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LITANY

Submitted by AmyMay on Tue, 11/29/2011 - 11:31pm

A number of us talked after class tonight as doing some kind of litany for our final performance. Just wanted to make a post for us to throw up our ideas, so we can form into groups or come to consensus on one joint project.

I'll start. I was thinking about reworking Eve Ensler's "I'm Over It" piece, since we as a class o[pointed out so many weaknesses and assumptions in the work. I thought it might be cool to create our own list of "Over-its", about sexual assault or another issue (although I envisioned sexual assault myself.) These would strive to address previously posed critiques, and any new ones we might have. I thought it would be neat to once again have everyone read aloud the piece (yay class participation.) If this were the case, I think we should post a trigger warning on Serendip/ make explicit what we are going to do before we start. Maybe we could be right after break to allow for more a more graceful exit of anyone who doesn't want to participate (more snacks for them!)

Anyhoo, that's my two cents.

Groups:

Precarious, Performative, Playful, Potential...Perspectives!

AmyMay's blog

Comments

Sorry for the delay! What a crazy day...

Submitted by someshine on Fri, 12/02/2011 - 3:51am.

hey all,

i'm really sorry i haven't emailed or posted on serendip about this sooner... busy(ness)...

i'm really excited about an idea i had to merge the litany with an idea i had using yarn... it's late, i may not be coherent in explaining this, so please bare with me!

each of us in this "performance" group will come up with our own line about what we are:

- over it about

OR

- moved to act as a result of some theory we learned in the class

- your idea here

whichever theme we decide on, we'll make sure to explain to the class which category we want them to stick with and to create their own line to add to the litany. the goal is for everyone to come up with one in 5-10 (?) minutes. but, first, we read ours so that they have some idea of how this'll go.

after 5-10 minutes, we'll ask everyone to put their line into a hat/box/bundle and we'll mix them up and pass them out. no one can look at their line... even if they have their own, it's okay.

next, we have everyone sit in a circle. we have a spool of yarn that we have one of us toss to someone in the circle (this is assuming we each have a second line we'd like to contribute to this new group). that person will finally open their folded piece of paper and read the line aloud. the person who wrote that will make themselves known and the person who read their line aloud will toss the yarn to them. throwing the yarn process is rather difficult, especially when one does not pull enough excess thread to toss, so there are a few moments of silence in between, in appropriate quaker style. we repeat this process until everyone has uttered their line and the member of our group who initially tossed the yarn will say a short bit about how all of our perspectives are now known to the group and we can begin to build right relationships with one another if we'd like to (using the example of being moved to act as a result of a theory from class) reach out to an idea that resonated with us. inevitably, we'll have overlapping and complementary ideas... further showing how we are entangled... both through our words and the yarn.

we then cut the yarn and make friendship bracelets out of them... or in this case, alliance bracelets, or some other clever name someone can think of!

what do y'all think? any additional ideas/improvements are greatly appreciated.

pleasant dreams,

☮ someshine