Noticing MORE : Thought of the week for 10/10

We hope you've been able to put some of the things we've listed into practice over the last few weeks.  Here are some more things to try to increase your NOTICING. 
Each exercise can be done in ten minutes or less: 

-Sit in a chair or lie on the ground hands at your side and feet flat.  Begin to notice your breathing.  Start first with the air as it enters your nostrils and as it leaves.  What do you notice is different between the in breath and the out breath?  Temperature, sensation?  Then notice how your lungs expand and the various tugs on your muscles just from breathing.  Allow your attention to float through the body and notice all that you can around your toes, ankles, legs etc.  Notice your attention relocalizing through your body and notice how with each new phase you can pick up on greater detail

-Look at your favorite piece of art or your favorite souvenir.  What was it that you noticed about it that made you want to keep it?  What can you notice about it today that you never really noticed before?-Watch your favorite movie and ask yourself what are the first images presented to the viewer?  Why did they select those images.  What was it that the makers of the film noticed in that moment that made them decide it was necessary to tell the story.

-If you are working on memorizing a scene or a monologue, notice if there is one word, phrase or line that just doesn’t really stick in your mind.  Look at it more closely.  See if you can notice what it is about the line, phrase or word that makes you want to skip it or substitute something else.  Quite often that detail will be the key to the line.

- Go through a photo album and pick one person that you care about.  Look at them in the different pictures of the album.  What details are different from photo to photo? From moment to moment? From year to year?

Other ideas:  Re-read your favorite poem and look for something new,  watch an animal and see how much of its surroundings it is taking in at all times,  do a “taste test” of different brands of the same product and see if you can articulate the differences.

Thought of the Week 10/3 NOTICING part II

Thought for the week from Magis: Last week we spoke about noticing. Here are some more thoughts and some activities for you to try out :
One of the truly emblematic pieces of American Theatre is Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” While studying it as a youngster I probably learned more about theatre and literature from the way this play was taught to me than any other single work I had experienced up until that point in my life. I remember getting to the Third Act when Emily wants to go back to re-live her twelfth birthday. I was puzzled at the reactions of the other characters who told her not to do it because it would be too painful. As she noticed the things that she overlooked while she was alive it became unbearable for her. She asked the stage manager “do any human beings realize life while they live it? Every every minute?” His response to her was “No. The saints and poets, they do some.” This interchange made a huge impact on me. How much there is to notice in life… and how like the saints and poets we are when we are able to notice it in the moment.
Suggestions for developing a noticing practice:
-Spend 10 minutes in one spot: on a bus or train, on a park bench, at a window and just watch what is going on. What do you see? People? Birds? Movement? Colors? Notice what attracts your eye from moment to moment and name it.
- The next time you eat spend some time noticing the complexity of temperature, texture, aroma, and flavor. Notice how each chew will change the equation slightly and feature one or more of the components slightly differently. Each new bite will be different proportions. Take your time and enjoy the intricacy of the tastes.

NOTICING: Magis Thought For the Week 9/26

NOTICING:
As actors we recreate life on stage. A huge portion of what we do has its foundation in sharpening our ability to notice. Whether we work intuitively or technically, from the inside out or from the outside in, the raw material of what we work with is harvested through our ability to notice.  Our reactions in reading a script can be appropriated only if we’ve developed a way in noticing how something affects us.  The choices we make as character can be made only if we are able to notice the choices we make for our selves in real life.  How we respond to a scene partner in rehearsal or on stage can be open and attentive only if we can notice the subtle cues and invitations that are present in the moment that is being created right in front of us.   Noticing what attracts our attention helps us to gather more and more possibilities. The more we find the world around us fascinating, and the more we can begin and maintain and enjoyable fascination, then everything we do on staged will be drenched in this same fascination.  We sometimes think that enjoyment is something that just happens to us depending on something external.  While the hook is definitely grounded in the external, the ability to enjoy something depends on how much of our attention we can bring to really experience it.  Without the ability to notice, things just pass us by.  Without the ability to notice, even the most precious things don’t even register.  The more we notice, the more we see how intricate life is.  We not only see it we begin to enjoy it.

