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tags: projects
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# 20220729 TDM Support designLab

## Fall TDM Support (notes from meeting with TDM folks)
### MDF Fall support:
* Documentation of the three production studios, especially capturing some of the two theatrical productions to add to what we have from HDP last year
* Contacting the leaders of the two theatrical productions to see if process-documentation assignments or activities might fit with their visions for the course (something akin to the interviews of students Jessi performed for HDP last year or documentation of rehearsals, etc).
* TDM 90AR: TDM Puppet Production Studio (Kate Brehm)
* TDM 90BR: Spring Production Studio
* Work to support the 8 TDM students performing senior theses in the coming year, aiding either with process-documentation or with creating a web-based portfolio of these projects
* Developing a “lookbook” or “menu” of options for Learning Lab support that we could present sometime this term in preparation for Spring 2023 courses. This might include:
* a model of how student interviews can prompt metacognitive reflection of what they’ve learned for the course (while also telling the story of the course to the broader Harvard community)
* ideas for multimedia portfolio assignments that the Bok Center can support
* ideas for integrating other modes of process-documentation into a course in tandem with either of the above to create a “story of the course” (which could also help students develop portfolios)
* ideas for using Bok Center support to generate media for use in TDM productions and classes (like the videos and images Jessi created for HDP projections, buttons and lobby installations)

## course information from my.harvard
The language of puppetry is steeped in visual and physical storytelling. Inanimate objects become living beings in a world where anything can come to life. Students of this course will learn to tell stories through the physically dynamic practice of puppeteering. Simultaneously, we will consider dramaturgically what types of story and themes are best suited to this medium.

Classes will consist of short discussions followed by rehearsal for a puppet production of The Poacher, a short story by science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. All students will puppeteer in the production, which will include multi-operator bunraku-style, tabletop, and shadow puppets as well as a full-body costumed environment puppeteered collectively as an ensemble. A professional design team will share with the class their processes of connecting each discipline to the unique needs of a puppet show: lighting that avoids human beings, sound which drives emotional tenor, costumes that are also puppets, and scenery which itself performs.

The Poacher places its main character in the same realm occupied by Sleeping Beauty. Our young protagonist has a difficult home life and spends most time poaching mushrooms from the king’s forest. Their curiosity is peaked by a strange hedge beyond which they discover Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom in a state of suspended animation. In a twist, instead of waking the princess, our protagonist decides to become permanently lost and live among the half-awake until their end.

This story plays in the boundary between animate and inanimate, sleeping and waking, real and imaginary, ignorance and knowledge. These themes, most relevant to the practice of puppetry, are also precisely the ones outlined by Roger Caillois in his text on insect mimicry. The spoken narration of The Poacher will be interlaced with comments from Caillois on the benefits of disappearing into one’s surroundings.TDM's Fall 2022 Production will be taught by movement director and artist Kate Brehm. TDM production studios (TDM 90AR/BR/CR/DR) frame and involve participation in Theater, Dance & Media’s twice yearly professionally directed and designed productions. The preponderance of time for this course will be dedicated to the rehearsal process and performances, where the integration of theory and practice, and theater, dance, and media take place. Students will meet with the course head for seminar discussions and studio work at designated times to examine the entire performance process through a creative lens.

### framing notes
* way to conceptualize = solo vs. collaborative
* senior theses support = helping one artist
* vs. production studios as much more collaborative
* Puppet Production Studio potentially capped at 12 students (according to my.harvard)
### where we're at now
* produce some prototypes that can be sent to Kate Brehm as a pitch for our/the MDF's support of Puppet Studios.
* MK (+ others?) will capture some media at R&D sessions this upcoming week

## DesignLab Notes

Questions:
- are they constructing puppets or renting?
-

### prototype ideas
* movement studies
* done with HDP (Forsyth?) producing graphic overlays - adapting that to the manipulation of a puppet, what does it mean to manipulate a subject that's not you, tools as an extension of the body
* anaylsis of different puppets:
* if each student focused on the range of movement and puppetry of one puppet, and then reflecting on the storytelling moves and all combined could go into an encyclopedia of puppetry or something
* and how does that translate into their own understanding of their own movement and communication
* interview sequence
* pre and post
* and ITM interviews as things move along
* ie. Vogue Billy Eilish - reflecting on previous interview

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_wNsZEqpKUA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

* documentation of construction of puppet alongside the process of students becoming a puppeteer (timeline!)
* comparing their initial plan for their puppet to what actually happened, alongside what they initially think they'll enjoy/like etc. to how they end up feeling as a puppeteer at the end
* students becoming puppets!? with the green screen
* discovering what happens unexpectedly and work with that, discovering new constraints
* thinking about what movement you want for your puppet FIRST with your own body ***first step of the pitch!***
* intimacy and safety, communication and consent

### documentation and media
* each student assigned 3 posts or so over the course of semester
* all students record and have to post - to defamiliarize the experience that they are having, getting them to look at something in a different way
* having to find something weird or unexpected each week and do a blog post-sized reflection/close reading

## things to get the MPAs to make as prototypes
* 3 part activity - (15 minutes to set up, 1 hour to prototype)
* 1 or 2 questions where they talk on camera
* range of movement diagram
* all shoot and post
* bookend reflection
* put together a kit for students? or doing research on their own? (each puppet will have it's own background/cultural context, etc.)
* giving them options to choose most aligned with what they want to explore
* what do we have the most unknowns about? where would we want the most feedback? what will be the most challening/complex for us to design/develop for/with them?
* range of movement diagram
* using the overhead and the stage
* prototype different ways of annotating
* both the mover and documenter(s) learn and explore and need to communicate

## Kate Brehm

link to her site: https://www.katebrehm.com/#intro

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/460406736?h=b71a87c2ea" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/460406736">MovementForPuppets1</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user1572297">Kate Brehm</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>


<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/225692776?h=8366d82c31" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/225692776">Discrepancies, meditation 1 - short section</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user1572297">Kate Brehm</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

check out her description of her performance [here](https://www.katebrehm.com/projects/discrepancies.html)


## visual references