11/14 workshop in minimum

Today, I went in alone and did a dialogue-writing workshop. The women and I began by discussing what it means to write dialogue -- convey in writing a conversation between two people without relying on description. All of the prompts to follow were restricted to written speech only, no narration.
The first warm-up prompt was short and silly: think of a person you know at this point in your life, and write out a dialogue between that person and yourself as a 10-year-old. We wrote for about 5 minutes, some were eager to share their work...
The second prompt was more restrictive: I have them a setting (backstage of some show, dressing room), and they could write their dialogue using 3-word utterances (each of the statements/responses in the conversation had to be 3 words long). We wrote for maybe about 10 minutes, and shared again.
The last and longest assignment was more open: they were to write a dialogue between 2 people talking about another person. I warned the women that once they begin writing, I will intermittently interrupt them with prompts that they could work into their dialogue. So a few minutes into the writing, I asked them to include a rhetorical question; a little later -- an apology. Finally, the "third person" in the initial dialogue was to walk in and join/interrupt the conversation. We wrapped up after that prompt, and most women shared their work.
The feedback that I got from the women was generally positive. Three women hung around after the workshop was over to chat; they told me that they liked being challenged, because they write regularly and well but are not used to being restricted/stimulated by specific prompts. I also got feedback from other people that they found the workshop fun. As far as my perception goes... I think a significant part of today's experience was that it started off light-hearted and almost autobiographical, so there wasn't too much pressure to "write something good". I was pretty impressed with their work [especially with the energy in the 3-line dialogues, actually] and, from their enthusiasm/support for one another when they shared, generally thought that the workshop went well. It did feel a little off-balance at times, because one or two women were *really* enthusiastic about the exercise, and others were getting stuck at times. But generally people seemed to be on the same page.

Question

Britt and I are planning on doing a workshop in Medium on the Kweli lyrics to 'Get By', and then ask three prompts: To write off a verse that speaks to you, to draw off a verse that speaks to you, or to write the verses.

Has anyone done this song yet in Medium, or done something similar to this? If so, let us know so we can make sure not to overlap.

Thanks!

11/5 workshop

This week made for quite an entertaining SPACE session. Molly and I (Anna) planned a workshop focused on beauty. Our plan was to begin with a brief discussion of what we thought beauty means and then show visual works, mostly portraits, by different artists and talk about how they presented beauty. We planned on spending the last half of the class working on broadly-defined self-portraits– i.e. picking traits of ourselves that we found beautiful and finding ways to visually depict them.
In class the discussion on beauty was fine, although a bit colloquial. Once we brought out the portraits by other artists all hell broke lose at the sight of Frida Kahlo’s unibrow and mustache. It was actually quite funny, and it seemed that there was a fine balance struck between understanding the more serious undertones of the session and just having fun. The self-portraits turned out great, and although most everybody balked at the idea of having to draw themselves, once they realized the possibilities for abstraction most seemed to enjoy themselves and create meaningful works.

Becky and Britt 11/7 Workshop

Our workshop this week focused on interviewing. Beforehand, I typed up a list of questions ranging from "What is success to you?", "When have you felt the happiest?" and "What historical figure do you most identify with?" etc. (I can email you this list if you'd like.) We paired up the women randomly to interview one another based on these or their own questions, except for two women who really wanted to be together and explained that otherwise they wouldn't get anything out of the activity. We also explained that the goal was three tiered: One--to interview and find out about the person, and follow tangential conversations to get more out of it. Two--to be interviewed and share with the interviewer. Three--to write about the person you interviewed by answering the prompt "To me, s0-and-so is..." One thing I should have made clearer was that the writing assignment was meant to express their views of the person in their OWN words, not just a tally of the facts about the person. We gave the groups about a half an hour, and we told them when the half-way point was to switch. Then we spent about 10-15 minutes writing, which wasn't enough for some people, while others had finished early. Then we shared what we wrote. The women who wrote laundry lists about their interviewee presented entirely differently than those who put their own thoughts and words into their writing, and the result was that the laundry-list writers wanted to improve and bring it back next week. We got mostly positive reactions to the workshop.