I was in Tuscany working with Ellen Stewart, the founder and director of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, on a site specific piece based on one of Ambrose Bierce’s novels. The theatre group in Italy had scouted out several locations but none of them were exactly what Ellen was looking for to tell the story.  As the team was driving Ellen from Arcidosso to Bagnore, Ellen said “Stop the car, pull over.”  There was a little chapel there and a wall that opened into a huge field, a grove, and an old farmhouse that belonged to a local family.  It was the perfect spot to do the show.  Someone asked Ellen, “how did you know to stop here?”  She said “I heard a bird.”  Ellen noticed everything.  She noticed things in artists that others overlooked.  She saw things in many of today’s great artists that no one ever saw before and presented them to an audience in a way that allowed them to see the special qualities that she noticed in them.  Her ability to notice launched the careers of Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Diane Lane, Wallace Shawn,  and hundreds of others,  and gave us the first productions of “Godspell,” “Hair,” and Blue Man Group. 

What can our "noticing" ignite in us this week?

Be-lieve

Today some of the threads of this past week were woven together.  Not a bad image as I sit here in Guatemala where weaving is a significant part of the indigenous culture.

Last Tuesday I led the first session of the Notre Dame Summer camp and when Magis starts with young actors we always teach the three tools (body, voice, imagination) and the three commandments:

Be seen

Be heard

Be-lieve

Today, our first full day in Guatemala began with attending the opening of a new arts center “La Casa.”  Our friends from Caja Ludica, an extraordinary arts collective, kicked things off with a lively parade of circus like magical figures going around the streets of the neighborhood where La Casa is located. 

Julia Escobar, one of the founders of Caja Ludica, has an impressive smile and an arresting presence.  Seeing her proclaim the opening of La Casa to the crowd  she commanded people in the plaza near the park.  Her presence was magnetic and she was absolutely committed to the magical belief that in the world of this parade she WAS magic, the kind of magic that inspires, that calls people to do their best, that provides for it to happen. Later on at our planning meeting I heard from her some of the extreme challenges of is past year:  losing a space that they had just renovated, dealing with huge unknown factors regarding their funding, and any number of other things that could drive a director of a company mad.  I said to her “and always surviving with a smile!” She replied, “if I didn’t have that…”

It spoke volumes to me how if we can commit to our situation, if we can Be-lieve then that magic that comes through her smile can make it all happen in spite of the pitfalls along the way.  That is the kind of belief, commitment and magic that people come to the theatre to see.
-George

Second to last... but not least

This week's training was our 2nd to last of the year so we had to make it count!

During the first part of our training, we focused very specifically on the area where our spine attaches to our neck. We worked from "monkey" and examined how that point is deeply connected with all of our movements. Much of the company noticed that the slightest turn of the head could be clocked by feeling that 'critical juncture' (get it?? haha), We then moved on to what I describe as "Crocodile Floorwork;" replicating the spineful creature's progression of movement-from small to large. As crocodiles, we went from resting face-down in the swamp, to roaming and searching our ecosystem.  For me, it was revealing to encounter the resulting mindfulness that exploring the crocodile motions elicited. We then moved on to a bit of text work, allowing the lines to come to us as we searched the room. 

The next portion of training consisted of two exercises that tested our ability to both inhibit and follow our impulses in achieving a goal. We played "Red Light, Green Light" and "Simon Says." Yes, these are historically "children's games." But we found that both of these games illuminated certain aspects of our process BECAUSE of the simplicity of each games' instructions. For instance, in Simon Says, we were forced to inhibit our impulses to follow a director's direction. It takes an "extra-daily" use of energy to monitor whether or not Simon has ordered us to do something. In Red Light, Green Light, we must utilize "extra-daily" use of energy to honor the obstacle (being caught) in our pursuit of the traffic person. 

