Notes from the CEO
1) CEO Notes is a public place for me, William Pope.L, the CEO of the BF, to set out, cook up, work out, play out, write up ideas, strategies, problematics, challenges, ways of life concerning the BF.
2) Eventually we want to add an email or blog function to this part of the site to give it more interactivity - til then folks can email me at: wpopel@bates.edu. All responses are encouraged.
3) Before going on tour, we usually do at least 10 days of rehearsal. For the 2005 tour we did 14 days, next year if everything works, I’d like to do 17, I think that’s an even better number. Why?
4) Timing is very important in performance. One of the most difficult gifts to give a new performer is the gift of being in the moment without judgment. Or better said, where judgment is so fluid it does not feel or seem like you’re deciding, you just do it – you act with a certainty and confidence that no matter what you do it’s okay – with technique – sensing right action with judgment. But it does not function as a barrier, more like a sieve. This technique, or way, or strategy is difficult to describe. Once you do it once or twice you know the feeling and you strive for that balance.
5) What do I mean by feeling? One of the most important resourses we have, as humans, is our ability to create and understand through emotion. I am interested in emotion as a means of analysis, a form of intelligence. For many years, sports and theater, and more recently psychology and contemporary sociology, have recognized that emotion is not irrational or mysterious but part of our mental toolbox to understand ourselves and the world. If we analyze how our emotions work at all, usually it is to control them or free ourselves of them. Usually we look for single causes not networks of relationships. We do not know how to be with our emotions. A performer needs to familiarize him or herself with how he or she reacts in certain situations and how these situations might affect others. Perhaps more importantly a performer needs to know how he or she feels just being in the world.
6)

In rehearsal, I construct situations of comfort and discomfort. Comfort is necessary to create a platform of trust and committment. Discomfort is necessary to create a stronger platform by introducing the unfamiliar. For example, I use the "wrong & strong" method. A performer is introduced to a technique or a skit sequence amd before the performer is ready he or she must perform it in a new context. Sensing when the performer is ready is left to myself, the director. The key to success here is nothing the performer can do is wrong. Everything can be used. Many performers believe to suceed they must know everything about a subject. However, learning occurs within a context of strategic absence. Knowing anything fully, that is perfectly, can prevent a real grasp of knowledge. Ignorance can be caused by what we do know as well as what we do not. It is when a person knows only partially that they have the opportunity to gain their own knowledge as well as respect for the adventure of aquiring it. Failure and trial and error are a necessary part of this process. Knowledge is a lie if one does not understand it is always provisional.