#george bartenieff

[genevieveetguy]

American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy (Histoires d'Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy), Chantal Akerman (1989)

[cultfaction]

Cult Faction Podcast Ep. 99: See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Directed by Arthur Hiller, Seen No Evil Hear No Evil goes under the spotlight this week! It stars Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder alongside Joan Severance, Kevin Spacey, Alan North, Kirsten Childs, Louis Giambalvo, Anthony Zerbe, John Capodice, and George Bartenieff. Plus you get the usual brutal bickering from your three favourite film…

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[travsd]

R.I.P. George Bartenieff

I only just learned the sad news from friend Paul Bartlett that Theater for the New City co-founder George Bartenieff (b. 1933) passed away on July 30. Bartenieff was one of those exceedingly rare figures who moved easily among Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, and commercial film and television. As for Off-Off, he was there from the beginning and can be said to have been among its…

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[chelseahotelproject-blog]

Composing our Collaboration

Don’t be afraid to start over. Don’t be afraid to not know. Someone will come along and guide you. You may end up in places that you never expected.

  For weeks I have been contemplating a certain blog post about the Chelsea Hotel. I’ve gone so far as to outline what I thought it was and I was unable to fill it out with content. Or I was writing passages but unable to create a cohesive structure.

  Until we met an extraordinary artist named Gerald Busby.

  (Photo by Mia Hanson, mybiggayears.com)

And so I am starting over. I am going from zero.

  Inspired by today’s meeting, this blog post is about the notion of the individual. And about individuals working together to become something else.

  One thing that has come up in all of our interviews is the through-line that community is comprised of various individuals—that a group, in fact, exists and thrives because of the individual voices that make up the group.

  The Chelsea Hotel is one such place. Part of why the artists who live there felt free to create was because, as Gerald explained, “It’s the privacy actually. It’s something like being between being a college dorm and an artists’ colony. You’re glad that these people are around you, but you don’t even know their names or hardly ever speak to them. But it’s still a community. But the most important thing is the privacy, the insulation. Nobody comes to your door unless you ask them to, like the MacDowell Colony. That was the great part of it. And just knowing that there were these mad, crazy people doing all these things.”

  When we have our privacy, we can be exactly who we are because no one is looking. And yet, being surrounded by creative energy is infectious and generates more creative energy just by being in its midst.

  And the residents of the Hotel have invited us to their doors—another group of “mad, crazy people” who happen to be doing a project for their Artistic Process and Contemporary Community class at Brooklyn College.

  The four of us, Andy, Radek, Erik, and myself, make up a really diverse group of artists who work in a myriad of different disciplines. We all have our unique, very strong, and very individual opinions on aesthetics and art. We all have different interests and visions for the work we create. And we all have different methodologies that we access to create our art. So a big question (and one that comes up in any collaboration) is: how do we allow for each one of our individual voices to shine through in service of our greater goal—the piece that we are creating. How do all of us, as individuals, co-exist together so that everyone can contribute their own message in their own way?

  This question is also one that I would extend beyond art—a question that speaks to the very nature of human existence and the societies that we create.

  Gerald also spoke of mentorship. One of his two greatest mentors was Robert Altman (the other being Virgil Thomson). Of Altman, he says, “He was a person who, his uniqueness was that when you were with him, he totally transformed his, well he had no ego virtually and when you were with him, it was like he had given you permission to be your inner self child fun thing that, you know, you went ‘Daddy, I knew you were there somewhere!’ He made you just tingle with excitement, like he knew you. And his eyes were like lasers and he would look at you and he would channel his energy through you. And so you would do things that you had never done before and that you had no idea that you could do.”

  How can we all aspire to do this for each other?

  And on Virgil he says, “He was a master at efficiency of energy. He said, 'Time is how you use your energy. The people who do ten times more than you do are simply more efficient than you. They don’t have any more time, but they just use it differently.’ And he wouldn’t waste energy reacting at all. It was kind of a Zen thing. He probably learned it as a critic. He would start with a totally relaxed face. Whenever he listened or saw anything, anything that he was going to judge, was to have the body as still as possible. It’s like a meditation. And then your senses are kind of freed from all that rattling and that rambling from the tapes that play in your head all the time about rnnnngrrennnnngrennn and all that shit….He only used his energy for his work. Period.”

