Click #1850charla 2.28.14 to get the custom Twitter timeline for this 2/28/14 performance of What’s on [My] Mind?

Today @xtaforster, @ysidorapico and several .Re/actors took to the Twitter stage for the #1850charla. One of the performers, @mediciprincess, asked

Initially, I came up with the idea for the #1850charla while I was brainstorming for alternate ways of performing What’s on [My] Mind?, in part because I was trying to avoid turning this performance into a “big production.”  So I was thinking about alternate stages, virtual stages. @YsidoraPico’s December 2013 performance with Vanessa Blaylock Company in Second Life helped me get comfortable and familiar with alternate ways of performing live. In Dance for Camera: The Planets, for example, I was performing live for an audience of one in a virtual world — Vaneeessa Blaylock. I’ve reflected more on that collaboration here.

Regardless of the super-small audience for that performance (I suppose my children also were a sort of audience; while @YsidoraPico and I were working in SL, they were duly fascinated with my “playing” — they’re fanatical about Minecraft, another virtual world), this experience with VBC deepened my relationship with @YsidoraPico; also, I learned explicitly that I truly thrive on super-specific deadlines and on steep learning curves; additionally, I got some rad photographs of @YsidoraPico, which have become part of this performance.

Most of all, #1850charla — this entire project, really, and the associated collaborations — have strengthened the marriage in me between playing and learning.  I am always galvanized by the question what if? and also with the idea that anything goes.

Inventing the #1850charla created the need to figure out what I was going to do about it, why I was doing it, how I was going to do it, and in trying to figure out all these things, I had a lot of fun and learned a ton of stuff.

And, despite my initial intention, there’s still a “big production” happening soon — the March 12, 2014 performance at 14 Pews in Houston, Texas and at EZTV in Santa Monica (via Google+ Hangout on Air).