Making Room was recently asked to speak at a Toronto Park Summit organized by the amazing people at Park People. They made this video about last year’s raft project for this event.
In less than three weeks, we will turn the PARC (Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre) Drop-In into a giant indoor market with performance, art works, and toys to enjoy. A magical world where art becomes life, life becomes art, the present and past switch places, and stories, art and conversation swirl together under One Tent!
Workshops are held Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons. If you are able to help out, please e-mail and let us know that you are coming! diggerburtt@gmail.com.
In the weeks leading up to the holidays, we explored the concept of ‘wisdom’, and what it means to be a ‘wise person’. During our Wednesday building and writing workshops, we looked through old PARC photographs to seek out images of ‘wise people’. After choosing three photographs each, we discussed the concept of ‘wisdom’, and we explained why we chose particular images. We then wrote a short description or imagined monologue for the person in one of our chosen pictures, which we each read out loud to the group. The following week, we began to construct puppets based on this monologue and image. Sonja directed us through a process of first sketching a portrait, then creating a sculptural base out of dowel, tinfoil and oven-bake clay, and finally sculpting a three-dimensional version of the image. The puppet heads are approximately three inches high and two inches across.
I have wanted to connect sound choir activities in the basement with the writing and construction activities happening on the second floor, and I thought that it might be fun to create voices for the puppets. I thought to experiment with gestural speech, as in gibberish or glossolalia (the act of speaking in tongues), because puppets are limited in their physical movements and I think that their voices should match. I also like the idea of the ‘wise fool,’ who is simultaneously innocent and deeply intelligent. I think that gibberish is an ideal tool for expressing such contradictory nature, because the non-verbal voice communicates through instinctual, sonic gestures. I think that such direct means of communication can pierce the habitual emotional armours that we create through words, leaving us with direct, deeply emotional and spiritual meanings.
In our final sound choir workshop before the holidays, I asked the group to come up with three adjectives that could be used to describe their ‘wise person’, which I had asked them to visualize. I then worked with each person to develop a gibberish voice for their puppet. I first asked John to isolate his adjectives so that he could practice a vocabulary of different voices. It was interesting for me to see how subtly each adjective affected his choices: The terms ‘rugged’ and ‘straight-up’, for instance, both produced a fairly gruff demeanour, but the ‘rugged’ voice was emotionally closed and continually grumbling while the ‘straight-up’ voice spoke in clearly articulated, impassioned gestures. I then chose another person from the group, Alice, and I asked her to perform the same exercise.
I noticed that both Alice and John instinctually used exaggerated physical gestures, as well as sound, to communicate. I decided to experiment with turning the voice exercise into a physical theatre exercise, and I had them rise from their chairs to their feet and face each other. I asked them to imagine that they were the characters associated with their adjective-voices, and that they had something to say to each other as they passed in the halls of PARC. This produced peals of laughter, as Alice’s ‘silent’ person (who communicated via low and extended creaking growls) encountered John’s ‘rugged’ person (who was generally angry). I asked them to add in other adjectives, creating voices that were simultaneously ‘rugged, straight-up and wise’ or ‘silent and slow’.
This exercise was highly effective, as each person was able to develop a voice and physical stance that expressed a certain combination of adjectives. Everybody in the group was laughing, and eventually even Michelle (who had been extremely reticent) volunteered herself. We culminated by creating a ‘drop-in’ scene followed by a ‘bus-scene’. We worked together to imagine scenarios that might happen on a bus, such as a ‘bodacious’ person trying to steal the seat of a ‘gentle and silent’ person. I think that the adjectives were somewhat lost as people began to act out their characters – in general, the characters seemed to become louder and more ridiculous as the exercise went on, and I think that original intentions were sometimes lost. I think also, though, that the group developed a kind of rhythmic cohesion that I haven’t witnessed as prominently in the music-based workshops. I was also pleased with the level of full-bodied attention that each participant (including myself) was able to maintain throughout the workshop, and also with the frequent occurrences of laughter, followed by more serious devotion.
Within the Making Room group, it seems that loud and ridiculous activities can serve as an effective contrast to our more contemplative rituals. I am curious to explore possibilities for creating a more definitive and ritualized workshop structure, and it is useful to have discovered an apparent desire for energetic expression. Perhaps instead of starting with a ten-minute sit, as I have been facilitating, we should start with a loud warm-up or theatre activity, followed by increasingly thoughtful activities, and closing finally with a sit.
- RB
Two sessions ago, we began with a silent sit followed by a guided meditation through an inner soundscape. I asked the group to envision a place, physically existing or completely internal, where they feel or have felt no need to be anywhere else. I asked them to imagine the sounds of this place, and then to express those sounds using their voices. While the group was reticent at first, a sound collage began to emerge, often carrying with it verbal observations regarding the place in mind (‘I’m going out to the barn to ride a horse, now I’m riding a horse [horse-hoof sound and neighing]’). My immediate aesthetic response is to discourage such observations, under the assumption that descriptions of a soundscape can distract participant-listeners from the soundscape itself. I am curious, however, about how these observations signify a certain kind of engagement with a place, distinguishing between narrative and sensory memory. Continue reading
As the days become colder and we again don layer after layer to protect us against winter and are into one month into our Market Project, it is good to take a moment to remember our Join the Adventure Boat Launch and Pageant last June. These beautiful photographs were taken by Katherine Fleitas, of Peace Photo.
As part of the on-going Tuesday evening work parties at the HOPE garden (Masaryk-Cowan Park, 220 Cowan Ave.), more than twenty volunteers assisted in making colourful flags that are being prepared for our pageant that is now only two weeks away! The event was led by community artist and our friend Cath Campbell.
We will be completing the flags next Tuesday, June 19 between 5-7pm.
Thanks so much Greenest City!
members of the Making Room team hard at work
Over the past several weeks, a growing number of PARC folks, community members and artists have come together to prepare for out boat launch and pageant now just four weeks away.
On June 23 we will host a pageant that will begin at PARC at 4:30 in the afternoon and will wind down Dowling Avenue, and end in Budapest Park beside the Boulevard Club at 1755 Lakeshore Ave W.
We have ongoing workshops four days a week leading up to the event. All workshops take place at the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC) at 1499 Queen St. W. Come join us anytime!
Monday at 2:30 in the Drop-In
canoe building with Ian Devenney
Tuesdays and Wednesday at 1:00 in the Healing Room
special art-making session
Friday at 2:00 in the Drop-In
Making Room, Making Art
Sonja and Brenda stringing together fabric flags
Last month, twelve members traveled to the Mabelle community in Central Etobicoke in order to take part in the MABELLEarts presentation of “A Tethered Heart.” We made the wooden boat that appears in some of these images. The boat made its first appearance in the Jumblies’ Theatre production of “Like An Old Tale” in Scarborough. All photos by Katherine Fleitas.
Sisi and Michelle dance the waltz
Over the past three weeks, Sisi Chen joined us as part of her internship with Jumblies Theatre. As well as spending time with us, Sisi worked with our sister organizations the Community Arts Guild, Arts4All and visited MABELLEarts to sit by the bonfire and celebrate the recent parade. While at PARC, Sisi has helped us build our canoe, make books, helped us with some desktop design, web design and taught us ballroom dance.
We will miss her when Sisi returns to Kingston to complete her undergraduate degree in teaching.
