Bielefeld is so small. . .

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It's not even on the city listings here. Hannover is the closest city that is listed. However, it does remind me a bit of Columbia, MO, where I went to Stephens. So, that's nice.

Tonight we met with all of the participants for the coming two weeks. There are MANY of us. Today was spent working on our own, those of us who had already come form Poland, and it was really very nice. We worked for about five hours, and took some time to do shopping and rest a bit. The days will be very full from here on out, but not terribly long. Our schedule for the next few days will be:

9-10 Warm-up
10- 4 Work session
with a lunch break from 1-2

We'll also have some extra work time with Sigmar Schroeder, who is the artistic director of TheaterLabor. He will create a sort of montage/collage/work demonstration that will be open to the public on the 22nd of August at 8PM.

The instructors will include Tage Larsen, from the Odin Teatret, Yoshi Oida, Ismael Ivo and Helge Bjorn Meyer. I am looking forward greatly to training with Tage, because I have been hearing about the Odin for a year now!

Later we work a few different hours, and will have times that we can watch some films from the Odin, some films from the Grot. Center, TheaterLabor and also some training videos. And on the 16th of August, we'll go to see an outdoor performance of TheaterLabor in a nearby city called Hartfurd, I think.

The space is really lovely. It reminds me so muhc of the King Plow Arts Center, that I thought I had momentarily been transported back to Atlanta! I have been taking a few photos and will add those in the next couple of days.

I am working tonight on my text that I will use in the first portion of the workshop. I am using a piece from Ecclesiates, that is also at the beginning of 'The Sun Also Rises', which happens to be my favorite book. I created a dialogue, because they asked that two people work with a dialogue. I think this is good, because there are so many of us that some people will not get to work fully and since we are the only dialogue, I am pretty sure we will get to work more.

1: What does man gain from all his labor in which he labors under the sun?

2: One generation goes, and another generation comes; but the earth remains forever.

1: The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises.

2: The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north. It turns around continually as it goes, and the wind returns again to its courses.

1: All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again.

This secodn text is something that we can say without even thinking twice, something that is written in our hearts. It will be used as just a stream of somethign to come out of our mouths as we work on warming up the voice, and opening it up in new and different ways. So I chose:

"The time has come," the Walrus said,?"To talk of many things:?Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--?Of cabbages--and kings--?And why the sea is boiling hot--?And whether pigs have wings."

Because I have loved that book for as long as I can remember, and more specifically, this portion. oddly enough, someone else is using the poem that the Duchess speaks when Alice comes to visit her.

The hostel here is very nice. No, it's very AWESOME. It's called Kolpinghaus, and is run by a very, very nice, very stoic German man. It's all very German- very precise, lots of labels, very clean and white. The breakfasts are good, and included. I bought internt for only 10 euro for the whole time I will be here. Pretty good. See it here: [url=www.kolpinghaus-bielefeld.de/

My room mates are great. Nais is from near Avignon but lives in Brussels, and Pinar is from Turkey, near Ankorra. We have similar living styles, which is lovely. They are both quiet and very intelligent and sweet. Briliant. Because two of my last room mates were very loud and had very different body clocks.

I am off to work on my text, and get some rest very soon. I am still exhausted from the bus ride on Sunday night. More as this crazy adventure continues!

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