We segued into clown work by first exploring an image exercise that was led by George. This exercise (which we did not know would lead to clown work), consisted of a fantastical morning routine and enabled us to enter our clown's world. It's amazing how these imagination exercises stick to our subconscious when we continue on into an improvisation. This improvisation consisted of us splitting into two groups of clowns. Our clowns interacted with "the voice" and with one another. This exercise was a potent reminder that a clowns experience, no matter how "externalized," must be as real for the clown, as Romeo's. Torvald's or Batman's journey is for them. 

We ended our training by working on a few prepositions. These prepositions continue to illuminate "Life is a Dream." Each moment that is explored beams a ray of light into a crevice of the play that is unearthed. The learning is palpable!

For me, working with Magis has encouraged and illuminated the mentality that 'the work' and the journey are a destination. That training is not just a "means to an end," but an end in itself. This mindset not only makes training more satisfying in the doing-it makes it more effective on the instrument. I love the notion that we are a "training company." It's old school and swagtastic in the best possible way. I'm looking forward to celebrating our year this Tuesday with all of you! There has certainly been a lot to celebrate this week!!!

-Dan

From the Directors' Lab

This past week in the Lab, Kelly and Alex worked on some explorations with "Life is a Dream."  Here's what they worked on: 

From Alex:

I wanted to explore the characters of Fife and Rosaura, how their characters are understood through their relationship to each other, and how that is learned by the audience at the beginning of the play before the very first line. Since I worked with three pairings my focus was on giving them adjustments and suggestions that would create specificity for all three pairings, which I found useful to a point--right about when we had to stop to show the rest of the group was when I wanted to start working with each pairing individually. I found that even the approximately two minutes of action that leads Rosaura to her first line ("I, wearied, worried, and for-done, alone will down the mountain...") was too much for us to work: my next step would have been to work with each of the pairings individually on just the action from when they wake to when they both are standing. I think condensing the amount of action being worked would lead us to clearer, more specific character and relationship choices. Once that very first moment of waking and standing was clear and strong, we could then start to see what happens to them next.

From Kelly:

What I was interested in exploring last night was the soundscape created by the two songs we've begun learning. In particular, I wanted to hear them sung simultaneously, since they are so different in nature (one very celebratory and triumphant and the other mournful). I am fascinated with the tension that exists between perceived opposites and often find that really exciting things grow from that space. There is a piece of music by Bach named "Morimur" that contrasts two completely different pieces of music to great effect.

Last night, we could only use eight people to begin exploring, so it was challenging, given that both pieces have three distinct parts. Still, everyone did really lovely work and we were able to sing them together. While it was an initial attempt, I believe it will work. In particular, there were a few lovely moments when the melancholy sounded between the pauses of the celebratory piece, creating a haunting feeling.

In moving forward, I would continue exploring in two steps. First, I would continue working on having the ensemble get comfortable with both pieces of music and with singing them together. Then, I would begin exploring with a larger soundscape, along the lines that Dennis, Ali, and Tsebiyah did the previous week. I would encourage the ensemble to use only simple sounds and tones to communicate, maybe even pretending to be different kinds of animals (alligator!) and see if there is a way to have the songs grow organically from the larger soundscape.

Curiosity

 Show original message

During last week’s training we looked afresh at exercises we’ve been working on for months. We slowed them down, considered them from different perspectives. We looked with curiosity. Curiosity seems pretty key to the life of an actor. The joy of exploration, of solving problems , finding answers that ask more question, always thirsting to know more about the world, your characters, yourself.

Every week we examine the red and blue wave. As an actor who has studied Suzuki, feeling the power of the earth through my feet and the wave that comes from that during the blue wave makes sense. The red wave however, seeming to come from the universe downward, but not so downward that it bone crushingly knocks you to the floor, is more complex. Letting, the wave pass through you and to a point across the room, rather than into the floor is another challenge. But last week, there was a comment about disengaging the foot from the ground before the wave reaches it, when it is at chest height. This seemed to help me significantly to get a sense of the wave passing through me rather than stopping at me. Having this small success, I’m left with many more questions- why red, why blue, why these waves, how do they echo the waves found in physics, are there other waves to consider? 

