Week 1
First day we do quick introductions and then talk about what the lab will hold. Each labbit is given a notebook and assigned a Yoga mat. We finish the day with beers in One Yellow Rabbits' The Big Secret Theatre and are told that "This is your home, your space". The rest of the week falls into the schedule quickly. 2 hours of yoga in the morning, quick break, movement work, lunch. After lunch we work with text.
By Wednesday we had already each created a personalized set of physical gestures to use in movement work, almost a personal sign language. Over lunch we decide to do a guerrilla performance of them, standing calf deep in the water of Olympic Plaza. Overnight, Labbit Stephanie creates Yellow Rabbit ears for each of us to wear. The next day we wear our new ears and perform for a crowd of unsuspecting onlookers. Conversation hushes, suits and young families alike stare, cameras come out. Some people smile. What's more, we all went. Every labbit. No one held back, we moved as a group.
The first week ends with a shaker over at a Charles' place, my director for the last few gigs I've done. There is also a trip planned out to the mountains for the out of town labbits. I however fly to Vancouver to grieve with a friend for the loss of his father.
Week 2
The tone of the lab starts to get a bit more serious. The yoga practice intensifies now that we've brushed off a bit of the rust (or at least for me). There is more of talk about what the final group projects are, and what the final projects we are individually creating will be. More members of the OYR family come through and perform their work for us and let us pick their brains.
We begin to experiment with cut-up beat poetry. We learn new techniques for derailing our personal filters and biases when writing or moving. We each create a character, and it's not the character we thought it would be when we first began. We receive a creative suggestion, drawn from a hat. If we choose to use it, it should be inspiration for our final piece. That night I tape mine to the front of my journal so that I can be constantly reminded what it is.
I promptly leave my journal on the bus the next morning.
Week 3
After a weekend of Sled Island, we all become very aware that this is the last week of the lab. Rehearsal times in the three spaces we have access to outside of class time start becoming hot commodities. I throw the idea I had based on the poetic suggestion and start fresh again. We take a trip to Chris Cran's art studio to spend an afternoon in a different type of lab and to share drinks.
Labbits are all working hard during the day on group projects for performance on Thursday, and at night on our own pieces for performance on Friday and Saturday. Ideas, costumes, and rehearsal times are all traded, thrown out, and revisited.
Friday and Saturday we perform. Each piece is completely different from the next. A love story is told through a painter's work and a hunger artists suffering. A dead husband is devoured from the inside out by ants. A musician wonders how they would redefine themselves. I ask if technology is causing us to forget how to speak, how much of a relationship can we live through text messages and phone calls. The audience is invited guests only; family, friends, and former labbits. The work is personal, challenging, and successful.
At the end of all of our performances on Saturday, we spend the night in The Big Secret Theatre. It's our celebration of the work and growth. We drink, dance, sing, and smile. One by one, the labbits take their leave of the group. The night fades, and the lab ends. We end the last day as we ended the first, sharing drinks with friends and being told that "This is our home, our space."
And I miss it dearly.
Fin
I've been encouraged to take the piece that I created for the lab and turn it into a full one act play. Based against the current design there is the chance for it to be awesome, suck, or leave the audience behind by losing the listener. But it's very much my aesthetic, and I know that's the next step in staying creatively alive. Create my own work when I can't find work that fits with my current situation.
I'll submit it to the IGNITE festival, the one I was just part of Charades for. The Summer Lab has started the process of me owning my aesthetic, now I just have to do it. Look for TTM, or Talk To Me (title subject to change and who knows if it'll be accepted), come the next IGNITE! festival.
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