PNC Assignment 5 Queering Abhinaya Shy and Meena Response

PW WUTST with king Dramaturgy by Shyamala Moorty. Continuing to develop Raja/ni role, and 20 minute solo-super-minimalist-no video we used to see this version for low budget touring option. This is developing into the version for Erasing Borders next week on Sept 5 2014. Any feedback by Post Natyam Collective is most welcome and desired before Wed Sept 3, 12 noon pacific standard time! This is not the final music but I adding music trax + colonial archive text the best I could to give you a better idea of what I'm thinking for the NYC version. Feedback Questions: 1) What do you get from the Raja/ni role? Do you associate them as male, female, fluid, etc? 2) What do you get as a viewer with the Raja/ni happening at the beginning, with the text? Any suggestions? 3) Who is Raja/ni looking at, admiring, attracted to? 4) Where would you like to see Raja/ni go? Anything specific that you would like us to try? 5) Any feedback, suggestions, questions, advice, unclear aspects for the rest of the piece? 6) Is there anything potentially PROBLEMATIC in terms of political statements viewers might take from this piece? Particularly anything anti-progressive/conservative?

Queering Abhinaya, assignment 5, response by Babli and Cyn

For this round of assignments, Babli and Cyn started collaborating on writing text for UNFINISHED, ITERATION III, Babli’s recent project inspired by painter Amrita Sher-Gil.

For this assignment, Cyn and Babli looked at two different portraits painted by Sher-Gil (at this point we won’t say which ones-sorry)

We created 2 rounds of freewrites for each portrait, i.e. looking at each portrait from 2 different perspectives.

We ask for feedback on the freewrites, and there is a video pasted below that plays with putting some of the text over movement (from Iteration II)- HOWEVER; we ask that you watch the video AFTER having responded to the text.

Our feedback questions are:

1) What do you get from the writings?  Are there any imagery, ideas, and/or phrases that stand out to you as compelling?

2) How do these writings relate to the performance, UNFINISHED?  How might you imagine them being integrated into the performance?

3) How do these writings relate to some of our explorations regarding the queer female desiring gaze?

4) Would you imagine combining these writings into one or two pieces, or do you like them as multiple perspectives on the same thing?

5) We pasted below an experiment of overlaying the text with movement (please only watch it after responding to the above questions)

a) How does watching the text with movement change the text- AND the movement for you?

b) What do you get from the combination?

c) How would you like the text to be delivered (i.e. voice over, Sandra speaking, text projection, another person speaking live - e.g. an audience member)

6) Any other thoughts?

Painting 1

Freewrites round  1

Your eyes, they look sultry, almond shaped

your gaze stern and self conscious,

indirect, since you are facing the diagonal

your prominent eyebrows appear close together

your lips deep red serious, no smile

they give your look a strictness and determination that exudes confidence

your hair is thick and very very long

I imagine it is very heavy

tied deep in the neck

Not open

Your face and hair look very Indian to me

Your shoulders stoop forward ever so slightly

On your diagonal the side of your upper body that is closer to me- it is your left side-

is light more brightly

Around your waist you are wearing a light blue pareo of which I can only  see the top part

Your hands are clasped in front of your hips

Your indirect facing

Your closed posture

your serious, confident, self conscious  face

seem to contradict the openness and lusciousness of your bare upper body

The shadow of a man in a hat towers behind you

All in front of the backdrop of a - is it a Japanese- scene where there are three figures

two female- they seem to be talking to each other

and one male

---

You are vulnerable, brown, thoughtful, hands folded protectively over your crotch.  My eyes skate between your face and your bare torso.  You face the corner with fathomless black black eyes, brows drawn together slightly, large sloping nose contrasting with your narrow jaw and round heart-shaped lips, slightly pursed, unavailable.  look don't look.  Your breasts and nipples, full with a slight sag, delicately modeled.  Your

arms browner than the rest of you -- a shirt sleeve tan?  Your chest relaxed, despite it all.  The strangest thing is the figures in the background, faint, a Japanese imperial painting, a male official with a long moustache, ladies in waiting.  An ominous shadow between you and this underpainting, a shadow which could not have been cast by you, ominous and frontal and male.

