Plugging away on starvation play

I've been doing a little bit more research about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. There are still a few historical questions that I still need to find out. Did all of the men sleep in the dorms, for example? Did any of them live off campus? How many hours per day did they have to stay at the lab? I think I may need to go to the University of Minnesota Archive. That's the source of the above film footage. I've been thinking lately about using some video projection in my piece. The only problem is that I don't have a projector, and have absolutely no knowledge about how to set something like that up. However, as my boyfriend said to me the other day: "if your play needs to have projections, you'll figure out a way to have projections." Certainly it seems possibly easier than my other idea of acquiring a treadmill, a vintage scale, and other vintage labratory items to be used or a montage sequence. I could instead of the real objects use projections juxtaposed with movement. So we'll see.

In any case, here are a couple of other links I was reading today:


http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/wwii/a2.html

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html

Just Do It

Okay, so I've been mildly freaking out about my Redeye Works in Progress Show. I'm finding that having six months to create a piece can actually be a difficult thing because it's so easy to procrastinate. It's not like I haven't been doing anything at all, but I do seem to put off working on it in favor of more pressing projects and assignments.

The good news is that I'm happy about my team. I've got Maggie Scanlan directing, and she is someone I trust and who I can rely on to be honest with me and to push myself. I've got Dixie Treichel helping me out with the Sound Design, and I know she's going to do a great job, and now I have Romina Tokimoto helping me out with movement.

I'm very excited to have Romina on board because I think she really connects with me (although we haven't worked artistically together before) and I'm really excited about some of the ideas she is bringing to the piece. She lead the group in an authentic movement session a couple weeks ago which was very helpful in generating some movement vocabulary for the piece, and the last time she met she said she was going to work on some choreography for the movement sections so we'll be able to play with that.

The thing I'm stuck on about right now is the text itself. Originally written as a traditional stage play, I'm re-imagining the work as a solo performance piece, and putting my own experience into it. This has been very scary, and I feel a bit stuck. I sort of know generally what the themes are that I'm working with: isolation, starvation, war, and altruism, but I need to hone in on what it is I'm trying to say more specifically.

Right now, it's difficult to begin working on the staging of it because I don't feel the script is ready. Or Rather, I'm having a moment of doubt about it. Last night, I had a very good conversation with the person whose opinion I respect above all others and he told me that I need to stop fretting about it and just do it. It's true, this momentary drop in confidence needs to be overcome if I'm going to be able to finish this project. I need to find my literary bad-ass gene, as he said, if I have one, and just write the play that has been in my head for over two years.

He also suggested that I re-think the title, and I'm considering changing it from The Minnesota Starvation Experiment to The Keys Experiment (Keys is the lead scientist in the Study).

Oh, and a bit of good news, and also more incentive to get my butt in gear: I've been accepted into Artery at The Soap Factory this summer, so that means that I'll be able to further explore the material following my presentation at the Redeye. So. Time to get to work.