Acting Class Daily: Saturdays

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 12:02:14 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. This week we’re celebrating our Mainstage material and exploring an Anton Chekhov masterpiece.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + July’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Each Saturday delivers new weekly character rehearsal challenges straight to your inbox. Something dynamic, something experimental, something transformational. Something to push the boundaries of truth in character. This Summer … Anton Chekhov’s seminal works. Next up, The Cherry Orchard.

Read Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

Your Weekly Character Challenge

This week’s challenge … The Last Day.

Choose your character.
Read the play. (Member Bonus - Class Archives: EA First Rehearsal/Report)
Find a space to work where your Imagination + Actor’s Faith can be set free and have uninterrupted freedom to explore.
Go on an imaginative memory tour of the last day of your character’s life. Allow yourself to move through three major moments as they felt on that very last day.

Your work is complete when you’ve experienced each of the three moments through the eyes, ears, heart, soul of your character and translate your discoveries into Creative Communication, capturing:

the first major moment using only Haiku poetry.
the second major moment using only classical music.
the third major moment using only a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

The Characters

Anya - Act I

We went to Paris; it's cold there and snowing. I talk French perfectly horribly. My mother lives on the fifth floor. I go to her, and find her there with various Frenchmen, women, an old abbé with a book, and everything in tobacco smoke and with no comfort at all. I suddenly became very sorry for mother--so sorry that I took her head in my arms and hugged her and wouldn't let her go. Then mother started hugging me and crying. . . .
She's already sold her villa near Mentone; she's nothing left, nothing. And I haven't a copeck left either; we only just managed to get here. And mother won't understand! We had dinner at a station; she asked for all the expensive things, and tipped the waiters one rouble each. And Charlotta too. Yasha wants his share too-- it's too bad. Mother's got a footman now, Yasha; we've brought him here.

Lubov - Act II

Oh, my sins. . . . I've always scattered money about without holding myself in, like a madwoman, and I married a man who made nothing but debts. My husband died of champagne--he drank terribly--and to my misfortune, I fell in love with another man and went off with him, and just at that time--it was my first punishment, a blow that hit me right on the head--here, in the river . . . my boy was drowned, and I went away, quite away, never to return, never to see this river again. . . I shut my eyes and ran without thinking, but he ran after me . . . without pity, without respect. I bought a villa near Mentone because he fell ill there, and for three years I knew no rest either by day or night; the sick man wore me out, and my soul dried up. And last year, when they had sold the villa to pay my debts, I went away to Paris, and there he robbed me of all I had and threw me over and went off with another woman. I tried to poison myself. . . . It was so silly, so shameful. . . . And suddenly I longed to be back in Russia, my own land, with my little girl. . . .
[Wipes her tears]
Lord, Lord be merciful to me, forgive me my sins! Punish me no more!

Play Along With Your Own Summer Character …

Read Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
(click here)
Choose your character or work with one we’ve highlighted above.
Invest in your character over the Summer with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

On the first Saturday of the month, our Mainstage Rehearsal Project gets posted for subscribers to play with all month long. Each project builds out an array of rehearsal tools, applying them to work you’ll remember forever. The stuff that makes acting worth believing in.

This Summer we’re exploring the magic of Oz … creating, shaping, and living truthfully in a world of pure imagination.

Read The Wonderful World of Oz

July’s Mainstage Project

Performance Possibility: The Story

This month we’re finding a story worth telling for your unique character in our world of Oz.

First, start by wondering at and selecting a transformative moment in your character’s life.

Next, specify the start, end, and moment of transformation. The end arrives once the transformative moment (button-pusher) has fully succeeded in changing your character.

Then, give us a taste of this transformative character experience by storyboarding the start, end, and moment of transformation using Creative Communication.

Create different versions of your storyboard using:

only specific pieces of music.
only specific images.
only specific objects.
only specific pieces of poetic text.

We’ll culminate this month’s mainstage project with one storyboard using a mix of music, images, objects, and poetic text to give us an experiential taste of this transformative moment … this story worth telling.

Post your storyboard - using your character’s name as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Follow The Yellow Brick Road

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 12:00:55 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. This week we’re celebrating our Mainstage material and exploring an Anton Chekhov masterpiece.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + July’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Read Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

Your Weekly Character Challenge

This week’s challenge … The Memory Walk.

Choose your character.
Read the play. (Member Bonus - Class Archives: EA First Rehearsal/Report)
Find a space to work where your Imagination + Actor’s Faith can be set free and have uninterrupted freedom to explore.
Go on a an imaginative tour, physically walking through and around all the nooks and crannies of the Cherry Orchard as it looked the very first time you saw it.

Your work is complete when you’ve walked through the whole Cherry Orchard and have translated your discoveries into Creative Communication, capturing:

a surprising emotion inspired by your Memory Walk using only a specific piece of poetic text.
a surprising animal/insect discovery inspired by your Memory Walk using only a specific object.
a surprising visual of nature inspired by your Memory Walk using only a specific piece of music.
the Cherry Orchard as you knew it then using only a specific image.

The Characters

Lopakhin - Act I

I want to say something very pleasant, very delightful, to you.
Looks at his watch.
I'm going away at once, I haven't much time . . . but I'll tell you all about it in two or three words. As you already know, your cherry orchard is to be sold to pay your debts, and the sale is fixed for August 22; but you needn't be alarmed, dear madam, you may sleep in peace; there's a way out. Here's my plan. Please attend carefully! Your estate is only thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into building lots and are then leased off for villas you'll get at least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

Yasha - Act III

Lubov Andreyevna! I want to ask a favour of you, if you'll be so kind! If you go to Paris again, then please take me with you. It's absolutely impossible for me to stop here.
Looking round.
What's the good of talking about it, you see for yourself that this is an uneducated country, with an immoral population, and it's so dull. The food in the kitchen is beastly, and here's this Fiers walking about mumbling various inappropriate things. Take me with you, be so kind!

Play Along With Your Own Summer Character …

Read Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
(click here)
Choose your character or work with one we’ve highlighted above.
Invest in your character over the Summer with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

This Summer we’re exploring the magic of Oz … creating, shaping, and living truthfully in a world of pure imagination.

Read The Wonderful World of Oz

July’s Mainstage Project

Performance Possibility: The Story

This month we’re finding a story worth telling for your unique character in our world of Oz.

First, start by wondering at and selecting a transformative moment in your character’s life.

Next, specify the start, end, and moment of transformation. The end arrives once the transformative moment (button-pusher) has fully succeeded in changing your character.

Then, give us a taste of this transformative character experience by storyboarding the start, end, and moment of transformation using Creative Communication.

Create different versions of your storyboard using:

only specific pieces of music.
only specific images.
only specific objects.
only specific pieces of poetic text.

Post your storyboard - using your character’s name as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Whistle While You Work

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 12:01:01 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. This week we’re celebrating our Mainstage material and exploring an Anton Chekhov masterpiece.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + June’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Read Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters

Your Weekly Character Challenge

This week’s challenge … The Heart Map.

