Grand Finale...

Hello to anyone still out there. I've been belating my final post because I hit the road and have yet to stop. I unfortunately don't have any photographs to post of my book making or the show, however I will describe to you the show itself, as it was quite something.
The show took place on a surreal Saturday night, January 3rd. I'd had four actors drop out the few days leading up to the show. Some of them simply flaked out (excuses of family emergencies, jobs, and just no communication at all), but what was most heartbreaking was Fannypack Dan was flown to a hospital in Seattle with a kidney failure. I spoke with him on the phone a few days later and he wanted to know every detail of the show. He's back now, and seems to be recovering fine. I will say that offering him a part in the show has opened him up in a way I've never seen--and I've known this man since I was fourteen! A couple hours before the show was to take place, I had a terrible feeling that something would occur that would be completely out of my control. Then, an hour before curtain, I was driving downtown when I heard a car horn and from the corner of my eye came a huge flash of light. I continued to drive downtown and noticed that the power was out in select places downtown. Well, a few of these places were my venues. I arrived at The Boiler Room, our meeting place, to find my actors in the pitch and a riot. With one, "The Show Must Go On!" we dispersed to collect candles. The hour devoted to setting our scenes and warming up (as well as a chance to explain how this thing would actually go down) was spent finding light. By curtain, we were lighting candles in the first venue and dressing the set as about fifty people poured into the dark building. They were an eerily quiet audience. My fliers were very minimal. They simply stated, 'Four on the Town/Meet at Jefferson Community School at 7 pm on January 3rd/This is a theatrical event and it is FREE" so many of the audience members had no idea they would be walking to different scenes, or what they were getting themselves into content-wise. The first scene was a total bust. My one professional actor not only forgot his lines but broke character and started laughing, saying "Shit, sorry Madeline!" My other actors were baffled and did not know what to do. They painfully shuffled through the scene and we hiked to the next show. By this point the audience had grown and The Boiler Room was packed to the brim. Actors were all over the scene, shouting their lines and making audience members jump with surprise. Bill Shepard delivered a haunting monologue under a flashlight hung from the ceiling. A buck-toothed actor jumped in and played a bizarre country song at the end. The third scene was in a staircase and people were sitting on the steps watching the reading located in the doorway. It was this scene that brought a sense of organization to the event, and people began to feel more comfortable with the event. The last scene took place underground, where you had to duck through a little door to get in. I acted in this scene as an eighty year old woman (age make-up, cane...) and held a candle. Luckily, the candle was planned from the beginning. Many people found the scene moving and it was a perfect ending to the show, partly because the last line was "We are absurd." Afterward there was a big candle-lit show at The Boiler Room where we danced till midnight, when the power came on and we went to bed. It took me a couple days of wallowing in what I could've done differently to realize that it was a very cool event. It's been urged that a sequel take place, this time 'Five on the Town,' with new writers in new venues. Many of the original actors and others not involved want to put on another show. With about seventy audience members by the end, I think we'd get a pretty good turnout. I keep thinking about what this could turn into, if perhaps after 'Five on the Town' there was 'Six on the Town' and on until there are some fifty perspectives on PT, all performed and documented.I would like to say that this project has been the most passionate and wildly fun part of my semester. I've never done a show that's brought on so much support from the community, as well as collaboration! Basically, I can't wait to do it all over again. I wish all of you could have been there to see it, as my books feel so meaningless without the town, and the people, and the flickering candle light...

Unfortunately, I don't know HOW to do this. So I'm going to explain what I did on this little side here because, I can't figure out how to organize. 

So, first I picked out the project and that was the cigarette boxes. And I figured, paint wouldn't work, so I went ahead and did tape!! What tape to choose? I couldn't figure it out. But then I was thinking that I really am fond of black and white, so silver and black would work well, the other options were rainbow, or solid colors. But I liked silver and black, especially since I left pieces of the red Marlboro boxes that I used showing. I chose the title "Feet of Clay" because of its symbolism. The picture, if you're interested, is actually of the statues outside of the Hoover Dam in Arizona/Nevada. I've always loved those statues. I took a lot of time picking out the order of the pages of the book. I didn't want to put things that were too much alike together, or things that were too different. Also I was weary of putting poems that I really liked together and leaving ones I wasn't too fond of at the end. I took everything and finally got my order. The reason that the pages are all messy and taped down (which you can see when looking at the xerox copies) was because, much like demonstrated in my using the blog, I'm not as good with technology as I thought. I could not wrap my mind around how to get this page, to line up with that, and what order to type it in. I must have done it a hundred times. Finally I just cut everything up and did it manually and liked the result, so I kept it that way. Messy. which also works with the title "Feet of Clay".

I enjoyed the workshop very much, getting all of your work in the mail was like getting secret presents! 

winding down

Hey all,

My journals will be in the mail for you today. 

Meanwhile, here are some scanned images of the final product, as well as my reflection below.

Happy 2009!

m

Nancy's back and front chapbook cover laid out flat

This is a view of my chapbook cover laid out flat, hand sewn in the center to bind the pages snugly inside. I folded these little books in half, stacked them all together, and bound them tightly in plastic wrap for several weeks so they'll hopefully stay flat.

