A Heyokah Goodbye

Hi friends,

It has been a while!  Heyokah closed over a month ago, and so many things have changed since then.  Two members of our cast (Stephen and Kaleena) are in Europe, all of the colorful blocks have been dismantled, and the Manitou Art Theatre has lost one of its favorite family members, Millie Harrison.

As I try to grapple with the reality that the Marvelous Millie Harrison has left this earth, I can't help but be reminded of the Heyokah.  The Heyokah is supposed to help navigate the line between life and death, and to keep the world in balance.

The more I think about Heyokah, the more I believe that Millie was full of Heyokah spirit.  For example, Heyokahs acted in unexpected ways, and what is more unexpected than slapping someone when they're crying?  Something Millie apparently did very frequently.  Heyokah also came from the great thunderbird.  Millie's high school mascot was the Thunderbird (T-Bird for short), and regularly ended announcements with the phrase "have a Thunderiffic day!"  Thus, Millie also came from the Thunderbird.  Millie reminded people what was important in life.  When other people wore expensive dresses to the prom, Millie wore a dress made out of Diet Coke cans.  When other people made beautiful Valentines cards for their friends, Millie made one about a lobster attack.  When other people were saying mean things on the golf course, Millie complimented every player.

Now all of these connections may just be a product of my brain trying to make sense of how such a vibrant, beautiful person could leave this earth so soon, but I think that it is wonderful to think of Millie Harrison as a Heyokah, because she will always remind me to do the unexpected, to love everyone, and I know that when it's time for me to go, Millie will be there to help me cross the line.

And finally, in honor of Millie:

Art from a Friend!

 2 Things:

1. I would like to apologize for making the readers of this blog think that the Heyokah process was a disaster.  It wasn't.  It was crappy sometimes, but what amazing things aren't?

2. I would like to share some art that one of our loyal fans created.  She was inspired by the idea of the Heyokah, as well as the performance.

This picture is titled "The Girl of Encouraging Whispers"

 

This picture is called "Mr. Mime" and was inspired by Bill Bowers' performance of Under A Montana Moon.

This piece is titled "The Heyokah."  

I hope you can guess what inspired it...

Thank you to Marie!

Exciting Feedback

The more this show grows and develops, the more positive the feedback we receive!  This weekend was full of incredible audiences and exciting shows.

Here is the really awesome feedback we received from one of Colorado Springs' premier arts advocates!

Susan J. Edmondson
Composes a sloppy wet love letter to The Manitou Art Theatre with thanks to director Jim Jackson, deviser extraordinaire Bill Bowers, and the incredible cast of The Heyokah Project for an evening that was beautiful, often humorous, at times puzzling but always, always filled with humanity. Matinee today and then just one more weekend to catch this show.

Cast Profile 4: Hannah R

I'm not going to lie... I'm making these up for everyone.  So don't take them too seriously...

Name: Hannah Rocky
Special Skills: Marilyn Monroe impersonations, ability to put herself in very awkward situations
Favorite Thing About Devising: Can share lots of stories
Least Favorite Thing About Devising: Things change so fast; it's hard to remember the changes!
Interesting Fact: Hannah's father is an acclaimed visual artist, and her daughter wants to be a coroner.

Cast Profile 3: Hossein F

 

Name: Hossein F

Special Skills: Awesome long hair, Songwriting Skillz, Karma caller

Interesting Fact: Hoss is a conspiracy theorist... or is he?

Favorite Thing About Devising: [unknown]

Least Favorite Thing About Devising: [unknown]

What He Wishes He Could Add to His Costume: A fifth hand

Cast Profile 2: Stephen O

 

Name: Stephen Ochsner

Special Skills: Can walk on his hands, super flexibility, warm-up master

Interesting Fact: The day after Heyokah closes, Stephen will leave for Russia!

Favorite Thing About Devising: [unknown]

Least Favorite Thing About Devising: [unknown]

What He Wishes He Could Add to His Costume: A tongue for his second face

Full Cast Pic

From top-left to bottom-right:
Hannah, Sara, Hossein, Kaleena, Birgitta, Stephen, Ben, Vanessa, James, Lisbet, Bill, Deserai.

Jim and Alfie are missing from this picture because they were misbehaving.

As you may notice, I have stopped the cast profiles for one night because I need to solicit profiles from my colleagues.

Today Birgitta, Jim and I worked on a new song to help introduce the personal narratives.  It should be very fun.  I love devising.

Tell your friends to come see this show!

Cast Profile 1: Sara B

   There are three reasons I am starting with myself:

1. I don't want to use anyone else as a guinea pig

2. I am lazy

3. I am super psyched to show you my costume and uke

Name: Sara Barad

Special Skills: Ukulele-playing, melodic mischief

Interesting Fact: Sara's shirt is made out of a pair of pants and her pants are made out of a shirt.

Favorite Thing About Devising: The process is never over! 

Least Favorite Thing About Devising: There is not really a boss to tell people to shut up.

What She Wishes She Could Add to Her Costume: A Dog-Shit Necklace

Opening Weekend is Over!