Choose your character.
Read the play. (Member Bonus - Class Archives: EA First Rehearsal/Report)
For each sentence of your Three Sisters text, say it aloud in your own words.
Speak your soul’s truth. Allow messy, unapologetic sound to pour out of you.
Once a sentence feels free and true - write it down.
Move onto the next sentence, repeating the process until you’ve done this work for all your text in Act One.
Next, add to your Heart Map by speaking the unspoken thoughts that cause your first sentence. Add them to the start of your map.
Finally, speak the connective thoughts between each and every written sentence. Include the thoughts you hear inside of yourself while others have dialogue. Or in group silence. Add them all to your map.

Your Heart Map is complete when you’ve written down the full, free-flowing truth of both the spoken and unspoken in Act One.

Now tear it up. Delete it. Throw it away.

We want to be careful not to prioritize this text. To treat it as “right” or “better”…

We do this work to discover something in our hearts. If we were to hold onto it or be careful with how we shape it … the work then moves into our intellect to judge, doubt, compare.

Let’s treat this as an exercise. A muscle-builder. A speed-bump groover.

Once you’ve torn up your first map … do it all again for Act Two.

And then again for Act Three. And once more for Act Four.

Each thrown away after completed.

Four maps total.

The Characters

Natasha - Act III

We must come to an agreement, Olga. Your place is the school, mine⁠—the home. You devote yourself to teaching, I, to the household. And if I talk about servants, then I do know what I am talking about; I do know what I am talking about⁠ ⁠… And tomorrow there’s to be no more of that old thief, that old hag⁠ ⁠…
Stamping.
That witch! And don’t you dare annoy me! Don’t you dare!
Stopping short.
Really, if you don’t move downstairs, we shall always be quarrelling. This is awful ...

Anfisa - Act IV

Well, little girl, here I am, still alive! Still alive! In the high school, together with little Olga, in her official apartments⁠ ⁠… so the Lord has appointed for my old age. Sinful woman that I am, I’ve never lived like that in my life before.⁠ ⁠… A large flat, government property, and I’ve a whole room and bed to myself. All government property. I wake up at nights and, oh God, and Holy Mother, there isn’t a happier person than I! ⁠…

Play Along With Your Own Summer Character …

Read Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters.
(click here)
Choose your character or work with one we’ve highlighted above.
Invest in your character over the Summer with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

This Summer we’re exploring the magic of Oz … creating, shaping, and living truthfully in a world of pure imagination.

Read The Wonderful World of Oz

June’s Mainstage Project

Performance Possibility: The Character

This month we’re bringing to life your unique, one-of-a-kind character in our world of Oz.

First, start with a favorite fictional childhood character.

Next, harmonize your character by combining it with a real-life, historical figure that feels like a “soul twin.”

Give us a taste of your unique character concoction using Creative Communication:

a specific piece of music
a specific image
a specific object
a specific piece of poetic text.

Let’s culminate this month’s mainstage project with one “Spoon River-esque” page of text where your character speaks from their soul - saying the most true, most important, most personal words they want the world to hear.

Share your page of text - using your character’s name as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Friend Like Me

Alladin (1992)

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 17 Jun 2023 12:00:38 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. This week we’re celebrating our Mainstage material and exploring an Anton Chekhov masterpiece.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + June’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Read Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters

Your Weekly Character Challenge

This week’s challenge … The Movement Piece.

Choose your character.
Read the play. (Member Bonus - Class Archives: EA First Rehearsal/Report)
Continue your character exploration by crafting a Movement Piece for the start of each of Chekhov’s four acts. Each piece should poetically express the effect life has had on your character up until that point in time:
1. Act One - express your character’s life prior to the start of our story.
2. Act Two - express your character’s most important internal changes between Act One and Act Two.
3. Act Three - express your character’s unseen personal life between Act Two and Act Three.
4. Act Four - express the hidden fears and desires of your character at any moment in time between Act Three and Act Four.
5. Share your Movement Pieces!

Here’s our Act One Movement Piece from Uncle Vanya (ECT, 2018):

The Characters

Irina - Act III

Oh, I am unhappy⁠ ⁠… I can’t work, I shan’t work. Enough, enough! I used to be a telegraphist, now I work at the town council offices, and I have nothing but hate and contempt for all they give me to do⁠ ⁠… I am already twenty-three, I have already been at work for a long while, and my brain has dried up, and I’ve grown thinner, plainer, older, and there is no relief of any sort, and time goes and it seems all the while as if I am going away from the real, the beautiful life, farther and farther away, down some precipice. I’m in despair and I can’t understand how it is that I am still alive, that I haven’t killed myself ...

Tuzenbach - Act IV

It is curious how silly trivial little things, sometimes for no apparent reason, become significant. At first you laugh at these things, you think they are of no importance, you go on and you feel that you haven’t got the strength to stop yourself. Oh don’t let’s talk about it! I am happy. It is as if for the first time in my life I see these firs, maples, beeches, and they all look at me inquisitively and wait. What beautiful trees and how beautiful, when one comes to think of it, life must be near them!
A shout in the distance.
It’s time I went.⁠ ⁠… There’s a tree which has dried up but it still sways in the breeze with the others. And so it seems to me that if I die, I shall still take part in life in one way or another. Goodbye, dear⁠ ⁠…

Play Along With Your Own Summer Character …

Read Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters.
(click here)
Choose your character or work with one we’ve highlighted above.
Invest in your character over the Summer with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

This Summer we’re exploring the magic of Oz … creating, shaping, and living truthfully in a world of pure imagination.

Read The Wonderful World of Oz

June’s Mainstage Project

Performance Possibility: The Character

This month we’re bringing to life your unique, one-of-a-kind character in our world of Oz.

First, start with a favorite fictional childhood character.

Next, harmonize your character by combining it with a real-life, historical figure that feels like a “soul twin.”

Give us a taste of your unique character concoction using Creative Communication:

a specific piece of music
a specific image
a specific object
a specific piece of poetic text.

Share your page of text - using your character’s name as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

It’s The Hard Knock Life

Annie (1982)

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 12:01:08 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. This week we’re celebrating our Mainstage material and exploring an Anton Chekhov masterpiece.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + June’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Read Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters

Your Weekly Character Challenge

This week’s challenge … The Elysium Etudes.

Choose your character.
Read the play. (Member Bonus - Class Archives: EA First Rehearsal/Report)
Begin your character exploration by living-through each of The Elysium Etudes:

The Characters

Masha - Act III

I want to make a confession, dear sisters. My soul is in pain. I will confess to you, and never again to anybody⁠ ⁠… I’ll tell you this minute. It’s my secret but you must know everything⁠ ⁠… I can’t be silent.⁠ ⁠… I love, I love⁠ ⁠… I love that man.⁠ ⁠… You saw him only just now.⁠ ⁠… Why don’t I say it⁠ ⁠… in one word. I love Vershinin.