______

freewrites round 2

Your eyes- my gaze is drawn to your eyes most of all-- they are almond shaped. You are looking out into the distance, but not with your eyes wide open -- your look/your gaze into the distance- may I call it sultry?

your hair lusciously cascades down your back.

Your lips are full

deep red

serious, sensuous, earnest

contemplative

Your torso is shaped by curves-

the slight droop of your shoulders close your body

just like the protective clasp of your hands

your full breasts are marked by what looks like a tanline- leaving your arms darker than the fullness of your breast

your hips are covered snugly by a light blue, thin pareo

it is tied very low below your bellybutton

just like we were told to wear it for dance class

_______

in van gogh, whom you loved as well, brilliance and movement and color and hope.  you drew yourself against his hope, his romance-faded vision of a japanese monastic artistic community, his dark shadow looming behind you.  Amrita, how did you occupy this legacy, luxuriating in and rejecting these western eyes, so exotic, so different!  black crows of eyebrows furrowed, thick cascading hair, you paint yourself into the primitive colonial object, using the tools of your colonizers your teachers.  what a peculiar gesture, the self-portrait, to treat oneself as visual object, to be inside and outside.  as you paint your body you paint truth and flaw and desire, lushness and discomfort.  a celebration, yes, of lush brown openness and femininity, gauguin, but where you keep yourself, your secrets, is in your eyes, black, unavailable, aware of being seen.  you feel my gaze upon you, you feel the entire history of western viewers gazing upon you.

Painting 2

freewrites round 1

You are sitting

relaxed

Your left elbow supported on something (dark)

Your right hand placed on your knee

You are putting weight on your hand, it seems

Your right shoulder gets pushed up

Your posture turns out slightly skewed

But in a relaxed, provocative way

Your eyes are piercing

Your red lips match the pattern on your blouse

I ask myself if you are- or maybe want to- lift your eyebrow

to enhance the challenging, is it playful, look you are returning to the person painting you

You are playing back the gaze

Your right hand

the one on your knee

appears huge

____

You summon me to look at you, quizzical and confrontational, your shoulder jutting askew all bones and lips, hand gripping your knee like a man, the foreshortening making your hand even larger.  Your clothes scrubbed with rough strokes, black on black, energetically worked from the background, the strokes fat, undelicate, moving.  all elbows and jawline.  your face, though, is lit, cream and ivory glowing translucent in incandescent light, striking your left cheekbone, forehead.  a glint in your gray green eyes, so clear and far-seeing, your strong dark eyebrows arched expressive, your huge orange red pouty grim stubborn lips, so kissable.  your hair, bobbed, curves into your jaw and disappears into the background.  you are manly and womanly, confrontational all boney angles and yet unreadable, waiting and looking back at the one who paints you.

___________________

Freewrites round 2:

your shoulders and hair cut, your fingers and joints - their angularity exudes strength

your eyes are piercing

so striking

your gaze direct

your lips so curved

so full so striking

The folds of your dress trace the shape of your body

your left hand tucked in as if prodded on your hips

makes your right hand even larger

- protruding out

grasping your own knee

instead of reaching out

_____

Brazen and full-lipped, you thrust your elbow, shoulder, hips at me, looking at me through me beyond me.  Unreadable.  I model your face, delicate porcelain translucent eggshell, tinged with cream and shell and yolk.  The rest is the constant mystery of mixing blacks grays browns, purple shadows enriching the mahogany gleam of your hair, your clothing emerging in blacks and olives and yellow gray greens.  After all this time sharing space, I still cannot read you, a puzzle how you thrust yourself against me and retract, one key two keys, how you found us in the sheets, your green eyes and mannish hands, surveying us with amusement.  I work that drama into the drip and swirl and fold of cloth and brush, energetically moving cloth against your skin, so delicate, your stubborn lips, so kissable.

