There’s no need to do research or extra reading to enjoy one of our shows, but our creative process often leads us down interesting paths — and we want to share some of that inspiration and research with you!
For us, the process often starts with a set of questions to explore, a couple ‘anchors’ that will help us bring those questions to life on stage, a structure to explore in, and then additional research that branches out in different directions. Here are some of the things we enjoyed digging into for Pity+Fear (a travesty).
Questions
- What does it mean to change, to discover new identities, or let go of old identities?
- What is the role of narrative in maintaining personal & public identity?
- What happens to the old story?
Anchors
There were a few ‘seeds’ that came together as inspiration for writing this show in the first place:
- The myths of Agraulos (and other characters surrounding her)
- Aristotle’s Poetics (where we get the title Pity+Fear)
- Personal stories of Miriam and Josie
Structure
- “One woman” monologue/concert show, with integrated music
- At least one musician, who interacts with the monologue, breaking the “one woman” form
- Mix of external references (myth, queer theory, etc) and personal stories
Research
- Buntport Theater’s The Rembrandt Room…
- “…when time turns over…”
- “When did you put the frame on your life?”
- “Am I perfect at being real?”
- testing the mechanics (to get under, you have to lose) by Laura Ann Samuelson
- “When I made this, I thought it would be different.”
- “I’ve just been building all of these outsides in drag as insides, without considering, on a deeper level, what an outside is actually for.”
- Audre Lorde:
- Poetry is Not a Luxury
- “The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free.”
- “For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt…”
- Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
- Poetry is Not a Luxury
- Why Mammals are Called Mammals: Gender Politics in Eighteenth-Century Natural History by Londa Schiebinger
- SweetBitter Podcast (season 1 - Sappho)
- Talia Mae Bettcher, PhD…
- Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance
- When Selves Have Sex: What the Phenomenology of Trans Sexuality Can Teach About Sexual Orientation
- I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
- When Did We Become Cis? by Jules Gill-Peterson
- Truth Emerging from Her Well… by Jean-Léon Gérôme
- How the Technological Design of Facebook Homogenizes Identity and Limits Personal Representation by Benjamin Grosser
- Plato’s The Republic
- Natural Kinds ("Promiscuous Realism” is a great phrase)
- Heraclitus, fragments
- Sappho
- Swimming to Cambodia by Spalding Gray & Laurie Anderson (for structure)