As those of you who read the title of this post know, opening weekend of The Heyokah Project is over!  I cannot believe how fast it went; it feels like just four days ago that we were running the show for the first time!

Oh... wait... we were...

The birth of this show was a painful, sleep-depriving, fight-inducing process, but now we have a beautiful new creation to share with the world. 

Our first four shows have been delicious, and we have received exciting feedback from all of our audiences!  Here are some of the highlights:

"I saw this live theater performance opening night. Not only is it worth the price of admission, it will stir your soul. If you live in and around Colorado Springs give yourself a gift and go see it!" - Isaac Ring


"Wonderful show!  A must-see!" - Terri Harrison

"I laughed, I cried....no, no I really mean it! I laughed, I cried! Great opening night show!  Bravo to cast and crew and master deviser Bill Bowers" - Jim Jackson

So now you might ask, "why is Sara still writing this blog?  I thought that the show was finished..."  

And we would reply that "The show is not actually finished."

I think that one of the most exciting things about new work is that it can continue to grow and change based on audience feedback.  None of our four shows this weekend were exactly the same; we changed the ending between the first and second show, we changed the second act transitions between the second and third show, and we changed several of my entrances between the third and fourth show!

This is so much fun!  Come see it!  And ask questions and give us feedback!  Your comment may change the show!

AAAAAAAA

Less than 24 hours!





AAAAAAAAAA.

Just got home from rehearsal.  Going to bed.

AAAAAAAAAA.

FINAL COUNTDOWN

It's the final countdown!  Da-na-na-naaaa
                                                 Da-na-nuh-nuh-nuh
                                                         Da-na-na-naaaa
                                                                Da-na-nuh-nuh-nuh-nah

It is also 2:38 AM and I just got back to my dorm after spending 11 hours in rehearsal and 3 hours painting the set.  And tomorrow will probably be just as intense.  So I am going to bed.  Sleep is important during hell week.

Sleep well.

Catch-up

I apologize for my lack of posting in recent days.  I realize that this probably seems like the most exciting part of the process and you are probably all about to die of suspense, but you really haven't missed much.

Bill came back and left
Jim cut some stuff from the show
We all are working on our costumes
We just started painting the set
I wrote some new songs
The first act almost has all of the transitions it needs...

And that's that.

I got a question the other night about whether or not the cast was out of our "emo phase," and the answer is "yes and no..." Which is probably not very helpful.  But growth hurts.  So we are still hurting and having quarrels and pouting and kicking, but that's not a bad thing.

We can see the light (very dimly and far away) at the end of the tunnel, and I have no doubt that we will reach it by Thursday night (hopefully...).

a Ukulele, a Suit Coat, and a Sheep Walk into a Bar...

I was going to try to turn this into a joke, but nothing is coming to me so I will settle for a riddle.

What do a ukulele, a suit coat, and a sheep have in common?

They are all being used in The Heyokah Project!

I know that is cheesy, but I'm tired.  As Kaleena so wisely put it, "It takes a lot of energy to be creative for five hours each day." And that's true.

Today we welcomed Bill back into our lives, reviewed most of the solo pieces, modeled our costumes, and revisited three of the ensemble pieces. 

Perhaps because I feel so drained, I cannot think of anything else to tell you, so I will ask:

Do you have any questions?  Is there any subject that particularly interested you? Anything that you would like to hear more about?

White Underpants

Today we decided that we will spend the first half of the show in white boxers.  "Why?" You might ask.  "Because we want to." will be our answer.

Simplicity is a beautiful thing.

Plain and Simple Wins the Race

The world is full of stories, both explicit and implicit.  Stories and narratives help us learn and make sense of things.  Jesus and Buddah taught their disciples through parables and Obama got elected by telling stories.  But what is the best way to tell a story?

Because our show (and just about any other show) is full of stories, we have been exploring different and exciting ways to tell them.  We have used poetry, mime, songs, dance, comic strips, drawings, ladders, chalk, and various other mediums to share our stories and those of the heyokah.  What I think that we have found through hours of trial and error is that simple is best.  In most cases, the beauty of the story is in the words, and any visual stimulation distracts the audience from the words. 

For example, Kaleena, James, and Vanessa have been working on Kaleena's personal story for about two weeks.  They created a fancy comic book-ish atmosphere complete with ninjas, nemesis, and noises.  However, the more they added, the less we understood Kaleena's story. 

Similarly, Hannah and Stephen have been working on a story about letting go.  They choreographed  a series of movements to go along with Hannah's words, and discussed at length the symbols they were trying to use.  Like in Kaleena's case, the more Stephen and Hannah added to the piece, the less clear it became.

In the last two "shit days," we have been reevaluating the project and what we want to do with it.  Part of that process has been to revisit all of the personal stories and pieces and work to make them show-ready.  While working and experimenting, we discovered that in both Kaleena and Hannah's cases the story was most clear when they were just telling it to us.  Plain and simple.

