A Wolverine Abroad: We All Wear Masks

Literally! Venice is one of the most famous cities in the world. Its endless bridges and canals connecting the islands of a city born from a marsh draw visitors from all over the world. The art and architecture of the region are rich, and the sea food is legendary. But when people think of Venice, they find themselves thinking of Carnevale, which is one of the world’s most noted festivals. The symbol of the citywide party? A mask, or “una maschera.”

The masks of Venice are some of the most beautiful in the world. Many of them are still made by artisans in their shops that go back generations. Masks can cost anywhere between 2 euro (about $3) to thousands of euro, depending on the quality and decoration. Of course, I am in Italy during February, so I made sure to visit Carnevale in Venice the last weekend that it was going on, and these masks and the costumes that often went with them were breathtakingly beautiful. I doubt most people have ever seen anything like them. Pictures don’t even begin to compare, but here are some anyway.

What’s really amazing about these masks and the costumes is that they are handmade by artisans in their shops. Some sit in the windows making masks for everyone to see. You can watch as they tear and peel and press anything from papier-mâché to actual gold leaf. They make traditional carnevale masks, animals, and sometimes even characters and actors. Visiting these shops is sort of like visiting art museums. You aren’t allowed to have cameras inside, you have to be careful when walking around the store, and you have to by quiet. But it is totally worth it, because some of them are masks that you won’t see anywhere else in the world. It’s easy to copy the traditional Venetian masks if you have hot glue, sequins, and feathers, but the original ones and the richer ones are unique to shops and artists in Venice.

Knowing that these masks would cost hundreds of euro, I decided on one of the roadside stands and my friends and I purchased these masks.

I walked around the entire night jingling because of the bells on my joker mask. It was sort of difficult to eat or drink, but it was so worth it to where that awesome masks and get all those looks of jealousy. How much did it cost you ask? 15 euro! So cheap compared to what I thought it would cost.

I’m so glad I finally got to go somewhere and see some live art, because I’ve been writing about that art fair for way too long. But next week I’ll probably be back on the art fair. Venice kind of went over budget L Thanks so much for reading! Like I said before, if you have any ideas of where in Italy or Europe I should go or what I should write about, leave a comment! Everything is only a train ride away here! It’s so convenient. America needs to catch up with public transportation.

Ciao ciao!

Danny Fob

Your Wolverine Abroad Blogger

Ciao ciao!
Danny Fob
Your Wolverine Abroad Blogger

A drama-what?

Dramaturg.  Part two.  New works.

For me, this is the most exciting part of dramaturgy.  While you do uncover really interesting information when doing production dramaturgy, new works dramaturgy is where it’s at.  It’s fast-paced.  It’s exciting.  You see a new play form right in front of your very eyes, and, if the playwright is open to your input, you see your ideas shape the play into its best possible form.

New works are really my bread and butter.  This partially comes from my aspirations to write plays for a living.  If people aren’t interested in new plays, then I basically have no career ahead of me.  So I am an advocate for new work.  This is not saying that the classics aren’t important (I still love Death of a Salesman), but I don’t think our respect for the older works should hinder interest or investment in new, innovative art.  While the plays of Miller, Albee, and O’Neill still hold great meaning and insight into our modern age, there is nothing that can be more relevant to the here and now than something that is written in the here and now.  Many audiences are afraid of new plays, seeing something in its first iteration, but where would we be if audiences hadn’t taken chances on those playwrights I mentioned above?  Or Paula Vogel?  Or Sarah Ruhl?  Or Tony Kushner?

The aim of new works dramaturgy is to take what the writer already has and what they’re trying to say and clarify and strengthen it.  Sometimes, a playwright thinks that his message or even plot points are clear, but what is in his head does not quite translate to the page.  It is a dramaturg’s job to parse out what is being said, and help the playwright discern the most effective way to say that.  Oftentimes, it is taking an image or wording that already exists and giving it greater import.  For example, something that seems to happen frequently is that a playwright creates a symbol in the first half of the play but abandons it after the first few scenes.  Just reintroducing the symbol in the second act could strengthen the theme it illustrates and clarify the overall trajectory of the play.

