The Dawes of Life.
Posted by Brennan on April 9, 2012
I often wake up at 4:30 in the morning, (weirdly, it’s very often 4:33), with my eyes calmly opening up together on one very clear and very specific thought. As though my brain figured out something while I was sleeping, and sorry, no, it can’t wait until morning, and my brain really has to tell me right now, before it goes back to dreaming about a hamster race or whatever, and forgets everything that it just so delicately perceived….
Sometimes, it’s a very basic thought:
a.) It’s 200 degrees in here.
b.) That’s the loudest radiator in North America, and why is it still on.
c.) That was maybe too big of a pile of spaghetti to toss down the hatch at 11pm.
Other times, it’s more philosophical:
“Ohhhhhh…..we’re all made up of the same thing, which nobody has a name for just yet, but is basically just movement, and we’re the same as other people and the same as turtles and moose and lakes, all traveling through space together, with human beings just being the Universe’s way of being aware of itself…..........duh.” (sleep)
But last night, it was a bit more Monkey related:
“The Dawes School Show! I need to blog about the Dawes show!”
Then:
“Dawes. Dawes. Sounds like the name of a creek.” (In my Montana brain, that’s crick.) “As in, ‘We found ‘im hiding down by Dawes Creek! Right by Old Man Kays’s fish’in hole!’”
And then, finally:
“Oh, right.” 
Well, sometimes we go through a journey just to find that we’ve arrived at the beginning, right? (Right?) So here we are. Blog #1, coming at you from rehearsals for the Dawes School show, Spring 2012. Spring, into funny. (Note: Not the actual motto for the show, but now that I’ve planted the seed…....)
Now. No matter how creative a group may be, (and on a scale from 1-10, people in the Monkeys often rank as a solid “ridiculous,”), habits form, and “motions” are gone through. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The “habit” of making kids’ stories come to life on stage is WAY more useful to society, I would argue, than chomping down on those fingernails. Or, stealing pets. Or whatever.
It is, however, probably good to at least be aware of these habits. We all want to keep improving and growing, meeting and conquering new challenge after new challenge? Right? Continually improving every day of our lives until we rest peacefully at the age of 158, surrounded by our 11 Ph.D’s. (Wait, right?)
A few days before our first rehearsal, renowned and award-winning director Matt Miller, (Matt, please fact-check this.), sent an e-mail to the Dawes cast, giving us a challenge; a slight change to our usual approach to making a Barrel of Monkeys show. We would still be intelligent and hilarious and unfairly attractive, each one of us. That wasn’t the bit that was changing. BUT, when it came time to grab props and costumes for our hilarious and attractive acting, we would be making ALL of those props and costumes using only paper materials. Newspaper, cardboard, grocery sacks, the like. No store-bought food or toys or pony-tails, and nothing silly like “fabric” or “plastics” to get in our way. The idea being not only to challenge ourselves to think in a new way, but also, as Matt put very well in his e-mail:
“Part of the goal here is to spur creativity in the students by building our show from materials that would likely be available to them.”
“But Matt, what about my hilarious wig that I wear in every school show! It’s always a hit, and thus, I am beloved by students all around Chicagoland!”
“You’ll have to make a new wig, out of paper.”
“Mmmm…....I see your game Matt Miller. You want us to toss away our bag of tricks, eh? To come at these stories as though we were arriving at them for the first time, eeehhh? To look ANEW at the writing of these brilliant young authors, and to see what was previously unseen, to love what before would have floated by unnoticed on that swift and mighty river of creation. Yes, I do see your game Matt Miller. And I accept. Game, and pants made out of last week’s Chicago Reader, on.”
(I’ll add this. If anybody is nervous, rest assured. There has already been one sighting of the Matt-Miller-Neck-Snap-Attack. ©)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrVCjnRdB_k)