Draftifestos

A place to dump drafts and manifestos that update and change as we do.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
I a large, I contain multitudes!
(Walt Whitman, Song of Myself)

We emerged from the Cavern of No and eagerly stand before a Mountain of Yes!

Kaitlen Osburn & Kassy Skoretz

23 February 2019

We started a Blog (Kassy posting)

My roommate and I are starting a blog. In our own ways, we are both performers, directors, writers, leaders, teachers, students, and goofballs. Our interests are various and our impetus for engaging art and ideas needs a little focus and practice. So, we find ourselves here, starting a blog.

While thinking about the process of starting a blog and what that might entail, I started moving through some inspirational and aspirational texts--I bumped into Anne Bogart. In and then, you act, Anne Bogart writes “the why determines the value of the what” (43). So, in starting this, my third blog, I ask myself: Self, why are we creating this blog and what will it contain?

Several answers came to mind. To be explicit, several answers have coalesced from much noodling back and forth on what the take-aways or purposes of this kind of blog might be to me and to those around me. I drafted and wandered through thought and have come to the following list of values: 

• I value asking questions
• Questions are how we frame what we don’t yet know. They are how we derive our next actions and how we come to our outside the box, creative thinking. I’ve been reading about the development of asking questions from The Right Question Institute, who believe that "all people [can learn] to learn to ask better questions and participate more effectively in key decisions” through those better questions. I’ve been reading A More Beautiful Question and The Undoing Project, thinking about the way that questions allow us to move outside of the traps that our pattern making brains can convince us are real. 
• I value curious and deliberate engagement with ideas and work
• I was once grilled deliberately at a conference by the keynote speaker, who happened to watch my panel, about some of the basic assumptions I had made in my paper. It was extremely exciting to know that he was ready to engage curiously with my ideas, and I was devastated when my panel members cut him off and moved to another question. They told me later that they were saving me from his sharp tongue and catty demeanor. I was floored by how foolish that made me feel. I delight in the ability to engage with ideas and find value in the curious questioning of them to discover all they might have to offer. 
• I value sharing said ideas and work
• Sharing work and ideas is one of my favorite parts of both the creative and critical processes. By moving the work between brains, I think that a more complete and complex thing can be created and understood. 
• I value critical thought about things I am curious about
• In much the same way that learning happens between body and brain, I think that creativity can flourish with critical thought. In best practice (and I do mean that it takes practice), critical thought and creativity foster each other like sunshine and rain to plants. Different amounts of each cause different kinds of plants to flourish, but both are necessary in some degree and some way. I value a mix of both in my own work. I am not certain yet what that percentage is, and it might be a variable one in much the same way that there is a variable amount of rainfall or cloud cover in any given year. 
• I value rigor in my work
• In the same vein as “paintings only stop in interesting places”, I think most art and critical thought are never quite finished, but I am curious about what places they might stop if we don’t give up until the angel blesses us like Jacob. This is a particular process that graduate school and multiple artist conservatories have taught me: to keep digging when you think you’ve gone far enough or when you think you’ve asked all the questions or thought of all the things. There’s more to go. You can hold on and be more thorough, consider more angles, include more people. 
• I need ways to combine rigor, questions, critical thought, creation, and engagement in a format with deadlines that has the ability to be both formal and informal.

The values answer the why for me specifically. I continue to read and to learn and to encounter and create art, and I need a place in which that is done with someone because it’s better as a party than a solo act. That’s why I invited Kaitlen to the party. That’s why I hope we can have other guest contributors.

So what is the result of this why—how does it determine the value of the what? The what is this blog and for myself, I hope it will contain the following actions:  

• restoring my consistent engagement with ideas in a written format
• making a place to be accountable to with artistic and critical creation
• engaging with creators and thinkers in a shareable format
• continuing to sharpen my questioning and thinking skills
• intentionally continuing my own creation and criticism
• fostering joy in sharing said work

I anticipate that you, as reader or contributor, will find many kinds of work here, including: scripts, videos, photographs, rehearsal records, reading responses, manifestos, interviews, questions, and research.