Theatre Ventoux

ensemble: noun: a group constituting an organic whole or producing together a single effect.

A major part of the Ventoux Process (or at least from what I’ve noticed) is the cohesiveness of the Ensemble. We are all individual actors that come together and perform as a whole. Our tune-ups are done as a group, a lot of the focus work is done to make us aware of ourselves, our body is our instrument, and of those acting around us. This group is not about one actor or one performance. This group is about performing a ’single effect,’ the show.

Schedules and time constraints have made the cohesive aspect of this group more difficult, but we are all dedicated to the single effect, we all have the same goal; and regardless of what we have going on in our personal lives, we have to perform to the best of our ability. We owe the audience that and more.

The show has taken on a new life and we now know what the first layer of the show looks like, but in these next 9 rehearsals we’ll step up the intensity and see how deep we can make the layers. We are playing the same emotions as before, playing the same intent and need, but now it’s time to see how intense we can make that need. How many steps and layers into the process can we delve? That’s for each actor to decide, and I’d like to challenge myself and my fellow actors… find those 6 more changes and take it to a place you never thought you could get to. Step it up and start to play for the single effect.

Cheers.

It began in 1979 as a dream in the heart of a 14 year old boy sitting in his English class. It resurfaced in 1985 while that boy, now a young man, was making grand plans for a future with his best friend. It emerged again in 1988 as that young man immersed himself in university life. Finally, in 2007, in partnership with his best friend, and for some years now, his wife, and with the help of some of the most amazing people in Fresno, the dream took on a life of its own.

Theatre Ventoux is a dream brought to life.

This is who we are.

Theatre Ventoux has a singular mission: the creation of something wonderful. Whatever else we may intend, as a company or individually, the creation of a living, breathing embodiment of wonder is the driving force behind all that we do.

Theatre Ventoux does not audition actors. We choose and design our productions around artists whose work we delight in and whose character we respect. We choose our actors for the unique gifts that they bring to each of our productions.

Theatre Ventoux has a way of working. Dubbed the Ventoux Process, we provide our actors with specific tools which we believe nourish the creative impulse and aid in channeling that impulse into the conscious creation of something wonderful. Through work on Centering and the essential acting elements of Language, Relationship, Emotion, Action, Character and Presence we seek to clarify and challenge our craft as a means to up the stakes of our art.

Theatre Ventoux offers our patrons a money-back guarantee. If, after any Theatre Ventoux performance, a patron feels their time could have been better spent elsewhere, we will promptly refund the cost of admission. Time is all that we have; if we are wasting yours, we do not deserve your money.

Theatre Ventoux is a dream brought to life. Like all dreams, it is fragileand tenuous; it exists by virtue of the faith placed in it. So long as we have the faith of our artists, the support of our patrons, and the blessings of our family, we will continue to dream the dream.

That is what we do.

That is who we are.

This being my second experience with the Theatre Ventoux process I find myself taking more from the Tune-Ups than I had with “This Flattering Glass.” I really love the Tune-Ups because it gives me a chance to let my world melt away and allow for my creative process to come forth. It doesn’t matter what I come into the rehearsal space carrying or weighting on my mind, as soon as we focus on our breathing and start playing with the Space Ball, the world as I know it disappears for the next 3 hours and I am in the zone. It’s a mini vacation from my life and playing in a life I am portraying.

“Childe Byron” is an intense, touching, and kick in the pants show that is so much fun to perform. I am loving this group of actors, most of which I’ve performed with before and some I’ve never worked with before. It really is a good range of talent.

Tonight we are to be off book. The dreaded time period (I’m sure you heard the do-do-dooooooooo music and a scream in the background) as the actors rush to make sure they know their lines better than they did last night. I spent the weekend camping and sitting by the fire memorizing my script, yes even when the drinks were getting passed around, I was memorizing my script. It’s strange what we are willing to do for our art, isn’t it?

I know that this week of rehearsal will be a little clunky, but that is to be expected. We are getting off book rather quickly, but I can’t wait to get it out of my hands and really be able to act. I especially can’t wait to further develop a particular character I am playing, knowing that it’s going to be an amazing connection.

So for now, I’ll be walking around my office, waltz stepping (I’ll let another actor talk about the Waltz Rehearsal), memorizing and speaking in a British accent as much as I can.