Andrei - Act IV

Oh, what has become of my past and where is it? I used to be young, happy, clever, I used to be able to think and frame clever ideas, the present and the future seemed to me full of hope. Why do we, almost before we have begun to live, become dull, grey, uninteresting, lazy, apathetic, useless, unhappy.⁠ ⁠… This town has already been in existence for two hundred years and it has a hundred thousand inhabitants, not one of whom is in any way different from the others. There has never been, now or at any other time, a single leader of men, a single scholar, an artist, a man of even the slightest eminence who might arouse envy or a passionate desire to be imitated. They only eat, drink, sleep, and then they die⁠ ⁠… more people are born and also eat, drink, sleep, and so as not to go silly from boredom, they try to make life many-sided with their beastly backbiting, vodka, cards, and litigation. The wives deceive their husbands, and the husbands lie, and pretend they see nothing and hear nothing, and the evil influence irresistibly oppresses the children and the divine spark in them is extinguished, and they become just as pitiful corpses and just as much like one another as their fathers and mothers.⁠ ⁠…

Play Along With Your Own Summer Character …

Read Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters.
(click here)
Choose your character or work with one we’ve highlighted above.
Invest in your character over the Summer with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

This Summer we’re exploring the magic of Oz … creating, shaping, and living truthfully in a world of pure imagination.

Read The Wonderful World of Oz

June’s Mainstage Project

Performance Possibility: The Character

This month we’re bringing to life your unique, one-of-a-kind character in our world of Oz.

First, start with a favorite fictional childhood character.

Next, harmonize your character by combining it with a real-life, historical figure that feels like a “soul twin.”

Give us a taste of your unique character concoction using Creative Communication:

a specific piece of music
a specific image
a specific object
a specific piece of poetic text.

Share your page of text - using your character’s name as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Pure Imagination

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 27 May 2023 12:01:02 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + May’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

The Spoon River Anthology

We’ve done so much good work these last four months.

You’ve taken a character that once belonged to a writer and by doing things … you have made it personal and real to you.

You have made this character your own.

Now it’s time to turn our attention to who we’re coming back for.

To pinpoint our target and know, in our soul, its taste, its pull, its truth.

Your Weekly Character Challenge

You’ve been chosen to walk through The Portal.

A once in a deathtime opportunity to say anything you want to anyone you choose.

One chance. Forevermore.

This week’s opportunity … The Portal.

Choose the space you’d like to work in - and delineate a “threshold” that separates being in (or out) of the space.
Allow an aspect of the room to reveal itself as your TARGET.
Exit the space.
Begin your once in a deathtime opportunity by walking towards your threshold. Once you take your first step you cannot stop or turn back! Each step towards your threshold commits your entire being to going for it.
Cross the threshold. Taste your TARGET. Release the truth of your soul within the words of the Spoon River poem (written by Edgar Lee Masters).
Make sure to experience your words landing on (and affecting) your TARGET. Taste how the TARGET gets it by the truth revealed “in its eyes.”
Once your final words are uttered, turn your back on your TARGET and exit the space, leaving life - and Spoon River - behind forevermore.

Graveyard Echoes

Pauline Barrett

Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife
And almost a year to creep back into strength,
Till the dawn of our wedding decennial
Found me my seeming self again.
We walked the forest together,
By a path of soundless moss and turf.
But I could not look in your eyes,
And you could not look in my eyes,
For such sorrow was ours—the beginning of gray in your hair.
And I but a shell of myself.
And what did we talk of?—sky and water,
Anything, ’most, to hide our thoughts.
And then your gift of wild roses,
Set on the table to grace our dinner.
Poor heart, how bravely you struggled
To imagine and live a remembered rapture!
Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,
And you left me alone in my room for a while,
As you did when I was a bride, poor heart.
And I looked in the mirror and something said:
“One should be all dead when one is half-dead—”
Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love.”
And I did it looking there in the mirror—
Dear, have you ever understood?

Mrs. George Reece

To this generation I would say:
Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.
It may serve a turn in your life.
My husband had nothing to do
With the fall of the bank—he was only cashier.
The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes,
And his vain, unscrupulous son.
Yet my husband was sent to prison,
And I was left with the children,
To feed and clothe and school them.
And I did it, and sent them forth
Into the world all clean and strong,
And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet:
“Act well your part, there all the honor lies.”

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

May’s Mainstage Project

The Essential Beauty

This month we’re bringing to life the essential beauty of your character in a 2 minute performance - building off your textured, character access of previous monthly projects.

First, imagine a world in which your character was never born.

What would be lost?

That taste (of what you know would be missing) ...

That taste (of what you know to be essential, beautiful) …

That is what we all want to taste, to experience, through your creative expression.

Pinpoint the essential beauty of your character.
Devise a way to bring it to life in performance/creative expression.
Utilize Creative Communication to fully speak your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
Remember to work from the raw heart, forgiving any need to be careful, clear, or considerate of us (the camera(. Risk creatively from your soul connection to your character.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 20 May 2023 12:01:20 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + May’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

The Spoon River Anthology

We’ve done so much good work these last four months.

You’ve taken a character that once belonged to a writer and by doing things … you have made it personal and real to you.

You have made this character your own.

Now it’s time to turn our attention to who we’re coming back for.

To pinpoint our target and know, in our soul, its taste, its pull, its truth.

Your Weekly Character Challenge

This month we’re working our way towards The Portal.

Building towards an opportunity to come back to life and say anything we want to anyone we choose.

Seizing this opportunity of a deathtime.

This week’s challenge … The Permission of Paraphrase.

Start with the freedom of expression AND specificity found in your HEART MAP.
Add the pull of your TARGET.
Speak freely from your soul until your TARGET gets it.
Repeat the first three steps until the words of the Spoon River poem (written by Edgar Lee Masters) begin to show up - speaking your soul as truthfully, as effortlessly, as the words inspired by your HEART MAP.

Your work is complete when the permission of paraphrase gives way to you freely expressing your character’s soul within the words of Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River.

Next week … the opportunity of a deathtime.

Graveyard Echoes

Russian Sonia

I, born in Weimar
Of a mother who was French
And German father, a most learned professor,
Orphaned at fourteen years,
Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia,
All up and down the boulevards of Paris,
Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts,
And later of poor artists and of poets.
At forty years, passée, I sought New York
And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat,
Red-faced and hale, though turned his sixtieth year,
Returning after having sold a ship-load
Of cattle in the German city, Hamburg.
He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here
For twenty years—they thought that we were married
This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt
Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day.
And why not? for my very dust is laughing
For thinking of the humorous thing called life.

Barney Hainsfeather

If the excursion train to Peoria
Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life—
Certainly I should have escaped this place.
But as it was burned as well, they mistook me
For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery
At Chicago,
And John for me, so I lie here.
It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town,
But to be buried here—ach!

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

May’s Mainstage Project

The Essential Beauty

This month we’re bringing to life the essential beauty of your character in a 2 minute performance - building off your textured, character access of previous monthly projects.

First, imagine a world in which your character was never born.

What would be lost?

That taste (of what you know would be missing) ...

That taste (of what you know to be essential, beautiful) …

That is what we all want to taste, to experience, through your creative expression.

Pinpoint the essential beauty of your character.
Devise a way to bring it to life in performance/creative expression.
Utilize Creative Communication to fully speak your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
Remember to work from the raw heart, forgiving any need to be careful, clear, or considerate of us (the camera(. Risk creatively from your soul connection to your character.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

We conclude our celebration of O. Henry’s short stories with Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen (2018) - from O. Henry’s Playhouse (an ITV production), directed by Frederick Stephani, starring Thomas Mitchell, Morey Amsterdam, Michael Pate, Florenz Ames, Russell Thorson, Michael Emmet and Bill Baucom.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 13 May 2023 12:01:02 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + May’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

The Spoon River Anthology

We’ve done so much good work these last four months.