Some playwrights are resistant to dramaturgs.  This is understandable, especially when the dramaturg is brought into the process at a later stage, like a first staged reading or even first full production.  The playwright has been working, usually in solitary, for months, possibly even years on this work, and then the dramaturg has the audacity to tell them that they need to change it?  What most playwrights come to realize after working with a good dramaturg (or at least we hope they realize) is that the dramaturg does not have malicious plans to change the play into something completely different from what the playwright envisioned.  We want to see their vision come to life in the most effective way.  We are really there to help, not hinder.  While I have met many dramaturgs who also write, like myself, when you are working on someone else’s show you have immense respect for what that writer is doing and you are not trying to push your own agenda or writing style on the playwright.  You are respecting what they do.

In this way, text is king.  As I indicated in my last post, dramaturgs are the biggest word nerds.  The importance of language is magnified ten fold in new plays, because you are still at a stage where you can control the words.  Watching a playwright do on the spot rewrites after being given a suggestion about the character’s vocabulary is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen.  You see the wheels spinning, the motors whirring, and then they produce the perfect sentence.

Dramaturgy is a very personal profession.  The role of the dramaturg in completely dependent on his relationship to the playwright and what that particular playwright needs from him.  For some playwrights, they just need the playwright to tell them things they already know but are too close to the material to decide.  It might benefit the play to cut a character entirely, and the playwright may know that, but because they have spent months with this character, they can’t bring themselves to cut it or convince themselves that the character is necessary.  Sometimes they just need the push and logic of a dramaturg to take that step.  Depending on the size of the production team, the dramaturg can also take all of the opinions of the rehearsal room and really pick out what the playwright needs to hear and what is best ignored.  The dramaturg can eliminate the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen” that is all too common in rehearsal rooms.

New works dramaturgy is quick and frenzied and thrilling.  There is anxiety and enthusiasm around a new play that you really don’t get with older works, especially if the company you’re working with is nurturing, inventive, and collaborative.  At its best, new works dramaturgy is a partnership between the playwright, possibly the director, and the dramaturg.  Each has the utmost respect for the other, and each is aware of his own aesthetic as well as the playwright’s, so they know how to tailor their opinions to fit the needs of the show.  I was lucky enough to be a part of a process like that this past summer.  Even as an intern, I felt comfortable enough at a table with the playwright, director, and dramaturg to voice my opinions and actually got to see them incorporated into the show. I think the show was better for it.  When the show opened, I felt like an integral part of the team, something that can be missing in production dramaturgy where you have left after the table work is over.  In new works dramaturgy, you are there every step of the way, watching incredible artists do their thing and feeling free to focus on the words and the dramatic arc and symbolism and themes and all of the nerdy stuff that you can’t help but notice.

Even writing about new plays makes me want to delve into some brand-new manuscript, devouring its innovations and hearing the distinctive new voice tumbling around in my head.  I want to help bring works to the stage that we have never seen before.  I want audiences to be excited about new works and not afraid that they might fail.  Because, hopefully, in the hands of a gifted playwright and capable dramaturg, the audience will feel that same enthusiasm and excitement as the lights rise on the career of a young playwright.

UofM Does it Again (Twice)

The University has Michigan has continued to display its astonishing ability to host first-rate events in the past few weeks, especially those honoring Black History Month. About a week ago, on February 10, nationally renowned spoken word poet J Ivy headlined a spoken word event at the UMMA. The evening began with an open mic portion, allowing a dozen or so aspiring poets to showcase their talents. I had the honor of joining them when the MC asked for an additional five performers from the audience, which gave me the very unique opportunity of reading my poetry in front of over 100 people. Although I was quite clearly an amateur and my poem did not have the substance of some others, (I immediately followed a girl who read her incredible poem about a girl being raped) the crowd warmly accepted my efforts. That is the beauty of an open mic- the quality is less important than the actual process of performing. The other poets were all far more talented than I was, and kept the audience thoroughly entertained before J Ivy’s segment.

