Two poems about grandmothers

my grandmother 
doesn’t know pain 
she believes that 
famine is nutrition 
poverty is wealth 
thirst is water
her body like a grapevine winding around a walking stick 
her hair bees’ wings 
she swallows the sun-speckles of pills 
and calls the internet the telephone to america
her heart has turned into a rose the only thing you can do 
is smell it 
pressing yourself to her chest 
there’s nothing else you can do with it 
only a rose
her arms like stork’s legs 
red sticks 
and i am on my knees 
howling like a wolf 
at the white moon of your skull 
grandmother 
i’m telling you it’s not pain 
just the embrace of a very strong god 
one with an unshaven cheek that prickles when he kisses you.                                                                                                              -Grandmother by valzhyna mort  (Belarusian poet. This is a translation) 

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips. -Here by Grace Paley

Bosnian witch

Ba' bush kas

also: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28684

Speaking of Sex

I've been reading bits and pieces of the book I've got on my breaks at work and came across these things today.

"The grotesque features of Baba Yaga, and especially the mention of her genitals and buttocks by some male tale-tellers, recalls Kligman's and Jones's view that the image of an ugly witch presents a sexually nonthreatening female."
"Perianez-Chavernoff interprets the physical description of Baba Yaga as a realistic description of peasant life."
"The practice of swaddling accounts for the isolated mention of the parts of Baba Yaga's body. Russian peasant children, rendered immobile, were late to realize the body as an entire entity."
- Baba Yaga The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of Russian Folktal by Andreas Johns

Other intersting things
-Demanding help, refusing to be eaten, calling Baba ugly reflect the [male] hero's need to seperate from his mother, going to see Baba is a right of passage and when you return you will be independent
-In one story Baba has hired smiths and seamstresses to make her an army, she is the warrior leader of them.
-Once a hero sucks on Baba's breasts she treats him like her own child and honors the bond they have.

Reading into that last one a little bit, the way the books talks about it it seems as if the hero is almost tricking Baba Yaga into letting him drink her milk because then she HAS to take care of him because he is her child. Her mothering instinct is assumed.

Sexorcize.

In addition to Ashur's morphotron, I got a little something for ya'll to do. I made a little list of some questions that a character could conceivably ask of Baba Yaga. Pick one (or more!) and write something based on it. I was thinking dialogue, but if you have something else up your sleeve, by all means.

Here dey is:

"Baba Yaga, where are your daughters?"

"Baba Yaga, I see you have a vegetable garden, why do you never eat from it?"

"Baba Yaga, whose boots are these?"

"Baba Yaga, will you not come with me?"

"Baba Yaga, where do you go each day?"

"Baba Yaga, I am very thirsty, might I have some water from your well?"

"Baba Yaga, who was your gate?"

Woop!

Please post your responses in a new blog post so that they show up in e'r'body's newsfeed.

Also: Here are some Charles Arnoldi sculptures that I think apply somehow:

Rexorcize

Vasilissa emerges from the forest. Before her is a house supported by four chicken legs. She hears a galloping horse behind her and from the woods emerges a dark figure riding a black horse, and as he passes night falls. The light shining through the windows suggests warmth but at the same time danger, as if the windows were two glowing eyes. Suddenly Baba Yaga flies down from the treetops on her mortar, landing before the front gate not three feet away from Vasilissa. She gesture with one hand and causes the gate and front door to sling open, and the tangled branches in the front yard to yield a stone path to the door. BY beckons V to follow, which she does. Once inside...

V: Forgive me for intruding, but my stepmother and stepsisters are in desperate need of fire. The night is cold and windy, and our flint has become dull and useless. If it wouldn’t be any trouble, might I -

BY: I know why you’ve come dear. There is fire there in the stove. Take this torch and light it then let me be.

V thanks her and approaches the stove, opens it, lights the torch, and runs out of the house under BY’s malicious gaze.

okay everyladies, the task at hand is to take this segment and rearrange, change, expand, mutate, pervade, and pervert it to your heart’s content. Make something new. Do it by next Thursday and win a prize.

Eva's gonna have something similar 4 erryone.

So here is a random/interesting site http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/15/amazing-unrealized-r.html

And a less random/also interesting site http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/images.html

What baba yaga wants, I think, changes according to who she is dealing with. In fact, every aspect of her character is very dependent on the person encountering her. So maybe she is identified by those who visit her home, but seeing as they never know much about her, what does that even mean?