You’ve taken a character that once belonged to a writer and by doing things … you have made it personal and real to you.

You have made this character your own.

Now it’s time to turn our attention to who we’re coming back for.

To pinpoint our target and know, in our soul, its taste, its pull, its truth.

Your Weekly Character Challenge

This month we’re working our way towards The Portal.

Building towards an opportunity to come back to life and say anything we want to anyone we choose.

Seizing this opportunity of a deathtime.

This week’s challenge … The Target.

Wonder at who you hunger to confront if given the chance to return to life. It can be a person, group of people, animal, inanimate object … any type of target.
When wondering at your target, embrace the first, frozen image of it appearing in your portal. Nickname your portal.
Pick an inanimate object in the world around you. When you notice an aspect of the nickname in the object, own it by saying the nickname out-loud. Repeat by calling out as many tastes of the nickname you can discover.
Focus on that instant, pure, flash of a moment when your Target first sees you return but has yet to process it. That moment of unguarded realization. That look.
Discover a piece of music that speaks the “truth behind the eyes” of your Target. The unfiltered truth of what your Target is really saying to you with that look.

Your work is complete when you can find tastes of the nickname in any object or person in your real life surroundings + the music does the work of igniting that first taste of your Target … pulling your soul to speak.

Making you yearn to take advantage of this opportunity of a deathtime.

Graveyard Echoes

Francis Turner

I could not run or play
In boyhood.
In manhood I could only sip the cup,
Not drink—For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.
Yet I lie here
Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:
There is a garden of acacia,
Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines—
There on that afternoon in June
By Mary’s side—
Kissing her with my soul upon my lips
It suddenly took flight.

Franklin Jones

If I could have lived another year
I could have finished my flying machine,
And become rich and famous.
Hence it is fitting the workman
Who tried to chisel a dove for me
Made it look more like a chicken.
For what is it all but being hatched,
And running about the yard,
To the day of the block?
Save that a man has an angel’s brain,
And sees the ax from the first!

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

May’s Mainstage Project

The Essential Beauty

This month we’re bringing to life the essential beauty of your character in a 2 minute performance - building off your textured, character access of previous monthly projects.

First, imagine a world in which your character was never born.

What would be lost?

That taste (of what you know would be missing) ...

That taste (of what you know to be essential, beautiful) …

That is what we all want to taste, to experience, through your creative expression.

Pinpoint the essential beauty of your character.
Devise a way to bring it to life in performance/creative expression.
Utilize Creative Communication to fully speak your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
Remember to work from the raw heart, forgiving any need to be careful, clear, or considerate of us (the camera(. Risk creatively from your soul connection to your character.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

We continue our celebration of O. Henry’s short stories with The Green Door (2018) - a Los Metates Studios production, directed by Matthew Evans, starring Jeremiah Hoppman and Bethany Paulsen.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 06 May 2023 12:01:30 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + May’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

The Portal

This month we’re working our way towards The Portal.

A chance to come back to life and say anything we want to anyone we choose.

Seizing the opportunity of a deathtime.

What if your Spoon River character had the chance to come back to life?

To speak to anyone you wanted and make them hear everything you hunger to say?

What would you give for that opportunity? That reunited love? That lust for revenge?

All it takes … is finding a way to make the case to earn that chance.

This week … The Heart Map.

We’ve done so much good work these last four months.

You’ve taken a character that once belonged to a writer and by doing things … you have made it personal and real to you.

You have made this character your own.

Now it’s time to turn our attention to the writer’s text. To do things that take a writer’s words off the page - and into our heart.

This week we’re discovering … The Heart Map.

For each sentence of your Spoon River text, say it aloud in your own words.
Speak truth. Subtext. Allow messy, unapologetic sound to pour out of you.
Once a sentence feels free and true - write it down.
Move onto the next sentence, repeating the process until you’ve done this work for all your text.
Speak the unspoken thoughts that cause your first sentence. Add to the start of your map.
Speak the connective thoughts between each written sentence. Add them into your map.

Your map is complete when you’ve written down the full, free-flowing truth of both the spoken and unspoken.

Now tear it up. Delete it. Throw it away.

We want to be careful not to prioritize this text. To make it “right” …

We do this work to discover. To find something in our hearts. If we were to hold onto it or be careful with shaping it … the work then moves into our intellect … judging, doubting, comparing.

It’s an exercise. A muscle-builder. A speed-bump groover.

Once you’ve torn up your first map … do it all again.

And then once more.

Each thrown away after completed.

Three maps total.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

May’s Mainstage Project

The Essential Beauty

This month we’re bringing to life the essential beauty of your character in a 2 minute performance - building off your textured, character access of previous monthly projects.

First, imagine a world in which your character was never born.

What would be lost?

That taste (of what you know would be missing) ...

That taste (of what you know to be essential, beautiful) …

That is what we all want to taste, to experience, through your creative expression.

Pinpoint the essential beauty of your character.
Devise a way to bring it to life in performance/creative expression.
Utilize Creative Communication to fully speak your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
Remember to work from the raw heart, forgiving any need to be careful, clear, or considerate of us (the camera(. Risk creatively from your soul connection to your character.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Graveyard Echoes

Nancy Knapp

Well, don’t you see this was the way of it:
We bought the farm with what he inherited,
And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning
His father’s mind against the rest of them.
And we never had any peace with our treasure.
The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed.
And lightning struck the granary.
So we mortgaged the farm to keep going.
And he grew silent and was worried all the time.
Then some of the neighbors refused to speak to us,
And took sides with his brothers and sisters.
And I had no place to turn, as one may say to himself,
At an earlier time in life;
“No matter, So and so is my friend, or I can shake this off
With a little trip to Decatur.”
Then the dreadfulest smells infested the rooms.
So I set fire to the beds and the old witch-house
Went up in a roar of flame,
As I danced in the yard with waving arms,
While he wept like a freezing steer.

Barry Holden

The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
Set fire to the house
They were trying Dr. Duval
For the murder of Zora Clemens,
And I sat in the court two weeks
Listening to every witness.
It was clear he had got her in a family way;
And to let the child be born
Would not do.
Well, how about me with eight children,
And one coming, and the farm
Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?
And when I got home that night,
(After listening to the story of the buggy ride,
And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)
The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,
Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,
Was the hatchet!
And just as I entered there was my wife,
Standing before me, big with child.
She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,
And I killed her.

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

We continue our presentation of O. Henry’s short stories with After Twenty Years (2016) - a Neo Film School project directed by Sarith Krishnan, starring Rahul R. Nair, Hari Kallamoola, and Sudeep Moothamana.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 29 Apr 2023 12:00:21 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. EA’s Rehearsal Playground returns next week, ushering in the culmination of our Spoon River + O. Henry adventures.

The first Saturday of the month will introduce a new Weekly Character Challenge + May’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project.

Enjoy the rehearsal day off … and catch you next week!

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 12:00:21 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + April’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Essential Beauty

This month we’re setting our sights on the deepest core of character connection.

Expressing the essential beauty of your character’s soul.

Earning the opportunity of a … deathtime.

This week … The Dance.