Then it came time for the star. J Ivy has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry several times, and is most famous for his collaboration with Kanye West on the song “Never Let Me Down” on Kanye’s first album, College Dropout. J Ivy adds an entire spoken word poem (which he gave a rendition of at the event) in the middle of the song, which is also a testament to Kanye’s unparalleled creative genius. On Friday, J Ivy performed for over half an hour, reading some poems while also performing others. I particularly liked how he engaged the audience throughout the show, (“And the church says…”) and even jumped off stage during his finale. My favorite poem of his was called “Blind Date,” which told the story of a blind date he once went on that turned into a set-up to mug him. The story was so interactive, so vivid that it captured all of J Ivy’s best qualities in one poem. This entire event was the epitome of what a University-sponsored show should be: an opportunity for students to get experience performing followed by a professional exhibiting the art at its finest.

This past Friday, the 17, I took part in another student-performed event at the Work Gallery on State Street: the Word of Mouth Story Slam. Completely student run, the story slam crew hosts an event every month, in which students compete by getting five minutes to tell any story he or she chooses, based on that night’s theme. The stories are then scored on a ten-point scale by three different judges; the storyteller awarded the most amount of points wins. A few nights ago, as it was so close to Valentine’s Day, the theme was infatuation. Stories ranged from a girl’s infatuation with quirky situations, to the telltale signs of how a boy knew he was interested in a girl, to a serious account of a college romance. I was the second-to-last performer (out of ten) to tell a story, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. As it was a much smaller crowd than the spoken word event, the acts were not nearly as strictly prepared and I was able to be much more personal and relaxed. I highly recommend the events to anyone who is looking for a night of intimate, enjoyable conversation and some darn good stories. There is only one slam left this school year, the Grand Slam in March, which will feature all of the winners of the events this year, so the performances will surely be worthwhile. Make sure you get to Work Gallery- I guarantee it will be worth your time.

All About Me!

Hello gentle reader!

I’m Corey, the newest member of the arts,ink team! I’ll be posting every Sunday, and I’m super excited to be here! Exclamation points! But. I’m terribly afraid this blogging will turn into an egotistical rampage where all I do is talk about myself. And no one wants to read that. So let’s take this first blog post and do just that. Let’s talk about who I am, where I come from, and why you should trust any word that comes out of my mouth…

I’m from a small town in south-east Michigan, near Toledo, Ohio. I’m a sophomore here at UM, studying Music Composition. I’m really into contemporary art, and fancy myself an amateur visual artist. I am a DJ at the local radio station, WCBN (listen to me live from 1-3am on Monday night/Tuesday mornings!). I dig most music, from hip-hop to avant garde jazz. Some of my favorite bands/musicians include tUnE-yArDs, Sufjan Stevens, Jack’s Mannequin, Steve Reich, Nico Muhly, Alarm Will Sound, and much much more….Most of my posts will probably be about music, but I’m exploring everything around, so expect some theatre, performance art and whatever else is floating around my mind.

But let’s talk a little about studying music composition, because this tends to raise the most questions with people I meet. This means I take classes in music, but I take lessons in composition. And writing music is what I focus on. I do play a few instruments (trumpet, piano, accordion), but I’m not that good (still pretty good though!). As a composer, I do write “classical” music. But I have a real issue with that term. That’s worth another blog post entirely, but I don’t feel that just because my music is played in a concert hall, that it should be any less fun/interesting/relevant than anything else you might listen to. So, as a result, I like to explore ideas of genre in my music. Perhaps the best example of that is my string trio with accordion, blacklight

blacklight by Corey_Smith

In blacklight, I tried to incorporate a club music aesthetic into an otherwise very modern and dissonant soundscape. It’s somewhere between a love song to Lady Gaga and a critique of the culture that exists around clubs.

