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The Interdisciplinary Work of Lyss Warmland.

Posts tagged Performance

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Check out my conversation with  few of the other people involved in Take Back the Night: Port Hope, Avril Ewing, Maggie Robbins, and Sarah Kennedy (with contributions from Meghan Sheffield and Ashley Bouman).

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We talk about:

– Our event this year
– What each of us think about the choices the Port Hope committee makes compared to the choices other groups make for Take Back the Night events (ie. the way we chose to involve men, not blocking off the streets, not involving police, choosing to celebrate coming together and not just to address the heavy vibes etc)
– What the theme “building community, building hope” means to us
– Why we’re each involved
– Why being involved in this event keeps us well

and more!

If you’re wondering about the stats I sourced:

    • 7 in 10 people who experience family violence are women and girls.32
    • Women are about four times as likely as men to be victims of intimate partner homicide.33
    • Women were 10 times more likely than men to be the victim of a police-reported sexual assault in 2008.3
    • Women are twice as likely as men to be victims of family violence.38
    • Women who experience spousal violence are more likely to endure extreme forms assault including choking, beating, being threatened with a knife or gun, and sexual violence.39
    • About 80% of victims of dating violence are women.40
    • Girls are 1.5 times more likely than boys to experience violence at home.41

Featured Tunes by:
The Muffs
Helaa
Hailiah
Sarah Tohnin

Check out my conversation with Val Russell and Lucy Caldwell, the director and lead actress from Northumberland Players‘ rendition of Silent Sky!

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“The true story of 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Silent Sky explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific discoveries, when women’s ideas were dismissed until men claimed credit for them. Social progress, like scientific progress, can be hard to see when one is trapped among earthly complications. Henrietta Leavitt and her female peers believe in both, and their dedication changed the way we understand both the heavens and Earth.

Silent Sky is the poignant tale of a woman’s dedication to the stars and the human touch that makes life under the cast sky beautiful and timeless. It is a beautiful and insightful piece of theatre.”

Featured Tunes:
Northern Star by Fortunate Ones
Starlight by Muse
I See Gold by The Good Lovelies
There’s a Star For Everyone by Aretha Franklin

wafflecast

3 live podcasts and a delicious waffle at Ganarascals…

Watch an episode of Rage Quit, a nerd podcast with Collin Whitehouse, Liam Whitehouse, and Daniel Courtney!

Get some info on local businesses and their owners with a live episode of Business Insights with John Racine!

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And be part of Lyss England’s interview with Caitlin O’Sullivan, one of the owners of Ganarascals, on a live episode of The Nothing Exists Radio Hour!

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All podcasts will be recorded live to be aired late on Northumberland 89.7, so be a part of the recorded show and select a tasty waffle off a menu of epicness.

Reserve your tickets at Ganarascals for this super fun event, emceed by Hailiah Knight, happening February 15! $25/ticket.

FB Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/288929641822711/

 

Check out this very cool live podcast recorded LIVE in front of an audience at Masterbate Festival: Threesome on October 20, 2018 in Port Hope, Ontario.

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This show features:

– Live improvised music by Marko Lipovsek and Nelson Denis
– Interviews with a whole pile of audience members where they tell us their favourite sex tips
– A live performance of her original song “Don’t Send it to Me” (about receiving dick pics) by Amelia Merhar
– A live interview between myself and event host, Miranda Lukaniuk Lipovsek
– A live performance of her original song “Wanna Screw Ya” by Bella Muerta
– Interviews with all of the performers and crew from Masterbate this year who share their favourite sex tips with us

WARNING: This episode contains explicitly sexual content. It’s probably not appropriate for people who aren’t adults.

BIG THANKS to my friends at Two Blue Shirts Productions for gifting me the excellent quality recordings of the live performance pieces!

The intention of this project is to promote healing and storytelling through community and performance. There will be an open call to anyone who wishes to get involved in the process of creating a piece of performance art regarding the topic of disordered eating and performance.

There will be efforts made to encourage a wide range of people to participate in the workshopping and performing process. This includes diversity in age, gender, race, sexual orientation, ability level, and type of disability. While, ideally, most of the collective would be comprised of people living with disordered eating behaviours, it may also be interesting to hear from people supporting loved ones living with disordered eating behaviours or people who work closely with performers living with disordered eating behaviours. There is no cost to participants associated with this program.

There will be a five week series of workshops where this group of people will discuss things such as:

How does disordered eating affect performers? How does disordered eating affect performance itself?

What is performance?

What is disordered eating?

How does performance affect people physically and emotionally?

The difference between intentional and unintentional performances regarding disordered eating

Is there a place for people with disordered eating behaviours in spaces that promote performance?

How can we support one another regarding disordered eating behaviours?

while also taking care of ourselves?

How can being creative contribute to healing?

How does body image affect performance?

The lived experiences of performers with disordered eating behaviours?

Any people involved in the workshopping process will be invited to work on the actual writing of the performance based on the notes from the workshopping process. The format of performance will be discussed amongst collective (monologues? One act play? Music? Dance? Movement? Visual art? Combination?) There will be 4 rehearsals and two performances at the end of the workshopping process. Tickets will be sold for $20 each, with compensated and discounted tickets available to anyone who would like to attend, but cannot afford the ticket price. There will also be a “pay what you can” donation jar available at all performances and throughout the workshopping and rehearsal process.

Other topics will likely come up, and anyone involved in the collective will encouraged to bring up topics that are relevant to the project. Notes will be taken at each workshop. Workshops will be co-facilitated by Lyss England and Jillien Hone. Workshops will be done according to To the Root’s community discussion format.

