Tonight I heard the Warsaw Philharmonic perform at the Gaillard Auditorium. I went to the performance tonight eager to hear Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6. Instead I left with a new appreciation for Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.
The Warsaw orchestra opened with a piece titled Orawa composed by Wojciech Kilar. At the center of the piece was a jagged melody that was repeated while surrounded by a sea of slicing sounds. The following is the image that was singed into my mind as I listened to this opening work:
Later that night when reading the program I discovered that Orawa is a word reminiscent of "olawa", which denotes a mountain pasture; its grass cover trampled by sheep and on which young shepherds celebrated the end of the grazing period with a rousing "zbojnicki" (robbers') dance. Orawa is a kind of musical painting of mountain nature and the highland folk.
The next piece featured the pianist Valentina Lisitsa which the program described as having "the kind of talent that comes along once in a generation." I am not a fan of piano concertos but Lisitsa's performance won me over. Her playing impressed not only me but also my 9 year old daughter Zoe. Lisitsa's flurry of fingers sparked repeated exhalations of wonderment and amazement from my daughter. At times her fluid mastery of the keys approached a surreal state. The following is my illustrated response to her performance:
The following video is an example of the magic that I witnessed tonight:
The final performance was Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6. Interesting thing that I learned. If you squint your eyes during the performance everything disapears except for the muscians hands and bows. It made the visual effects that much more interesting. Here is the image that this work inspired:
Summary: Discovering original interpretations of primary source documents through a live-animation performance.
Objectives The student will:
Select and analyze a primary source document
In this lesson students will use the staging techniques of visual art, object theater, drama, music, film, modeling and performance to present an original interpretation of a primary source document.
Write an original narrative based on evidence from a primary source document.
Use puppets, models, and story telling techniques to stage a narrative based on a primary source document.
Materials Live-animation materials: dolls and other miniature items that can be used in a small scale theater production. Projection devices: Here are some suggested ways students can present their live-animation performance to an audience.
Elmo projector
Camcorder and tripod (shoestring tip: an old VCR camera can be directly connected to a television or LCD projector and then be used to present the students "live action".
Overhead projector
Activity: What is a primary source?
1. Project or write the following definition: Primary source - source created by people who actually saw or participated in an event and recorded that event or their reactions to it immediately after the event.
2. Discuss with students how our perception of history is shaped by primary documents.
Activity: An introduction to live-animation theater Students watch the following video clip from The Great War created by members of the theater troupe Hotel Modern.
1. Pre-viewing questions
Before showing the video clip ask students to ask themselves the following questions: What is the narrator reading in the background? Where in the clip is the "suspension of disbelief" created? When is this suspension destroyed?
2. Show the video clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRbe2GDjZRI)
3. After viewing the clip return to the pre-viewing questions and ask students to share their answers with their peers.
Activity: An interview with the members of Hotel Modern
In this activity students will watch video clips from an interview with the members of Hotel Modern.
In the first clip Herman Helle explains how he relies on the audience's imagination during the performance of The Great War. In the second clip members of the troupe explain how they conduct research when creating their performances. The third clip presents a discussion with the troupe on how they use the suspension of disbelief in their performances.
IMAGINATION
RESEARCH
THE SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF
Activity: Creation and presentation of a live-animation performance based on a primary source document.
Task: Students plan, stage, and present a live-action performance based on the text in a primary source document. Divide students into groups of three or four.
1. Selection of a primary source document
Students identify primary source documents from either a list of documents preselected by the teacher or they use the Internet to make their own selection.
Tip: Letters and diaries work the best for creating a live-action performance.
2. Instruct students to plan, write, and stage a live-animation performance that illustrates the ideas and concepts presented in their primary source document.
3. Assign or allow members of each group to choose the following group roles: narrator, sound effects, actor #1, and actor #2.
Station #1: The Exposition
Each group of students uses maps, charts, and objects to present the setting, time, historical context, and main characters of the work.
Example: In their presentation of "The Great War" the theater troupe Hotel Modern used an Elmo projector to project a map of Europe onto the video screen. The troupe members maneuvered toy cannons and ships around the map to show the buildup of the military in European nations on the eve of the first world war. Troupe members also used cigars and handshakes to provide a more subjective comment on how these alliances between the European nations were created during the lead up to the first world war.
Station #2: Live-animation presentation illustration of the narrative.
