the Portrait Studio Site

Media and production info for The Portrait production…

Thoughts on a Chamber Epic

Chamber Epic

The Portrait will be a big little show. Tiny in form, enormous in scope. Tightly packed, richly detailed, and ready to explode - but that energy will be deployed intentionally… sometimes in an agonizingly charged drip, sometimes in blinding flashes.

To guide us on how the work will look, feel, sound, i’m referencing the concept of “chamber epic” - a performance that completely fills and threatens to bust out of its frame, but completely under our control. Here’s some thoughts on how to focus that idea.

A chamber epic is Proficient, Strange, and Full.

It will be proficient in how its performed and designed. A high level of specificity, scale, control, space in all aspects. Actions and design will be ‘clean’ with a focus on precision (tight choreography, highly-detailed design) and clarity (clear edges, beginnings/endings, bold colors and lines). Even chaos will be highly executed. Another key concept here will be management of ‘space’ (in the sense of Japanese 間 “ma”). Gesture and design will have a clear framework of space, emptiness, holding, suspense. This is the definitive period after a vocal, physical, or choral statement. Proficiency is a function of precision, clarity, and manipulation of time.

It will be strange in how we use unexpected and unusual events, timing, shapes, and space. Combinations and contradictions will be used to keep the audience from settling in too comfortably. We’re not trying to lull them into a lovely evening of gentle storytelling. We’re engaging them, challenging them, keeping their sense of curiosity piqued at all time. This show will make choices based on how we manipulate the audience’s sense of expectation, sometimes leaning into it, sometimes dropping the floor out underneath them.

It will be full by the quantity and depth of detail. At times it will be purposely overwhelming. The doesn’t always mean busy. We will use silence and stillness (ma) to fill moments. Visually, there will be a lot to watch. The soundscape will be close to music scoring. There will be singing. There will be puppets. There will be moments of orchestrated chaos. There will be improv. There will be group choreography. It will be a mechanically impressive feat.

Underscoring the whole thing is the basic function of storytelling. I’m sensitive about building a pretty shell. Everything will be in service of telling a complicated story. The audience won’t catch everything, but they’ll all get the carrier wave of what this story means to them in their lives and in society now. They will be pulled in by the gravity of your performance.

There you go, a little window into my plans for this extremely energetic ball of information and passion spinning in front of the audience like a neutron star.

Workshop 1

Monday, August 24, 2026

6:30 - 9:30

@ Center for Performing Arts, Mpls, Studio 305W

Chorus, Composure, Chaos

Our first workshop for building The Portrait will be exploring and exploding the discrete elements of physical and vocal traits that make up a character. We won’t be working on specific characters, but expanding the palette we’ll choose from to build character. We’ll work on different ways to orchestrate choral movement and gesture, vocal and physical gesture.

We’ll use individual, small group, and ensemble creation techniques to create without editing. We’ll share, shop, and steal from each other to start defining the textures to the creatures inhabiting this world.

At the end of the workshop we’ll have an initial, broad sense of the unique palettes to deploy for building these characters and how they interact in a group.

Workshop 2

Monday, September 14 2026

6:30 - 9:30

@ Center for Performing Arts, Mpls, Studio 305W

Character Assassination School

Our second workshop for The Portrait will focus on the characters. Building off the palette from the first workshop, we’ll start exploring qualities unique to the individual characters. Everyone will try on the six characters, pushing the exploration of what their physical, psychic, and vocal traits could be.

At the end of the workshop we’ll have discovered some guiding truths about the characters and the world they make up.

Workshop 3

Sunday, October 4, 2026

10:00 - 5:00

@ Center for Performing Arts, Mpls, Studio 205W

Words and Sounds

Our third and final workshop in 2026 will start digging into the intentionally overwrought, thickly-written text to identify the essential, the silly, the salacious, the delightful, the awful, and what’s missing. We’ll also start exploring the live soundscape of the piece, discovering moments of musicality and sonic diversion.

We’ll apply what we know about the characters in this story to play out some scenes, both to continue figuring out what those characters are and to see how the words hang in the scene.

A longer-form intensive workshop, a meal will be catered.

At the end of the workshop we’ll have uncovered editing needs to the script and identified moments of musicality that might need scoring or defining outside the rehearsal room. All this will lead us to the next set of workshops in 2027 that will prep us for production in October 2027.