Quest Tour of the Czech Republic 
Journal Updates

Friday-Saturday, November 14-15, 2003
Friday afternoon we took a walking tour of Brno. One great treat for us has been the presence of Fritz, a former MSSD student who is now living in the Czech Republic with his family. Fritz and his family guided us around Brno for our sightseeing tour (QuickTime movie, 10MB).

Impressions by Tim McCarty
" A Celebration of the Senses" opened last night and it was wonderful. Shira and Mike looked great in charcoal grey turtle neck tops and black pants. The costumes combined with our simple staging and lighting gave the show the clean look and feel of a poetry reading. One of our interpreters found the piece to be "incredibly beautiful." Jindra Zemanek, the director of Pantomima SI stated that our work is "the model for the future."

The end of last evenings program focused on various awards or recognition. We received two awards. Shira served on the jury and explained that Quest received an award for its model of inclussiveness and our efforts to share our work through cultural exchanges. The second award was for me in recognition of my efforts to promote deaf theatre and the work of deaf artists. Both awards are national Czech awards and we received our awards from a women who was a minister of the national deaf association.

After the program, we went to a gala celebration. That experience is hard to
describe. It was at the National Theatre. There were lots of people there. There
was a single musician there with all kinds of sound equipment performing various
popular American songs in Czech. We all had a great time.

Tomorrow, we head to Prague and I am so looking forward to that. Hopefully, the
weather will hold. We had one really cold day, but other than that it's been
mild with temperatures probably around 40.

For me, this has been a most gratifying tour. Our work has (the shows and my
workshop) have been strong. Our company has responded to the challenge. The university of performing arts is interested in further exchanges. Our hosts simply say, "This is not an end. It is a beginning." Everyone in our company is feeling proud, honored, and humbled.

Impressions by Banafsheh Wallace
Our workshop was two fold, involving various techniques that we use in our rehearsal process, and a question and answer period. The beauty of sign is that simple gestures can often transcend language (and sometimes cultural) barriers. We engaged in games which challenge spatial memory and imagination such as "Environments" where moments and movements depend on particular situations. For example, the entire room may be covered in a dense fog, or the floor may be incased in ice.  How would you move in such an environment? We also did other excercises such as "One, two, three", where 3 different objects are placed in different spaces and you must create a picture relating and giving focus to that object, my favorite, "Mask" which challenges communication and creativity, and "Nothing" which forces you to give "nothing". This particular excercise is personally challenging for me, as I have always been uncomfortable having people stare at me in my most vulnerable state. Thankfully, Tim (who conducted the workshop) made this the last excercise. I say "thankfully", because although this one is admittedly my least favorite, I'd had the opportunity to develop trust within a safe rehearsal/training/workshop atmosphere to reveal myself to complete strangers.

The question and answer period went well. It was fascinating to to be on the panel, where the English we were speaking was being simultaneously translated to ASL, Czech or Slovakian, and Gestuno. The feedback was positive, and most thought the show was powerful and moving.

Dare I write about the evening's performance? The evening's performers were Austrian, and their performance was in a word... INTERESTING. First, there were five actors, three which played music the entire time, while the other two acted out the story.  I wondered at that particular choice, because there were periods of dead time while costume changes were done backstage, which I thought could have been filled with other forms of action.  They also made use of a large iron set piece which would take on various forms throughout the evening. One interesting point in their performance is the fact that the female actor would speak EVERYTHING. She spoke her part, and would drop her voice to indicate that she was translating what he was signing. I felt bad for her, because the only voice in the show was hers, which I found interesting because I would have expected someone else to speak his part. I left the show with more questions than answers, resolving myself to "Maybe that's just how they do it in Austria."

Impressions by Mike Harper
Having seen "Wings" for the first time on this tour, and having been blown away by that performance, I felt inspired to give the same quality of performance in "Celebration of the Senses." During rehearsals I did a certain amount of wondering how it would "play" here, where the language is different, since the play is based on English speaking poems. But once we were onstage in front of an audience, I felt so comfortable with what Shira and I were doing that it made any lesser concerns seem to disappear. Part of me felt impelled to break thru any language barrier thru sheer focus on what we were doing, and trusting that "something positive" was going on between the audience and us. One of the interesting things about performing today was that it happened at the end of a conference during which I had met and gotten to know quite a few of the people that we were playing to, and that made the experience more meaningful too.

"Celebration" was followed by some other special performances, the highlight of which for me was the backward depiction of the Olympic events (Imagine watching it in reverse on your VCR and you get the idea). What incredible technique and analysis of every little movement and gesture, but beyond the technique, watching actions take on a different meaning when they unexpectedly follow each other was incredibly funny. I thought the performers were wonderful!

The evening ended with a gala gathering at a local performing arts center complex, with much mingling, picture taking, dancing, and merriment. The party was still going at midnight when I left.

More...