VIDEO:
UNFINISHED ITERATION III, Text, PNC Assigment Aug 2014 from Unfinished on Vimeo.

PW: iteration 3 exploration

Queering Abhinaya Assignment #5: working in pairs

We are continuing our Queering Abhinaya long-distance process this month (August 2014) using a slightly different approach.  Rather than having one person give a central assignment, this month we are working in pairs with weekly check-ins.  Following up on choreographic interests and material produced during the residency and beforehand, each person will work with her partner to brainstorm what she would like to work on and what kind of support would be useful from the other person.

Our working pairs are: 

Sandra, Cynthia

Meena, Shy

For reference, here are notes from our conversation (only accessible to PN members): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ovEdGa2PffXSB-zTE-fd25HKG8AzMrEatKgW90DAvl8/edit

Please post your studies with feedback questions by August 25 and give feedback by August 31.  Each individual pair is responsible scheduling your weekly meetings.

Subverting Orientalism: Translating Maud Allan's "Vision of Salome"

BACKGROUND INFO

For my "alternative translations" assignment, I chose to focus on Maud Allan's Vision of Salome.  I initially ran across references to Maud Allan during our Cabaret Travels research (see my written assignment #2) on German kabarett, where the phenomenon of naked dancing was supposedly inspired by Allan's infamous Salome piece.  In that context, I was originally interested in how Orientalist embodiments of the Other by white western women gave rise to alternative possibilities for performing gender and sexuality.  Maud Allan was a white female Canadian-born, California-raised dancer whose dance career took off in Germany.  She was all the rage for a couple of years around 1908 in London, where she gave 250 performances of the Vision of Salome at the Palace Theatre.  She was the major figure in a complicated court case, in which she charged Noel Pemberton-Billings, a right-wing MP and publisher of The Vigilante newspaper, of libel for associating her name with an article titled, "The Cult of the Clitoris."  This article claimed that there was a black book containing the names of 47,000 British homosexuals who were being blackmailed by the Germans to undermine the British government.  (Pemberton-Billings was found not guilty, using a defense strategy that essentially flipped the case to put Allan and her choreography on trial.)  Allan was a complex figure: anti-suffrage despite being an unmarried, financially independent woman; whose longest romantic relationship was with her female secretary and lover, Verna Aldrich despite suing Pemberton-Billings for accusing her of being a lesbian; who performed sexuality through the guise of Orientalist spirituality.

In her article, "Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allan's 'The Vision of Salome,'" Amy Koritz describes how the work toed a tricky line between titillating audiences with images of the erotic, exotic Eastern femme fatale and performing Victorian propriety for critics (Koritz 1994).  Koritz includes several excerpts of reviews, which, while varied in their assessment of the work's aesthetic quality, comment on her "lady-like performance" (74) "[that] is absolutely without the slightest suggestion of the vulgarities familiar to the tourists in Cairo and Tangier" (Koritz 1994: 70).  Allan's own choreographic intention, as documented in her 1908 publication, My Life and Dancing, portrays Salome as a relatively innocent girl, subject to obedience to her vengeful mother; her experience pushes her over the cusp of womanhood as she becomes drunk on power and enamored of John the Baptist, whose beheading she has caused (Allan 1908: 120-8).  As such, audience (vs. critical) reception of the work as overtly sexually titillating seems to go against Allan's choreographic intentions.

CREATIVE ASSIGNMENT
For my dance-text, I was drawn to a piece of publicity circulated by Alfred Butt, the manager of the Palace Theatre (Koritz 1994: 69).  I asked us to find a way to subvert the writing's intention; this subversion could be informed by the complicated history and politics surrounding Maud Allan and The Vision of Salome, or simply by the choreographer's own predilections and/or lived experience.

