columbia who helped me out a lot, who were always there like, “This
is good, but try doing this. See if you like it.” And sometimes I’d get
aggravated because I was like, “This is how I want to do it.” And
they’d be like, “Just try it and if you like it, then you know, and if
not, then go back to the one you had.” And I always ended up liking
it the way they wanted me to do it!
I know that if it wasn’t for all the people who were there helping
Luis, the production wouldn’t have been how it came out. A lot
of my friends mentioned that they would like to see a second part of
Merging Into You. I’m more than willing to do a second part of it,
because that play gave me so much energy. It’s amazing.
kym I wanted to do more teaching, and I had the opportunity to work
with Free Street over the summer. And some of the Association
House kids were doing stuff at Free Street — it was amazing for
them, the same kids got to work together on the stuff that we did
Impulse exchange is an exercise in which
the participant receives impulses from an
outside source (someone swings his/her
arm, taps his/her shoulder) and explores
physically from that “impulse point” by
curving the body from the impulse point
into itself, discovering and experimenting
with different movement possibilities. If
the participant focuses completely on the
points from which he or she is curving,
the mind should open and in turn be
more receptive and concentrated.