What if your Spoon River character had the chance to come back to life?

To speak to anyone you wanted and make them hear everything you hunger to say?

What would you give for that opportunity? That reunited love? That lust for revenge?

All it takes … is finding a way to make the case.

Earning that chance.

Let’s get to work.

This week we’re hunting for The Dance.

One single piece you dance to G-d from your raw, character soul.

A dance that speaks your worth. Movement that leaves nothing back.

One single movement piece to earn your character the chance to live again.

Start by embracing the knowings that come from your work finding the Dance of Undeath and the two movement pieces that filled its gaps ... going from its direction to finding your own dance in your own body.

Your dance.

Your body.

Craft the form of your movement piece in any way you’d like, knowing that all it needs is for you to go for it.

Fill it with the truth of your character heart.

Move and express from the rawness of your character soul.

Set-up a camera to record.
When you feel the taste of G-d inside the camera lens … dance from your soul, knowing the more you get it out - unapologetically, sincerely - the more consideration you earn for this once in a deathtime opportunity.
Post your video - using your character’s name as the title.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

April’s Mainstage Project

The Prayer

This month, we’re reaching into the soul of your O. Henry character to capture the most important prayer you have for any one person in your character’s life.

Find the person who you yearn to help the most.
Find the reason you believe they deserve help.
Find the words to make who’s listening feel your true heart.
Add a piece of Creative Communication so you can fill-in any missing pieces, tastes, knowings … to fully speak all of your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
When you can feel the taste of who you’re praying to inside the camera lens … pray with all your heart, knowing if it’s true your prayer will be heard, believed, and granted.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Graveyard Echoes

William and Emily

There is something about Death
Like love itself!
If with some one with whom you have known passion
And the glow of youthful love,
You also, after years of life
Together, feel the sinking of the fire
And thus fade away together,
Gradually, faintly, delicately,
As it were in each other’s arms,
Passing from the familiar room—
That is a power of unison between souls
Like love itself!

The Circuit Judge

Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain—
Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred
Were marking scores against me,
But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches,
Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,
Not on the right of the matter.
O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone
For worse than the anger of the wronged,
The curses of the poor,
Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,
Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,
Hanged by my sentence,
Was innocent in soul compared with me.

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

We conclude our presentation of O. Henry’s Full House (1952) with The Gift of the Magi - introduced by John Steinbeck (!), directed by Henry King, and starring Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 12:00:17 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + April’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Essential Beauty

This month we’re setting our sights on the deepest core of character connection.

Expressing the essential beauty of your character’s soul.

Earning the opportunity of a … deathtime.

It all begins with, The Song of Your Soul.

What if your Spoon River character had the chance to come back to life?

To speak to anyone you wanted and make them hear everything you hunger to say?

What would you give for that opportunity? That reunited love? That lust for revenge?

All it takes … is finding a way to make the case.

Earning that chance.

Let’s get to work.

This week we’re hunting for The Song of Your Soul.

One single song you sing to G-d from your raw, character soul.

A song speaking your worth. A song leaving nothing back.

One single song that earns your character the chance to live again.

Start by embracing the knowings from your work of finding the Song of Your Worth and the two songs that filled its gaps ... and going from that direction to one that finds your song in your voice.

Your song.

Your soul.

Your voice.

Craft the form of your song in any way you’d like, knowing that all it needs - is for you to go for it …

Fill it with the truth of your character heart.

Sing from the rawness of your character soul.

Set-up a camera to record.
When you feel the taste of G-d inside the camera lens … sing from your soul, knowing the more you get your soul out - unapologetically, sincerely - the more possible your consideration for this once in a deathtime opportunity.
Post your video - using your character’s name as the title.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

April’s Mainstage Project

The Prayer

This month, we’re reaching into the soul of your O. Henry character to capture the most important prayer you have for any one person in your character’s life.

Find the person who you yearn to help the most.
Find the reason you believe they deserve help.
Find the words to make who’s listening feel your true heart.
Add a piece of Creative Communication so you can fill-in any missing pieces, tastes, knowings … to fully speak all of your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
When you can feel the taste of who you’re praying to inside the camera lens … pray with all your heart, knowing if it’s true your prayer will be heard, believed, and granted.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Graveyard Echoes

A. D. Blood

If you in the village think that my work was a good one,
Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,
And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,
In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;
Why do you let the milliner’s daughter Dora,
And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier
Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow?

Robert Southey Burke

I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor
A. D. Blood.
I lavished my admiration upon you,
You were to my mind the almost perfect man.
You devoured my personality,
And the idealism of my youth,
And the strength of a high-souled fealty.
And all my hopes for the world,
And all my beliefs in Truth,
Were smelted up in the blinding heat
Of my devotion to you,
And molded into your image.
And then when I found what you were:
That your soul was small
And your words were false
As your blue-white porcelain teeth,
And your cuffs of celluloid,
I hated the love I had for you,
I hated myself, I hated you
For my wasted soul, and wasted youth.
And I say to all, beware of ideals,
Beware of giving your love away
To any man alive.

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

We continue our presentation of O. Henry’s Full House (1952) with The Ransom of Red Chief - introduced by John Steinbeck (!), directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Fred Allen, Oscar Levant, Lee Aaker, Irving Bacon, Kathleen Freeman, and Robert Easton.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 08 Apr 2023 12:00:43 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + April’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Essential Beauty

This month we’re setting our sights on the deepest core of character connection.

Expressing the essential beauty of your character’s soul.

Earning the opportunity of a … deathtime.

It all begins with, The Dance of Undeath.

What if your Spoon River character had the chance to come back to life?

To speak to anyone you wanted and make them hear everything you hunger to say?

What would you give for that opportunity? That reunited love? That lust for revenge?

All it takes … is finding a way to make the case.

Earning that chance.

Let’s get to work.

This week we’re hunting for The Dance of Undeath.

One dance/movement piece that captures an almost complete taste of why it is essential for your character to get the chance to live again.

Embracing The Dance … let’s ignite our hunger to be more specific.

We are never satisfied with getting close. With finding a taste that almost completely captures the (mighty) importance of coming back to life.

Let’s plug those holes. Fill those gaps. Capture those missing ingredients.

Specify two tastes not captured in The Dance of Undeath.
Find a dance/movement piece to fully capture one of the missing tastes.
Find another dance/movement piece to fully capture the other missing taste.

This week’s challenge is complete when you have The Dance of Undeath plus two additional dance/movement pieces that add two crucial, missing truths.

Three dance/movement pieces total.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

April’s Mainstage Project

The Prayer

This month, we’re reaching into the soul of your O. Henry character to capture the most important prayer you have for any one person in your character’s life.

Find the person who you yearn to help the most.
Find the reason you believe they deserve help.
Find the words to make who’s listening feel your true heart.
Add a piece of Creative Communication so you can fill-in any missing pieces, tastes, knowings … to fully speak all of your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
When you can feel the taste of who you’re praying to inside the camera lens … pray with all your heart, knowing if it’s true your prayer will be heard, believed, and granted.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Graveyard Echoes

Nellie Clark

I was only eight years old;
And before I grew up and knew what it meant
I had no words for it, except
That I was frightened and told my
Mother; And that my Father got a pistol
And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,
Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.
Nevertheless the story clung to me.
But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five,
Was a newcomer and never heard it
’Till two years after we were married.
Then he considered himself cheated,
And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin.
Well, he deserted me, and I died
The following winter.

