I'm in the midst of putting together something else under a tight deadline, but I'd just like to share my experience of the Staten Island Creative Hub last night.
Once upon a time last year, I attended a reading at The Cup (formerly The Muddy Cup) where I met the writers who had been papering various venues with flyers about The Staten Island Writers' Collective. After hearing them read, I joined them at the SIWC. In 2010, they've morphed the SIWC into The Staten Island Creative Hub. I joined them in the back room of Cargo Cafe last night where I had a great time working in the easy improvisational atmosphere they've set up. I had such a great time working on the exercises at hand during the evening that I unfortunately didn't take any photos while it was happening. Exercises included:
~ A writing exercise on "your deepest desire" during the Outer Body Poetry segment.
~ The Recursive Blindfolded Musicians Experiment, in which all the participants (you guessed it) wear blindfolds and jam together. I was feeling especially into percussion yesterday. The second time around, I actually fell into a near-zen trance.
~ The Sound & Video segment. First we chose instruments and provided a score to a digital animation. They we took turns improvising music, dialogue and sound effects to soundless video clips. Clips included:
*The Three Stooges open a chest of drawers. I improvised a score on the keyboard while some of the other participants improvised dialogue. At some point, I started turning out the final scene from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". No, I didn't order any mashed potatoes to build Devil's Tower.
*Then I participated in a 3-man scene from the film "Forbidden Planet". Somehow, I got named "3". This will now precipitate all of you having to address me as "3" from now on. My scene-mates and I were given the task of playing to the situation of receiving radio waves from the 1980's. This gave me great opportunity to sing "Gloria" and "Material Girl" while improvising sound effects aboard a spaceship, among other absolutely ludicrous things that popped out of me.
*And finally, I played one of the Stooges in a haunted mansion--only our task was "to find a television so that we could watch the movie 'Speed'". Additionally, I was knocked about by a knight in shining armor while searching for Dennis Hopper.
Thanks to Eric, Paul & Steve who led the experiments and to all the other participants. I'll be back!