"The pink pearls slip amorously about her bosom and throat as she moves, while the long strand of pearls that floats from the belt about her waist floats languorously apart from her smooth hips.  The desire that flames from her eyes and bursts in hot flames from her scarlet mouth infects the very air with the madness of passion.  Swaying like a white witch with yearning hands and arms that plead, Miss Allan is such a delicious embodiment of lust that she might win forgiveness with the sins of such wonderful flesh.  As Herod catches the fire, so Salome dances even as a Bacchante, twisting her body like a silver snake eager for its prey, panting hot with passion, the fires of her eyes scorching like a living furnace"(cited by Buonaventura 2004: 34).

Here are our responses (password for all is "allan"):

Cyn translates Maud Allan from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Shyamala translates Maud Allan from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Sandra translates Maud Allan from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Meena translates Maud Allan from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
I was struck by the different strategies used to subvert the eroticized, feminized Orientalism in the studies.  Shyamala converted the sensual into the grotesque; Sandra queered the text by positioning herself as a female desiring spectator; Meena "neutralized" the words through dryness and objectivity (literally working with objects); while I performed an aggressive, fighting masculinity inspired by Koritz's description of the English Morris dance, the polar opposite of the feminized East:

"It is, in spirit, the organized, traditional expression of virility, sound health and animal spirits.  It smacks of cudgel-play, of quarterstaff, of wrestling, of honest fisticuffs.  There is nothing sinuous in it, nothing dreamy; nothing whatever is left to the imagination....It is the dance of folk who are slow to anger, but of great obstinacy -- forthright of act and speech: to watch it in its thumping sturdiness is to hold such things as poniards and stilettos, the swordsman with the domino, the man who stabs in the back -- as unimaginable things.  The Morris Dance, in short, is a perfect expression in rhythm and movement of the English character."  (Cecil Sharp, in Flitch's Modern Dancing and Dancers, quoted by Koritz 1994: 72).

WRITTEN REFERENCES
Allan, Maud.  1908.  My Life and Dancing.  London: Everett and Company.  https://archive.org/details/mylifedancing00allaiala

Bland, Lucy.  1998.  "Trial by Sexology?: Maud Allan, Salome and the 'Cult of the Clitoris' Case."  In Sexology in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires, eds. Lucy Bland, Laura Doan.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 183-97.

Buonaventura, Wendy.  2003.  Something in the Way She Moves: Dancing Women from Salome to Madonna.  Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

Koritz, Amy.  1994.  "Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allan's 'The Vision of Salome.'"  Theatre Journal 46 (1): 63-78.

IMAGE
http://reflectionsinverse.blogspot.com/2013/07/maude-allan-salome-dancer-who-caused.html

Queering Abhinaya Assignment 4: Translations of Teachings (Shyamala and All)

I chose some text from a padam called Velavare, that I had learned from Medha Yodh.  However, the English versions of the poem were not translated poetically, but rather in a literal word for word fashion that was useful for learning the dance, but somehow did not inspire me to make interesting interpretations of it.  It seemed more fruitful to translate my written dance notes of what Medha had taught me.  So it became more similar to Lionel Popkin's translations of Ruth St. Denis' instructions on how to do her dances then just a re-choreographing of the text.  Each of us did our own interpretation of the same words/descriptions as seen below. 

passwords for all are: medha

Shy translates Medha from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Meena translates Medha from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Sandra translates Medha from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Cynthia translates Medha from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Queering Abhinaya Assignment #4: alternative translations

Inspired by one of Lionel Popkins’ approaches to his full length trio “Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” I am interested in translating texts describing dance into alternative movement interpretations than the original intention.  In my memory of the piece, Lionel tells the audience that he is using Ruth's dance directions of her work quite loosely, in a similar manner to how she treated the dances from the multiple cultures that she represented/appropriated in her work.  
 

As we recently discussed in an in person session, abhinaya  traditionally interprets texts, and literally means to “carry across” (like the word translation).   As we are queering abhinaya, I invite us to find alternative interpretations that may open up, subvert, or even create contrary interpretations to the original text and dance that the text was written about.

