Jessica WilkinsJessica Wilkins is an artist, graduate student and director of UNCG's Art Truck. She is co-producing The Body Project and is creating new work through the lens of the humor YELLOW BILE. See Jess tap into her Bile Side on Storyhound's facebook page here. I had really been looking forward to the night of the Humor drawing at Greensboro Project Space back in November. I knew I wanted to participate with this very alive and diverse group of artists to discover unknown parts of our group and of myself.
I picked Yellow Bile as my fantastic humor and along with our other members we began to learn about our destructive, vengeful, hot-tempered, ambitious, daring, imaginative and confident leader selves! Letting the words sink in and not getting to heady about it all…we explored the untreated onion, lemon, cabbage, pasta, eggplant and cucumber with touch and action. I unboxed the pasta and broke fist fulls of the long rods onto the cement floor, smashing and thrashing, stomping and breaking… I was on my way to some Yellow Bile destruction! Permission given and I took it! I tore away at cabbages and squeezed lemons with gritted teeth. It felt so good to be angry and physical while also knowing I was exploring and testing with the safety of the group. For a long time I’d felt guilty at the temper tantrums I had as a kid and saw my Grandmother’s rage as something I didn’t want to have any part of. I’ve come to find a place for rage and anger. Not needing them to stay too long,,..and yet allowing them to be a part of me. This exploration helped me to playfully choose to embody rage and anger, an exercise, a freedom. And at this moment in time, as a first year graduate student within UNCG’s art department, I am interested in other aspects of the fantastic yellow bile; I am interested in the ambitious, the daring, the imaginative and confident qualities that are needed to see me through this Making process. The Body Project offers an opportunity to use play and inquiry when collaborating with a fellow Body Project participant and writer (I have teamed up with writer Susan Kirby-Smith). I think our teamwork will help keep me accountable and surprised as I learn to trust my self as an artist.
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Kerri MubaarakKerri is blogging about her theatre company, Scrapmettle's, ongoing process to create a new theatrical piece for The Body Project, investigating Scrapmettle's assigned humor: BLOOD. Sitting in her cube, Ambria Webster, collaborator on The Body Project had a flash of inspiration about how to open “Bloods” (working title). Meanwhile, Ingram Bell works through the emotional drama and memory of being shot, deconstructing the details leading up to the incident and reassembling it in dialogue and stage directions. This is proof that inspiration can come at any moment, but after that is the true work of telling the story honestly, tying it all together and healing old wounds in the process.
Shelley Stolaroff SegalShelley is a playwright, composer, and essayist living in Greensboro, NC. As part of the body project, she is creating a new piece for piano inspired by the humor PHLEGM. When Gabby Sinclair offered to draw a Body Project humor for me last November because I was out of town I was relieved and grateful. I should’ve known better. When I returned and eagerly checked my assignment I discovered I was Phlegm. Really? That snot funny, I thought. I read the description and tried to determine how I would compose music to a temperament so unlike mine. Phlegmatic: Apathetic and Indecisive. Also, Relaxed, Peaceful, and Quiet. My friends would snicker. It didn’t help that I kept picturing that slimy green mucus thug on the Mucinex commercials. Shit, I thought, why couldn’t I have drawn something hot and angry like Yellow Bile?
But with time and consideration I have come to appreciate Phlegm, the watery rock star of the vital fluids. “The Four Humors are the metabolic agents of the Four Elements in the human body. The right balance and purity of them is essential to maintaining health.” I read about Hippocrates, who not only understood the geography of the body, he believed that each humor corresponded with one of the four traditional--and I believe--modern temperaments. The truth is, all humors are special and beautiful, and part of a fine liquid mosaic. Each contributes to one’s sense of balance, physically and emotionally. Phlegm is beautiful and necessary. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to work with. While sitting on the piano trying to compose, my fingers start to underperform. To feel sluggish. My brain, which is usually wound up as tight as a tick, begins to relax. So do my muscles. I just feel like hunkering down inside one of those soft polyester blankets and sipping cocoa. I studied my humor further. (After I’d had coffee.) I was still reticent about my assignment because I typically come up short in the mellow department. I started reasoning. Well, phlegm is associated with water. I’m a Taurus, which is an earth sign, and water nourishes the earth. Voila. It all made sense. (Especially when I noticed the Phlegm drives are comfort and food.) However, my friends would probably agree that I’m more closely aligned with hot air. (Choleric and Sanguine.) I kept reading and looking at medieval woodblocks. I was heartened to see that my phlegm organ was the brain and my age was maturity. (No, really.) But I was embarrassed when I read the quote, and I quote, “The young warrior’s choler gave him courage but phlegm produced cowards.” Oh dear. Well, my music will not be cowardly. It will be bold, (somewhat) and focused, and well, you’ll just have to hear it and judge for yourself. Please be sanguine with your criticism. I’m very temperamental in real life. *** Shelley Stolaroff Segal is a playwright, performer, and