We Made a Video

The h2m crack team of Marc & Alex did some beautiful work with rehearsal footage and an iPhone camera to make this little gem. It makes me want to see the show, and then I remember: oh yeah, I'm in the show!

WHAT ABOUT LOVE?

So, yes, we are deep in the creation process for our new show, Something's Got Ahold of My Heart.

We're putting together a rough order for the showing we're doing at the mOuth Jan 27-29 as part of Fertile Ground. It's especially complicated since we've divided the show into four parts. Each part is stylistically and thematically distinct, but the throughline, the theme that haunts each part of the show is LOVE. Which, despite what this Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty duet would have you believe, is NOT so easy.

And who better to turn to for inspiration on this theme than Fleetwood Mac? 

If you're me you can spend HOURS going down a youtube rabbit hole, watching them perform "Silver Spring" over the years, always staged the same, and usually ending with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham facing each other, singing/shouting with varying degrees of intensity. As you can see from this relatively staid version from 1997, or this crazy one that culminates in Lindsey chasing Stevie into a corner, or this one from 2004 with less drama (though they still end the song screaming at each other), or this one from 2009.

What's amazing to me is -- one, how palpable it is in each case, but also how calculated. They are playing it up and performing their drama, milking it, maybe sometimes faking it -- and yet they also seem to get caught up in it every time. It's fascinating.

One more inspiration!

I was doing the dishes yesterday and suddenly "What About Love" by Heart popped into my head. God, isn't that a great song? Such a great shouting rock anthem, and yet it's basically a plea to not let something delicate slip away: "What about love? Don't you want someone to care about you?" Such a plaintive question, and yet when it's screamed alongside wailing guitars and shooting FLAMES and fog and chains and ... hey guys, you know what, I never realized that Ann and Nancy Wilson were drag queens!

So now seems like a good time to give the DISCLAIMER: our January showing will NOT involve shooting flames, or live tigers, or an army of backup dancers (or hair stylists).

That's because we're trying our ideas out while they're fresh, before we spend our hard earned cash on leather corsets. And we will continue to test out our ideas through the spring and summer before we premiere the show for real next fall. We do this with all our shows. We never know which ideas are working and which aren't until we try them out on an audience.

But what this means is, if you play your cards right, I think we can work some shooting flames into the show somewhere down the line. If every single person who comes to the showings says the one thing the show needs is SHOOTING FLAMES, what choice do we have?!

WHAT ABOUT LOVE? WHAT ABOUT SHOOTING FLAMES??? DON'T LET IT SLIP AWAY!

Closing it Out

2011 is fast coming to a close. For some it's the last day of school; for me it's my last h2m rehearsal of the year and the prospect of a few extra nights and weekend days to stretch out, refresh, and recharge before the new year rears its head.

There is a funny place between the balance of rehearsing and creating and the balance of living life. These short days and long nights are good ones for the recharging, the research, and the dreaming required to make theatre.

I'll be spending some time thinking big thoughts for our newest project, Something's Got Ahold of My Heart. We'll be showing a first blush of what we've made in January for the Fertile Ground Festival and then, a long-time dream of mine come true, we'll be installed at Disjecta for Portland2012: A Biennial of Contemporary Art. Unlike most of the work in the space, ours will be (a) in-progress and alive and (b) performance (not painting or sculpture or video). I toured the space last week with Prudence Roberts, the exhibit curator, and Jonathan and Maesie from h2m. My mind was spinning with the possibilities of opening our process to the public in ways that aren't just about sitting in chairs and watching. What are we wanting to show, to share? How do we want to shift our line of inquiry over the weeks? What will opening our process up in this way tell us?

Many questions and many thoughts to keep the darkness at bay. Looking forward to sharing more questions than answers soon.

Something New

We're deep in the early stages of building a new show, a time that always gets me thinking about process. Over the years Hand2Mouth has worked to build performances in a variety of ways, but in the last 6 we're honed in on our own mish mash of building techniques. I like to think of us as the weirdest architecture firm: we know we want to make a building but aren't sure what it will hold or what we want it to look like until we spend a lot of time with our pens, paper, CAD programs, and even some glass, steel and wood.

It is a long unwieldy experience, and I love the fact that I will spend a week reading obsessively about neuroscience and the next listening to Smokey Robinson non-stop. From here someone else will pull out the common thread and make a dance about it, someone else will find some text to sing, and our designers will make it look beautiful, and in nine months someone will sit in a dark theater and watch it happen live.