George Gray

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me—
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Our celebration of O. Henry’s Full House (1952) continues with The Last Leaf - introduced by John Steinbeck (!) directed by Jean Negulesco and starring Anne Baxter, Jean Peters, and Gregory Ratoff.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 12:00:47 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + April’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Essential Beauty

This month we’re setting our sights on the deepest core of character connection.

Expressing the essential beauty of your character’s soul.

Earning the opportunity of a … deathtime.

It all begins with, The Song of Worth.

What if your Spoon River character had the chance to come back to life?

To speak to anyone you wanted and make them hear everything you hunger to say?

What would you give for that opportunity? That reunited love? That lust for revenge?

All it takes … is finding a way to make the case.

Earning that chance.

Let’s get to work.

This week we’re hunting for The Song of Worth.

One song that captures an almost complete taste of what only you know to be most meaningful, worthwhile, essential about your character.

Once we embrace The Song … let’s ignite our Olympic Spirit with a hunger to be even more specific. To never be satisfied with just getting close … finding a song that almost completely captures your character’s worth.

Let’s plug those holes. Fill those gaps. Capture those missing ingredients.

Specify two tastes not captured in The Song of Worth.
Find a song to fully captures one of those missing tastes.
Find another song to fully captures the other missing taste.

This week’s challenge is complete when you have The Song of Worth plus two additional songs that add two crucial, missing truths.

Three songs total.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

April’s Mainstage Project

The Prayer

This month, we’re reaching into the soul of your O. Henry character to capture the most important prayer you have for any one person in your character’s life.

Find the person who you yearn to help the most.
Find the reason you believe they deserve help.
Find the words to make who’s listening feel your true heart.
Add a piece of Creative Communication so you can fill-in any missing pieces, tastes, knowings … to fully speak all of your soul.
Set-up a camera to record.
When you can feel the taste of who you’re praying to inside the camera lens … pray with all your heart, knowing if it’s true your prayer will be heard, believed, and granted.
Share your video - using your character’s name (and O. Henry story) as the title.

Graveyard Echoes

Deacon Taylor

I belonged to the church,
And to the party of prohibition;
And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.
In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,
For every noon for thirty years,
I slipped behind the prescription partition
In Trainor’s drug store
And poured a generous drink
From the bottle marked “Spiritus frumenti.”

Sam Hookey

I ran away from home with the circus,
Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,
The lion tamer.
One time, having starved the lions
For more than a day,
I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus
And Leo and Gypsy.
Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,
And killed me.
On entering these regions
I met a shadow who cursed me,
And said it served me right. . . .
It was Robespierre!

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Let’s continue our celebration of O. Henry’s Full House (1952) with The Clarion Call - directed by Henry Hathaway, starring Dale Robertson and Richard Widmark.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 12:01:10 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + March’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nightmares do something to us. They leave something behind.

Dreams open doors and possibilities. Tastes we never considered possible.

This month we’re gifting our transformational growth with the ability to live through our character nightmares and character dreamscapes.

Up next, The Nightmare/Dreamscape Etudes.

This month we’ve infused fantasy and nightmare scenario “button-pushers” into the world around us - and crafted a conveyor belt to move us through the full experience.

This week we’re meeting our preparation with the willingness to surrender/accept whatever comes our way.

Etudes are about living as the character.

No matter what happens, the deal is we stay in character and experience life as the character.

Completely.

Totally.

Sure we have an idea, a setup, of how we want an Etude to progress.

Etudes are there to answer questions. To gift us with knowing through actual experience.

We want those knowings. We want things as actors from our work, sure.

The challenge to release guiding our work, to accept everything as the character, is why we prepare so meticulously.

Why we think through ways to ensure our conveyor belt will carry us and do all the work of being in control.

We care mightily about the value of our Etude.

But for an Etude to mirror life … to give us a visceral, experiential knowing … it can’t be “rehearsed.”

Just like in life we make plans, but once it starts, it is real life.

Surprising, uncontrollable. Something to react to and deal with as best you can.

Always as the character.

Never as the actor.

Even if that means pushing back against the setup and world you created as the actor because you need to, or want to, as the character.

When the Etude is over remember to fulfill your Rehearsal Bargain by pouring out your experiences - the discoveries & challenges - into a Rehearsal Report.

Take time between the Nightmare Etude and Fantasy Etudes to learn from your work.

Make choices to set yourself (and environment) up with even deeper levels of permission, freedom, surrender and acceptance.

Gift your growth by learning from each (Nightmare or Fantasy) Etude in order to live more fully and freely in the next.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

March’s Mainstage Project

After reading all of these short stories by O. Henry - step away for a day.

Your character will be the one most living in your soul after that full day is up.

This month, please Creatively Communicate what only you can taste of the heart/soul connection you feel to your character.

Find the image that captures the connection.
Find the song that captures the connection.
Find the object (one you can actually touch vs. discover online or see behind glass in a museum) that captures the connection.
Find the poem that captures the connection.
Create an original piece of Creative Communication that captures the connection - adding/expanding on the forms of expression listed above.

Graveyard Echoes

Justice Arnett

It is true, fellow citizens,
That my old docket lying there for years
On a shelf above my head and over
The seat of justice, I say it is true
That docket had an iron rim
Which gashed my baldness when it fell—
(Somehow I think it was shaken loose
By the heave of the air all over town
When the gasoline tank at the canning works
Blew up and burned Butch Weldy)—
But let us argue points in order,
And reason the whole case carefully:
First I concede my head was cut,
But second the frightful thing was this:
The leaves of the docket shot and showered
Around me like a deck of cards
In the hands of a sleight of hand performer.
And up to the end I saw those leaves
Till I said at last, “Those are not leaves,
Why, can’t you see they are days and days
And the days and days of seventy years?
And why do you torture me with leaves
And the little entries on them?

Aner Clute

Over and over they used to ask me,
While buying the wine or the beer,
In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,
Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived
How I happened to lead the life,
And what was the start of it.
Well, I told them a silk dress,
And a promise of marriage from a rich man—
(It was Lucius Atherton).
But that was not really it at all.
Suppose a boy steals an apple
From the tray at the grocery store,
And they all begin to call him a thief,
The editor, minister, judge, and all the people—
“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes
And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread
Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.
It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple
That makes the boy what he is.

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Let’s begin our celebration of O. Henry’s Full House (1952) with the film’s first short story - The Cop and the Anthem, starring Marilyn Monroe and Charles Laughton.

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 12:01:02 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + March’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nightmares do something to us. They leave something behind.

Dreams open doors and possibilities. Tastes we never considered possible.

This month we’re gifting our transformational growth with the ability to live through our character nightmares and character dreamscapes.

Up next, The Nightmare/Dreamscape Conveyor Belt.

Last week we infused the power of our button-pushers (pieces of creative communication that capture each fantasy and nightmare scenario) into the world around us.

Now let’s order our 10 atmospheric tastes into a sequence that maximizes the nightmare/fantasy feel.