essayist living in Greensboro, NC. My Son, her play about autism and race premiered in NYC, and was presented at TEDx East. Other production credits include Bliss, a play about marriage, and Outing Your Autistic Child, which she both scored and choreographed. Segal’s international and regional stage credits include performances at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, the Classic Stage Company in NYC, the North Coast Repertory Company in San Diego, and the Main Street Theater in Houston. Non-fiction credits include The Washington Post, Blunt Moms, and Autism/Asperger’s Digest. Anthology credits include Voices from the Spectrum, Chicken Soup for the Soul, From Sac Literary Journal, and Multiples Illuminated. Her instrumental music has been used in short films and original stage productions, and was published in conjunction with the Miles Davis Jazz Orchestra in Greensboro. Segal received her theater training at The Drama Studio London and the Classic Stage Company in New York. By Ashley LumpkinAshley Lumpkin is a Georgia-raised, Carolina-based writer, editor, actor, and educator. Above all else, Ashley considers herself a teacher, poet, and changer of fates. She is a lover of mathematics and language. She loves you too. Ashley drew "Yellow bile" for The Body Project and is blogging about her process here. Check out Ashley's work here. Some context: Poems Usually start for me with some concrete image or interesting fact that I can build something larger out of, But this project in many ways feels like starting with the grand idea and working back in words. This frame helped me to organize some of the more abstract ideas floating in my head, and then ask the questions that may lead to a concrete center for my poem. - Ashley By Chanel WebsterChanel is a visual artist who is blogging for The Body Project about her experience investigating her drawn humor: PHLEGM. She's previously worked with Storyhound Theatre on The Greensboro Grapevine, and her new piece will be exhibited at The Greensboro Project Space on March 2 as part of First Friday. A Greensboro N.C. native, I am a predominantly a self taught visual artist mostly known for acrylic collage paintings with a red background. Creative inspiration for me begins with a vision inspired by the emotion of everyday life. My creative goal as a visual artist is to create emotion through simplicity with line and color through paintings, sketches and photography.
My Experience at the Phlegm Table ... Walking into the room (at the Greensboro Project Space) on our first night of The Body Project, I had no idea of what to expect. First thing I noticed: there are four tables each with a lemon, a head of lettuce, an eggplant, a box of noodles and an onion. I'm trying to figure out how in the world is this related to the body experiment. I was smiling on the outside but on the inside I was so confused. We all stood around and waited to learn our destiny. Each person was asked to pull a piece of paper which would decide which humor we would work with. Some of us pulled the paper and started reading over it and then slowly pulling out our cell phones for more information like cramming for an exam. Next, we were asked to stand at a table with our group and talk about the humor that we picked. My group was hesitant at first, it took us a few minutes to get things going. Once we got started, we were speaking calmly and tearing the items apart slowly. At that moment, I noticed that somehow we all took on the characteristics of our humor phlegm. I think we did so without noticing. Once we began dissecting the parts, the process made more sense. We compared the components of the humor to ourselves. We spoke of procrastination, wanting to do things perfectly, taking our time, being calm and laid back. We also talked a lot about water. The movement of water, the consistency, and the importance. Water seemed to stand out and it became my inspiration. By the end of the night, I had formed a free flowing wave out of torn lettuce. Layer after layer bending and progressing into this huge wave. It was towering and overflowing but kept it's balance. Similar to a snapshot it captured a moment. It represented a moment of calmness, a peaceful movement. Needless to say, water will be a major focus in my piece of art... After the meeting, I had a few ideas and definitely knew that I wanted water to be a key component. I spent most of the three weeks that have following researching and brainstorming. Gathering my thoughts... First, I created a list of all words I think of when I think of water. Looking at those words on my list, I chose the ones that related to my vision. These elements had to reflect the temperament calm and easygoing. Some of the words I picked were hesitation, blue, float, secluded, wave, and thirst. I looked at a lot of photos and videos of water to get a visual of the movement. My next step is to figure out how to incorporate these words and represent them with line and color. So many options so many ideas. Brainstorming and sketching all the elements together is the next step. by Kerri MubaarakKerri Mubaarak is artistic director of Scrapmettle. She will be blogging for The Body Project about Scrapmettle's three-month journey to create a new theatre piece responding to the humor blood. Scrapmettle creates new performances and advises writers, directors and performing artists. We honor theater tradition by expanding and contracting its elements to meet performance goals and the demands of the profession. Our approach extends the range of the artist by challenging their perceived limitations and drawing out subtle aspects of their nature that enhance the writing, character, direction or design. In creating new performances, we use theater's visceral effect to reveal what lies beneath the surface of the human experience.