And what do these waves mean for my performances? It seems to me that every play, monologue, every line, every word is in essence its own wave, passing through us. We are the conduit, the energy passes through us, but doesn’t stop with us, we must allow it to reach our audience across the room. The wave, the energy flow, the exchange, is really the essence of communication, the essence of theatre. I’m excited to attempt the waves again with this notion that they are a microcosm of a play. 

Training also included work on movement up and down stairs, using the upward energy of gravity to go up stairs and the downward to go down. Going downstairs super fast has been one of my secret loves since I was about 8 - the closest thing to flying. And every time I do it even now, I feel like a child, delighted at the motion of my body through space. But flying up stairs was a new experience, it was not uniformly felt, but occasionally, the momentum of the energy built up and I suddenly realized I was half way up the flight of stairs without even realizing it!

The final element of training included propositions or compositions on Life Is A Dream. It was really delightful to see the variety of responses to the play and the games created by it. From a book on the head standoff, to a darkened soundscape, to monologues, duologues and hand puppets, it's fascinating to see the varied interpretations of this 500 year old work and also the drama and comedy sitting side by side. I look forward to more!

Ali Kennedy Scott

More Life... is a dream :)

6/11/2015

At the session on Tuesday, we delved deeper into various modes of training.

We began with Margi and Erika providing a fresh perspective on our Alexander work, focusing on the concept of “direction.”  How do we direct our bodies without actually engaging muscles or trying to “place” or “arrange” our bodies in to what we believe to be true alignment?  The answer is deeper body awareness and more complete body mapping.  So we turned to images of the human skeleton to try to understand how our bones fit together to carry weight.  As an example, we also looked at the skeleton of an alligator.

The alligator: a creature that appears to be all spine.  From the images Erika brought to class we noticed how the alligator’s arms and legs extend easily from the spine and that when they lie on their bellies, their limbs rest comfortably “at their sides.”  Our arms and legs essentially fall to the sides of our bodies as well, but we want to keep looking for that energy that keeps them from pinching down of hanging as dead weight.

Using the print outs of human skeletons as a visual reference, we talked about how the red wave and blue wave can help us visualize “direction” in the body.  The blue wave travels UP the spine, allowing the spine and neck and head to travel forward and up on an easy current of energy.  The red wave pours down the body simultaneously.  We can allow this energy to pour down through our arms and legs and ground us.  This idea- that not all energy must travel up up up when working on Alexander Technique- was described with the image of a fountain.  As the energy travels up from the ground into the pelvis, it spills over like water in a fountain and moves back down the legs in a circular flow of energy that deeply connects us to the earth.  The same thing happens at the sternum.  As the energy travels up through the torso, it shoots out from the sternum to the collar bone to the shoulders and then down the arms, allowing them to hang freely without unnecessary and tension-inducing lift.

Thus, the arms, we decided, begin at the sternum.  And the legs begin at the meeting of the coccyx and ilium.  Thinking of the limbs this way allows them to easily plug into the energy moving up the spine and carry that energy out and down.  It also allows our limbs to connect more to the core of our physical and spiritual body, carrying that internal energy outward in movement and gesture.

We talked about re-connecting to our reptilian brains at the base of the skull.  When this primal mechanism is triggered in a fight or flight response, we are granted full freedom of movement- tension free and without conscious thought. 

After all this investigation, we tackled an exercise designed to coax out the sensation of having the arms traveling out and down from the sternum.  We began standing behind a chair.  We moved easily into a relaxed monkey pose and brought our hanging arms to rest on chair back.  We then applied light pressure to the chair, attempting to pull it into two pieces, essentially moving our hands apart from each other while keeping them gripped on to the chair back.  This light engagement helped us to open up the back body and feel the arms rooted deeply in the sternum.