 And speaking of using this energy and work, while we were in the Hotel, I received a phone call from one of my dearest mentors--George Bartenieff. He is performing in an exciting new play Another Life, written and directed by his wife Karen Malpede, and produced by their company, Theater Three Collaborative. This piece comes to the Irondale Center in Brooklyn after premiering at the Theater of Kosovo this past summer. Supported by The Festival of Conscience, the audience will share in a dialogue with a range of speakers after each show--from human rights activists, lawyers, and authors who have helped influence the shape of Another Life.

(Photo courtesy of Theatermania)

George was the first mentor who taught me about how to create work collaboratively. In 2007, while a small group of us were members of the HB Ensemble and interested in creating new work, he introduced us to The Painters Project--a course that he teaches in generating new plays about famous artists. The guidance we received from George was transformative. It was an exercise in accessing that which speaks to us personally, down to our subconscious, even. Once we did that, we realized that we had agency over our own creativity. And through his gentle openness, listening, and encouragement (which was not without a healthy dose of quixotic creative ideas and nudging to push the work forward), our group premiered our one-person shows at The Cherry Lane Theatre in May 2009. I had written and performed in my very first piece called Metaphysical Dalí--a physical theater spectacle about the life and work of Salvador Dalí that has influenced the course of my artistic career since. The piece was, all at once, my own and devised collaboratively. The openness and generosity of George in listening to our voices and lending his vision to our work caused me and the other "painters" on that stage to reach unimagined heights in our work. The performances were transcendent, and I have since made it my life's work to cultivate that energy in myself and others.

I felt an odd synchronicity as I stood on the streets of New York City, listening to his excitement and invitation over the phone. In this moment, I recognized the importance of accepting the gifts that others offer us.

Gerald's interview and George's phone call led me to question: Whether we are artists creating new work or tenants living in a building or just people walking down the street, can we be still enough and can we exist without ego, so that we can see others as they truly are? Can we embrace the basic tenets of collaboration--listening to others, saying yes to their ideas, being honest and building upon them with our own, and by trusting that our collaborators and the piece itself will guide us? Can we be open and accepting so that we can be affected by others have to offer, instead of imposing our preexisting viewpoints on them?

  In this vein, I sat there with my three other wildly talented collaborators as Gerald weaved into his stories our own various interests that he was otherwise unaware of. There were many moments where all five of us (including Gerald himself) were simply tickled by his words and his openness in revealing his life and its many lessons.

  He brought up the Radical Faeries who are a group that I originally wanted to work with when we were first investigating community.

  He referenced Mexico on many occasions, which is Erik’s country of origin and from where he had just returned to teach last week.

  He mentioned the Gardner Museum in Boston and an exhibit that has stuck with Radek since he visited many years ago.

  And he spoke of life in the Chelsea, which is the place that Andy has brought into our lives—a place that has already given us a lifetime of inspiration.

  There are doubtless other threads that Gerald wove in from each of our individual lives and countless others that bind us together.

  So as I listened to this gentle man—so full of joy and honesty and openness, I heard him discuss composition (and a whole other blog post on that glorious topic), and how he composes really fast for television and film. I also remembered an old email exchange weeks ago where he mentioned the possibility of composing something. And I decided in that moment to also listen to my mother, who has always told me that “it never hurts to ask.” So I channeled her, and despite any reservations, I asked Gerald if he would be at all interested in composing a score for the Chelsea Hotel Project.

  It appears that we now have a composer who is happily creating a musical score for our soundwalk.

  In collaboration, as in life, if we can just look at people as they truly are, listen to what they have to say, and accept what they have to offer, we can learn to co-exist and we can individually be better. We can be our private selves in public. And we can work together, without ego, so that the individual eventually disappears and the interaction becomes some other thing. It becomes art. And we can all, together, do what we never dreamed was possible.

  It appears that this other thing is starting to take some exciting shape and that our impossible dreams may very well may become a reality.