To cut/move (this is in process): Where, When, Contact

Dates and locations have varied, but for now I've settled on Saturdays at 1, next one on October 25th, in the Rose Garden of Prospect Park. (It's those three concrete circles that were once fountains, in the woods near the top of the park, near Flatbush Ave, above the Veil of Cashmere.) This might be the last one of the season, as the winter is coming. I may turn to library games, or exclusively running games because integrating writing and other art creations are a bit tougher when it's colder. 

If you have trouble finding us, want to RSVP, or have any questions, feel free to email me at cgziemba@gmail.com. Also, please email if you're running late. 

It's free, but I wouldn't mind a donation, or we tend to go to Fiona's Bar after, where you could buy me a beer. I usually put it on nonsensenyc.com (which has the most amazing listing of strange and wonderful events in NYC, I can't recommend it enough) and have been testing out platforms to promote it: instagram, Luma, WithFriends, Eventbrite. But marketing is very very much not my skill set, so please feel free to bring friends. 

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Also, it's been both kid and dog friendly, and to folk who aren't athletically inclined, and even to folk who haven't experimented with poetics and play in a while.  It adapts based on who shows up. Finally, bring water, and shoes you can scamper around in. Optional to bring is a notebook if you're partial to yours, chalk, and a balloon (balloons are just fun.)

What's in the Pages Below

I've written a lot trying to explain all this, and it's broken up into hopefully manageable chunks in the pages below. Some of these pages explore theories of play and the overall philosophy underlying this project. Other pages explore the various methods I've been building out for creating games, and the different genres that I've been stealing from to make these games. You're absolutely invited, without having read any of this, to just show up some Saturday at 1 to play, but I do invite you to read some, as much or as little or as much as you like.

Some of it is very good, with one caveat: writing is a recursive process. It's a game where you take a step and then fix that step, and then take another step and then fix the first two, then another step and you're fixing three, and on like that. By the time you're taken ten steps you've fixed fifty five, and I know that my repairs haven't kept up with my progress. I had a vision, but one that is evolving, so it's hard to keep up with the work of clearly articulating it.

At the very bottom of this, below all the links, you'll see a bit of my plan for the next session, though they don't really get followed. This is built around indeterminacy and adaptation, and each day is built around whoever arrives.

More notes

talk about what was played, then play . The game can come from  

 and we just run around a bit making up and playing games. The games we play can come from wherever, from writing and dance and 

These are practiced by (fix this opening clause)

inviting whoever I can to some spot in a park, usually Prospect Park in Brooklyn, usually on Saturdays around noonish (when the weather is nice), and I start by explaining the three efforts. 

1) transform the audience into the performers into the artist, 

2) import athletic movements into various art forms,

3) play rule creation games.

then we talk and think about games and free moving rules. And then we play some games. The games come from many different genres: running games, writing games, meditation games, sketching, theater, improv, clowning, dancing, games mixing all these games, game creation games. Anything really, as long as you're moving and creating rules. Then we think about what was played, then create new games, then play a few more, then think about what was created and played, and then create and play more. Then other things happen.

Calvinball Creations is a game of creation, movement, and analysis.

Creation, movement, and analysis. It's an opportunity to practice these three things, and put them into conversation with each other, and perhaps afterward, deepen one's experience of creation, movement, and analysis.

Every audience member is a performer, and also the artist. All the art includes physical movement. Everything in it is about making up rules. 

Experimental 

The purpose of Calvinball Variations is to create forms of play

Calvinball Variations is a game whose purpose is to create play forms

Calvinball  Variations is a game of play form creation 

Calvinball Variations is played by creating new ways to play

 Calvinball Variations is a game of play creation, play movement, and play analysis. 

CV is played by using movement and analysis to create new forms of play. 

CV is play analysis. 

To start from a universal principle, we're all just making it up as we go. This is simple truth, but obvious. The moment we recognize it feels beautiful, and it is, but it's also boring. It feels transcendent, and it is, but it's also common. Existence is play without purpose, and knowing this is essential, but the knowledge itself is strangely uninteresting. 

Practicing this knowledge and trying to make it interesting is the central effort of this funny little project. If all I did was tell you to play, then it's not helpful, and it's bad art. If I invite you to play then the process does start and may be helpful, but still very much isn't good art. However, if I can bring us together to examine the contours of movement and creation, and to practice the art of making things up, and to elicit (summon?) your ideas about ways to make things up, and see what you can do with them... 

then this is very interesting, and helpful in ways that I still don't understand. It's slowly becoming an art. 

Encountering this funny little project

These are practiced by (fix this opening clause)

inviting whoever I can to some spot in a park, usually Prospect Park in Brooklyn, usually on Saturdays around noonish (when the weather is nice), and I start by explaining the three efforts. 

1) transform the audience into the performers into the artist, 

2) import athletic movements into various art forms,

3) play rule creation games.

then we talk and think about games and free moving rules. And then we play some games. The games come from many different genres: running games, writing games, meditation games, sketching, theater, improv, clowning, dancing, games mixing all these games, game creation games. Anything really, as long as you're moving and creating rules. Then we think about what was played, then create new games, then play a few more, then think about what was created and played, and then create and play more. Then other things happen.

At the end we have orange slices.

*to cut: and after that, you may find that we may find yourself, on occasion, in strange ways, exploring the movement and contours of the taste of orange slices, and finding new interest. Once we learn how to put forth these efforts, we may find them meaningful and useful to on occasion in our lives, (Much of this is appropriated from the old Calvin and Hobbs comic strip, specifically the episodes where he plays Calvinball, a game that you make up as you go along, with the only rule being that you can't play the same way twice. My little play idea is an attempt to explore what this means, and to find ways of having it live in this world, because the simple truth that we're all just making it up as we go along is, in truth, rather complicated.)