The clips below are from an interview I conducted with the theater troupe Hotel Modern after their performance of The Great War at the 2008 Spoleto Festival. In the first clip Herman Helle explains how he relies on the audience's imagination during the performance of The Great War. In the second clip members of the troupe explain how they conduct research when creating their performances. The third clip presents a discussion with the troupe on how they use the suspension of disbelief in their performances. The final clip features scenes from Hotel Modern's performance of The Great War. All of these clips will be used in a unit that will be conducted this fall in my Language Arts classroom at the Academic Magnet High School.
Below are some of the sources I used to prepare for Anderson's performance of Homeland. Also visit the "Language Is A Virus" site created for my Honors European Literature students to use during their study of Anderson this year by clicking on the following banner: Listen: A radio interview with Laurie Anderson In this interview Anderson talks about Homeland, shares her opinions about how 9/11 influenced her as an artist, and her technological fantasy of long mechanical arms. Click here to listen to the interview. Read: An overview of the performance, HOMELAND
Homeland is a series of songs and stories that creates a poetic and political portrait of contemporary American culture. Conceived as one long piece of music, Homeland moves through many worlds- from Greek tragedy to American business models. The stories and songs that make up Homeland are marked by political urgency. They address the current climate of fear, obsession with information and security. They are also- as with all of Anderson's work- personal and utterly unique.
"Dead stars their light still trapped in time. The dark emotion that came
a great distance to reach me. The sky. The land. The sky. The land"
The music, built on the foundation of groove electronics, will feature many of the new melodic forms Anderson has been developing on the violin and in her recent work with new electronic systems and Tuvan throat singers. Anderson is joined in Homeland by several musicians skilled in improvisation so each performance is unique
Sonically, Homeland is the most sophisticated Anderson production to date. The electronic contrals are all virtual and Homeland is a tour de force of spoken word, music and technology.
"I walk accompanied by ghosts. My father with his diamond eyes.
His voice life size. He says: Follow me. Follow me.
On Friday afternoon I participated in Marc Bamuthi Joseph's workshop held at the Avery Institute. Accompanying me were four members of the Academic Magnet's "Slamposium" Team: 9th grader Harriet Boatwright, 10th grader Kristen Martore, 10th grader Jacqueline Calloway, and 12th grader Megan Wilson. Also joining us was Katie MacNeil who graduated from the Magnet last year and is currently making a splash in the poetry slam scene here in Charleston. The six of us did not know what to expect, but two intense hours later we found ourselves blown away by the awesome talent and infectious creative energy of Marc Joseph.
Members of the AMHS "Slamposium"
WORKSHOP HIGHLIGHTS The workshop was a mixture of movement and word. Here are some of the highlights:
Performance: Joseph began with a performance that used movement and words to tell his story about his experience in a hospital watching his grandfather die three times. It was a piece our group had watched on YouTube already but it was quite powerful to have Joseph move around the outside of our chairs performing the piece around, beside, and even through us. Here is the clip on You Tube. Watch it and imagine experiencing what I did. Joseph stopping beside your chair, pausing briefly in his story, and staring directly into your eyes before gyrating back off into his story. It was very powerful. (note the piece we saw begins 1:30 into the clip)
Categories: Joseph wrote the words "hip hop" on the white board and asked us to share our definition of the words. participants to tell him what they thought was their meaning. I quickly raised my hand and gave the typical Literature teacher's response: "Well in your performance you moved your hips and you did a lot of hopping". Other participants added their definitions of the phrase. Joseph also added that one possible origin of the word is that it was a phrase used by party hoppers in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Joseph then concluded by stressing that there are no wrong answers to how "hip hop" should be defined. In the end Joseph made a great point that one should not be limited by definitions and categories.
Words: Joseph wrote the following title on the board: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf He then rewrote the title as follows: For______ _______ Who Have Considered_______when the _______is Enuf. He then instructed us to rewrite the phrase by inserting our own words into the blanks. Finally he created a "word bank" on the white board by recording the answers volunteered by the workshop participants.
Movement: Joseph led the participants through a series of dance moves. He began slow enough with the demonstration that even I, the world's most inept dancer, could follow along through the first seven moves. This was enough for me to experience the same movement that Joseph uses during his performances. In fact there were a few times during his Spoleto performance the next day that I noticed the same moves that he had taught us in the workshop. This use of movement as a partner to the spoken word is certainly something I plan to use with my slam team as well as in my Creative Writing class.
Words: Joseph asked us to think of a time in our life that we were most uncomfortable in our own skin. He said for us to picture our entire skin covered in this time. He then asked us to boil that time down into four words. Joseph then asked us to do the same for a time in our life when we felt the best about ourselves. Here are my best and worst of times described in just four words each: worst: "plastic blue air freshener" best: "orange African moon rising" Joseph then returned to the white board at the front and pointed to the words that had been written earlier. He then instructed us to complete a written piece that used our phrases and the words on the whiteboard. He then gave us 15 minutes to compose our piece.