Some of my other work you can find at my soundcloud, but I’ll also link to this interesting piece, called the radio keeps saying the end is near, or something like that. This is a piece I wrote last Friday, in a TWENTY FOUR HOUR PERIOD. It was a super stressful “Composer Marathon” event that the school of music put on. Essentially, I was given the ensemble of Cello and Viola at 8pm on Friday night, and was expected to perform a piece on Saturday at 8pm. This is what happened…

It’s not a great piece, but I’m proud of it, for sure. It still needs some work still, but it was fun to do! Particularly to add myself to the ensemble and start screaming at the audience, THAT’s pretty fun.

Anyway, that’s me and my music! I’m really excited to be posting here and look forward to next week, where the subject won’t even be me!

Monochromatic Iceland

Iceland is a contoured landscape of vibrant green and volcanic grey, of mossy color on a dark charcoal. It’s sometimes sand and ice and windswept plains, sometimes fire and carved earth and vast volumes of water, deposited and gouged. It’s dynamic, and unexpected. Somewhere, though, in the imagination, the color is always there.

Yet— yet, photographer Michael Schlegel has managed to capture Iceland in a series of square-cropped black and white. Each is a minimalistic frame of something, stark and ethereal. “When photography is not about colours but about emotions,” says a design blog. The blacks are deep and rich, the whites bright but somehow not blown out, as one might say of other pieces. Contrast is high, but not in an overly forced way; the focus of these photographs is not on minute textures and details, and yet it breathes texture. Even in simple greyscale, the gradients are at once robust and subtle.

Jagged outcroppings of stone arise from nowhere, at their feet pools of sea mist.  Wide sweeps of sky and water and land alike have, with the help of a long shutter, perhaps, have begun to oddslot flow as if they were the lot of them made of the same fluid substance, only in different densities. A pearly wash of ocean is offset by a knife of dark stone, just enough detail visible to hint at its cragged texture, but without brazenly displaying it. Less is more, so they say.

And it might be, indeed. The suddenness of the Icelandic landscape is already in itself full of the unexpected, the aesthetically pleasing. Who might suppose that there could be such a thing as conventional photography of it? Then someone like Schlegel comes along, saps out the color, removes the unnecessary, and suddenly the world is an entirely different place.

Valentine’s Day Video 50

Today is Valentine’s Day and I’m feeling like this guy:

Robert Wilson. "Video 50," 1978. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

Sometimes when I’m feeling like this guy I go walk around in the UMMA. It clears my head. Something about all that marble flooring. The word austere comes to mind.

So I’m in the UMMA. It’s afternoonish and I’m pretty much the only person in there. I feel mildly artsy for being the only person in the UMMA on Valentine’s Day afternoon. And mildy lonely. I feel like an aesthete—“Who needs lousy Hallmark holidays when there’s the cold, austere beauty of the UMMA?”

Loud noises are coming from the back-leftish corner, from the New Media Gallery.

Currently I don’t know that the room in the back-leftish corner is called the “New Media Gallery.” I Google it later.

The noises sound like a film score: orchestral instruments blare and echo off the austere marble flooring.

In general the UMMA’s atmosphere right now seems somewhat funny, because it’s pretty much empty and silent, but then there are all these melodramatic, film-score-y, orchestral instruments playing loudly. It seems ‘surreal,’ not unlike a Robert Wilson avant-garde short-film conglomeration thing.

Which is what the exhibit making loud funny noises and breaking the austere atmosphere of the UMMA turns out to be: Robert Wilson’s Video 50.