If you'd like to see what our minds are looking to now, check out the project blog for this new beast. Who knows, you might see it next on stage.

September Showings

Fall is here and we're ready to do a little showing of our work alongside one of our favorite events of the year: PICA's TBA Festival! 10 days of excellent performance (dance! theatre! music! more!) to help us make it through the rest of the year.

Here's what h2m will be sharing;
Sunday, Sept 11
My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow
2pm, Conduit Dance
918 SW Yamhill St #4

Undine
4:30pm, Fall.ART.Live at Director Park
815 SW Park Ave

Saturday, Sept 17
Uncanny Valley + Seth Nehil's Children's Games
2pm, Portland Actors Conservatory
1436 SW Montgomery

All showings are free. Hope to see you there!

Summer Screen #1

Clouds are predicted for this Friday evening, so come inside and join us for the first of our three part Summer Screen series at the mOuth (810 SE Belmont). We'll be showing Dark Matters, Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM Crystal Pite's 2009 performance as filmed by On the Boards TV. Doors open at 7pm, film is at 7:30. Tickets are just $5 at the door and we'll have bar with cheap beer, wine and free popcorn.

About Dark Matters from Pite's website:

“Dark matter” is the terra incognita of our day. Comprising roughly 96 percent of the observable universe, dark matter affects the speed, structure and evolution of galaxies, yet its nature remains a mystery. This potent, affecting darkness is paralleled in Crystal Pite’s creation, Dark Matters. Emerging out of Pite’s curiosity and fascination with the unseen forces at work on mind and body, Dark Matters, features six extraordinary dancers, and a stunning original score from long-time collaborator Owen Belton.

Dark Matters is structured into two distinct acts: Act One portrays the tension between creation and destruction through a decidedly theatrical fable; the players are manipulated by anonymous puppeteers who drive the narrative yet subvert its artifice. Act Two is pure dance, with choreography that aspires to the impossible purity and grace of a marionette, while grappling with the essential question of free will, and the conflict inherent in manipulation. The revelations of Act One inform the way we view the dancing in Act Two.

With dark matter beautifully embodied in the shadowy puppeteer, Dark Matters is a haunting portrait of the unknown, a performance that pulls itself apart in an attempt to discover what it’s made of.

Come see the filmed version now and in March 2012 see it live as presented by White Bird Dance. More on Summer Screen #2 (Orgy of Tolerance, Troubleyn Jan Fabre) and #3 (B.C., Janvier 1545, Fontainebleau. Christian Rizzo l'Association Fragile) coming soon!

Coming Up! July - Forever

If you missed the run of Erin Leddy's beautiful (and 5-time Drammy Award winning performance) My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow back in January, please do not fear.

If you're in Portland, you have two chances to see the show on July 15 & 16 at the first (and hopefully annual!) 1 Festival. This brand new festival, co-created by Portland favorite Mizu Desierto and housed by The Headwaters, is a celebration of solo performance across dance and theatre. The festival kicked off yesterday evening with a night of dance and continues through Sunday, July 17. If you are in Seattle, keep your eyes peeled for forthcoming details on performances in October. And for those way up north in Vancouver B.C, keep the evening of Feb 1, 2012 free for My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow's Canadian premiere at The PuSH Festival.

More performances in Oregon and around the west (and the world...) to be announced soon.

Also, save the dates for Summer Screen: new performance on film. Fridays August 5, 19 and September 2 join h2m at the mOuth (810 SE Belmont Street) for beer, wine, and the best contemporary performance on the big screen.

Risk/Reward Profile #7: Portland Experimental Theatre Lab

Wait, there is one more group! This year Portland Experimental Theatre Lab takes you out of the theatre for a little bit.

You can try and catch Wittgenstein's Mistress tonight, but if last night was any indication all three showings will sell out very quickly. 27 lucky people (9 per show) get to take this 15-minute audio tour from one of Portland's newest performance groups.

This work is a bi-coastal collaboration between recent New York transplant, Rebecca Lingafelter, NYC Performance Lab 115's resident sound designer Mark Valadez and their NY Director Meiyin Wang. Meiyin already flew back east, but you can read more about her here.

Each audience member gets outfitted with an ipod and heads into a world that blends sound, movement and imagery while following a woman who claims to be the last person on earth.

We love when new performance groups move to Portland!