I think you guys nailed the chicken house relationship. It seems very much to be an old companion with which she has developed no small amount of codependency.

The play, to me, contains the house - which contains sort of a mess with order, in which only certain things can be found by anyone but the person who understands the mess, an exterior of woods which have their own ominous presence, and the space between where many of the magical occurrences... occur. The sounds of a busy home dominate, always something cooking or boiling or creaking or sweeping or crowing or cackles from no discernible source human or otherwise. Silence should be terrifying.

Stucture? Ugh. What does that even mean.

more reading

http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrrussian.html
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrBabaYaga.html

russian house

catching up

first off, sorry it's taken me so long to respond to all of these wonderful thoughts...it's amazing how much one misses when only being gone 5 days.

anyways, i have lots of thoughts, not all of which are fully formed yet, so i'll just start with some of them.

i really like this idea of creating a sort of "fabricated russia"...a russia that is an adaptation and culmination of all the different ideas and movements that impacted our american theatre and art world. this idea really clicks for me because it's sort of mimics how i imagine each new baba assimilating to her life, taking in the history of all the baba's previous to her, and adapting them to her chapter of the story.

i think that creating a fabricated world somewhere between reality and fiction would also be very disorienting for an audience...again this idea of dismantling their security. they know this world...or at least they feel like they do, but they also don't know it at all.

whoever had the idea about incorporating smell (audrey?), i love it. i think that's a great way to generate the closeness of a world, but i think it could work really well witht he disorientation of the audience...like when you're walking down a street and suddenly you smell something, and it kind of reminds you of elementary school for some reason but you can't place it and it's unendingly frustrating (does that happen to anyone else or just me?).

in response to eva's questions:

--i'm not sure BY really knows what she wants or what motivates her, and i feel like that's one of the most human things about her

--i think the house could be really representative of the change in the role of BY of the years...as each old BY makes way for a new one, there is some part of her left within the house, something which helps create this history----i'm interested in how the house remembers things? does it try to warn new baba yaga's about making the same mistakes the baba yaga's that came before it made?

--that being said, i feel like the house is very old, and feels grand, in the sense that it contains a long history...sort of like "if the walls could speak..."---what types of things, marks, objects, smells, sounds, are left behind by each baba yaga?

--i feel like the story is more narrative? we're definitely following a specific storyline of a person (BY), but their voice changes and evolves---i don't know if it needs to be clear how the "torch gets passed" every time, but i think there should be an obvious connection between each BY

i think my last thought for this really long post is that while i was going through catching up on everything, the image of russian nesting dolls came to mind, and it felt really fitting with this idea of a slow unravelling of this story, and how each baba yaga rests inside the niche that the previous one left for it.

Characters Discussion: centralized

I realized that the advantage a google group has over the blog is that it tells you about comments, so i thought i would repost some of the comments from audrey's last post, just so everyone can join the discush. Obviously, it would be useful to read audrey's post (characters) first so that these make sense:

Eva said...

Damn gurl, that's a lot of characters. If our whole things is about the mulptiplicity of baba and her journey or whatever, we want her to be the focus, yeah?

I think that we should figure out what we're saying about her, then decide what characters we need based on that. My personal preference would be to err on the side of less, but I'd like to what everyone thinks.

JUNE 12, 2009 6:00 PM 

Audrey said...

I guess I'm just thinking that each Baba is shaped by who she's interacting with, so knowing who she's helping/hurting will effect her

they're her support in a way. Each one doesn't need to have their whole life explained to the audience. and there is over lap between them.
so its like 
a boy, the daughters and their BY
and
Ivan and his BY
and so on

JUNE 12, 2009 6:29 PM

Rachel said...

I think what's really good about audrey's list is that all of those characters say different things about Baba Yaga, and I think that that a great list to have I think I would be a good idea to simplify and expand upon it to make it sort of cause and effect (example: little boy- daughters in oven). I think that from there we can choose aspects that fit together, separate episodes, combine existing stories, etc. 

We started to talk about this in another discussion, but I think that along with a lot of these pretty established relationships, one of the big relationships we can totally work out for ourselves is the one between BY and her house. Like her private and her public self. Revealing both of these will, I think, help to make her really complex, interesting, and central. bam

JUNE 14, 2009 7:33 AM

Audrey said...

house baba relationship could perhaps be established during transitions?

