Author: mark
Teachers Monarchs and a sound of teaching
press release, Teachers Monarchs and a sound of teaching at Cathouse Proper, 2021
The teacher had a butterfly on a string. He would bring it to class weighing down the end of the string under his stack of notes. It would flut around and then sit patiently on the back of an empty chair, honing its wings, slow—the pace of breathing. There is no breathing in class so this was the class’s breath. Then, at a moment when the teacher picked up his notes to remind himself of something it would float up, pulling its string around the semicircle of chairs, leaving a loop in its slack around each student. By the time it came around, 8, 11 or 15 loops draping off each desk, lines over notebooks, across course-packets, a folded arm, a pen, in some places hanging down near the floor, in some places falling over a shoulder or missing a desk entirely and across two knees… By that time, the end of the string would be clearly swept from the teacher’s desk and the butterfly would settle down again on the back of the same chair, hone its wings and breathe again for the class. The students would take each loop of string and rest it on the crown of their heads, so that when their heads would sway the butterfly would beat its wings a bit faster. At the end of the class, the teacher would ask for the end of the string back, collecting a loop from each student as they said farewell. With it all coiled in hand he would sit for a minute in the room alone with his butterfly, breathe deep and glance once more to the side to synchronize his breath with the butterfly’s.
Another class would be another dance, the butterfly always lifting off at the moment the teacher reached again for his notes. In the slack of its leash, the butterfly would trace the breeze, twitches, glances, movements of bodies, not-thoughts, and everything else that happened in the class except for the learning.
Teachers Monarchs and a sound of teaching brings together a group of performative sculptures and works on paper by Tim Simonds. “Streamers” move to the ambient environment and in the presence of bodies around them. Arrangements of “Teachers Monarchs” rest on a gathering of educational tables. The works are on view by daylight. The tables are borrowed and acquired from Starlight Preparatory, JEI Learning Center Bensonhurst, and a day care center in Rock Tavern, NY.
The Brooklyn Rail, “Art in Transit,”
Artillery Magazine, “A Gentle Pulpit” by Peter Brock
Teachers Monarchs and a sound of teaching
Tongue and Cheek Episode 25
A Sound of Teaching—with Phil Timberlake— Broadcast on Montez Press Radio, Saturday, November 21st, 2020 11AM–12:00, Broadcast on WGXC, Tuesday December 1st, 2020, 2PM–3PM
A Sound of Teaching—with Phil Timberlake— Conversations with Phil Timberlake, actor and teacher of voice and speech for actors, leading us through exercises inspired by Roy Hart, Catherine Fitzmaurice, Arthur Lessac and Kristin Linklater and leading him through how he visually imagines a moment of his teaching.
Joined by Phil Timberlake
Phil Timberlake is an Associate Professor of Voice and Speech at DePaul University’s Theatre School. He is an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and holds a Diploma as a Roy Hart Voice Teacher. Phil has been a Fulbright Fellow to France, and is currently an ensemble member at Chicago’s Lifeline Theatre.
(Vocalise)
Tongue and Cheek Episode 24
Vocospherics, Broadcast on Montez Press Radio, Saturday, October 31st, 2020, 11AM–12, Broadcast on WGXC, Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020, 2PM–3PM
Vocospherics— Modulatet speech sounds to help diminish Covid’s spread? Thinking aloud around aerosolizations of voice — and what happens in the infrazone bettween mouth and mask.
(Vocalize)
Tongue and Cheek Episode 23
Mimicry of, Broadcast on Montez Press Radio, Saturday, September 26th, 2020 11AM–12:00, Broadcast on WGXC, Tuesday, October 6th, 2020, 2PM–3PM
Mimicry of—To get used to the quality of speaking to yourself, sympathizing space and drawing the perimeter of the room with breath, hiking with Lia, decide what your feet are in, Bella reading some notes from Roger Caillois on Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia, Arthur Russell.
(Socialise)
Tongue and Cheek Episode 22
Liquid Breath, Broadcast on WGXC, Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020, 2PM–3PM
Liquid Breath—A note on liquid breath and a selection of breathing exercises from past broadcasts.
(Vocalise)
Tongue and Cheek Episode 21
Crowds, Broadcast on Montez Press Radio, Saturday, April 25th, 2020, 11AM–12PM, Broadcast on WGXC, Tuesday, May 5th, 2020, 3PM–4PM
Crowds
Missing crowds, fractured voices and bodies, synchronous and asynchronous crowds, eyes and voice tracing in two directions at once, sitcom without a laugh track, quilts and syncopating sentences, crowding ourselves, “sensation already overfull,” Silvesterklausen walking with bells from house to house in the Appenzell from Thomas Lüchinger’s Guets Neus, effects of alcohol on the sound of a crowd, making a crowd of the body.
Tongue and Cheek Episode 20
Windows Mirrors Floors, Broadcast on Montez Press Radio, Saturday, March 28th, 2020, 11AM–12PM, Broadcast on WGXC, Tuesday, April 7th, 2020, 3PM–4PM
Windows Mirrors Floors
Hardwood, its pores, chatoyance, spalting, and checking, defining exercises, dancing in and out of windows, finding and holding a personal horizon-line, tracing one’s profile in the mirror, “aee…I,” “hey,” “no, no, no,” conversations in the mouth, wide and narrow soap swings (“ka”-“ta” / “ga”-“lu”), putting the horizon on the mirror. Handel’s “Water Music,” Canned Heat, Carol Douglas, Joaquín Sabina and Rocío Dúrcal.
(Vocalise)
Tongue and Cheek Episode 19
Resonators—with Zack Winokur, Broadcast on WGXC, Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020, 2PM–3PM, Broadcast on Montez Press Radio, Saturday, July 25th, 2020, 11AM–12PM
Resonators—with Zack Winokur—Releasing tension—breathing into your hands, visceral sphere, floating (in your breath and liquid-air around you), pulling a string of “tzss” out from your mouth, hanging from the ceiling like a puppet, mouth at the back of your head. Rooting (pushing down into the ground) and uprooting (pushing up against your own body) “see out of you back eyes…this is you back nose, smell out of your back nose…this is your back mouth. I want you to first taste out of back tongue” vocalizing out of your back mouth. Pushing on your fingers with your eyes. Finding the heaviness of limbs. Rudder. Elbow as the pelvis. Standing close to an opera singer. An opera singer’s bodily control (finding space) and inability to control. Singing with and without a pelvis. Singing through a straw.
Joined by Zack Winokur
Zack Winokur is a stage director, choreographer, and dancer. In 2017 Winokur, founded AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), which Winokur co-directs with composer Matthew Aucoin. AMOC is an ensemble of singers, musicians, and dancers committed to creating a body of new, discipline-colliding music-theater works that range from operatic stage work to creatively curated chamber events. Future highlights include directing Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Santa Fe Opera, and a newly devised piece in collaboration with AMOC and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, which tours the Bay Area, the Krannert Center, and comes to the Met Museum next fall. Highlights from last season include The Black Clown, an adaptation of the Langston Hughes poem starring Davóne Tines with music by Michael Schachter, at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center and the American Repertory Theater; Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, with music by Tyshawn Sorey, text by Claudia Rankine, and starring Julia Bullock at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a new production of Hans Werner Henze’s El Cimarrón starring Davóne Tines, also at the Met Museum; and a new piece for the Los Angeles Dance Project at the Luma Foundation in Arles, France.
(Vocalise)