GREETINGS FROM THE BARBETTE TRENCHES (Patreon)

My dear, strange, wonderful patrons ––

I write you this brief missive from a posturally-deficient malformed-blob position, partially fused to my couch, because I CROSSED (A) FINISH LINE OR TWO recently and I wanted to dredge up a smidgen of post-Did-The-Thing-collapse™️ to give you some small updates on what's been going on. 

Since I wrote you last, my days have been 7am wake-ups and midnight or 1am bedtimes, because in the past 4 weeks ...

• I got the act choreography got pared down* and rehearsed as many times as I could physically and organizationally manage
  
  (*friends in Toronto told me: "Ess, it looks like you're doing every trick you know towards the end of the act, there."
  
  (To which I replied, "Well .... yes. I guess I am."
  
  (So they told me to "Kill some of my darlings", and I did, and the version of the act that now exists, is being performed, and was recorded is that "kill your darlings" version.
  
  (It's my hope to keep working hard with my coach, William, this summer to see what other technical movements might be swapped in or out in certain areas and see how that helps the piece as a whole).
  
• I rehearsed with my artistic advisors a few more times at the National Circus School in Montreal, thanks to the space given to me by La TOHU for this work's creation;
  
• I onboarded a new team of pullers -- LeeAnn Ball and Glory Dearling -- to teach them the act and rehearse with me so that it would be remotely possible to get through the big days at the end of this month (and, in a pleasing parallel, the end of this list, as it happens);
  
• the new music for the act was completed by Greg Harrison, who transcribed the 'Tale of the Kalendar Prince' section of the Scheherezade Suite into a composition for a percussion ensemble of glockenspiel, celeste, marimba, zylophone, a 100-year-old-pump-organ, and accordion (I KNOW IT SOUNDS BIZARRE BUT IT'S INCREDIBLE), hired two amazing musicians and arranged a studio day to record that music in, AND composed a digital/electronic second half of the piece to create the full 8-minute track -- which you'll get to hear soon;
  
• I had an 11th hour epiphany for the composition and put a 24-hour call-out on Instagram asking trans and non-binary folks from around the world to submit recordings of them whispering "An Angel ... a Flower ... a Bird..."* for me (*how Jean Cocteau once described Barbette in a letter to friends in 1923) and had Greg Harrison weave those into the final composition. There are now somewhere around 150 voices of trans and non-binary people from around the world who are a part of the soundscape of the world of LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE. This has become one of my absolute favourite about this project. More on this in another post soon.
  
• Costumes were dragged, kicking and screaming, into existence by designer Michael Slack and seamstress Marianne Thibeault (Atelier M): I spent a few long nights in the atelier along with Michael and Marianne to help these garments cross the finish line in time
  
• I found a videographer (Kayla Jeanson, recommended to me by Damian Siquieros) and started planning the VIDEO SHOOT for this act to make a short circus film. Mayhem, chaos, and bloodshed ensued trying to get the venue for this filming sorted out -- I'll spare you the gory details and skip to the good part: I lucked out and was able to rent AN ENTIRE FREAKING CHURCH to film in on Monday May 1st, for a 12 hour day (((-- three days later than I said I was going to be done all of this, but .... honestly, not bad)))
  
• I finished my final residency with La TOHU and did an end-of-residency presentation and salon at the École Nationale de Cirque on Thursday April 27th: I organized inviting 25 of my circus peers, Montreal artist friends, and collaborators from across the duration of the process to come see the act and offer some feedback.
  
  I wrote an introduction for my Artistic Residency coordinator from TOHU to read at the start; organized local circus artists to help with the event; I organized a free-writing exercise for everyone to do immediately after the presentation while I got re-dressed and have 20 or so beautiful anonymous little stream-of-consciousness feedback cards to review; built out a 6-part Google forms feedback form and virtually distributed it; wrote my own little speech to offer during the salon after the showing; and had a lot of wonderful conversations with a bunch of generous humans about it in an artist talk-back afterwards.
  
  It was all recorded by Kayla Jeanson, my lead videographer on the project (and I hope to be sharing this footage with all of you soon, along with that virtual feedback form for YOUR thoughts and musings!)
  
• I had camera rehearsals, production meetings galore, location scouts, concept meetings, prop and set-decoration hunting parties and more in the midst of it all to orchestrate a 4-person camera team (including a drone operator and an analog filmographer shooting on 16mm black and white film and more, and generally make sure that the filming day on May 1st would go off without a hitch: miraculously, we stayed within a 5-minute margin of error on the entire 5 page shot-list / 12-hour day that I built out with the help of my 1st AD and project coordinator, Tanya Burka (without whom this would've all gone off the rails), ahead of filming.
  
• Post-production on the short circus film of LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE will begin in early June: I'll get the footage from my May 1st filming day in the middle of the month, footage from a Bolex film camera that we shot some of the scenes on (!!!!!) that has to be shipped to a lab to be darkroom processed, scanned, and then sent back to me, by the END of May.
  
• I actually managed to keep up okay with my flexibility training (somehow?) for a big opportunity coming up at the end of May that I don't think I want to talk about yet (because I'm semi-seriously convinced that would jinx it) but will soon...
  
• And, somehow, I did 4-hour voiceover recording sessions from 9am to 1pm on most weekday mornings during that whole stretch at a recording studio in downtown Montréal. 

The beautiful photos in today's post are behind-the-scenes shots that my Lighting Designer, Mathieu Poirier, snapped towards the end of the filming day on Monday. 

He says he's got a whole folder I'll be able to see soon & I look forward to sharing some more with you.  

I intentionally cherry-picked the ones that are in the Big White Dress because I haven't shown you all much of the other costume layers yet and I'd like to give those their own post before I start sharing video and photo that show everything altogether!

Phew.

I finished filming at midnight on Monday, got to bed around 3am, and then woke up the next day and ripped back down the highway from Montreal to Toronto because ...

I'll be performing LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE as one of the opening acts in a mixed program for (RE)COMPOSED this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Artists' Play!

If you happen to be a local Torontonian and you've got a free Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon, you can grab tickets to the show HERE (Friday night is sold out!)

I'll be getting through my tech install, dress rehearsals, and shows this weekend and then look forward to trying to figure out where to start in on the costume, music, and presentation footage and photos I've saved up to share with you all!

Thank you all for being with me through every step of this astronomically sprawling project -- Can't wait to show you what's next.