On more reflection, it's not so much the amount of characters that I object to, just the amount of other people's stories. Ivan's story is super involved, where as vaslilililitkaksalisa (whatever, I've given up trying to spell that shit) the beautiful takes place mainly in the yaga world. Except for her marrying the king, and all that bullshit about the silk shirts but who really cares about that anyway?

Characters

After finishing reading the Baba Yaga book I had at school, which had some stories at the end I've come up with a list of characters that I feel its important we include.

1. A boy
2. A girl (Valilisa?)
3. Three Baba daughters
4. Prince Ivan
5. Prince Ivan's fiance (Valilisa grown up?)
6. Animals
a. Wolf
b. Bear
c. Hedgehog
7. Twins (boy and girl)

I don't know if any of you stumbled across Prince Ivan in your reading but I read his story the other day and loved it.
Basically he meets his fiance (depending on how much time we want to contribute to each story he turns her back into a woman from a ferret) and she says she's going to go home and come back the next morning with two ships full of things for them (i.e. payment for the marriage but I like to pretend she was just getting furniture for their house).
Prince Ivan sets off for the shore the next morning but his nasty stepmother sends her little son along with him and when the fiance shows up the little boy puts Ivan to sleep and they cannot wake him. The fiance says "Ok, it must not be enough stuff I'll come back tomorrow with more" and she does but the same thing happens a few times until she says "Fuck it, if he wants me and my stuff he has to come find me. Tell him to make 3 copper hats and 3 steel spears and when he crosses three rivers and three lands and three seas and wears out all the hats and spears then he'll find me."
Long story short, he does that and everytime he wears out one set of things and crosses 1 river, land and sea he comes to a Baba Yaga who says keep going sometimes she hangs out with my sister"
He gets to the third BY and she says "Quick hide in the basement" (made me think of a basesment in the house that the audience could see into and could watch him all squished in and listening) and the fiance comes over.
And she is really mad, basically they have a little girl talk and come to the conclusion that Ivan better fucking not come find her because she would just kick his ass to the curb. So, knowing that Ivan is listening, Baba asks "is there anything he could do if he wanted to win you back?"
and she says "On the sea there is an oak, in the oak a mare's head, in the head a duck, in the duck an egg and in the egg my heart, if he could bring that to me then maybe." and she says good bye and leaves.
So Ivan sets off and saves a man from being put to death so he gets a side kick. As they're walking the come across a wolf, a kite (bird), and a fish that Ivan want to eat but the side kick says dont and they'll help us. So they get to the tree and cut it open and the head falls out which the wolf shakes until the duck falls out which the kite pecks at until the egg falls out which rolls into the ocean but the fish gets it and gives it to Ivan.
They go back to Baba who tells him to get back in the basement and she has the fiance over and puts the egg on her plate and she eats it and suddenly is sad.
"why are you sad?"
"I miss Ivan!"
"Well, good because he's in my basement!" and they all live happily ever after!

For some reason I love this Ivan kid, he's just really nice. And the fiance is relateable and not stupid. And the loosing your heart thing when your heart broken and hiding it away, trying not to feel anything and the struggle to get it back. It just sits right with me.

Russian, American, Bogart, Questions,

I've been thinking about a question that I think it was Skye, mentioned awhile ago about the Russianess of the story, and how much of Russia we were going to incorporate into our play.

I have a few thoughts on this, spurred in part by Anne Bogart:

Russian theatre is probably the biggest influence on American theatre in the last century. Stanislavsky method is the prevailing acting system learned, and smaller American artistic movements were pretty much crushed when the movement started by stanislavsky and the moscow arts theatre reached America.

American theatre also spends a lot of time wishing it were European, and to that end, I am interested in how we can make this Russian story pertinent to an American setting and audience. By setting I mean where we are putting it on, not necessarily the world of the play.

If there is an American way of thinking, way of structuring things, sense of humor, sensibility, which has been endlessly influenced by Russians, how can we address this or embrace it through the creation of this play?

It may be a good idea to reach back and do some research on American theatre traditions like vaudeville, silent movies, expressionism like martha graham, as somewhere to start.

To shove just a little bit more Bogart in here, i have a weensy little quote:

" We enjoy a rich, diverse and unique histroy and to celebrate it is to remember it. To remember it is to use it. To use it is to be true to who we are".

also: I know that we aren't at school right now, and that summer time is blah time, but please guys, respond and read. please?

anxiety is not neurosis

from The Magic Years by Selma Fraiberg, I'll email the whole thing.

