From: Rebecca Singh <rsingh@theatrelocal.org> To: BRIAN QUIRT <bquirt@rogers.com> Cc: "carpenternick84@gmail.com" <carpenternick84@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2015 1:54 PM Subject: Re: Pure Research - Request from Nightswimming Hi Brian, Thanks for reaching out about this and congratulations on your participation in the RAPP Conference! Nick and I recently reconnected and discussed your proposal. Here are my spontaneous thoughts: - Nick and I worked hard to jointly author our report and produce something that represented both of our ideas and conclusions. We did not intend to necessarily use the results on joint work following PR so we will respond separately as Nick lives and works in Montreal and I am in Toronto. -I used the results of the Pure Research experiment most rigorously in a choral piece I wrote and directed for Hysteria at buddies following Pure Research called "S.C.U.M. Suite" where 12 women portrayed Valerie Solanas. I had previously worked with groups that included choral text (The Montreal All Star Cheerleaders) but had never delved into research that was not attached to a new play development process. The question of "can a group successfully play one character?" was also asked in subsequent processes. PR gave me a vocabulary with which to communicate thoughts and ideas to the actors. If you would like to research or reference the works that followed Pure Research you will find it mostly chronicled here:www.cheerleaderchronicles.com and here: www.theatrelocal.org -I worked with the participants on several occasions after Pure Research It was good to have developed a shared vocabulary. A community was built out of the large and diverse group we assembled and there is a sort of project family tree that can be traced back to our work together. -I work with professional actors and am not a teacher with students in an academic setting. As such, I proposed multiple professional choral projects using Spoken Chorus after PR but was not able to successfully get public funding to develop work based on or using the research. Local company, VideoCabaret was very interested in supporting the avant garde nature of the work and generously offered micro-grants on a few occasions which allowed for a couple of 5 minute performances to be rehearsed and presented as readings. Despite this support opportunities were so limited I eventually had to stop developing choral works. -I was awarded an international opportunity to work on a production with German
theatre director Volker Loesch and with large spoken choruses led by Bernd Freytag. I spent 3 months as an assistant on a piece at the State Theatre in Stuttgart where my practical experiences working with large groups came into play. The process focused on working with non-professionals and was more basic and technical than the nuance working with actors affords so there was not a lot of opportunity to use the research results in rehearsal. I made a trailer which featured the chorus and it can be viewed here: http://youtu.be/Sow4FoNAjwQ . The choral director and I did discuss the PR results and those outcomes however an arts council proposal to bring him to Canada to continue the discussion and start working on a project that would have combined our work was not successful although we would have liked to try it. http://canadalandshow.com/podcast/fear-loathing-canadian-television
-I participated in another Pure Research project years later which was run by our PR participant Christine Brubaker. Thank you for the opportunity to revisit the work! Best Regards, Rebecca Â