The Front Page

A Full Day of Practice at the Movement Dance Studio

Two new puppeteers joined us at Movement Dance Studio yesterday, and before long we were choosing who would be in a scene, what they wanted and where the trouble might begin. A warm welcome to you both!

We are trying a Meet the Puppets! segment at the start of a workshop day: a chance to meet the cast and find your feet before the practice gets under way. Yesterday’s introduction led straight into a full and productive Troupe Workshop.

The Troupe Guide brought this month’s study cards, including CROW skit cards for all five themes, leaving us pleasantly spoiled for choice. CROW gives a scene its bones: Character, Relationship, Objective, and Where/When—the context. Who are we? How do we know one another? What do we want? And where have we found ourselves?

We settled on two three-character skits, one from Doing Different Better and one from Don’t Look Up. A few clear starting points leave plenty of room for the puppeteers to discover what happens between them. The cards begin the conversation; the people bring it to life.

In the afternoon, Shannon led us through several rounds of improv exercises, putting some meat on the bones of the CROW framework. Up we got, out of our seats and moving around—a welcome change for puppeteers who can become rather firmly attached to their chairs. There was room to try a response, follow someone else’s idea and discover what our own movements could bring to a scene.

Our webmaster has added PRACTICE to the top menu. Have a look at the workshop footage, and be sure to log in for the longer behind-the-scenes videos. There is something rather encouraging about seeing a scene while it is still finding its feet.

Around the Village

A little invitation can travel a long way

Our next Meet the Puppets! is at Sooke Public Library on Friday, October 9, from 1–3 p.m. Please take a minute over your morning coffee to share this free RSVP invitation with friends or family in Sooke and this end of the Westshore. Someone you know may be waiting for exactly this sort of invitation.

Studio Hours are coming up, too. Sign in to choose a session and RSVP. Studio Hours fall on the third weekend of the month unless otherwise announced. We will spend some time on Saturday, October 17, organizing the props for our café skits. Even an imaginary café needs someone to find the cups.

Around Manzer Commons

A home with room for a neighbourhood

For anyone catching up, Manzer Commons Cooperative is the new co-op taking shape around Roxana’s and my intention to bequeath our property as a neighbourhood community and resource centre. We hope a place that has held our family’s life can keep making room for other people’s lives, long into the future.

The vision brings together the round house and gathering spaces, the Tau Wellness Centre, the Medicine Garden, a home for the Common Thread troupe, and a proposed fire-protection reservoir serving the surrounding neighbourhood. It also includes a healing place for the Westerly Peoples, envisioned with Tsow Tun Le Lum and guided by Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Holders. These are plans we are developing through relationships, shared stewardship and the practical work of establishing the co-op.

The big project here this year has been the long-delayed maintenance of the green roof. Like many construction projects, it has proved every bit as complicated as expected, with a crew of six at its busiest. I had hoped we would be buttoned up by mid-September; it now looks like the first week of October. A couple of extra weeks is manageable—and reasonable, given the complexity of the work. We are looking forward to having everything tucked safely away again.

This week brought a welcome step forward: we began the six-week National Social Purpose Real Estate Organizational Readiness Program, offered by the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities. Our first session, on October 1, explored how a project fits its mission and community.

We are also preparing to work with a team of University of Toronto planning students. Their contribution will be a planning due-diligence report, looking at the policies affecting the property, its environmental and heritage context, nearby services and possibilities for moving forward. Fresh eyes and thoughtful questions are very welcome at this stage.

Here at home, our next steps include reaching out during the election cycle and seeking support from all candidates. We want the Commons to become a neighbourhood resource with broad support and a future that lasts beyond any one election.

If you are interested in decolonizing our relationship to land ownership and exploring what shared stewardship might look like, please get in touch about joining us in the learning. There is a great deal to work out, and room for more people around that table.

Your Two Cents

An early election—for whose benefit?

British Columbia is heading to the polls again, with provincial voting day set for October 24. The election was called on September 22. Elections BC has the dates and voting information.

Does David Eby’s early election call offer citizens a useful chance to choose the province’s direction, or does it strike you as a crudely political move with little public benefit? What would make an early election justified in your eyes?