For THE BODY PROJECT, Scrapmettle has jumped on as theatre-makers, and will create a new 15 minute piece inspired by their prompt - blood. Below are blog entries for Scrapmettle's first two meetings. On December 3rd Scrapmettle entered phase 1 of The Body Project | Blood. A few committed theater makers from our camp came to the table to brainstorm the old fashioned way--with pens, pencils and pieces of notebook paper ripped and shared. Out of nowhere, words, songs (from gospel to hip hop) and images landed in front of us making the vision plain and giving us something to work with. The ooo's and a-ha's of shared experiences faded into odd moments of silence from being brain tired on a Sunday afternoon. Just when I thought we were done for the day, Karin Johnson who was already standing with her purse in hand turned and in one breath laid out the structure of the piece we will write next week. Blood, in the context of a birth seen from three angles--medical, literal and symbolic. We love it when a plan comes together! December 9th: Scrapmettle firmly entered the writing phase of The Body Project | Blood. Last week, we decidedly gave this piece structure and direction, but all of that changed. Enter Ingram Bell, one of the newest members of the Scrapmettle Writing Team with a very candid recollection of being shot in the head. She carefully unfolded the events leading up to and including the incident as if to protect the rest of us from the details. We braced ourselves and asked her to keep unfolding while we reluctantly imagined the smell of dried blood and pictured it spattered with bits of brain matter on a car window. From Ingram's memory came images, scenes, set pieces and a clear storyline. Ingram's proximity to the subject and close call with death made us take a second look at Blood, still within the structure we originally defined, but in a way we couldn't have ever imagined just 7 days ago. Pictured above: Ingram Bell recounts the time she survived a gunshot wound to the head. --Kerri Mubaarak (Directing) Kate KehoeKate is a poet and co-organizer for The Body Project. She teaches poetry at UNCG. A few years ago, I attended a lecture on writing about the body. One of the panelists said, “We have an Ipod, but we are a body.” I always took this statement to mean, we don’t own ourselves, we exist in ourselves. More terrifying however, I imagined we can’t escape the failings of the body (and continue to live), in the same way we can escape external objects that fail us: the Ipod that won’t charge, the phone screen that’s cracked, or the kitchen table with one broken leg. This impermanence, the complexity, and the constraints of the body as a compared to a machine haunted me. Our failings seemed sacred, our impermanence sacred too. When Gabrielle, Jini, Jessica, and I brainstormed for the Body Project, these ideas were on my mind. We wanted to explore the living body with an eye toward the complexity we exist in everyday, but never think about. For example, we never notice the cornea that controls the light that enters our eyes like curtains, unless of course, this part of us fails. I imagined that perhaps we are only a little closer to understanding our bodies than the medievalists barbers, who were also the surgeons, offering haircuts and bloodlettings. As a collaborative group, we began to think of the systems humans have used to understand bodies. We became fascinated by the four humors, yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. Within these ideas, we found our lens for exploration. We reached out to artists, writers, painters, dancers, film makers, and others who were interested in exploring the body with us. When we brought our team together to talk about the idea, I knew that we found the right lens. We began our exploration with a game to define our humor through food. Each of us was paired off by humor and sent to a table with vegetables. My group received blood, the humor of childhood, of summer, of fire. This idea brought us back to our childhood bodies and raw moments of discovery through touch and story. We were told to build bodies and stories with our vegetables, to tear apart the eggplant or break the cucumber and we complied. Our cucumber and cabbage canoes took off on a river of noodles and seeds. The onion bombs destroyed the eggplant catfish coming to attack our ships. We told stories, we played with our food, (our hands all smelling of the lemon we tore off for our sails) and as humans sometimes do, we collaborated. We hope you’ll enjoy this exploration as much as we do. More soon. May you be well in body & mind. Kate By Jini ZlatniskiJini is a co-organizer of The Body Project and managing director of Storyhound Theatre. I’m not actually involved in The Body Project as an artist. When I showed up for the drawing of the Humors (Nov. 18th at The Greensboro Project Space), four tables were set up around the room, each containing a cabbage, a cucumber, a box of spaghetti, two onions and a lemon. Each table was also labeled with one of the humors. I had no idea WTF Gabrielle and Kate had cooked up for the evening. I raised an eyebrow and nodded politely. Even when it was explained to me, my skepticality only increased. I’m a little slow to get things sometimes, I admit it. So, after each of the participating artists drew their humor, they retired to the corresponding table. Feeling a bit lost and useless, I wandered to the table that only had two people at it, one of whom I knew. It was the black bile table. We all stood there staring at the vegetables. We rearranged them into the shape of a body. We were loathe to tear into any of them lest we make a mess. Then Gabby wandered over and asked us to deconstruct the body we made and talk about the temperament associated with black bile which is melancholy. We each picked up a vegetable and started to take it apart. Carefully. Orderly. Neatly. As I pulled the leaves from the head of cabbage, the melancholy hit me. Hard. Fast. When my son was born nine years ago, I