 

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collabart.JPGThe above is a collaborative piece of art that was produced during the process of The Performance and Disordered Eating Project. The artists involved are Lyss, Jill, Lindsey, MJ, Clayton, and Marcela.

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The Performance and Disability Project, presented in partnership with To the Root Community Discussions and Green Wood Coalition in Port Hope Downtown, is a collectively formed piece of performance art on the topic of disability and performance. With the intention of promoting healing and storytelling through community and performance, there was an open call to anyone in the Northumberland community who wanted to participate in such a project. Once the collective, which is comprised of about ten people, was formed, we began to meet at Green Wood Coalition’s space on John Street, in Port Hope, where we took part in a series of five community discussions centered around the topic. What underlies these discussions is a collective intention to care for ourselves and one another, and to remain committed to anti-oppressive practice- and creativity. Rather than positioning the facilitator (Lyss England of To the Root) as an authoritative expert, members of the collective are considered an expert on their own lived experience. Outlines and notes from all five community discussions can be found at performanceanddisabilityproject.tumblr.com.

While engaging in this five week long workshopping process, folks in the collective kept in mind the creative end product (which was presented as a very open concept- simply that of “performance”), and begin to work on a creative ways to present their story and experiences regarding disability. Although most of this collective has no previous performance experience, we have worked towards feeling comfortable sharing our stories through various means of performance such as poetry reading, monologues, a short silent scene, and performance art. After the five workshops, we moved into Ontario Street Theatre  to spend three weeks running through our show.

It has been a process that has allowed folks in the collective to explore ourselves creatively, gain support from one other, and to stand in our own power to share our stories and experiences on our own terms. Therapeutic processes can sometimes seem daunting to participants because the end product (feeling safe, comfortable, and supported) seems so far out of reach. Contrastingly, theatrical and performance processes are often so focused on the end product that the process (including emotional and physical components) becomes secondary to the end product. This format fuses therapeutic process with creative end product. The best of both worlds. Our show is raw, honest, and paradigm shifting. Most importantly, it creates a space for the stories of people who are too often pushed aside in our community.

Shows are July 24 at 7pm and July 26 at 2pm at Ontario Street Theatre in Port Hope, Ontario. $20 per ticket (contact Lyss at totherootdiscussions@gmail.com if this price makes the show inaccessible to you). Contact Lyss England (totherootdiscussions@gmail.com) or Sean Carthew to reserve tickets, or show up at the door. Proceeds go to Green Wood Coalition and future To the Root projects. Physically accessible, sober space with immediate peer support available on site. Big thanks to Northumberland Sunrise Rotary for funding!

 

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From www.greenwoodcoalition.com –

We’re pleased to partner with To the Root facilitator and theatre activist, Lyss England, in presenting the Disability & Performance Project over 8 weeks, beginning June 2. This series of Tuesday evening workshops, presented at our space, 17 John St., Port Hope and the Ontario Street Theatre, and will consist of five three-hour long workshop evenings on topics related to performance and disability, three three-hour long evenings of rehearsal, and two performances. There is no cost for this great series, so if you’d like to be involved, contact Lyss at totherootdiscussions@gmail.com.

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Click here to view notes from the entire collaborative performance.

 

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I’ve been making lists of things that feel good. There is literally no qualifier for making the list except that the thing felt good. There are no rules, I don’t post these statuses with any real consistency, they just happen when I feel like I need them. I started posting “things that feel good” statuses when I was about six months into a violent (but, as always, functional) depression because I noticed that my thought patterns focused in on negative things that didn’t feel good at all, and that I was focusing all of my energy on those feelings that didn’t feel good. I was looking for a way to train my brain to notice things that felt good instead, and one day I decided to post a list of things that had felt good that day as a Facebook status.The response I got kind of blew my mind. A ton of people liked it or otherwise “reacted” to it. People commented that they thought it was a cool concept. People approached me in the street to tell me they had loved that status.

It was just a status on Facebook, and I hadn’t posted it in hope of receiving any type of response as much as to hold myself publicly accountable for this paradigm shift I was attempting to create for myself. It is an easy way to keep a record. That being said, I’m never one to turn down validation, and the reminders every time I would receive a notification to look at that status were helpful in re-training my brain, because I kept re-reading these things that I was intentionally acknowledging as feeling good. It became a mantra, these Things That Felt Good.

I started posting them more often. As my depression lessened, the posts began to feel more celebratory and less like another thing I put myself through the motions of in hope of feeling better. People continued engaging with the concept of them both on and offline, and even began posting their own. Being mindful of things that feel good was a concept that made sense to a lot of people. And I felt as though it really was contributing to a meaningful change for me.

As a person who is fascinated by performance, I have always felt drawn to public displays of self-discovery and change. I think that expressions of authentic processes of self-discovery are the highest form of art, and that it follows naturally for that art form to bleed into the public sphere. With presentation of this wild display of vulnerability comes the opportunity for those witnessing it to reflect, relate, connect with the artist, and with one another. It creates space for discussion. It also creates space for accountability and the continuation of the process of reflection for the artist.

There’s also something to be said for the intentional self-objectification that comes with using the self as a medium for artistic expression. The process of exposing ones self has been, for me, a way of looking at myself from outside of myself. A way of taking space from my body, and then being very much in my body. Objectifying my Self, and my experiences on my terms. Making my Self a display in a way that I consent to, intentionally.

I didn’t intend for Things That Felt Good Today posts to be an art project when I started to do it, but upon reflection, that is a large component of what it is and what has been healing about it. 

Things That Felt Good Today posts are an art form because they are vulnerable displays of mindfulness that is related to the authentic self and are performed publicly. They are full of transformative potential for the artist, and for those who witness them. For those who choose to engage with them, those who create their own, those who think about them.They are a performance piece that feels good.