Praxis Theatre

Your process is showing: an introduction

(l-r) Mass [Cross-Section], Holy Vedas [Brain Scan], Savannah [Cellular Scan]. Click to enlarge

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by Shira Leuchter

I am going to try a little something here. It’s not often that I have the opportunity to unite my practices of performance-making and fine-art-making, but the Praxis blog seems like the perfect place to give it a go on a regular basis.

So, how am I going to do this? Well, the questions I’ve chosen to explore are: what does process look like? What kind of image would I make or select if I had to find a way to visually represent a process of creating performance?

Here’s what I’m going to do. It’ll be en experiment that I’ll share with you every month, right here. It’ll be a personal exploration that I’d love you to witness, respond to and try to figure out alongside me.

I’m going to sit in on some rehearsals. I’m going to watch all sorts of processes. I’m going to profusely thank those who let me in to their rehearsal rooms to observe what they do and how they make their work. Then I’m going to make something as a response to that particular act of creation. It could be any form of visual representation – a painting, a collage, a dress, a meal – I’ll let what I see determine what I make.

One Block - Click to enlarge

I’ll try my best to choose work that will be in performance close to the posting dates, so that you’ll have the opportunity to actually see the piece.

I know that this work will be personal to me, that you’ll have to see these processes through my eyes. My big hope is that, by taking a close look at How We Make Things, we can start a conversation about how different ways of art-making converge and deviate.

One last thing: I’m not going to write much about what I saw and how I came to make what I’ve made. Sometimes I may not write anything at all. But I will always tell you what materials I’ve used and what piece I’m responding to.
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Images:

• The Room asked me to make pieces for The Red Machine as a response to the brain’s temporal lobes, commonly thought of as the religious centre of the brain. The top images are personal photographs with found images (2009).
• A work-in-progress piece responding to One Block. I’ll probably keep adding to this as the process continues. Encaustic and oil with found archival photographs and images donated by anonymous Toronto residents.

Shira Leuchter makes performance stuff and other art stuff. She is currently working with UnSpun Theatre on a new piece that will be performed as part of Harbourfront’s HATCH program this April. She collects all of her shallowest thoughts here.