A year ago, I came away from Jacob's Pillow's Curriculum in Motion Institute with a whole new appetite for choreography. Then the shape of my life changed and the choreography went quiet for a while. Not abandoned. Just paused. Sunday, I picked it back up.
Matt Recine, MCM company artist, and I returned to the rehearsal room with Good Breeding, and for a while, we didn't talk about words at all. I'd watched Scat, Urban Bush Women's new work streaming from Jacob's Pillow, and something in it wouldn't let go of me — why was I looking for a choreographer when the choreographer was already in the room? Well, turns out I was scared. And when I realize it's fear driving me, I stop, turn around, and head straight toward the challenge.
Here's what we found in the room: the key to unlocking movement in an actor who wouldn't call himself a dancer wasn't a step or a shape. It was a breath. The same kind of pause I took when my life came apart — a kind of choreography, it turns out. I'm already stretching myself writing this play for a solo male actor. Now I'm stretching into choreography too, asking how a physical narrative gets built, and what that teaches me about building a textual one. I don't have answers yet. I have a rehearsal room, a weekly meeting now on the calendar with Matt, and a pause that turned out to be part of the work.
And here's what Matt has to say,
"Working on this play has been enriching for me as an actor. I've never had to carry a story in this way. It's forced me to rethink how I approach my theatre-making process for the better. And it's shown me new and deeper connections between my physical body and the character I'm creating. It continues to prove (for me) how important it is that all facets of myself are communicating with each other while building a character and a world on stage--from body to blood to brain."
Act II: Today Square, In Person
While one play is teaching me to move, another practice is asking people to sit still for a moment and notice. This season, Today Square is coming to The Dance Hall in Kittery, two sessions, two different paces. All materials provided for this creative writing experience.
Today Square, Family Session: a day's worth of noticing, no writing experience required. Bring the whole family for an afternoon of low pressure storymaking, side by side. Ages 8 and up. Quiet space available throughout, stepping back from any activity is always welcome.
Today Square, An Evening Practice: Sunday evening, 90 minutes. This adult session slows the practice into something meditative, a small square of words as a container for reflection and imagination. If you've been meaning to carve out an hour just for yourself, this is it.
One square. One observation. One moment of attention. That's still the whole practice, I'm just glad to finally be sharing it with you in a room instead of only in an inbox.
Act III: Rewriting, Not Editing
Hand Me Down isn't being edited right now. It's being rewritten, by hand. Pages of pencil on paper, the intuitive draft slowly becoming something more purposeful. That's a distinction I keep coming back to: editing tightens what's already there. Rewriting by hand is different, it's re-thinking the play with a pencil instead of a keyboard, letting the slower pace ask harder questions than a cursor ever does.
A Blackwing pencil in hand does make a girl feel grand!
There's real science behind why that slowness matters. Neuroimaging studies comparing handwriting to typing have found that writing by hand engages a broader, more integrated network of brain regions, motor, sensory, and memory systems working together in a way typing doesn't require.
Want to dive deeper?
If the pencil-versus-keyboard thing has its hooks in you too, here's where I went down the rabbit hole:
Researchers have linked that extra effort to deeper encoding and more durable understanding of the material. Typing is faster. Handwriting is where the thinking actually happens. So that's where I am with Joan and Hank right now: moving from the draft that found the story to the draft that clarifies it. I will be with the actors again next week and I'm only halfway through the pages - so I better get back to writing.