Performance: Finally Joseph returned us to the dance floor and instructed us to create a piece that combined the words with movement. The presentations were quite interesting.
A recent posting on the City Paper's Spoleto Buzz Blog pointed out the fact that the character of the trickster appears in Amistad, Monkey, and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. This caused me to contemplate the purpose and value of the trickster in literature.
The trickster makes an appearance in many of the works I teach in my Honors European Literature class at the Academic Magnet High School. In Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost students evaluate Satan's character as the trickster archetype by explaining the symbolic meanings created when he changes into a serpent and tempts Eve. They also examine the trickster in more modern works such as Dr. Seuss' children's book The Cat In The Hat. In in addition to learning how to apply psychoanalytical literary criticism in an analysis they also evaluate the cat's character as a trickster who challenges the status quo.
Definition of the Trickster So what is a trickster? I use the following definition when introducing my students to the trickster archetype: The Trickster openly questions and mocks authority, encourages impulse and enthusiasm, seeks out new ideas and experiences, destroys convention and complacency, promotes chaos and unrest. At the same time, the trickster brings new knowledge and wisdom. Even when punished horribly for his effrontery, his indomitable spirit keeps him coming back for more. The trickster is often a master of disguise and may have magical or super-powers.
What purpose does the trickster serve in a story? In most stories the trickster helps us gain a new perspective on the world as we know it by turning it upside down. He or she challenges the status quo by manipulating situations, changing appearances, or stirring up trouble. For example they evaluate how much the cat's "trickster" games such as "Up up with a fish" impact the children's final decision to take responsibility for their own actions.
The trickster at Spoleto Here is a quick overview and analysis of the trickster characters I have encountered so far at Spoleto performances this year.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea In this play the Devil takes on many of the trickster characteristics.
Master of disguise: The devil takes on many different disguises ranging from the more folksy "Jack Black" (as seen in the picture above) to the more traditional forked tongued and horned attire.
Magical powers: In the episode "Speak of the Devil and he Shall Appear" the devil uses his powers to call a flock of geese to consume a maiden who is feeding them pieces of bread.
This afternoon I had the pleasure of listening and participating in a conversation with the talented members of the acting troop 1927, creators of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Conducted by CBS correspondent Martha Teichner, the conversation explored the troops origins, inspirations, and aspirations. Below are some of the ideas I gleaned that could be helpful in shaping and creating innovative ideas for the classroom.
Item #1:Facial Expressions, A Visual Reference for Artists by Mark SimonPaul Barritt (head of film and animation) said that they had used this book as a source for creating some of the dramatic faces that were seen in the play.Teaching Idea: This book will be a great resource when I am teaching students about indirect characterization in literature. I also plan to use it as a journal entry in creative writing. Students will select a series of facial expressions and write a vignette based on their selection of facial expressions. Click here to view a more detailed description of the book on Amazon.
Item #2: I asked members of the troop how the medium of digitally projected images impacted their creative process. Suzanne Andrade stated that it is restrictive but that they like the discipline it requires them to implement as actors. She did report that the medium of the projected image also created moments of inspiration. An example of this occured when Esme Appleton decided to pretend she was sawing a moon. The members of the troop liked this idea and incorporated it into the performance by having Paul Barritt change the projected image so it looked like Esme's character was sawing the moon.
Item #3:Paul Barritt was asked about how he ages his films so they look like vintage films from the silent film era. He reported looks at old films and collects samples of the crackles in the film. "I can just watch crackle" all day long.
Item #4:Origin of the "sinster characters". Suzanne Andrade was asked about where she found the inspiration for the two sinster characters in the play. She informed the audience that they were inspired by the creepy sisters in Kubrick's film, The Shining.
creepy sisters from The Shining
the sinsters from Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Item #5: Satirist Chris MorrisOne of the inspirations sited by the troop members was Chris Morris, a British satirist. They referred to one of his fake documentaries that dealt with the fictitious drug, Cake. The spoof inspired one government official to take up the dangers of this "drug" before the House of Commons. This might be a satirist I could refer to or use in my satire unit next year.
Item #1: Visit 1927's website http://www.19-27.co.uk/ This is a fantastic website. Packed full of innovative graphics, video clips, and silly historical facts this site is a great primer for helping one understand the quirky surrealistic mindset of this theater troop.
Highlights of 1927's Website
"Listen and Hear" section: Features audio recordings of Suzanne Andrade's quirky poems. My favorite was "The Lodger". It features the creepy synchronized monotone voices of the sinster sisters describing the strange smells emanating from their lodger's room as they peep through the keyhole of his door.