If you were to be lead through all 10 atmospheres/environments/button pushers one after the other … how could they be ordered in such a way to heighten your belief of being in a nightmare/fantasy? Embrace a sequence that makes things feel out of your control.

Next, come up with a way to be pulled from one to the other - moving through all 10 fantasy/nightmare tastes … without having to do anything “as an actor.”

The power of the Nightmare/Fantasy Etude lies in being able to stay fully and totally in character from moment one until the Etude concludes. No exceptions. All in.

We need to think of how to set it all up so there won’t be things pulling you out of character.

The goal is to remove moments where you need to be “responsible” in order for things to work as intended.

We want to take out the actor … leaving our character to live.

It’s about building something you can trust to pull you forward, to move you from place to place.

Remember, we never do an Etude more than once so be mindful not to rehearse your setup. You do, however, want to taste-test it ever so slightly … just enough to know you’ll be able to let go and trust the “conveyor belt” you’ve set up for yourself.

You know you’re ready when there’s no work to do.

When you, the actor, can disappear.

Simply by entering into the space, by experiencing it, your instrument is ignited with a visceral taste, a seductive shiver, of the nightmare/fantasy flavor … and now ready to be pulled towards each new taste without ever stepping out of character.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

March’s Mainstage Project

After reading all of these short stories by O. Henry - step away for a day.

Your character will be the one most living in your soul after that full day is up.

This month, please Creatively Communicate what only you can taste of the heart/soul connection you feel to your character.

Find the image that captures the connection.
Find the song that captures the connection.
Find the object (one you can actually touch vs. discover online or see behind glass in a museum) that captures the connection.
Find the poem that captures the connection.
Create an original piece of Creative Communication that captures the connection - adding/expanding on the forms of expression listed above.

Graveyard Echoes

Margaret Fuller Slack

I would have been as great as George Eliot
But for an untoward fate.
For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
Chin resting on hand, and deep—set eyes—
Gray, too, and far-searching.
But there was the old, old problem:
Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?
Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,
Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,
And I married him, giving birth to eight children,
And had no time to write.
It was all over with me, anyway,
When I ran the needle in my hand
While washing the baby’s things,
And died from lock—jaw, an ironical death.
Hear me, ambitious souls,
Sex is the curse of life.

“Ace” Shaw

I never saw any difference
Between playing cards for money
And selling real estate,
Practicing law, banking, or anything else.
For everything is chance.
Nevertheless
Seest thou a man diligent in business?
He shall stand before Kings!

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

Here’s one more TCM introduction to get us ready for O. Henry’s Full House (1952).

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 13:00:10 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + March’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nightmares do something to us. They leave something behind.

Dreams open doors and possibilities. Tastes we never considered possible.

This month we’re gifting our transformational growth with the ability to live through our character nightmares and character dreamscapes.

Up next, The Nightmare/Dreamscape Environment.

Last week we whittled our fantasy and nightmare scenarios into pieces of Creative Communication.

Now let’s do the work to ignite those tastes and bring them alive in the world around us.

Work with one piece of Creative Communication at a time …

Allowing the impossible or fantastical to lead your imagination, imagine your entire space - the whole world around you - transforming and evolving until it becomes something that pushes on your buttons with the same concentrated taste of your Creative Communication.

You’ve found what you’re after when what you imagine takes on a life of its own. When the space around you “does the work” (in its own way) previously done by the piece of Creative Communication.

Next, informed by your discoveries, and working one “button-pushing environment” at a time, play with ways to tinker and transform your actual, physical space with real-life adjustments and additions that similarly affect your instrument.

Taste-test your environment ever so slightly as you transform it … enough to know the space now does the work of easily and immediately igniting your instrument … enough to know you can trust, let go, and continue tinkering elsewhere.

You know you’re set when there’s no more work to do.

You, the actor, can disappear.

You have shaped your environment so simply by being in the space and experiencing the world around you, your instrument ignites with a visceral taste, a seductive shiver, of each nightmare/fantasy world.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

March’s Mainstage Project

After reading all of these short stories by O. Henry - step away for a day.

Your character will be the one most living in your soul after that full day is up.

This month, please Creatively Communicate what only you can taste of the heart/soul connection you feel to your character.

Find the image that captures the connection.
Find the song that captures the connection.
Find the object (one you can actually touch vs. discover online or see behind glass in a museum) that captures the connection.
Find the poem that captures the connection.
Create an original piece of Creative Communication that captures the connection - adding/expanding on the forms of expression listed above.

Graveyard Echoes

Dorcas Gustine

I was not beloved of the villagers,
But all because I spoke my mind,
And met those who transgressed against me
With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing
Nor secret griefs nor grudges.
That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised,
Who hid the wolf under his cloak,
Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly.
It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth
And fight him openly, even in the street,
Amid dust and howls of pain.
The tongue may be an unruly member—
But silence poisons the soul.
Berate me who will—I am content.

Harold Arnett

I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,
Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,
Weak from the noon-day heat.
A church bell sounded mournfully far away,
I heard the cry of a baby,
And the coughing of John Yarnell,
Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,
Then the violent voice of my wife:
“Watch out, the potatoes are burning!”
I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust.
I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . .
Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again.
Too late! Thus I came here,
With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs,
Though one must breathe
Of what use is it To rid one’s self of the world,
When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life?

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 13:00:23 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + March’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nightmares do something to us. They leave something behind.

Dreams open doors and possibilities. Tastes we never considered possible.

This month we’re gifting our transformational growth with the ability to live through our character nightmares and character dreamscapes.

Up first, The 10 Scenarios.

Begin by specifying 10 nightmare scenarios for your character.

Whittle each nightmare down its most concentrated core … a flash of a moment carrying the pure taste of that scenario.

Next repeat the process, now specifying 10 fantasy scenarios for your character.

Whittle each fantasy down to its most concentrated core … a flash of a moment carrying the pure taste of each scenario.

Finally, translate each (concentrated) taste into a piece of Creative Communication.

Use movement, poetry, music, object, imagery to find the click of what will push your buttons, play your keys, affect you.

You know you’ve found your “button-pusher” when there no work left to do.

You, the actor, can disappear.

Simply by tasting your own Creative Communication, by experiencing it, your instrument ignites with a visceral taste, a seductive shiver, of your nightmare/fantasy scenario.

How It Works

This Spring we’re delving into the works of O. Henry … unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.

O. Henry Classic Short Stories

March’s Mainstage Project

After reading all of these short stories by O. Henry - step away for a day.

Your character will be the one most living in your soul after that full day is up.

This month, please Creatively Communicate what only you can taste of the heart/soul connection you feel to your character.

Find the image that captures the connection.
Find the song that captures the connection.
Find the object (one you can actually touch vs. discover online or see behind glass in a museum) that captures the connection.
Find the poem that captures the connection.
Create an original piece of Creative Communication that captures the connection - adding/expanding on the forms of expression listed above.

Graveyard Echoes

The Town Marshal

The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal
When the saloons were voted out,
Because when I was a drinking man,
Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede
At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.
And they wanted a terrible man,
Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,
And a hater of saloons and drinkers,
To keep law and order in the village.
And they presented me with a loaded cane
With which I struck Jack McGuire
Before he drew the gun with which he killed me.
The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain
To hang him, for in a dream
I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen
And told him the whole secret story.
Fourteen years were enough for killing me.

