Burroughs Gongs and Mime

Working with the rhythms of our names we tried many combinations of patterns on the gongs. In a small room we couldn't do it for long, and the drums and stones are over at Webster.

We only have a couple more sessions before the show so we need to bring together all our exercises into a structure that we can present next month.

I can imagine the three gong players processing down the strip as they play.

The class did well with the overlaid nursery rhyme rhythmic patterns last week (when clapping) so that should transfer well to the groups of drums. Maybe they all play the same sequence in unison, or maybe we can organize subgroups to do the multiple layers.


































I was hoping the story we all made a few weeks ago could be easily used as the basis for a mimed drama so we started by cutting up the text line by line and making phonetic sounds based on each person's text.

Putting the students in small groups to enact their lines though simply brought out the lurking violence in many of the phrases. The bizarre inventiveness of the language got lost in translation and playground action debased the rest.

The story may still end up in written form on the strip somehow, but if we use any text or action from it, it will only be fragmentary. Perhaps just the names Pooch and Lulu. And I'd like to try movements based on elbows, Pop tarts, macaroni, potatoes and pickles. Maybe a party game where you carry these items in your elbows and pass them around without dropping them...