Nancy's chapbook documented

This is the last page of prose followed by my publishing page. I created fifteen original watercolor paintings as chapbook covers and numbered each one here on the publishing page. I made up the name for my press. I included here where this chapbook was published and when.

This is an excerpt of the chapbook showing side by side pages printed with prose. This is the part of low-fi publishing where a mock-up of the book is critical, since the order of the pages is important in order for the end product to read like a book.

This is the first page of my prose. I found many interesting font and style choices. However, I thought it would be best to keep the words as small as possible, while still being easy enough to read. So I went with this simple font.

This is the title page. I punched six tiny holes through the pages that make up my book and the cover. This is what the binding looks like as each page of the book is turned. Only in the middle of the book is the black binding visible along the center of the book.

This is the watercolor painted cover. It is hand-sewn on with black tapestry thread and tied in the center with a square knot.

scooters, vacation, fall

Hey evvverybody.....so my project has taken hold of my life, so much so that I've had dreams about it. Last Monday was my first meeting with all my actors (about twenty of them) and it went swimmingly. I've had two mishaps: 1. the space I was going to use for my scene, a wedding chapel, totally fell through. After leaving about 20 messages on their machine and getting absolutely no answer, I gave up. Also, one of the writers got super stressed out about her scene and didn't feel she could write it, or what she had was usable. A big bummer, as 'Five on the Town' had to become 'Four on the Town', which really doesn't have that nice ring to it. HOWEVER, the good news is I am now using her space for my own scene, and it's a whole lot less stress for me, as far as casting and directing goes. My actors are great, many of them have no experience but are thrilled. One guy, Fannypack Dan--the grumpiest homeless man I've ever crossed--is so excited about his part he shouts his lines to me from across the street. People have been coming up outta the blue and asking for parts. It's pretty magical. One of the writers schedualed a music show of old time rag blues to happen after the performances...As far as the books go, I found enough vinyl to cover a family of four at this great recycling store in Portland called Scrap. I'll use these for the cover, and I'm using my typewriter for the innards. I'd like to take pictures of the night of the performance for the books, so I'm really grateful for this extra time because the show isn't until January 3rd. I'll definitely have them out by the 15th.
In preparation for this falling through, and for my own sense of mystery and fun, I've been working on another project. Basically, it's an anonymous art show at The Boiler Room consisting of about ten mailboxes I've been collecting. I'm going to fill them with letters, poems, bits of stories, paint them real pretty and in the middle of the night on New Years Eve, break into the Room and hang them on the walls. Only the manager and my dad know about this, so don't tell anybody! They've all got their own themes like..."Varitiations on 'I Love You'", "Ten Things I Think I Know" and "Dear My Friend". My psuedonym is Pee Jay. If there's room at the Goddard show, perhaps I could haul one of these along? I'm not sure how to document it so thank the lord this theatre extravaganza has panned out (so far.....).
Well, that's about it for now. I'm damn excited for everyone's books/bubba boxes/psuedo-standardized tests....

Answers to Nancy’s Questions and Plans for the Near Future

Hi there:

Here is a to-do list for the rest of our group study:

1. Send me your mailing address, to my regular email (jenhofer@gmail.com); I will compile a list and send it out to everyone via FirstClass (or if you prefer I reach you using a different email, feel free to let me know).

2. Finish your chapbook or project, and document the project. It would be great to post documentation (images, text, reflections, etc) to the blog, so future students in this group study can access it.

3. Send your work to everyone in the class via snail mail, and bring or send two copies to the residency. One of those will be given to the BFA Writing Program, and the other to the Goddard Library. The BFA copies should be given to Lucinda; they will live on a special shelf in her office. The Library copies can be given to Dustin Byerly.

4. Write a brief reflection on how the experience of this Group Study project informed your thinking and practice this semester. Please include information about what you found especially useful and/or ways this Group Study might be improved. I think it would be great if we post these to the blog, so we can read each other’s, but if you’d prefer to send your reflection only to me, that’s fine too (either via gmail or via FirstClass).

Due dates: Technically all work for this group study is “due” on December 31. I myself will not be able to finish my book before that date, though I expect to have it done shortly thereafter. If you need a little more time, take a little more time. What do I mean by “a little more time”? Specifically, I mean up to two weeks, but no longer! I will respond to each of your projects individually, but I will not have time to do that after mid-January. Simply put, if you send your project after January 15, I will not be able to write you a response. Likewise, I should receive your reflections about the low-fi publishing experience no later than January 15; I will not accept them after that date.

Showing our work: We pretty much agreed that we’d like to share our work with the larger Goddard community during the spring semester residency. Dee Windsome is the coordinator of the student art show, and I imagine she’d be willing to work with one or more of you to create a space to exhibit our projects as part of the show. I will be on leave during the spring semester, so someone (or someones) from our group should volunteer to be the coordinator or coordinatrix of our exhibition. Any takers? I’m happy to help with legwork in advance (via email), but I won’t be at the residency.

Any further questions? Please ask!

As Robert Creeley used to say, onward!

Jen