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Divine Dissatisfaction

Posted by DCA Theater on October 14, 2010 in July-December 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Sideshow Theatre

by Jennie Winston, Strangerland ensemble member

The following is an excerpt form Jennie Winston’s rehearsal journal. She was writing after a particularly tense evening this past Monday.

Martha Graham spoke of the balance between pleasure and discontent involved in creation, using the term “divine dissatisfaction,” which I believe applies well to any person’s process of trying constantly to improve herself and/or anything she has a hand in.

Having never been a part of a devising process before, I’ve found myself working with a substantial learning curve. I love everything about learning, except that it often entails going through a stretch of having too much comprehension to be unaware of my nearsightedness but not enough to have already gotten past it.

Karie Miller possesses an admirable maturity in ensemble building and guidance and fosters a progressive environment, one in which physical energies swell and mental energies are channeled into swiftly and strongly uncovering more and more potential within Strangerland’s plot. With so much territory to be discovered and momentum of spirit amongst the individuals in the room, we journey and I don‘t find myself stuck for long in any discomfort I encounter along the way, because there’s a strong focus on, personally and as a collective, moving forward in a continuously more useful direction.

Admittedly, though, without textual material and with such a strong premise, I sometimes encounter frustration in attempting to develop a character who well serves the epic tale we are attempting to tell, whose personal story feeds the show.

Tonight we tackled the breaking of stasis and doing so caused me to have a sense of the breakage of the stasis of my personal experience of the rehearsal process. I was carried away a bit by a wave of overwhelm and, after addressing said overwhelm with Karie and the cast, deposited on the banks of simultaneous level-headedness and excitement, excitement for the artistic communion to come in these last weeks of rehearsal and excitement for the remainder of the show coming together. I find myself even more now appreciating the experience I’ve had in working on this project, focusing on the possibilities within the story, and loving being a part of the exploration involved in artistically constructing with others in the way we have been and will continue to. What a blessing, to be involved in crafting the actualization of Sideshow’s labor of love.