I walk over to the New Media Gallery and read this introduction posted at the entrance: “Robert Wilson gained a reputation as a creator of aggressively experimental theater work. Wilson first came to prominence with works from the mid-1970s such as The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973) and Einstein on the Beach (1976).” (My roommate saw Einstein on the Beach a couple weeks ago. Einstein on the Beach was in town a couple weeks ago. In situ I suddenly remember this. And just now ex situ I asked my roommate “if it was sweet” and he said “yeah it was sweet.” He said that it was five hours long and that he thought he wouldn’t be able to sit through the whole thing, but he ended up sitting through the whole thing and not really feeling bored or whatever. I can’t imagine sitting through anything for five hours.) “These lavish, unusually long productions broke and then redefined every convention of theater.” After reading “these lavish, unusually long productions broke and redefined every convention of theater” I feel mildly skeptical. I skim over some more praiseful Robert Wilson bio and get to the part about Video 50 itself. “Video 50 are smaller-scale experiments, but they share with these spectacles the qualities that typify Wilson’s aesthetic: surreal, dreamlike imagery, unlinear narrative, conflation of seemingly unrelated characters and micro-stories, and a mesmerizingly slow pace…Video 50 consists of a random arrangement of 30 second ‘episodes’…The work is immersive and experiential, seductively dissolving the distance between viewer and subject.”

So basically it sounds to me like your SOP for an avant-garde short-film conglomeration thing.

There’s a sign outside the doorway warning about adult content and unsuitability for young viewers, which makes me mildly excited. Eventually I walk through a little L-shaped hall into the NMG itself, passing by yet another warning for adult content on the way  (there turns out to be nothing I would consider adult content in Video 50), and now I’m standing in an empty dark square room. A ceiling-mounted projector projects Video 50 on the front wall. Currently some type of credits are rolling and I’m uncertain whether they’re the end or beginning credits. The only seating in the room are two austere wooden benches, one pushed up against the back wall and the other against a side wall. I sit down on the back-wall bench so I don’t have to painfully twist my neck 90 degrees to see the film(s).

The credits keep rolling—I determine they’re the opening credits, meaning my timing for entering the NMG was perfect—and I take out my trusty Moleskine notebook and begin writing notes about the austerity of the room. I write things like, “The room is empty, except for four Sony speakers placed atop the four corners of a spotless white wall that doesn’t quite reach the ceiling.” Did I mention that today is Valentine’s today?

After the credits, the first “episode” of Video 50 arrives. The first episode is this guy:

I write: 1. Business-dressed man standing by waterfall. Loud waterfall noises. The image sort of flickers.

I write: Screen flickers…shitty projector or intentional part of the film?

Before long the first episode is over and cuts straight into the next episode:

2. A window with white drapes. Wind blows the drapes. Loud whooshing noises.

And before long it cuts to the next episode:

3. A cream-white old, rotary-style phone. It’s ringing loudly.

This is more or less how the entire thing goes: I see a short clip of a pretty random-seeming object or scene or something, and before I can even jot a few notes down describing what it is the episode is over and I’m looking at something new.

I try to write fast enough to make notes for every episode, but I end up missing a few here and there.

4. A door opens. A woman in a pink dress enters the room. Romantic music starts playing.

5. Overhead view of a man smoking and an unlit light bulb. Dripping noises. The man turns on the light bulb. (I.e.,

Robert Wilson. Video 50, 1978. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
Robert Wilson. "Video 50," 1978. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

)

6. Cityscape. On a rooftop a woman is being held at gunpoint by a masked, cliché-looking criminal. Crime-film, noir-ish music plays. The camera zooms in on the woman’s face. She winks and smiles.

6 makes me chuckle. I like 6. In my notebook I write “my fav” next to 6.

7. Man holding ice pack on head, sitting on bed. Monkey/animal noises. Then a close-up of a woman in curlers making loud scary monkey/animal noises.

I’m legitimately frightened by the woman in curlers.

8. Woman in bed w/ black phone on bedside table. Slow sad music. Then there’s a naked man sitting by a fire. (Is this supposed to be the adult content? No…parts…are being shown.)

At this point I’ve missed an episode or two and my episode-numbering in my notes is basically arbitrary. My wrist is hurting from trying to make notes as fast as the episodes change. It occurs to me that I’m still alone in the room, and I wonder when/if other museum patrons will enter.