So, find a text that describes or gives directions for how to do a dance.  Then create your own alternate version of the dance that relates to the text but somehow explodes the expectations of your chosen text.  For example, if the text says “turn”, there may be many ways to turn the body, or turn the perspective, or turn a body part, or to say “turn” in various languages, or to get someone else to turn etc.

Cyn's Assignment #3: triple weave

For my assignment, I decided to do a textual choreography that investigates (my) Taiwanese aboriginal and Chinese colonizer heritage and histories.   The piece uses three streams of text: the left column is by Atayal (泰雅/Taiya) poet Walis Nokan, the middle column are personal musings/memories written by myself, and the right column consists of Qing Dynasty colonial travel writings from the 1600s, sourced from Emma Teng's Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895.  For ease of reading, click on each page for a larger image.

Queering Abhinaya - Assignment #3

This assignment is inspired and informed by a talk I went to given by Professor Gayatri Gopinath at UCLA on April 17th, 2014 as part of Professor Anurima Banerji and Sue-Ellen Case's course "Queer Performance and Politics." Gopinath used queer theory as a tool of analysis (not as a term of identity) to connect diasporic communities and indigenous peoples as part of the same colonial expansionist project that among other things, attempts to contain and police racialized bodies (often literally i.e. low income housing projects and residential schools were mentioned). Gopinath analyzed the work of visual artists Tracey Moffatt (Australian Aboriginal) and Sehar Shah (Pakistani US) to develop a strategy that was termed as a "queer pairing" in order to talk about braided histories and non-normative bodies. For this assignment: 1) Choose an indigenous artist (the artist identifies as indigenous) that works with any medium - photography, sculpture, movement, performance, film, sound, poetry etc. I am most familiar with indigenous communities in North America so First Nations, Native, Aboriginal. However, please invite into this assignment what indigenous might mean in relation to places you have lived - Germany, India, Taiwan, Hawaii or other places. I am interested in this idea of home - who used to call the places we now call home, home? 2) Including abhinaya, however you might define it for this assignment, create an artistic conversation with your chosen artist/one of their works. 3) Similar to the last assignment, work in pairs. Cynthia and Babli Shyamala and Meena Due May 30th. Feedback June 2.

Queering Abhinaya: Assignment 2.2

This is the updated version of my assignment 2.
The original was here: http://postnatyam.blogspot.com/2014/04/shyamalas-creative-response-2-queering.html

It has become a group project now with Cynthia and Meena working on the filming, Alison De La Cruz directing and Cynthia editing. Right now it is in front of a green screen background so that Adnan Hussain can add animation. 

This scene of Super Ruwaxi: Origins
is called "the Fed gets a new identity"
it takes place after Fedora boy gets turned into Fedora Girl as Super Ruwaxi discovers her gender bending power.

https://vimeo.com/99398161, password: lexie
 
Questions: 
 1. What interests you emotionally and/or physically?

2.  How would you as an audience member feel about this character (like, dislike, empathize with, scared of, be amused by etc...)?

3.  Anything else?

Nightmare -- queering abhinaya assignment 2.3

This is a mock-up of a scene from Super Ruwaxi: Origins where Ruwaxi's parents have a nightmare about Ruwaxi after seeing a "Most Wanted" TV alert about Super Ruwaxi.  In my head, this video would be playing while Ruwaxi would watch from the side, dimly lit as if in their bedroom doorway, seeing her sleeping parents have a bad dream about her.

password: yellow fever
This video is a mock-up, and I ideally would re-record the voices so that one (the father) is a male voice.  I also would have to find images that are in the public domain or that I otherwise have rights too.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. How does the video make you feel?
2. How is the music working for you?  Any particular feedback that I should give my composer?  Here is a link to the music without the voices: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qhibcyxqksvjbl4/The%20Nightmare%20v1-2%20%28Jagged%20Pulse%29.mp3
3. What parts of the visuals are working and not working for you?  Are the still images effective or would you rather they be video?
4. Is this worth pursuing further or should I trash the idea?
5. Other thoughts?