Britt and Becky Halloween Night

In reaction to popular requests to celebrate Halloween in some way (ie decorations), Britt and I did a workshop that was half writing and half mask-making (not allowed, as it turns out). The writing prompt was "What is your spirit animal and why (If you could be any animal, what would you be and why?)". If they could only think of an animal that they definitely were not, then they could write about that as well. After sharing our animals, we made masks of our animal with cut-out Gate pizza plates, leaves, construction paper, magazine images, paints etc. But, making disguises is against the rules as we and Ariel were notified later, so no more mask making again. Otherwise, it went really well and the women enjoyed it.

10/29 workshop

This week's workshop went pretty well. We brought in a poem by Lisa Lewis called "Bridget" that addresses issues of gendered violence and female solidarity. We read the poem aloud (each woman--there were about five women present-- read a section of it), and then had a discussion. Several women talked about ways in which they identified with the speaker and subject matter in the poem, and even shared narratives of their own, some of which I (Molly) felt ill-equipped to respond to. In general, though, it was a good discussion, and I think people liked the poem. When we asked how they felt about turning a subject of violence and violation into a work of art, one woman said something along the lines of, 'When I read this and can identify with it, I know I'm not alone.' We talked about expanding the solidarity discussed in the poem into a broader solidarity between us as female readers of the poem and the female author. After the discussion, everyone wrote a poem in response to the poem, beginning with the last few lines of "Bridget." We shared what we had written at the end of the workshop. Everyone seemed willing and happy to share, and also supportive of one another's work.

Workshop 5: Chen and Rachel

Oscar Kokoschka, Bride of the Wind

We went in this past Thursday and did a visual arts oriented workshop. I was thinking that after the last color workshop, there was a gap between skill-based learning and the motivation to think about art at all. I thought that bringing in some reproductions of paintings and just talking about them, looking at them, would spark some interest that would perhaps lead to a desire to learn more about color. I think of it as analogous to reading and talking through a poem before taking pen to paper and writing a poem yourself. I also wanted to think about color in a different way, using the medium of small bits of colored paper as the mixing tool, as opposed to actually mixing color. The advantage in this is that you don't muddy up the paper. What you "mix" will stay pure.

These are the paintings we brought in, in chronological order. I made a handout to accompany them.

Justinian and his Attendants, a mosaic made in the 1500s in Ravenna, Italy
Georges Seurat's "Les Poseuses"
Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
Oscar Kokoschka's "Bride of the Wind"

The latter 3 were all made sometime in the late 1800s, and Kokoschka's was early 1900s. They all use fragmented color to different effect, and mosaic is a tiling medium, so different from paint, but the thing about these painters is their unadulterated color, their separation of each stroke/dot of paint so that the unity lies in walking back from the painting, not from standing up close. "Starry Night" has always looked mosaic-y to me, and Seurat is a practitioner of pointillism, which has a whole scientific ethos behind it as to why dots of color should be used instead of mixing.

We started out asking for names and what kind of art people liked. Most people didn't have anything particular in mind (we had 5 people maybe at the beginning of workshop), but someone mentioned liking cartoon art and someone else was really into pop art/Andy warhol, although the kind of stuff she herself liked making was "trompe l'oeil" (trick of the eye... a sort of illusionistic realistic art). So we began with that, then had a conversation about the first two pieces of art which lasted for 35 minutes... Some people left because they had to, and then we felt we should probably get started on the activity. We had torn colored sheets of construction paper into bits (not small enough bits, I felt... a shredder would've worked better, probably). We just told them that they could play around with it or copy a picture I brought in, but I think if I ever hold this workshop again, I'll make the time frame more rigid and have enough time for them to copy a simple color study (that way they are actually mixing the colored fragments in a way that makes them think about color...) A similar activity would be to bring in markers and have people copy a color picture but without making broad swathes of color-- they have to create it by making points only (a version of pointillism without ever having to bring in paint.)

Rachel can talk more about the dynamics of the group, which I thought were totally mellow compared to other workshops. I don't know why, but looking at art was pretty calming, so was playing with little paper bits. The two women who stayed through the whole workshop said it was fun and they'd like to more visual arts workshops. It's hard because I hate to lose anyone on account of which type of activity we bring in. last week a woman didn't join us because we were doing writing only, and then this week a old-time writer didn't join us because were doing visual arts (I think that was the reason, may've been something else.) But I guess you can't win them all.