"1927 Live section: Watch an extended promotional video featuring some of the best effects from the show.
"Meat The Devil" section: Features three animated shorts focusing on the devil. Watch "The Devil's Children Have the Devil's Luck". I never thought that paper cut outs of children could creep me out as much as the ones in this clip did.
Visit 1927's website:http://www.19-27.co.uk/ Item #2: British 80's culture mini crash course I often wonder how much funner Monty Python would be if I had grown up in Britain and been familiar with British culture. In this play there are also many allusions to British culture that are unfamiliar to American audiences. One example of this is a skit in the scene "Between" where the sinster twins play an adaptation of "Mallet's Mallet" a game popularized on the 80's children's TV show "Wacaday". Below is a clip from the show featuring the "Mallet's Mallet" game.
Classroom connection lesson: The juxtaposition of past and present in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea inspired a multi media lesson for the language arts classroom. This lesson is also an adaptation of an online graphic design contest. The premise is simple. Challenge students to create an advertisement for a modern product that uses the tone, diction, and imagery from a period in history. Here is an example of an image created for the online contest:
On June 6th a group of my literature students from the Academic Magnet High School will have the privilege to meet with Laurie Anderson in a round table discussion about the creative process. After sharing this news with my students their first question to me was, "Who is Laurie Anderson?" My response was to have them carefully study one of Anderson's most popular work, "O, Superman". Instead of immediately showing them the video and asking them to analyze what they saw I instead helped them slowly discover her work by walking them through the following steps:
1. Read and Mark-upStudents read and used literary tools to analyze and mark up the text of "O Superman" with interpretive notes.
Student sample of mark up.
2. Listen
Students listened to an audio recording of Anderson's performance of "O Superman". They used their lyric handouts to note where and how Anderson used music and sounds to communicate concepts in the performance.
3. Origins Exploring the origins of "O Superman" Anderson constructed the song as a cover of the aria "O Souverain, o juge, o père" (O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father) from Jules Massenet's 1885 opera Le Cid. She was moved by the opera's powerful refrain "O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father!" and identified with the huge emotions at its center. She says, "O Souverain' is basically a prayer for help. All is over, finished! My beautiful dreams of glory, my dreams of happiness, have flown away forever!" Students watched the aria and discussed its connections to "O Superman".
4. Watch
Watch a video recording of Anderson's performance of "O Superman"
5. DiscussStudents shared their interpretations of the central theme of "O Superman" and explained how the textual, auditory, and visual elements in the work helped present the theme they identified.
Click on the banner below to see a full explanation of this lesson.
Last night I saw the dress rehearsal of Amistad. There were two arias from the performance that I believe would work well as pieces for students to analyze in my Language Arts classes.
Aria #1: "I could tell"
The first aria came in the third scene of the first act. The scene is titled "Ankle and Wrist" and it begins with the perimeter of the stage encircled by armed men chanting "Ankle and Wrist". It is in the middle of this that Margru, an African female, sings the aria "I could tell". Her song laments the loss of her babies when she was forced into captivity.
Aria #2: "Skin of Clouds"
This aria is sung by the Goddess of the Waters. It recalls the horrors of the Middle Passage from the point of view of this traditional African Goddess. In an exasperated tone she describes how the humans sweet offerings of "sweets and flowers" have been replaced by the "blood and sinew" of bodies falling through her body of water. The aria ends with the following disturbingly written images of horror and injustice:
I tell the heavens,
I tell the earth,
gods of all the living
and the dead,
the waters will rise up
with the moon
and crush the rims of the earth.
This howling is not of the seas.
This death defiles my body,
dares to take my children,
rip them from the land.
This howling is not of the seas.
It is a madness,
not of nature,
not of the gods,
but of men.
This aria would be an especially powerful addition to a social studies unit on the Middle Passage.
Click the link below to view the opera unit I created for my Honors European Literature students this year.
1. A Crash Course Video Guide To Opera: With the expert help of Barry Goldsmith (affectionately called "Opera Man" by my literature students) I compiled a selection of video clips introducing the five major singing roles in an opera.
3. Literary analysis of a key aria in the opera: "Skin of Clouds" (Act II, Scene 7) I marked up a copy of text for this aria as if it were a poem by using the "literary superpower tools" of diction, symbolism, tone, and allusion.
4. Review background materials:
Poem: "Middle Passage" by Robert Hayden http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/middle-passage/ Anthony Davis stated that it was this poem by Hayden that first drew his attention to working on the Amistad opera.