Cynthia - Queering Abhinaya Take 2.2

Shy, Alison and I are deep in Super Ruwaxi land, and we are in the middle of trying to figure out the different visual looks for the different worlds in the work.  These worlds include Ruwaxi's home, her school, the club, the world of her arch nemesis (Fedora Boy/Lexie Luthora), and Urvashi's mythological world.  In addition to the live feed projection and audience interaction that we already set up in the initial version of the work, we are also planning to collaborate with Adnan as an animator.  In addition to identifying different looks for the different worlds, one of our biggest challenges is that certain scenes have many more characters than we have performers for.  This is one such scene.

The following scene is set at Ruwaxi's school.  It takes place after an initial exposition on the Middle Kingdom (Ruwaxi's home), where we find out about her close friend, Nana.  It also takes place after Ruwaxi has accidentally transformed the sleazy Fedora Boy into a female-bodied person at the club.  Fedora Boy has transformed himself into Lexie Luthora and now works at the Gender Police.  Lexie has been assigned to go undercover at Ruwaxi's school to start a female-only program of internalized self-hatred, but she does not know that Ruwaxi is the person who transformed her into a woman.  This video uses mudras as hand puppets to embody multiple characters, which I (as Ruwaxi) would respond to as a live body.  For the moment, you hear Ruwaxi's lines included in the voice-over, but not my body responding to the hand puppets.  The narrator is also not embodied in this video.

password "pepper"
Feedback Questions:
(1)  Do you find that the hand puppets offer enough scope for a rich acting performance, particularly for the character Nana -- or does their mediatized and pre-recorded nature take away from the liveness of the acting and complexity of the relationships?
(2) Can you follow the scene, or do you get confused about who the characters are?  Do you need different voices and different people's hands to play the different characters?  Shall I give the different hands different outfits (nail polish, rings, etc.) or faces?  Initially I was going to concentrate more on the different characters' aharya abhinaya; I was also considering having individual fingers or pairs of fingers play a single character -- but these foci seemed to limit movement possibilities, so I focused on expression through movement for this study.
(3) Would you prefer that Shyamala play Lexie (as she will in other parts of the play), or do you prefer Lexie as a hand puppet?
(4) Do you like the visuals as they are (knowing that I would have to fix the second half so the hands do not overlap with each other), or would you prefer them to be mixed with animation?
(5) Other thoughts?

Meena - Queering Abhinaya - Assignment #2

Feedback Questions: 1. What do you get from this video? 2. There is a very slight attempt at a more classical abhinaya facial expression at 0:40. What do you think? Does it stand out from the rest? Should I exclude or include this style into the video? 3. Is there too much text? Do you need more breaks, pauses, spaces, less text, differently placed, music? 4. Anything else?

Cyn's Creative Response #2: Lexie Strikes in the Locker Room

I’ve been having some challenges doing this assignment, partially because our script for “Super Ruwaxi: Origins” is still shifting around quite a lot, and so I haven’t been sure whether it made sense to stage a scene that might get cut.  Thus I’ve decided to use the feedback process to help brainstorm visual looks or staging approaches for one of the scenes in the script, which takes place at school.  As you read, keep in mind that there are only two performers – Shy and myself – though there are multiple characters.

To give some context for this scene, it takes place at Ruwaxi’s elite prep school.  The group of popular girls at the school is called the Lipstick Brigade, headed by Lexie Luthora, with her hangers-on, Vanna Valley White (an air-headed blonde), and Minx (a cunning and jealous brunette).  Lexie is the trans-female version of Fedora Boy.  Lexie now works at the Gender Police (where Fedora Boy also worked) and has gone under cover as a high school student to try to find and destroy her nemesis, Ruwaxi.  Lexie’s name is a reference to Lex Luthor, Superman’s nemesis.  Lexie also parallels Brihannala, the female (or hijra, depending on the story) version of Arjuna when he is in hiding in the Mahabharata.  ‘Nana (short for Banana) was Ruwaxi’s childhood best friend (and first female lover, though this back-story will probably not be included in the script), but their paths have diverged since Nana opted for the assimilated, materialistic route while Ruwaxi took the nerdy, model minority route.

