It's semester two, when we're focusing on creating an immerstive, community-centered adaptation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Our clowns walk, talk, dance, and sing. But can they read? Can they work with text?

Class, of course, starts as usual. More naturally than ever, tennis balls, scarves, and conversations bounce around the room as we juggle both objects and partners. Somebody says that last week everyone started with scarves, so this week everyone is starting with tennis balls. With the usual tunes playing, pairs and trios invent juggling games. Some of us can even juggle with one hand now--wowzers.

Mycah's writing something on the board... 8 "beats" and when he's done writing, he says, "Pack it away!"

Beat 1 -- But I Love Him, Daddy

Beat 2 -- Let's Blow this Popsicle Stand

Beat 3 -- The Boy is Mine

Beat 4 -- Love Juice in My Eye

Beat 5 -- Dance! Asshead! Dance!

Beat 6 -- The Polyamory Police

Beat 7 -- Mommy Make it Better

Beat 8 -- The Big Fin...

Everyone takes a walk. Obviously, a game emerges. Clapping, dancing, waving arms, wide-stepped walking, uppity shoulders... even when the song changes, they keep it going.

Mycah challenges everyone to dance with another. After a while, he further challenges them to find their signature move. And when the song cuts again, we stop ourselves from getting cut off. Keep it going, keep it going. We have to loosen it, don't lose our grip on it, keep it moving. As the room gets warm, we let our signature moves go back out into the sea from which they came... and keep walking. Now we see. The room, some new faces--huh? Huh? Huh? Maybe we should take a picture -- tschk! Tschk! While we do that, we stay connected to our feet and HOLD.

Mycah will give the room a text--the beats from earlier--but we will play the games we were playing and try to make the text EMERGE. GAZE. BREATH. GESTURE. SOUND.

We go around the room as each pair works with, "But I Love Him Daddy!" We don't forget our feet or our eyes. Some people's last semester clown identities appear in their voice, actions, gaze, breath, or gesture. We find new partners, whoever's gaze catches our eyes. Someone we've wanted to work with and have not had the chance to yet. In this transition, even in the suspension, we stay alive. Expansion of the mask exists with the full body.

"Let's blow this popsicle stand!" People are getting really crazy and really sweaty. Some pairs get dancey, some singy, some just walky. But constantly we try to see what's there with us and the text. "The Boy is Mine." We are trying to find a sense of one-ness in our games. The text is the seed of something--use it as a prompt to find something else that's there. Infuse the state, and the text will come from the game. Each pair tilts out and says the text to us watching. 

"Love Juice in My Eye." We're looking for ways we like to create. When we explode the texts, we find risks. When taken, we find that one-ness. Once we get to "Dance! Asshead! Dance!" we split up into two groups of five. The last two texts will be group songs. 

We are honing in on our capacity and ability to make work through the inspiration of the text or the game.

Each group performs their song. When we circle up, we ask each other what that experience was like, from the outside and from the inside. Then there is the little chart/list/map/thing of what we are really doing. Mycah's about to be real explicit with the way he's thinking from an outside perspective as we learn what it is to make work. It starts with self, who we know we are or who we're working on being. Then we see another person, for who they are, what they are, and the form that they are. When that happens, that's non-duality, or oneness. This is the bedrock of this work. But you can also find the game first and layer into the text. Or we can make the text into a game. The ability to make a text or game makes or breaks that oneness. As the game changes, it can be a status game, or a conflict game, or a game of awareness. And that's great too. Sometimes something else gets into the state work, since it's not all 0s and 1s. The question we ask ourselves is, "Do I think it works?" What worked for us? Why? Once we have a thing, it sets, and a vocabulary emerges--a singular thing, a natural thing. We find it, we mine it, we debrief it, and we codify it. The spring emerges. 

What we just did is conversate from our framework. We debriefed. The group said or did this. Mycah said, "This is what I saw."

Then we ask someone else what they thought about what we just talked about. 

It's the wolf moon. We moon up and howl. AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

See yourself in class... raw and unedited... a TV show episode's worth of clowning around...