jedidda

A. was saying the other day: you must be very escited about your trip to england and the workshop you're going to take.
Well, I haven't managed to be excited yet and I'm leaving tomorrow. It was just so much work and trip preparation related stress  that I think I will only feel excited when I finally get on the plane.
Plus I always get very anxious before a trip.
But fortunately tomorrow I will be in victorian haouse in the english countryside to attend a workshop about, of course, playback theatre, about the skills of listening to other peolple's stories.
No wonder people who know me from outside my work have trouble believing I'm a scientist.

It's not so much that nothing special happens, but more that I have been really busy scheduling my trip to the UK and my trip to the Palavras Andarilhas festival next week and also preparing to receive a cousin from Mozambique who arrived today. Well, I finally have my tickets to London. As usual these will be very active holidays, attending a playback theatre course about deeper listening with 2 other members of our group (3, if we count a former member who is away from Portugal at the moment).  Anyway the place looks wonderful, very relaxing atmosphere.
But before that I am going next week for the first time to this story telling event and attending workshops there as well. Still not comfortable enough to tell a story though. Hope some pf the people who attended M.'s workshop this summer will show up.

YouTube - Inception - Official Trailer [HD]

Finally saw this today.
Ok, it was entertaining enough and I did not feel the time pass. But I really can't see what all the fuss is about.

YouTube - Roncos do Diabo, Pé na Terra, Gaiteiricos de Miranda e Galandum - Geada 2009


Strangely enoguh, this music is one of my most vivid memories of the storytelling workshop I attended last week. This and orange exercise balls. I swear we spent most of the time playing with those orange balls. An activity which made me sleep like a baby every night.
One would suppose in a storytelling workshop you moslty sit down and share stories, but not with M. No, you run around getting hit by or hitting the others with a ball and when you're hit you have to tell a story, sometimes just start one that gets completed by the others, sometimes a 15s story. The ball is in fact a metaphor for the power of the word. And when you're on stage your emotions turn to run wild like when you're running around ducking from the ball and you have to learn how to control that.
Anyway, I knew what to expect because I had taken this course last year, but each time the exerciszes are different. And this time he made us choose made up names and that's how we knew each other for the rest of the workshop. We introduced our social selves at the end, but I have trouble remembering the others real names. It truly does help with preconceptions.

Yes, I know, I haven't updated this blog in ages.
Strangely enough, now that I have much less extra curricular activities, I have less energy to do anything. And maybe lately playback reheasarl is my space for venting ad telling my life stories. Even if playback theatre is not a therapy, it can be very therapeutic to see your feelings portrayed without judgment.
As usual, went to Andanças for hollidays this year, but for the first time in aroud 4 years, I went there as a regular person, not a performer, so most of the time I simply enjoyes being ale to do nothing if I felt like it, no rehearsals, no stress...The lack of adrenaline  felt a bit weird though.
 Fire started thursday on the mountains close by, and on saturday, when I woke up my tent was covered in ashes and the heat was getting unbearable. I wonder how i slept through the night.
And I still haven't fully recovered from the lack of sleep, as I ended up going out almost every night last week. I guess I am having trouble dealing with the silence after a week of being around people all the time. But it does feel good not to have to walk 500 m if you want to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

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Finished Patricia Highsmith's "Those who walk away", a story about two men,  chasing each other in the streets of Venice. Ray's wife has commited sucide and her father Ed has conviced himself that Ray is guilty and therefore deserves to be killed. I had bought it maybe 20 years ago and only now did I find the right mood to read it. Love this lady's twitted mind.
Then, as I have been reading so many very serious books this year I really felt like something light so I started "Irish Girls about Town", a short stories collection from several female irish writers. Most stories are really ultralight, though I did enjoy "the 28th day" about a woman having PMT, and "Your place or mine" and "the cup runneth" had an unexpected twist. As for the love stories, a bit too chick littish for my taste, I just find these happy endings so contrived, or maybe I'm just getting cynical.

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Finished Ionesco's "Les Chaises suivi de L'impromptu de l'Alma" last week.
"Les Chaises" itself I really enojyed, a story of an old couple interacting
with an invisible audience. Absurd, yes, but very poetic and sad, even if it
had also very funny moments. Plus I saw the play when I had 3 pages left to
read so the text came to life for me. L?imprmptu de l'Alma, on the other
hand, I found a bit too obvious. And he explains it all in the end.
Picked up Cloud Atlas, since I had forgotten "A charming Mass Suicide" in my
friends car. The first part is a little bit hard to read for me, becauseof
the old english style, so I turned back to "A charming Mass Suicide", quite
a funny book despite the subject. Even funnier for me because the characters
decide to drive from Finland to Portugal to commit suicide there.

See if you can  recognise anybody ;)
Had a wonderful time taking part in this.

Yesterday was my first time as a conductor for a playback performance. And I'm still shaky.
I must have explained this before but in playback theatre the conductor is the intermediary between the public and the actors, helps the public share their personal stories and chooses the forms in which this stories are going to be acted. Plus he or she also has to control the time of the performance.
During one rehearsal las year where we all took turns at conducting i suddenly found myself quite comfortable with the conducting and have been trained as one since january.
We had been asked by one evangelical church to perform at one of their "café concerto" they have on saturdays and we decided I would do the conducting. It was supposed to be a small audience between 16 and 30 years old and we were supposed to be the only act.
Well, it rurned out we were something like 5th on the list. We managed to be the second act but we only had 30-40 min to perform when a performance should last circa an hour. There must have been around 50 people, and a lot of small kids. And the audience didn't seem to know it was going to be interactive.
So it was a hell of a fight to coax stories out of them. And boy is it hard to deal with the silences! We ended up mostly acting for the kids at bthe beginning of the performance. The theme was "When our world collapses" and  at one point I asked: So, what is it that helps you when your world collapes? And alleluia, everybody staterd saying Faith and God and then I had them talking. So we managed one long story and at that point one of the organizers whispers in my ear we should end the performance.
It wasn't supposed to be such a challenge, but after this, I think I can do just about anything!

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Finished Paul Auster's "Book of Illusions" last week. At first it reminded me a bit too much of the Music of Chance, but when it got to Hector Mann story I put my guard down and I just couldn't put the book down. But I agree with some other readers, Zimmler's story didn't touch me as much. And now I know where the movie Martin frost comes from (or is it the opposite?).
Started reading Robertson Davies World of Wonders, the 3rd volume of the Deptford Trilogy.  I know it will make me spend a lot of time online researching magicians and conjurors. I'm just at the very beginning, he's still introducing the characters but i am already getting hooked.
I am alternating with Ionesco's "Les Chaises" which I had wanted to read whensince I saw the play a few years ago and I found it at Ler Devagar last friday when I went to see a play there. I had to come one hour early to pick up my invitation and spending one hour by myself in such a huge bookstore... Hard to resist temptations. I have seen the play in portuguese, but I can't remember how they translated the tender (?)name the old man calls his wife: "ma crotte". For me it means "my turd", never heard of another meaning but then it is theatre of the absurd, so why not?