Director Eva Burgess and I continued our work together at Dixon Place. You may recall that we have embarked on a theatrical exploration based upon some themes presented in the novel
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. We're also exploring the story of my own sexual abuse as part of the impulse to create the piece. It's pretty dicey terrain for me, but Eva has empowered me to keep moving ahead. Her work is very physical, and today we created a series of images that can be strung together into a "story". The images are not necessarily literal manifestations of any particular event. They are impulses, hunches, conjectures. But a story of course emerges for the audience, and as the actor I find that I'm less self-aware in creating these images than I would be just talking, or approaching the work head on. After the image work we did a writing exercise which could create some or all of the text that would accompany a series of movements. This is a very intriguing way to work because it taps the conscious in a non-threatening way, and makes room for sub-conscious impulses to emerge as well. Thank you again, Eva. You're a genius.