After Alexander is was time for some extensive Viewpoints training with Erika.  We dove right in as a full group, working on filling the space with our moving bodies while keying up our kinesthetic listening.  We traveled through the windows created by two bodies passing, peeled off and changed directions when passing close to another ensemble member, and played with tempo and stillness.  After a while, Erika exhorted us to “turn up your listening from a 7 to an 11.”  For the last several minutes of the full group session, we were much more tuned in to the energy being passed around the room.  I felt much more plugged in and it was a pleasure to turn my conscious, decision-making mind off entirely and let impulses arise from the group. 

We then worked in groups of six- six ensemble members up on the grid and six sitting and acting as “audience.”  Both groups created some very memorable pictures and moments. 

Finally, it was time to work on “propositions” from LIFE IS A DREAM.  The propositions were developed for 10 minutes and then shared with the group.  We saw scenes from the opening of the play, the moment when Sigismund first sees Rosaura as a woman, the first meeting of Astolfo and Estrella, Basilio’s tortured decision over his cursed son, and the “locket moment.”  Each proposition made strong use of special awareness and stage picture, obviously drawing on the Viewpoints work.  Each proposition was expressive and readable.  For myself, I am excited to work on going deeper into the psychology of a moment, possibly obscuring its meaning and readability, for the sake of a deeper connection to the material.  That will be my goal in upcoming proposition work.

In all, an energetic and creative and enlightening session. 

Joe McGranaghan

Training comes through in audition

Hey everyone, This is from Dennis, and he talks about how our work with the Three Energies and the Six Revelations of Speech kicked in for him:

The beginning of this week I attended an Equity call for a theater company that wanted a contemporary monologue of any sort. What I've realized over recent years is that unless it is a classical play about half the auditions have been giving sides at auditions. Since that seems to be the case I've let my contemporary monologues either go forgotten or gather dust. I decided that I would go with a monologue that I began using almost 26 years ago and haven't used in over 10 years because it seemed to fit the project.

Once I rattled it off to make sure it was all there I began taking moments in my days leading up to it just reacquainting myself with it. This is one that is special to me so it really is in my bones. Vocally I always delivered it in the same manner and it never seems stale or forced to me. I even have a lot of the (psychologically) gestures planned ever since I performed the piece in the full play.

When I entered the room and began the monologue all of a sudden the training we've been doing kicked in almost by surprise. I began finding "dramatic" and how it went into "thoughtful" at the beginning. Then the "blue wave" kicked in with one of my gestures shooting the beam of blue out my hand as my usual gesture went over my head in the middle of the speech with the "epic / direct effective" . The next sections I felt the "retreating to one's own ground" go into antipathy to end with "lyric/ thoughtful".

While all this is happening I felt a bit disembodied and began hearing the words coming out of mouth. They came out in a totally brand new way. A way I have never heard myself say that monologue before. I would even say that the feeling stayed with me a little after I exited the room.

Since this character, a preacher, is a bit on the poetic side to begin with, I guess I was immediately able to relate the work we've done to this piece. Regardless of what the auditor may have thought or the final result of that audition it certainly left me with quite a lot to think about. All of it good.

Thanks for letting us know about this Dennis,  wishing you all similar experiences as we look for applications of the training as they surprise us in our work!

To our worldwide viewers... an invitation

We're glad to see that we get so many viewers around the world.  Please leave us a comment and tell us where you are from, what brought you to the blog, and what you'd like to see "more" of.  Just click on the word "comment" in blue below this post to take you to a page where you can leave your message.
Magis looks to build bridges with our art and we'd like to see this blog do that as well.

Week 7 - Assembly Required

The watchword for the night may be "flexibility."   Trains slowed by flooding,  parents meeting at school, various other circumstances created a need to be flexible.
It was a good sensiblity to have as we went into assembling pieces for our presentation of material about Sarra Copia Sulam. Tonight we were forced to create a kind of focus that slid through the factors that could derail process: space crunch, time crunch really made us focus on what we have.
Always easy to get caught up in thoughts about what we don't have, but we needed to begin to assemble the piece what what was available.
The limits teach us and challenge us.
As we put together pieces of what we already have from our work with the materials about Sarra Copia Sulam, led masterfully by Lab Director Alex Randrup, the through line of energy begins to get sketched out.  In the short physical training we had today I focused on through line of energy from one action to the next, and limited my selection of exercises to focus on things we would need as we assemble the piece.
I'm most interested in hearing from the actors about how the limits of tonight challenged you and what you found valuable in the challenge.
Remember to check the comments icon below to see the responses.

