We are currently in the midst of the COlLABorative action planning. I'm sitting in the office at New World Arts while Eric, Michelle, and Emily are making a coffee/tea run to the Electric Brew (I bet you anything Eric goes for another "moderately-iced" chai). We had a fairly intense start last night. Some of our people dropped out at the last minute, so we were busy making phone calls and shuffleing the groups.

while i write i hear the sounds of fighting, bodies hitting the ground, rocks being pounded together, highly-caffeinated conversations, and jingling keys. nwa is a hoping place for action.

We started off our collaborators with a few warm-up compositions. With a page full of stipulations and only fifteen minutes to create their pieces, these reluctant theatre geniuses pulled up some incredibly hysterical stuff ("have you ever heard of music that can kill?" -- Jonathan Nafziger being shot in the face by his comrads and laying out at least three feet in the air (that was startling)).

After doing the initial get-to-know-you / warm-up compositions, we divided participants into four different groups based on their chosen disciplines: one group for a visual arts piece in the stairwell, one group doing a commando writing assignment on mainstreet (the same assignment we used to generate our courthouse lawn plays or, in my case, get kidnapped), one group creatingand two groups to come up with games to play against each other. Here are some highlights from this round:
- massively unfair games. Each team made rules that only they could win.
- using weapons to make the games more "fun"
- knives and irons hanging from the light-fixture in the stairwell
- a trap that several people almost fall for
- an alarm that I knew was going to go off but still jumped when it did
- "didn't anyone tell you to wipe" repeated during the musical piece
- using the piano as a percussive instrument (without even touching the keys)

That was only some of the cool stuff we saw last night. If you come to NWA this evening at either 7:00 or 10:00, you can see some of it too. I'll leave you with a quote from Laura Gouin: "If we needed a mime, we could probably, long story short, kill my dad."

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