During and after the performance The Critic's Notebook: This is a piece of paper folded into quarters to create a mini notebook where one can scribble notes during and after the performance.
Painting With Verticals Cadence 3 by Bridget Riley
The 2008 festival poster was unveiled on Friday. To be honest my first thought was, "oh no, not an abstract!" As a Language Arts teacher I immediately look for a narrative and this can be difficult if not impossible to see in abstract works. Then, I remembered that I had similar thoughts last year when I saw Chuck Close's portrait of Philip Glass. But my opinion changed when I discovered that a discussion of Chuck Close's "minimalist" process of using just his fingerprints to create a large portrait was an ideal way to introduce students to the concept of Philip Glass' minimalist music. My second pass at the work, however, resulted in a flashback to some 70's wallpaper that I saw as a child. It took the words of my 9 year old daughter, Zoe, to get me to reconsider this work. She looked at it, squinched her face, and proclaimed, "Cool! That looks like woven water in a pond of fishes". Note to self: When an interpretation turns cynical seek a child's opinion.
A Literary Analysis of Art: "How to read a work of art in eight steps" Over the years I have integrated many works of art into my classroom as tools to teach concepts from my Language Arts curriculum. In that time I have developed a method called "reading a work of art in eight steps" (click here for the handout).
In order to give readers an idea of how this works I have provided my responses to these eight steps when used to analyze this year's festival poster. Keep in mind that this method uses literary tools to analyze a work of art. After I have my interpretation I will see what the experts have to say.
1. Sketch and label the main elements in the work (this slows students down and helps them see more elements in the work). Here's my quick mark up of this work:
2. Analyze the diction of the title: Students create word webs that examine the connotative and denotative meanings of the words in the title. Just take a look at the image below of a word map for "cadence" created by using the visual thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/): Many of these associated meanings gave movement to the painting and helped me build my interpretation of the work (or at least build on the original interpretation of my daughter's "woven water" interpretation).
Meanings associated with the number 3. I would tell my students that I don't care that the artist probably used the number three in the title because this was the third in a series. Instead I prefer to explore how I can deepen my own analysis of the work. Three is very important to human beings: three strikes, three pigs, three gods, three bears, three branches of government. Why is this? My answer comes from my hero, the famous mythologist Joseph Cambell who argued that 3 is the solution to the creation of life: male + female = offspring. This primal factor hearkens back to the early days when we first crawled out of the "woven water" and crawled around on land.
3. Subject: What is the subject being depicted in this work? My quick answer: Grass and light woven by water. (note to self: the water is my protagonist)
4. Characterization: Use the elements of indirect characterization (Speech, Thoughts, Effect on others, Actions, and Looks) to analyze characters and elements in the work. I have to heavily rely on personification here. Actions: The water is the protagonist whose flow is being disrupted by the growing grass and intruding light. The grass and light keep cadence (of three beats perhaps?). Looks: blue water is hidden behind the other elements.
5. What is the symbolic meaning of elements in the work? WATER: necessary for life and growth. Commonly appears as a birth or rebirth symbol. Water is used in baptismal services, which solemnizes spiritual births. Similarly, the appearance of rain in a work can suggest a character's spiritual rebirth. GRASS: food, shelter for fish?
6. Imagery: How do specific elements in the painting appeal to each of the five senses? blue=water, green=grass, white=light, gray=gray matter of the brain
7. Tone: Identify an adjective that describes the artist's attitude towards the subject of the work. apathetic / straightforward
8. Plot and theme Water's flow is disrupted by the elements of earth and sky causing it to weave itself into the fabric of a new diffusion. (I will be working on this as the festival progresses)
Welcome to the Spoleto Teacher Blog. It is here that I will share with you my exploration of the performances, artists, and creative energy that makes the Spoleto Festival the best comprehensive arts festival in the world. What makes this blog different from others written during the festival is that it is written from the point of view of a classroom teacher searching for new ideas and methods that can be integrated into the classroom curriculum.
The primary purpose of this blog will be a place for me to share with you my experiences as I help pilot the Spoleto Teacher Program for the festival. The goal of the Spoleto Teacher Program is to offer master teachers the unique opportunity to develop classroom lessons through the comprehensive study, attendance, and interpretation of multiple performances at the Spoleto festival. As a teacher with over a decade of experience in public education, I am honored to help launch this program. It will give me the opportunity to feed my undying hunger for knowledge as a lifelong learner. I am also excited because this program is an example of a more genuine method of professional development for classroom teachers. Finally I am honored to be part of a program that encourages educators to integrate what many researchers consider to be the fourth "R" in education. The Arts!