Also, at the moment we are imagining that Shy will play Lexie and I will play Arjuna throughout the piece, so that we play each other’s nemesis.  We are also interested in creating a distinct visual look for each world: school, home, club, Urvashi’s world.  Some preliminary visual thoughts are indicated in red. 

Lexie Strikes in the Locker Room

Lights up on the girls' locker room at Middle Kingdom High with sounds of showers and chattering girls.  Ruwaxi is deep in thought, distracted by new ideas for a paper.

RUWAXI

Ooh, I could write an extra credit paper on queer tropes in Hindu mythology through the lenses of feminist-of-color theory and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies.  

(Absent-mindedly, she slips out of her gym clothes, tucks her towel around her body, making her way towards the communal shower, soap and shampoo in hand.  Mentally thanking her mother for making her wear flip-flops, she lets her body relax into the hot stream of water, humming a seductive melody that she seemed to recall from a dream.)

(A bar of soap slides across the bathroom floor, hitting her flip flop. As RUWAXI kneels down to pick it up, LEXIE enters with the LIPSTICK BRIGADE just behind her.)

Lexie

Ahem.

(Ruwaxi looks up.)

Vanna

Ruwaxi, give her the soap already!

Ruwaxi

(visual thought bubble -- I'm thinking the following words would be expressed through imagery, not words) The suds cling to her pale pink areolas...her body so ripe yet perfectly toned...

Lexie

[in a dangerous whisper] What are you looking at?

Minx

[calculating] Yeah, Ruwaxi, do you like what you see or something?

(Lexie’s eyes widen at the sound of Ruwaxi’s name, then narrow with malice.)

Vanna

Oh my god, Ruwaxi, are you seriously a dyke?  I thought you were too busy studying to think about sex!

Lexie

So…you are Ruwaxi.  The little Oriental flower who turned out to be a hairy armpitted...

Ruwaxi

[fearful and embarrassed] I’m not looking at anything!  Sorry…

Lexie

(snaps her fingers) Shave her.

(Lexie pulls her diamond razor from her hair and grabs Ruwaxi by the wrist.  The rest of the Lipstick Brigade gathers, forcing Ruwaxi down to the slimy, tiled shower floor. Ruwaxi tries to stand up, to call forth her righteous anger, but she is gripped with fear, and as she lifts her arms, diamond flashes of razor sharpness slashed lightning-quick in a blur of hot steam, tig dha bony fingers holding Ruwaxi down bruisingly tight, dig…dig… slashing flesh and scraping away hair.  Ruwaxi is left in a heap on the shower floor, her curly armpit hair clogging the drain, blood mixing with water…)

(As a possible visual rendition of the above scene, I’m imagining my live body tangled in a typical cartoon fight sequence, perhaps a simple animation, complete with little curlicues, exclamation points, and sound effects (bam, pow, zap, etc.), mixed in with anti-lesbian epithets and bols.  For example: ouch!  I’LL &%*#*%^ TEACH YOU!  tig dha SLASH!  diga ZAP! $%^&! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS?  diga diga thai LESBIAN!  POW! diga thai BIFFF!  DYKE!  SLASH! tig dha CUNT-LOVER!) 

 (LEXIE exits with the LIPSTICK BRIGADE behind her. Nana enters after they’ve left.)

‘Nana

Are you okay, Ruwaxi?  [helps her get up and supports her] Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.

QUESTIONS:

(1) How might you imagine staging this visually given that there are only two performers?  (Options might include live feed, simple animation, pre-recorded video, audience interaction, etc.) 

(2) The blatant violence of this scene bothers me because it seems to be missing the cleverness and humorous political pointedness of the 15-minute version of the piece.  Do you have thoughts as to ways to make it both serious and light? 

(3) Thoughts about what kind of sound/music might support this scene?

