Rodin on Realism…
In art a thing is beautiful whenever it has character. Character — this is the intense truth of any natural spectacle, whether beautiful or ugly. You may even call it a double truth. For it is the inner essence expressed by the outer appearance. It is the soul, the sentiment, the idea that shines out through the features of a fare, the pose and action of a human body, the tones of a sky, the line of a horizon.
Rodin, Rodin on realism, 1910
Raegan Truax: citation performed in Memorial Auditorium, Stanford University for the department of Theater and Performance Studies
@Large Alcatraz, the site specific artwork of Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz:
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.
To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.
Ai Weiwei
Victoria Theater, San Francisco: Yeast Nation (the triumph of life) presented by Ray of Light Theatre
King Fool, We Players site integrated theatre adaptation of William Shakespeare’s of King Lear with Ava Roy and John Hadden in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travell’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient – a little space – know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love.
Walt Whitman
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth
Shakespeare, King Lear
Rehearsing in a graveyard… Ava Roy and John Hadden practicing We Players‘ King Fool in an East Bay cemetery.
The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone. Instead of growing more sensible in death, the inhabitants of the cemetery were sillier than they had been in life.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
We Players Lear Rehearsal at Battery Wallace in the Marin Headlands
Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied–Ha! waking? ’tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Shakespeare, King Lear, 1.4
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools
Shakespeare, King Lear
We Players Rime of the Ancient Mariner workshop on schooner Alma for the National Park Rangers of San Francisco Maritime
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
We Players Rime of the Ancient Mariner takes place on San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park’s schooner Alma, one of the National Historic Landmark ships at Hyde Street Pier.
Ava Roy on the Schooner Alma
…seasons, light and time, too, are intrinsically tied not only to space but also to human interactions with space. We have biological rhythms in our body: the rhythm of breathing – above all we have a rhythmical heart, melodious blood pumping. We have the circadian rhythms of hunger, of sleep, of sex…. The cosmic rhythms of day and night, winter and summer…. When you live beside the sea, you have the sea as an essential rhythm: you internalise it. It is necessary to harmonise all our rhythms.
Augusto Boal
Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘s poem explores a violation of nature and the resulting psychological effects on the mariner and on all those who hear his tale. The Mariner must grapple with loneliness and guilt and ultimately, seek a path of redemption. Through the poem, we are confronted with man’s fragile relationship with nature, and the humbling effects of the supreme elemental forces of the sea.
We Players Vessels for Improvisation at Hyde Street Pier with inkBoat and Rova Saxophone Quartet.
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
Charles Darwin
Speculation: Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days in Los Angeles.
No better, no worse, no change No pain.
Katie Sigismund as Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days
Ava Roy performs Shakespeare Sonnet #20 on Baker Beach
.
A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all ‘hues’ in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
Shakespeare Sonnet #20
We Players Trio Happening: Aquatic Park beach goers encountered the Graeae, a mythological trio of women from Ancient Greece, respectively called Dread, Horror and Alarm in a site specific theatre performance by We Players
As this wave from memories flows in,
the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972
with Maria Leigh, Caroline Parson, Julie Douglas; produced by Ava Roy and Lauren Dietrich Chavez
Franconia Performance Salon #11 featured performances by Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Sarah Mendelsohn, and Karen Penley; and excerpts of a new performance text by Martin Schwartz; a sound installation by Derek Phillips; and a video game by Daniel Jackson.
It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
Gertrude Stein