VLB!
AL

we begin formal rehearsals for cb tonight. more of the ventoux process, dialects, rough explorations of space and relationship, on our feet playing with what is, once again, a fantastically talented and dedicated group of interpretive artists. thanks to ebay we have our props and costumes (or most of them), thanks to steve sansebastian (fresno auction company) we have our set pieces.

i guess all that remains is to rush in where angels fear to tread…but then, we’re no angels. or, perhaps we are, and angels were never what we thought they were.

at any rate: VLB!!!

etonne-moi
g

so i happened across this book: “Pirandello’s One Act Plays” in a book store in the west village today (the book store was incredible, but that is a different note all together) and the owner of the store was great, we talked for a while about who Pirandello was and what he did, which was really interesting (but that too is for another note) and when he opened the book he said there wasn’t a price in it, so he would give it to me for FREE. so i start reading the forward by William Murray and he included in his forward a few excerpts from Pirandello’s journals, and i was almost in tears at the profoundness of what he said, so i thought i would share just a tid-bit with you:

“…the various styles with which he became identified: realistic melodrama, ironic comedy, philosophical discourse, the play of illusion and reality involving the participation of the audience, the use of fantasy and dream to reveal the truth behind seemingly simple, even humdrum surface situation. About the question of style itslef, Priandello wrote: ‘Style can be defined as the form of one’s talent. For each talent a different style; but by talent I mean that interior virtue of spirit by which a man discoveres for himself what he has not learned from others. A talent without individualality is not a real talent. And style means individuality, one’s own way of thinking, feeling, expressin. In short, a person has style who has things of his own to say and knows how to say them in his own way, with a completely personal attitude and manner that does not necessarily have to be beautifu.’ ”

this means that at the core of an actor is some one who is true to themselves, and therin lies the key: being our selves, generously, shapes our talent and makes it our own, thus that is our “style” as Pirandello would call it. but wait it gets better:

“Pirandello considered himself first and last an artist and he had strong ideas about what art was and what it was not. Among his papers was found the following revealing fragment: ‘The realists limit art to the pure and simple imitation of nature. They make not pretense at saying anything; they wish to portray exactly what nature is. It follows that the masterpiece of masterpieces will be the image reflected by a mirror. But why repeat in a human and lesser voice what nature says in her powerful one? Can one perhaps succeed in taking from nature the sun, its warmth, the perpetual mobility of its succesive aspects? To copy nature is impossible. Yes, one should study her and follow her, considering her as the greatest and most prolific teacher. Art is nature itself, but proceeding along its own lines in the human spirit. Andit is from this resemblence that the artist’s love of nature derives: he recognizes himself in her, and in contact with her he assumes consciousness of his own talent.In contrast to the realists, who have resolved to say nothing, there are those who want to say too much: philosophers, preachers, priests of the Idea. Before creating a picture, a poem, a melodrama, they write the commentary on it. And when the work is finished we are confronted by a sphinz, an enigma. Certain music called Wagnerian, certain dramas, certain novels or collections of verse of the the so-called symbolistic school, certain pictures or rebuses without perspective, without color, aridly outlined, unfortunatly provide us with painful examples of this. Art has nothing in common with this pedantic, obscure, and pretentious symbolism. Art does not derive from an abstract idea. But does this mean that thought has noghting to do with art? This is what the so-called aesthetes claim who say that the artist must in no way concern himself with the essence because the form is all. What does it matter what the artist expresses, if the expression is rich and powerful, the sounds, the lines, the colors joyfully beguile the senses and surprise the imagination by the fancy of their harmonious play? The aesthetes set themselves apart from the symbolists and the naturalists; they desire the cold representation of unalterable beauty, artifice for its own sake, for the pleasure of executing it. They distingusih the form from the idea and value only the former, without realizing that to seperate these two terms - form and idea - is to suppress art, which consists in essence of the compenetration of these two terms. The idea has no value in art until it acquires feeling, until, in entire possession of the spirit, it becomes a desire strong enough to arouse the images capable of endowing it with a living expression. Art, in short, is life, not a reasoning process. Now, all the founders of a system condem the artist to reason instead of to live. The realists make an artisan of him, the idealists a philosopher, the aesthetes and the partisans of art, fot art’s sake, a kind of juggler who should divert his neighbor with words, sounds, lines, and colors in bizarre interplay, like so many little globes of colored glass. In each case we have the substitution of thought for nature. Instead of allowing the work to mature spontaneously in the spirit, they compose it externally by summing up various elements whose affinity they can study. Instead of abandoning themselves to the free movement of life, they assemble, they graft, they knowledgeably combine dead limbs in order to compose a living body. Art is the living idea, the idea that, in becoming the center of the interior life, creates the body of images in which it clothes itself. The idea is nothing without the form, but what is form without the idea, if the idea is what creates it? No formulas, then, for art. Whoever desires to create beauty by a formula deludes himself. Beauty can derive from anything except premeditated reasoning. Sinc, about all, the artist must be moved, out of his being moved the work of art will be born.’ ”

i think that speaks for itself. so there you have it… how amazing is that?

much love

adam

Drumroll, please……..the cast of Equus is finalized and we couldn’t be happier. The production will go up this fall under the direction of Lisa Mercier-Taber, in partnership with our good friends at the California ARTS Academy. While our production is not an adaptation, it is a modern staging and revisioning of one of the more lauded and award winning plays of the last forty years. We expect it to be something wonderful, and we hope you will join us for it.

This Is Who We Are: