Perceptions
Giulia, all yellow dress, silent, lying down, chair
[stick figure showing head stage right and feet stage left, chair aligned as if she has fallen out of it]
A yawn. Too quiet. too still.
(start)
how the story of trauma is unrepeatable.
laughter is the strongest coping mechanism.
the miniatures!
the foot being a character.
the red and white striped carnival barker leggings.
‘this wall. this wall. this wall.’
eyes painted on eyelids.
hair covering her face to deliver the miniatures of herself and the chair.
cycles.
Pirandello’s last play.
red
tightrope circles and lines
‘you finally acclimated. i love you.’
repetition, disobeying body parts arms this one, legs the last
diagonal lines, two islands
wind up toys, precarity, humor ‘sword fights’,
(PLAY)
hands hitting body
self harm
tutu
corset
candy
blue
military coat, white under black boots
model of hanging person, music
(Joan Baez; London Bridge, misty morning)
fascination with miniatures
mixing sand—blue and white
water
paint
folding clay body into a ball
tiny white chair
mischievous smile making a decapitated decimated body from a whole one
painting self, crotch
‘i have known evil’
backwards step off chair, paint on cardboard
talkback
Mountain Giants—Pirandello
What remains of a play if you are just one person?
became interested
how does red feel in the body?
blue felt like a coda, softer
Ives Klein
all the pieces are separate BUT in performance they tend to bleed
blue
performance as research
started with the body then take notes
forget the play to find it
play with the illusion and then break it
yellow
setting the miniatures down is the only way to beak the loop
If I Was Her Dramaturg
Why did she pick these colors?
What would Purple, Orange, Green: A Triptych look like?
Why the term “triptych”?
How inappropriate is it to say I would be fearful to live inside of Giulia’s mind?
There’s something mad about these women, all, except for Antigone, and shouldn’t she be the maddest of them all?
Would she consider using transition music?
Could she do more performances so it wouldn’t be one of those it’s-cool-because-it’s-obscure things?
How can you cut the time between pieces down?
What is your intention for each individual piece? For the triptych as a whole?
How much of the original women are actually in this? How much is you?
Love Letters
For Yellow
Your foot talks to you. I wish mine could talk to me.
Your dress hides striped tights. Your dress is yellow like daisies, like innocence, but you are not. You’ve seen things that have blown you back in your chair, have knocked you out. Your story forever hampered by laughter, by competing women within you. You tell me where you are. You tell me what you want, and yet you cannot get it. With painted eyes you stare at me unblinkingly, you stare at me, hard. I wish I could return your gaze so that you really feel seen.
For Red
Again your toes do the talking, a tightrope showing you the way. What was it you said about acclimatizing? Ibsen’s late heroines are so ghostlike, aren’t they? Are you real, or are you a mechanical doll like the ones you place before us? Can you tell me who you are beyond the words he’s said to you? I’m not sure you can. Your arms hitting yourself without your consent tell me you’d rather step off this dangerous clothesline. But it’s hard to tell; you fight back too–the parasol of a sword you wield, undaunted.
For Blue
You mix paint like sacred rite; crush clay between your fingers like a survival need. Your coat is getting dirty, my dear; I worry the royal blue will not come out of your white tank and underwear. Your step backwards off the tiny chair was so terrifying I for a moment forgot the fall was a matter of inches, not feet. Your body is controlled this time; your mind quiet. More resigned? Determined? “A coda,” you will say, but I want more. I want this to be the fiercest, this one to resemble the angry Antigone we all know and love.
My State That Night
I was pissed that night. I had had class all day, had run out of time to eat dinner, I hadn’t even brought a pen. There were way too many minutes in between each solo show; the intermission was sometimes longer than the actual individual performance. Why yellow red blue? I still didn’t get what the primary colors really did for her or for the piece. I emanated loathing out of me, I couldn’t help it, for a colleague sitting a few rows down and to my right. I tried so hard to not see her as I stared down at the stage but there she always was.
I read the program during intermission(s): “The performance that you will see today is made of three performance and two intermissions in between. Following Vittori’s performance of ‘Yellow’ in 2011, ‘Red’ in 2013, and ‘Blue’ in 2014, […] this work presents the three pieces together in the form of a triptych for the first time in a theater.”
And then, “These three solo pieces, built out of a post-dramatic sensibility, draw on theatre, dance, and visual arts and aspire to develop their legacy in new ways.”
I hated how I heard an a cappella group singing upstairs during “Red”—apparently they weren’t allowed to reserve rooms upstairs to prevent sound bleed. I remember the paint, watching her make the paint onstage was so awesome to watch and her blue coat and painting herself including her crotch made me feel so uncomfortable I didn’t know what to do with it. I wish I knew more about Ives Klein. I wish I could have watched her piece without anyone I knew in the audience because being around your colleagues even the ones you like always changes how you think of a thing. I’m wondering if my reaction to it was genuine or not and then before I know it my intuition about how I feel about the piece is gone gone gone.
I was wondering if there seemed too much of Giulia in it; where were the original pieces? They were there, somewhere, but why wasn’t she more willing to admit her own presence in it?
How cliché would it be to say it was dream-like? Does that matter if it was the case?
Citations
Yellow
“…I want everybody to hear what I have to say.”[1] –Ilse
“If you list all we’ve lost… […] for all that’s said and done…. nevertheless… this misery we have we have bought for a great deal of money… (Wryly) … it must be worth something.”[2] –Ilse
“Invent this… differently.”[3] –Ilse
Red
“Down to the bottom, you say. Oh, don’t be too sure.”[4] –Ellida
“—like the drifting clouds with their shadows over the fjord. Everything lies there so bright and blue—and then all of a sudden—”[5] –Ellida
“The meanest work—the poorest conditions would have been better—if I’d chosen them myself, by my own free will!”[6] –Ellida
Blue
“Who on earth,
alive in the midst of so much grief as I,
could fail to find his death a rich reward?”[7] –Antigone
“they take me away
in all my pain… the road lies open, waiting.”[8] –Antigone
“Oh god, the voice of death. It’s come, it’s here.”[9] –Antigone
* * *
Bibliography
[1] Pirandello, Luigi. The Mountain Giants. Trans. Charles Wood. Bath: Absolute Press, 1993, p. 27.
[2] ibid, p. 61.
[3] ibid, p. 103.
[4] Ibsen, Henrik. The Lady from the Sea. Trans. Rolf Fjelde. New York: The Penguin Group, 1978, p. 622.
[5] ibid, p. 639.
[6] ibid, p. 663.
[7] Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: The Penguin Group, 1984, p.82.
[8] ibid, p. 104.
[9] ibid, p. 107.
Audrey Moyce 