classes

our work as a company is deeply influenced by our friendship and apprenticeship with Mary Overlie and Richard Foreman. Over the years we have been drawn to carry this lineage and share it with more people around the world. We try to offer these classes independently throughout the year. If you are part of a space, institution, organization or community interested please reach out to us. Here are some of the classes we offer. If you have any questions please contact us at themillionunderscores@gmail.com 

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Introduction to Mary Overlie's Six Viewpoints

(12-24 HOURS spread between 2-6 days)

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The Six Viewpoints is a postmodern philosophy that arises from physical inquiry. In this workshop we deconstruct performance into its six essential languages or materials: Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement/Kinetics, and Logic/Story. Through deceptively simple physical exercises collected and developed by Mary Overlie, we find each students' individual relationship to each of the materials. This is a great workshop for artists from any media, dancers, chaoreographers, actors, directors, musicians, sculptors, painters, poets... interested in interrogating performance as a medium.

 

 

Six Viewpoints Lecture

(2-4 HOURS)

 Mary's most refined and toured performance was her Lecture. She began to develop this lecture in the late 80s and continued developing, adding to it and changing it till 2019. Mary's Lecture articulates the postmodern philosophy in the Six Viewpoints and contextualized it historically, conceptually and pedagogically into what Mary calls THE BRIDGE.

I first heard this lecture in Mary's kitchen over a burger when I was 19. I continued to learn it over the years, translating it into Spanish, talking to Mary about it, and giving it myself during my years teaching at The Experimental Theater Wing at NYU.

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Material Dialogues

(3 HOURS  one-offs)

In the MATERIAL DIALOGUES, we take two MATERIALS (Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement, Story), explore them separately, in relation to each other and the space in between them. This Format is for a mix of people who have worked with The Six Viewpoints and those who haven't.

 

Findings at the Edges of the Materials

(24 HOURS spread over 6 days)

Each session will be a four hour workshop grounded in one of the six Materials, or SSTEMS as Mary called them: Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement, Story.  We will study each material in relation to the other five by exploring their meeting coordinates: where does Story meet Space? How does Space meet Shape? What is the relationship between Space and Emotion? How does Time affect Space? etc. 

By tracing the edges of these materials through their relationships, we will arrive at a complex definition of their territory, have a comprehensive idea of how they have been traditionally organized, and experiment with what new possibilities exist in their composition.

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Scene Study with the Six Viewpoints

Timothy Scott

(8-24 HOURS depending on the group)

For Actors and Directors curious about incorporating the Six Viewpoints and their philosophy into acting dramatic text. Through interrogations in style, history and context we will play with different ways of playing a particular scene by working differently with the materials. 

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FORM, CHAOS and CHANGE

Nicolás Noreña

(16-36 HOURS spread over 3- 12 days)

Beyond the materials there are three big forces in the world that are always opperative and have in them incredible creative power: Form, Chaos, and Change. Over the years with The Million Underscores we have been experimenting on how to harness the intrinsic generative power of these ever present and unending resources into theater making. This is a course for performers who are interested in challenging the ways in which they perceive and organize their creative process. Through improvisation, compositional exercises and conversations we will 

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Theater Machines

Nicolás Noreña

(18 HOURS on)

This workshop forms around our working definition of theater: Theater is an arrangement of the elements of reality-- an architecture that invites a way of seeing. Inspired by my work with Richard Foreman and conversations with Mary Overlie about how the materials exist in the world, this generative workshop offers theater makers a scaffolding to understand the forces that are at play in theater making, and structures to experiment into the making of new performance forms. 

 

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THE TEACHERS  

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Nicolás Noreña

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Mary Overlie and her Six Viewpoints transformed my relationship with theater, performance, art, and life. I first was introduced to this physical postmodernist philosophy by Mary herself, in her apartment, over dinner: she cooked hamburgers and gave me the lecture. I continued to  study the Six Viewpoints with Mary at the Experimental Theater Wing and the following eleven years under her tutelage.  I  studied privately with her in Brooklyn, upstate New York, and in Montana. I traveled with her through Europe and America and was trained to teach by her while I assisted her at Rose Bruford College, Impulstanz, Danza Canal, and Accademia Teatro Dimitri. 

 

Today I am part of the faculty at The Experimental Theater Wing in New York University, where Mary over 40 years developed her technique. I have also taught at Playwrights Horizons, MIT, Universidad de los Andes, Centro Cultural Lucy Tejada, Movement Research, and independently at CAVE home of LEIMAY, Brooklyn Studios for Dance and Studio Maya.  

I am currently the director of the Mary Overlie Archive. 

Passing along her work and keeping  the horizontal interrogation of theater alive is very much part of the work we do with our company, through our productions, laboratories and classes.

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Timothy Scott

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I studied with Mary Overlie, very intensely, over the course of eleven years.  I first encountered her work as a student at the Experimental Theater Wing, within NYU, from which we formed a lasting relationship. Mary's work and philosophies revolutionized my ideas of what theater could be, and as a performer, what I could perform. I have since traveled and assisted her teaching in New York, Montana, London, Madrid, Vienna and Verscio, Switzerland. Mary's work is very much alive within my own creative work and my understanding of art at-large. 

 

I have taught Six Viewpoints work independently at NYU's Meisner Studio, HB Studio, Playwright's Horizons, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, CAVE Home of Leimay, The Brick Theater and Studio Maya.