Barbette's Skeleton [INTERLUDE]: Recapitulation (Patreon)

And so we return to the final (belated) instalment of Barbette's Skeleton – a multi-part round-up of the research and creation that has happened around my Le Numéro Barbette project from May of this year up until now. 

[Newer patrons: I named the series 'Barbette's Skeleton' because it originally spanned the month of October and felt quaintly sPoOkY🎃. We're moving into the "I want soft twinkle lights and everything to smell like ginger cookies all the time" season, so continuing to title these project updates with this series header feels a little out of place ... but what the heck. I'll stick with it to round out 2022 in a tidy way, and pick a new series header for 2023 ;) ]

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HOUSEKEEPING:

My grand, evil plan for the final sections of "Barbette's Skeleton" was to discuss the costume and the music choices for the work. That's what was owing before we took our diversion into the world of the Cirque Éloize audition write-ups. 

But – there have been some delays in the costume department due to personal matters with my designer. It's happening, but not on the original timeline we had discussed. The music is an ever-shifting beast (still) (yes, even after 8 months) (it's okay, I'm rolling with it). 

And – there are big, broad shifts in the direction of the project that are different than what the beginning of Barbette's Skeleton was laying out (in terms of literal act structure). 

To be honest with you all, I'm feeling bogged down by this Barbette's Skeleton series: it's important and valuable to the overall project to document how it grows and evolves, but I feel like I'm falling behind on 'updates' here instead of using creative writing as a way to enhance my artistic explorations and reflections. As a writer I'm finding these report-style blog posts much less interesting to write than when I just bring you along for a story with me in the first-person style that I've come to love and (over)use. So I'm going to be trying to shift back towards that. 

Instead of writing you all book-report style updates on what is or isn't happening with costumes, what is or isn't happening with music, I'd like to zoom back out to talk about the things that feel like they're shaping my day to day thoughts and creation: a Big Goal™️/Side Quest™️* that is part of the larger grant project of Le Numéro Barbette. 

(*Side Quest: those fun things in video games where you take on a secondary goal in the midst of your Main Quest in order to ... get money ... or ... adventures ... or ... cool armour ... or ... something [I don't play video games much, clearly])

In my case, this circus Side Quest™️ takes the form of a rather outsized goal (the best kind, no?) that I set for myself regarding the "create a solo aerial straps act" aspect of my big Canada Council for the Arts project.

(Newer patrons: amongst other things, this project also includes me publishing a second instalment of SLOW CIRCUS featuring this Barbette act's research, creation, and related essays [probably beginning mid-2023]; as well as doing some video documentation that I screen in an online show at the end of the project period [honestly, at this point, probs early 2024]. I'll go over this more in your next post, if you don't feel like reviewing older ones)

Your next instalments exploring said Side Quest will be arriving Wednesday December 14th, Saturday December 17th, Wednesday December 21st at 7:00pm, and Saturday December 24th EST. 

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In the meantime, if you are a newer patron and could use a big, broad re–cap/overview of this project, take a peek at "Barbette's Skeleton: Part I" (it includes a cheeky little re-cap of who Barbette was as a performer, and how that has served as a vehicle for my ongoing project).

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And here are some short synopses of the other topics covered in the rest of the series if you'd like a refresher:

Part II of "Barbette's Skeleton" looks at the visual metaphors that we associate with aerial straps, especially in relation to the perceived gender of the performer. I talk about how I thought an updated act structure (one in which I show up as a male-presenting character, reveal two female-presenting characters, and finally end as ... myself) would be more effective for a contemporary audience than Barbette's original act structure (high femme glam all the way, before stripping off her wig at the end and striking some hyper-masculine poses).

Part III: "Digging for Bones" took a poke at at how I was going to try to deal with 'visual tropes' around gendered, performing bodies in relation to my own: a non-binary one (which doesn't have an identifiable 'look'), the 'trick' of gender revealing & concealing, and how Barbette herself manipulated this in her work.

In Part IV: "What's the Pleasure?" and Part V: "What's the Point?" I talked about the difference between the 'pleasure of viewing' and the 'pleasure of feeling', comparing and contrasting the work of artists Angela Bongiovanni and Matthew Richardson to illustrate things. These sections were posing some of the dramaturgical questions of the work: why are these characters on stage? what rules govern their universes? what reason does the performer have for interacting with their apparatus? etc.

Part VI: "What's the Story?" shared the earliest iteration of the narrative I wrote out to help me make sense of some of the dramaturgical questions I posed in the previous two sections.

Part VII: "Putting Flesh on Bones" fleshed out the broad strokes of the narrative that I shared in Part VI. I really tried to pin down the sections of the act, how they corresponded to each character, and with specifics regarding technique, tricks, and movement sequences I was imagining.

Part VIII: "Cinematic Scripting" is where we left off. This section shares how I was handling my brain-block of 'how on earth do circus artists notate their acts while they're creating them...?' I decided to treat it like a TV/movie script and shared some screenshots of that.

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Until next time, stay strange and wonderful –– and thank you from the bottom of my squiggly, chaotic little heart for supporting my work here <3

XO Ess