More things

First, here are two stills from this russian animation thingy I think is really cool. Thoughts about the oven and the house. These are from a 20 minute animated piece based on a russian story about a wolf. It starts with a lullaby (translated): "Lullaby, Lullaby. Hush little baby don't you cry. Or the little grey wolf will hear. The wolf is always near. Sleep tight baby and be good or he'll take you to the dark and scary woods."

Anyway, on another note, I'm reading Saints and Strangers by Angela Carter (who also wrote the Bloody Chamber). I'm getting a lot from it because it's a bunch of short adaptations/retellings which are totally adult and totally not about sexual abuse (horray!)

I was talking to my bro-in law about it and he was like "Well, aren't they already kind of adult?" Which got me thinking. Those stories are totes for kids. The word isn't "adult," but "scarryasfuck" which we take to mean adult because, culturally, we don't think kids should be scared. So what's with all the abuse stuff? What I've been throwing around is that fairy tales are already simple. They are simple so that you can see yourself and your trials in the story. 

The abuse also simplifies it, but in a super post-Freudian way, explaining it for you neatly so you can't/don't have to interpret it. It's as though Little Red Riding hood went to a psychoanalyst and told him her dream about a wolf, blahblahblah, and he said she was dealing with her Daddy issues. 

Anyway, it's a good book and I really recommend it.

NEXT!

a. read everyones stuff and comment!
b. read eva's post below and comment!
c. how about over the next say, 3 weeks, we all do some sort of visual project (painting, drawing, photo, found object thing, collected things in a jar, you get it) that gives us a general reflection of how we're feeling visual about what we've read/written/felt.

k?
ok!

Sally Forth!

The action, not the actress.

um, that picture was in response to rachel's writing about vassilisa and the heads. But I thought it might catch your attention.

I'm super excited about all the stuff that everyone posted, and I want to talk about where to go from here. We never talked really clearly about what Ashur and my role as 'the shapers' is going to be, and I know that the bearded one and I need to sort of gather up what we have right now and come up with an action plan.

In the mean time, I got really this-is-what-I-would-do-in-play writing-class on this thing and started writing down questions that I thought would help us clarify our direction.

So, in that vein, here are some questions:

What does Baba Yaga want? Like, overall? What's her deal?

What is her relationship to the chickenhouse? Is it her slave? Her BFF? Her coffin?

In your mind, what does the play look like to you right now? Finished product. (what kind of aesthetic are picturing right now, basically?)

What does it sound like?

What sort of structure are you leaning toward? We've talked alot about episodic vs. narrative, what does that mean?

Ok, that's what I got for now.

Also, may I suggest for those of you that use the apple mail (whatever it's called), that you add this blog to your RSS feed so that you know when it's been updated. Just go to file> add RSS feed, and then do manually add URL or whatever it says and then copy and paste.

Please respond to my questions so I don't feel like total nerd, grasping at straws.

eva

its alive take two

its alive!

found this table today, thought of how the things in the house are alive and helpful/hurtful and how we're going to show animation with out having everything moving

A quick jaunt through the history of russia

for anyone who is interested and like me, failed to have any sort of world history in high school

before 987- Pagan time! Tribes, fighting each other, fighting themselves, various religious rituals that dont have a common base or anything like that. crazy time!
987- Prince Vladimir (I'm not sure how they got a prince if everyone was all crazy but the book didnt say) was like "oh hey guys, Orthodoxy looks prettier than other types of Christianity, lets try that!" and so they did, because the art made him feel like he was in heaven, which is nice.
1240- Genghis Khan shows up and beats the shit out of everyone until...
1380- Russians get their act together and fight back
1530-1584 rule of "Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan of Russia" (Ivan the Terrible) who failed at leaving a heir so there was the "Time of Trouble" after he died until...
1613- Romanov Dynasty made everything better until...
Nicholas II was crap and his wife secretly ran everything with the "whimsical" advice of Rasputin
but then Bloody Sunday + WWI = Pissed off poor people and REVOLUTION!!! AHHH!!
and then communism
and dictatorship
and fail.
also between 1918-1921 there was civil war, Reds v. Whites

So, themes of Russian history we could use?
-Liking pretty, decadent, colorful, rich things
-Combining those things with simple, common things and the result isnt always positive
-Periods of prosperity followed by periods of disaster
-using color to represent two sides of a fight
-Poor v. Rich