Jack McGuire

They would have lynched me
Had I not been secretly hurried away
To the jail at Peoria.
And yet I was going peacefully home,
Carrying my jug, a little drunk,
When Logan, the marshal, halted me
Called me a drunken hound and shook me
And, when I cursed him for it, struck me
With that Prohibition loaded cane—
All this before I shot him.
They would have hanged me except for this:
My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land
Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,
And the judge was a friend of
Rhodes And wanted him to escape,
And Kinsey offered to quit on Rhodes
For fourteen years for me.
And the bargain was made.
I served my time
And learned to read and write.

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River.
(click here)
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges.
(click here)

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 13:00:13 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + February’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

What is an Etude?

Knowing comes from experience.

From having been there.

When you’ve sat on the edge of the pier watching the sunset and you’re asked what it was like … you can speak from the contours, the subtleties, the harmonies of the experience.

There isn’t a Daily Body need to describe it “correctly.”

You simply get to speak from what you know.

Etudes are a decision, a mentality, to spend time completely in character. No matter what the world around you tastes like or surprises you with … you remain “all-in.”

This month, we’re going to apply the power of the Etude to the development of your Spoon River character.

Up next, The Town Hall Etude.

Begin by finding an issue in your character’s “community” you’d most want to help affect change. Something you’d stand up for in the Town Hall.

You now have a unique perspective as a Spoon River character, having lived and died.

You now know what truly matters.

How your community can be better served.

Embrace the issue when it finds you. Sharpen with specificity by envisioning what success - what change - could feel like. Craft a scenario where you can make a real difference - affecting real change - while living fully, at all times, as your Spoon River character. Ensure your crafting has you interact with at least one other person, at some point during your Etude. Someone involved in affecting change. Someone who has no relationship with you, the actor, in life.

The Etude begins once you step outside. Remain fully in character throughout.

It should last for at least one hour. When it’s over, write down any questions/unknowns that shows up for 10 unfiltered and uninterrupted minutes, then “flip the page” and do the same for any knowings/discoveries now finding you.

Find a free-flow to the work of capturing your discoveries/challenges. Anything that shows up is crucial to capture. Let it all pour out onto the page.

There is no such thing as a right or wrong discovery or challenge. Capture them all.

Etude work is the essence of living freely within form.

The instance your Etude begins, any preparation, including these parameters I’m sending your way, should immediately give way to the priority of living freely.

Always accept what is happening as more than enough.

How It Works

February’s Mainstage Project

This month, Creatively Communicate what only you can taste of what it will be like to be you at your oldest, wisest creative self.

Find an image to ignite that taste.
Find a song to ignite that taste.
Find an object (one you can actually touch vs. discover online or see behind glass in a museum) to ignite that taste.
Find a poem to ignite that taste.
Create an original piece of Creative Communication to ignite that taste - expanding on the forms of expression listed above.

Graveyard Echoes

Flossie Cabanis

From Bindle’s opera house in the village
To Broadway is a great step.
But I tried to take it, my ambition fired
When sixteen years of age,
Seeing “East Lynne,” played here in the village
By Ralph Barrett, the coming
Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.
True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,
When Ralph disappeared in New York,
Leaving me alone in the city—
But life broke him also.
In all this place of silence
There are no kindred spirits.
How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos
Of these quiet fields
And read these words.

Johnnie Sayre

Father, thou canst never know
The anguish that smote my heart
For my disobedience, the moment I felt
The remorseless wheel of the engine
Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.
As they carried me to the home of widow Morris
I could see the school-house in the valley
To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.
I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness—
And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!
From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness.
Thou wert wise to chisel for me:
“Taken from the evil to come.”

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River (click here).
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges. (click here).

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment

Rehearsal Playground

Sat, 18 Feb 2023 13:01:23 GMT

Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.

All subscribers have a new Weekly Character Challenge + February’s Mainstage Rehearsal Project waiting below!

How It Works

Your Weekly Character Challenge

What is an Etude?

Knowing comes from experience.

From having been there.

When you’ve sat on the edge of the pier watching the sunset and you’re asked what it was like … you can speak from the contours, the subtleties, the harmonies of the experience.

There isn’t a Daily Body need to describe it “correctly.”

You simply get to speak from what you know.

Etudes are a decision, a mentality, to spend time completely in character. No matter what the world around you tastes like or surprises you with … you remain “all-in.”

This month, we’re going to apply the power of the Etude to the development of your Spoon River character.

Up next, The Meal Etude.

Feeding the body of your Spoon River character.

Something so simple, so fundamental, so foundational to daily life.

Something we’re now adding to our base of character experience …

A new texture of character knowing, fueling a deeper feeling of character confidence.

The Etude begins the moment you leave home to secure ingredients for your meal.

Once you’ve got your ingredients, prepare and then eat your meal however/wherever feels right as your character.

When clean-up is complete, release and capture the experience by writing down any questions/unknowns that show up for 10 unfiltered and uninterrupted minutes, then “flip the page” and do the same for any knowings/discoveries now finding you.

Find a free-flow to the work of capturing your discoveries/challenges. Anything that shows up is crucial to capture. Let it all pour out onto the page.

There is no such thing as a wrong or right discovery or challenge. Capture it all.

Etude work is the essence of living freely within form.

The instance your Etude begins, any preparation, including these parameters I’m sending your way, should immediately give way to the priority of living freely.

Always accept what is happening as more than enough.

Always accept whatever happens - all of it - as the character.

Release any idea of interruptions. Surrender simply to the unknowns of living life.

It is impossible to be interfered with in this work.

It’s your preparation, your meal, your tastebuds, your character.

Your gift to yourself … getting to spend time alive within your Spoon River body.

How It Works

February’s Mainstage Project

This month, Creatively Communicate what only you can taste of what it will be like to be you at your oldest, wisest creative self.

Find an image to ignite that taste.
Find a song to ignite that taste.
Find an object (one you can actually touch vs. discover online or see behind glass in a museum) to ignite that taste.
Find a poem to ignite that taste.
Create an original piece of Creative Communication to ignite that taste - expanding on the forms of expression listed above.

Graveyard Echoes

Doc Hill

I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night,
Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
Do you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,
And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able
To hold to the railing of the new life
When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave,
Hiding herself, and her grief!

Andy The Night-Watch

In my Spanish cloak,
And old slouch hat,
And overshoes of felt,
And Tyke, my faithful dog,
And my knotted hickory cane,
I slipped about with a bull’s-eye lantern
From door to door on the square,
As the midnight stars wheeled round,
And the bell in the steeple murmured
From the blowing of the wind;
And the weary steps of old Doc Hill
Sounded like one who walks in sleep,
And a far-off rooster crew.
And now another is watching Spoon River
As others watched before me.
And here we lie, Doc Hill and I
Where none breaks through and steals,
And no eye needs to guard.

Play Along With Your Own Spring Character …

Read Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River (click here).
Choose your Spoon River character or work with one of the echoes above.
Invest in your character over the Spring with our weekly work.
Share your discoveries and challenges. (click here).

Cinema Elysium Presents … The Saturday Matinee

ALL MONTH ON SUBSTACK

I’ll be providing feedback for paid members posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.

Leave a comment