{"id":397382,"date":"2010-03-06T15:32:10","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T20:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artscatter.com\/?p=7277"},"modified":"2010-03-06T15:32:10","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T20:32:10","slug":"the-meaning-or-not-of-tick-tack-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/397382","title":{"rendered":"The meaning (or not) of Tick Tack Type"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tick-cropped\"<\/p>\n

What’s it all about, Alfie?<\/p>\n

After a Friday evening of loosely organized chance in the company of Third Angle New Music Ensemble<\/a> (the program included Terry Riley<\/strong>’s endlessly mutable In C<\/em>; California composer Mark Applebaum<\/strong>’s similarly open-ended exploration of alternative musical “reading,” The Metaphysics of Notation<\/em>; and Portland composer David Schiff<\/strong>’s exhilaratingly jazz-charged Mountains\/ Rivers<\/em>, which takes inspiration from In C<\/em>) we’re feeling a bit unmoored.<\/p>\n

Since we’re in free-float anyway, this seems like a good time to check in on Imago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the terrific side benefits when Jerry Mouawad<\/strong> develops a new show is that he thinks long and hard about what he’s doing, and then he writes about it online. Anyone who wants to take a peek can get an inside look into one of Portland’s most fertile creative minds. Mouawad, Imago’s co-founder with Carol Triffle<\/strong>, spills his thoughts on the company blog<\/a>. The spilling isn’t always easy, because, ever aware of the virtues of theatrical suspense, Mouawad really wants to hold onto the beans.<\/p>\n

“I assume this blog is vague since I am not divulging any of the action,” he writes about his new show, Tick Tack Type.<\/em> “I apologize for this, but I am doing this for your sake (that is if you plan to see the work.) By discussing the action I am robbing you of the experience of it. What I see in an action may not be what you see. I can say this about Tick Tack Type<\/em>: in many ways it\u2019s about \u201cseeing\u201d or \u201cnot seeing.\u201d
\n<\/span>
\nOn Friday, in a post titled Finding Logic in the Non-logical<\/em>, he had some intriguing things to say about the continuing evolution of Tick Tack Type<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

Yesterday I blogged that I tried to dismantle any meaning when meaning began to arise in a scene in “Tick Tack Type.” I wrote that doing this was to free the play and not have it land in a didactic world. Today I will contradict my thinking saying that for every action in the play (or for most) I tried to find meaning in it.<\/p>\n

Is this a contradiction? Yes and no. I think it\u2019s a fine balance between an abstract work that has no means of a handle and an abstract work that resonates for audiences. I am not interested in pure abstraction; if I (were), I would imbed the work in pure movement and dance and not try to create theatre of it.<\/p>\n

… (F)or every action I tried to find meaning yet at the same time dismantle it. … In its simplest terms, when I had a character execute an action I tried to find one level or several of dramaturgical importance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And here, from Imago’s Web site, is what Tick Tack Type<\/em> is “about”:<\/p>\n

\n

Five men and four women are dropped from a chute into a stark empty room to discover themselves as participants in a strange typing academy. … Mouawad\u2019s characters search for ways to compete and survive under the rule of a tyrannical typing instructor played by artistic co-director Carol Triffle. … Mouawad has fashioned theatre without words to explore comedic and tragic drama. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sounds logical, no?<\/strong> Tick Tack Type<\/em> plays March 11-14 only, and tickets are free. Go to Imago’s Web site for information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s it all about, Alfie? After a Friday evening of loosely organized chance in the company of Third Angle New Music Ensemble (the program included Terry Riley’s endlessly mutable In C; California composer Mark Applebaum’s similarly open-ended exploration of alternative musical “reading,” The Metaphysics of Notation; and Portland composer David Schiff’s exhilaratingly jazz-charged Mountains\/ Rivers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}