wasn’t able to produce enough milk for him and we needed to supplement the breastmilk with formula to ensure he got enough to eat. After two weeks of tears and screams and feelings of inadequacy for being a horrible mother at not being able to produce enough food for my son, we switched to strictly formula. That’s where the cabbage comes in. Chilled cabbage leaves placed on the breasts help ease the pain and tenderness associated with breastfeeding. As I would no longer be feeding my son that way, for the first time since he was born, my breasts became engorged and I needed to help with the pain. So, out came the cabbage leaves. I used them until my milk dried up. It occurred to me that I hadn’t cooked with cabbage since then. I realized then that as I looked at the leaves, cabbage makes me sad. I had unconsciously associated the end of breastfeeding with a stupid vegetable. I started to rip it apart (carefully, of course, because I didn’t want to have to clean up too much later), and I began to realize it wasn’t my fault. And that felt good. By Gabrielle SinclairGabrielle is a co-organizer for The Body Project, and artistic director of Storyhound Theatre. Welcome to The Body Project! We are learning by doing. (Including with blog posts). A week ago today, The Body Project began. A three-month experiment bringing together upward of 40 local independent collaborators to investigate the human body through the four humors and their associated temperaments. Here's how this came about: My company, Storyhound Theatre, has engaged with learning as a lens for creation twice before, with our Uncommon Core reading series - first the Math Plays, then the Physics Plays - relationship-based theatre through the lens of math and science. Our next muse was human biology, with the Art Truck, UNCG's magnificent mobile art gallery. We were going to unmake it and remake the body. Easy. We might even solve it. Maybe everyone could draw a body part? Maybe we could literally build a body? It became clear, fast, that something felt inherently uneasy with our first instincts. Chunks of flesh and muscles and guts did not a body make! We needed to find a means of finding, manifesting a body in motion. A body moved. What makes us not merely piles of pieces? What is it that moves us to love, to hate, to sacrifice, to discover, to weep? What is that? Do you call it a soul? Then we remembered our Shakespeare. And the greatest characters of Western theatre - Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Falstaff, Viola among them - and their roots in their bodies, and the imaginative biological understanding of wellness, madness, sorrow, love. So last week, a gaggle of curious and brave Greensboro artists - visual, theatre, textual, musical, filmic, and movement - gathered at a hidden, unassuming place - The Greensboro Project Space - down a nearly invisible little lane alongside the Railyard in downtown. We ate yellow cake with flowers on it. We shook hands, wrote down our names, and wondered what was going on. We drew slips of paper with absurd, sticky sounding prompts - blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. We stood in a circle and tried to explain - “We’re building a body, together. This is where it will live. All of us will work independently. Your process is your own, and it’s a good one. Take your prompt - and go - get out of your comfort zone. In a little over three months, we’ll put on a show.” We were at the beginning - like a body gathered up in pieces. We did a silly yet poignant experiment sponsored by the produce section of Harris Teeter, to try and understand what these vital fluids are, and how their connected temperaments - sanguine, melancholy, choleric, and phlegmatic, might live in us and be manifest through our art. These "vital fluids," possibly originating in ancient Egypt, but most likely named by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, were the underlying basis of medicine for thousands of years. They are imaginative, and in many ways they make no sense. They were dismissed when modern medicine came along. And they are where we begin. Is it possible to build a community or creative doers, thinkers, makers, movers? A body of work. The body politic. Next door to us, in The Forge, students were learning to weld. In our room, for this short time, a question hung in the air - How do we forge a singular, living body from us? How do we create something - someone - whole? As Jess (of UNCG's Art Truck, and a grad student at UNCG) put it that night, "There's something powerful and freeing about inviting your demons to dinner." Each of these ancient images tap into something we often want to snuff out entirely, let alone find balance in. For the next three months, we're inviting our demons to dinner. What questions should we pose? And what will we do with the answers we receive? This online space is meant to serve as a remnant of this creative process - time stamps along the way. A safe space for collaborators working independently in this project to share and reflect on where they are at, what's on their minds, look for connections, put things in context. Check in. This online space is also an evolving, living document, where we hope to gather research that might be illuminating, inspiring, strange. History and stories. Revelations. Silliness. Tragedy. Stray thoughts. Questions we don't have the answers to and might one day. The image waiting for us at the end of this journey, in March, returning to where we began at the gallery down that little lane, is a body, filled up and alive and awake with fire, earth, water, air. With blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile. In search of the whole, in search of harmony, we're giving the notes each their chance to sing. |
AuthorsThe Greensboro poets, theatre-makers, visual artists, composers, dancers, and filmmakers of The Body Project. Presented by Storyhound Theatre and the UNCG Art Truck. Archives
March 2018
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