(4) Any suggestions to tighten or strengthen the writing?   Other thoughts?

Queering Abhinaya assignment 2, babli

Password: mixed up
Queering Abhinaya 2, 2 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Feedback questions:

1) what do you take away from the video?
2) What do you take away from the song?
3) how does the video relate to the song?
4) Does the video stand alone?
5) I was thinking of starting with a live announcement (like the ones Janet critiques)- kind like this:

"The next item is a traditional love song. It says:

I have been in love with a girl for many years.

One day, the girl will have to find out one day! Whenever I see her red red lips, with her ever happy laugh, I want to do everything to have the chance to taste them one day.

Why does she keep me waiting, why does she only smile from afar.

Like a hidden flower I grow close to her.Whenever I see her I think- let me wait some more time.
But today I will tell her for certain
The reasons are enough!"

What do you think of that idea?

6) How does it relate to "queering abhinaya"
7)Any other thoughts?

Shyamala's Creative Response # 2: Queering Abhinaya Super Ruwaxi

For this assignment I chose to work on a character in "Super Ruwaxi: Origins" a piece that Cynthia and I are expanding into a full show. Here is a little about the piece: Super Ruwaxi: Origins tells the origin story of how Wu Ruwaxi, a nerdy Chinese-American teenager, becomes Super Ruwaxi, a feminist super-heroine with magical gender-bending body odor. Ruwaxi also discovers that she has her power because she is future incarnation of the Hindu apsara, Urvashi.

Up until now I have been playing the character of Urvashi. However this assignment allowed me to explore the physicality and expression of the Super Villain: Razor Girl.

What you need to know before watching this... Super Ruwaxi is approached by a slimy guy in a dance club named Fedora Boy/aka The Fed. He makes inappropriate advances on her.  She gets mad and discovers her magical gender-bending body odor, changing him into Fedora Girl. Fedora Girl is shocked and runs away. What follows is Fedora Girl's transformation into Razor Girl, aka Lexi Luthora.

 
Fedora girl to razor girl from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
Password: Ruwaxi

Questions: 1. What interests you emotionally and/or physically? How would you as an audience member feel about this character (like, dislike, empathize with, scared of, be amused by etc...)? How else might I push this rendition of Razor Girl into a convincing and complex Super Villain who was accidentally created by Super Ruwaxi?

2. How does the song and spoken words inform you about what is going on for the character? (I got the idea from something Cynthia wrote that happens in the gender police headquarters where men are teaching their sons that "boys don't cry.")  Could you imagine other words, or no words support this transition?  If so, what could you imagine?

 3. Costuming: is it clear that the two costumes are the same person? Right now I interpreted Cynthia's description of Razor Girl as having the razor in a french twist as best as I could with short hair. However I realized, after I made the study, that keeping the hat might help us know that this is the same person as the audience members who were wearing it as Fedora Boy and Girl.

Here is a pic of a hat I have that actually has a little slot that a normal sized razor fits into perfectly (do we need to exaggerate the size of the razor?)

And here are two full body pics of Razor Girl, one with the razor in hair and one with the razor in hat. With the hat, I look more like a jazz/cabaret dancer to me.  This could be interesting...if we went in the hat direction I wonder how that might inform the way Razor Girl moves (do I need to go take some jazz classes?)



What are your thoughts about razor placement?Anything else about her costume that interests you, that you're not sure about, or that you have ideas about?

4. Costume transition: As the music ends in the video, I tried to recreate a sequence similar to Ruwaxi's transition into her club self...walking into the closet and being afraid of being caught. Is this confusing without hands and narrative? Could you imagine hands and narrative coming in here?  On a stage, I could do it in a different space than where Fedora girl just came from, but with a still camera it was easier to do it in place. Right now I relied on a video transition to create the clothing transition, but Razor Girl could, like Super Ruwaxi did earlier, change cloths live on stage if it is a simple enough transition (or in a video sequence). Any thoughts about this transition?

5.  Anything else?