Everything is Shit

Shit has become a large part of The Heyokah Project.  It all started when Birgitta stood in the center of the stage during a very lovely ensemble movement piece and yelled "SHIT!" over and over.  This may seem out of place, but shit is actually very important to the Heyokah tradition.  Heyokahs would make elaborate necklaces out of dog shit in order to show proud necklace-wearers that they were being vain.  They would also frequently cover themselves in shit during sacred ceremonies to prevent self-righteousness.

Besides being important to Heyokah ceremonies, shit is also a crucial part of life.  Without shit, our intestines would explode.  Furthermore, shit provides vital nutrients to the soil, soil which enables plants to grow.  The plants then feed animals, animals create shit, and the cycle continues again and again.  So shit is basically life.  Life is shit.

Right now the cast is in the "shit phase" (a technical theatrical term) of the rehearsal process, but as the previous paragraphs suggest, shit is crucial to life.  So even though this part of the process may stink, we must embrace it and work through it so that something beautiful can emerge.

Muddy Stories

Bill shared this story with us via email today.  It is from a book called Black Elk Speaks.

Even while we were singing thus, the heyokas were doing foolish things and making laughter. For instance, two heyokas with long crooked bows and arrows painted in a funny way, would come to a little shallow puddle of water. They would act as though they thought it was a wide, deep river that they had to cross; so, making motions, but saying nothing, they would decide to see how deep the river was. Taking their long crooked arrows, they would thrust these into the water, not downwards, but flat-wise just under the surface. This would make the whole arrow wet. Standing the arrows up beside them, they would show that the water was far over their heads in depth, so they would get ready to swim. One would then plunge into the shallow puddle head first, getting his face in the mud and fighting the water wildly as though he were drowning. Then the other would plunge in to save his comrade, and there would be more funny antics in the water to make the people laugh."

"When the ceremony was over, everybody felt a great deal better, for it had been a day of fun. They were better able now to see the greenness of the world, the wideness of the sacred day, the colors of the earth, and to set these in their minds."

So we basically just need a big pile of mud.

Tension Builds

Tensions are high in the Heyokah cast, and not just because Jim is making us do dances with ropes.  As we approach our opening night, rehearsals have become less about playing and experimenting and more about staging, rehearsing, and finalizing the show.  Because I am about to plunge into my personal feelings, I must issue this disclaimer: the following views are not necessarily representative of all members of the Heyokah cast.

In the early rehearsal process, rehearsal was basically playtime.  We spent hours finding cool things to do with shadows, writing goofy stories, and drawing pictures.  Any suggestion given by a member of the cast was embraced and explored.  There was little pressure to produce something "good" and a lot of drive to create something interesting.  It was basically creative bliss.

Now, because of deadlines (I think...), we are beginning to feel pressured to do things "right," to make a "good" show.  Suddenly we no longer have time to explore every idea, and so we have to fight to make our ideas heard.  Because we are fighting, we are no longer listening, and our creativity is evaporating as a result.  For example, today we worked on the opening piece; the story of the clown at the church (see the post "A Real-Life Heyokah Story").  Jim told us to spread ourselves out onstage and begin eiffeling (a mime term that involves leaning the body in different directions).  This seems like a simple direction, but it took us FOREVER to actually begin doing so because each person (myself included) had to give his or her input about where to stand and how to lean and what everyone else should be doing.  That which might have been a 3 minute "try out this idea" session became a 2 hour "listen to why my idea is better than yours" session.

I know that this seems to be a negative evaluation of rehearsal, and it is, but I think that rehearsals like these are part of the devising process; growth is difficult without pain.

A Warning

Here's a taste of Heyokah mischief:

Everybody lives,
Everybody dies,
You could be next,
So you should open your eyes!

Heyokah, you'd better watch your back,
Heyokah, the Grim Reaper will attack!

You could get struck by lightning,
Or drown in a lake,
Get smashed by a semi,
Or impaled by a rake.

Invisible Boundaries

Before I describe today's rehearsal events, I would like to take a minute to answer a question posed by a loyal reader: "Why don't we do spelling like this in school?"

After much deliberation, the cast and I decided that the best answer is: "because you do not attend a school that is run by heyokahs.  Aka, your school is boring."

I hope that was helpful.

Today we explored the idea of boundaries; physical boundaries, mental boundaries, societal boundaries, emotional boundaries, etc.  Who creates them?  Why? What purpose do they serve?

We talked about boundaries for a few minutes and then broke into groups of two.  Each group had to create two short pieces about boundaries, and then present them to the group.  Kaleena and Stephen did both of their pieces about accidental boundaries (what happens when someone is unaware of a boundary that he or she created?), Birgitta and Hossein did a piece about selfishness and personal space, and James and I created two pieces about bureaucracy.  So now we have an additional five sketches to include in our show.  Or not.  We'll see how it all goes.

Jim is supposed to spend the weekend reorganizing our script-mess into a rough outline.  I will share that outline as soon as it becomes available.

Also, stay tuned Sunday for pictures of some of our Heyokah costumes!