Bring your two cents to Freyja’s Cafe, or reply to the Weekly. There is room for disagreement at this table; give us your reasons and leave room for your neighbour’s.

The Tau Medicine Garden

Rosemary remembers

A rosemary sprig looks modest enough until you follow it through history. In Maud Grieve’s A Modern Herbal, it turns up at weddings and funerals, in festive halls and kitchen gardens: a small evergreen carrying a surprising amount of human feeling.

Grieve describes its narrow, aromatic leaves and pale blue flowers, and traces its associations with memory, loyalty and remembrance. Wedding guests once received gilded sprigs tied with coloured ribbons. A branch could say something its giver had not quite found words for.

Her 1931 herbal also records traditional uses for digestive complaints, headaches and nervous discomfort, along with fragrant hair washes and rubbing preparations. These are accounts of herbal tradition, rather than treatment advice. For our garden visit, rosemary offers a quieter question: which scent brings someone you love immediately to mind?

Historical source: Maud Grieve, A Modern Herbal—Rosemary.

A Moment of Practice

Just for today

Before the day fills with other people’s needs, Japanese Reiki practice invites us to tend our own foundation. The Gokai, Reiki’s five precepts, belong at the heart of that daily self-cultivation. One English rendering is:

Just for today: do not be angry; do not worry; be grateful; work diligently; be kind to others.

These are words to return to, rather than a test we fail when a difficult feeling arrives. In our practice, we might picture daily self-Reiki as tending a powerhouse of Ki within ourselves—a spiritual image for cultivating the presence and capacity we hope to offer others in need.

If you wish, sit comfortably, let your breathing stay natural and bring your palms together. Read the precepts slowly. Choose one to carry into an ordinary moment today. Begin there.

Further reading: The Gokai in Jikiden Reiki.

The Study Table

A growing October collection

How well do you know the character on your arm? This month’s flash cards invite you to get acquainted: their family story, the way they speak, the small gesture that gives them away before they say a word.

October Study Cards

• Eight character-role cards: Rowan, Maren, Dev, Jules, Tavi, Kai, Sam and Nia.
• Eight history-and-origins cards: one for each of those First Threads characters.
• Eight presentation cards: their voices, gestures and ways of moving through a scene.
• One design-requirements card: the five shared requirements for our work.
• Two Monthly Business cards: proposed touring opportunities and arrangements; and the ten-phase troupe work plan.
• Fifteen skit cards: a two-, three- and four-character scene for each of the five themes.

The First Thread CROW Skitbook is also taking shape this morning, bringing more starting points for scenes to our study table.

Try a few cards aloud. Read one, turn it over and see how much you can bring back without looking. Knowing your part means being able to restate what you have learned; for the best scores, work towards reciting the card verbatim. Then put that knowledge into motion with your puppet. Familiar words leave you freer to listen and respond when the scene takes an unexpected turn.

You will find new releases by month, so October’s additions are easy to pick up. As your collection grows, you may want Character Cards together, Skit Cards close at hand, and Business or Prop Cards in their own places. Those families of cards will develop with the work; for now, find a sorting habit that helps you practise.

September Cards

September’s collection is still there to return to: Puppeteer Basics, The Leitner System, Our First Assignment, Green Screen Stage Blocking and Rune Path Tracking. If your new cards are beginning to pile up, the Leitner card is a useful old friend: a little regular recall goes further than one heroic evening of study.

The Weekly Mind Twister

Whose cup is whose?

For this little café puzzle, Rowan, Jules and Nia each have one cup: blue, green or yellow. Nia’s is yellow. Rowan’s is not blue. Which cup belongs to each character?

From the Troupe Guide

Put a puppet on an arm

When I began thinking about how to draw people into puppetry, I had a rather simple idea: put a puppet on someone’s arm, stand back and let their imagination do the rest.

There is more to learn, of course. We have cards to study, movements to practise and the rather wonderful business of learning to work together. But I still trust that first little spark—the moment someone looks at the puppet and begins to imagine who might be looking back.

When I look around at what the world needs just now—whatever challenge happens to be at the door—I am pretty sure imaginative, creative people will help us find our way. People who can picture another possibility, try it out and invite someone else into the story.

Perhaps a puppet on an arm is a small beginning. I am happy to begin there.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday,
ChrŸs
Troupe Guide