9. Chair floating in an orange-pink sky. Classical piano music. Chair rotates back and forth slightly.

10. White door slowly closing by itself. A second after it closes, a hand juts into the frame, as if it just closed the door.

10 makes me laugh. I don’t know why. I guess the hand’s jutting into the frame was unexpected and funny.

In general I don’t know how Video 50 is supposed to make me feel. I feel it’s entertaining because I never know what the next episode will be, so it’s sort of suspenseful. But I don’t feel too much else about it.

I never really know how to take avant-garde art. But I guess it’s sort of the point of avant-garde art to make the audience feel uncertain about how to take it?

In any case I deicide I more or less like this Video 50 thing, even if only because it’s ‘different’ and I’ve never really sat through anything like it.

11. A man sleeping during a thunderstorm. He snores in a cartoony, ZZZZzzzzZZZ manner.

12. Close-up of a glasses-, mustache-faced man rhythmically touching his temple and grimacing and groaning ad nauseam.

13. A back view of a man wearing a safari hat and looking out at a still seascape. The man makes noises like “hruumph hruumph hruumph” metronomically ad nasuseam.

Even though the episodes are only like 30 sec. long, their repetitiveness and “mesmerizingly slow pace” induce me to write notes like “ad nauseam.”

14. Floating chair in an orange-pink sky (again). Classical piano music.

For some reason I like the floating chair. The floating chair calms me down, especially after having been made antsy by the men making groaning noises ad nauseam in the immediately preceding episodes. I wonder if a lot of thought was put into arranging the episodes in a specific way for effects such as the floating chair’s calming me down after I’ve been emotionally primed by the groaning men, or something.

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I decide it’s true what the description posted at the entrance said, that Video 50 “is immersive and experiential, seductively dissolving the distance between viewer and subject.” While being sucked into the experience, I’ve even almost forgotten that it’s Valentine’s Day.

Upon realizing that I’ve almost forgotten that it’s Valentine’s Day, I remember that it’s Valentine’s Day. I take out my phone to see if a certain girl has texted me.

She hasn’t.

15. Red hammer silently hammering a blue back ground. Then the blue background shatters like glass.

16. Close-up of a large-foreheaded baby crying.

The close-up of the big-headed baby startles me, especially after the preceding shattering.

I write “encephalitic” in my notebook.

For about 10 episodes I sort of lose myself. I get “sucked in” or “immersed” or “mesmerized” or whatever you want to call it. In any case, it’s basically the effect I was looking for when I decided to come to the UMMA.

I come to the UMMA when I’m thinking too much about something, like Valentine’s Day, so I can try to ‘lose myself’ in pieces of art.

What Video 50 seems to want to do is make you ‘lose yourself.’ It short-circuits your brain—you can’t really actually make sense of the conglomeration of floating chairs and encephalitic babies and business men standing near waterfalls, but your brain nevertheless tries to and in trying gets confused and before long you’re entranced and don’t even remember that you’re worried about a certain girl texting you or something.

Unfortunately, my Video 50 dream is broken when an old couple walks into the room and sits down next to me. I wonder if they’re on some sort of Valentine’s Day  date. Maybe that’s what older couples do on Valentine’s Day: watch avant-garde film in museums.

Now because I’m not alone, I’m immediately aware of myself, my surroundings—Video 50 is no longer able to suck me in. I shoot sideways glances at the old couple. I start writing notes about them instead of the artwork taking place in front of me.

I write things like, “The husband is ‘paunchy.’”

I consider leaving. I wanted to watch Video 50 all the way through, but the experience basically seems over for me now. My wrist hurts carpal-tunnelishly from writing frantically. The edge of my right hand is completely covered in ink. I’ve made it to 30 in my notebook.

A lot of the episodes repeat themselves. For example right now the safari-hatted man staring at a seascape and going “hruumph hruumph hruumph” has returned.

It suddenly seems unbearable.

I leave.

Images of Video 50 were taken from the University of Michigan Museum of Art website: http://www.umma.umich.edu/view/exhibitions/2011-wilson.php