Week 6 Outlets

Hey everyone,
Tell us what your connections, currents and outlets were

Week 5- Training wheels off... learning to ride

Week 5

We completed the core sequence, and the physical training sequence.  As we move forward, we will be taking off the training wheels more and more.  Here's John's post about the week... add your comments and questions as well.  The conversation goes on!

We began work today with Margi doing Alexander Technique. I always enjoy this part of training because I can always feel a considerable difference in how my body feels after the work is done. Particularly with the realigning of my spine. Although it can be taxing it always makes me feel energized. Tonight we did a variety of exercises that dealt with using core strength to facilitate the moves and still be able to breath freely and without straining extra muscles not involved with moving the specific parts of the body. A great deal of them dealt with keeping our legs straight while moving them suspended in the air. It was a bit of a struggle for me because I have had difficulty putting too much weight on my tail bone, but I was able to do them with relative success and the workout made me break a sweat. Margi said that in time we would be able to do all the exercises in a half an hour's time.

George got us into our physical and imaginative space by doing some exercises with rhythm and free form movement. We did Blue Wave, Red Wave and Big X energies as well. I had particular trouble with these tonight. I didn't feel any sort of through line with my energy. I feel like I don't know what its ultimate goal is because I can't quite feel the energy coming from any of the forms, except for Blue Wave because that deals with allowing energy to flow up from the Earth out the top of my spine. It's still early in training though, and Gabe said it's good to allow myself to give into not knowing right now. Discouragement will get me nowhere. And if I never find out the deeper significance or function for it in theatrical application then I will not despair either. Acting is about picking and choosing, and Magis has already given me a great deal to use.

We ended class with work on a variety of Ceba's letters and even one of Sarra's. We were all given one line from a letter and from it we constructed our own psychological gesture from it to use in an exercise later in which we walked into the middle of the company and delivered our line to a fellow actor, they would then take the impulse as they saw fit and reacted accordingly by responding with their own line, and this was passed from actor to actor. I find psychological gestures very intriguing and helpful. Although I never really use them in a practical sense in my own work. I feel that they take up too much time to discover to be truly helpful. That's something I have come to learn a great deal of while at Magis. Patience, and being willing to spend hours on the work and not rushing through. We live in such a fast paced environment in New York City and convenience is in such high demand here that I think I expect it in all aspects of my life. I just need to give all the work more time and practice for it be more useful for me. I have time, I just need to focus it more effectively.

Although I was feeling a bit distracted during training I felt that I did my best and didn't put myself down for being unfocused at times. We all have our days.

Good beginning John, as we go more rapidly into the physical training, each individual actor has to search more and more inside to find the kind of specificity we did in the first weeks of "basics."  Yes some days will be better than others, and all days will provide information for us to get back in the groove with less prompting from the outside.  A slow method of appropriation, but the search is intensely personal and will be adjusted every day.  Good to know that it was tough to feel a through line in the energies when we go faster: how do we each adjust to find or remind ourselves that the action for one needs to be connected to the next?  How do we find the ability to feel the "jo ha kyu" ... the way that the beginning of the next wave is already present in the culmination of the previous one? Patience is definitely key... we constantly say "notice and adjust."  We often expect ourselves to be machines, but we forget that we are organic... so our progress is also organic.

Sarra + Calderon = Juana

Hello Everyone,  Dennis sent this in... thought it would be good to share as a tie in between our work with Sarra Copia Sullam and Pedro Calderon de la Barca.  Don't blame him for the provocative post title... Thanks Dennis.  
 
This is Dennis and I just wanted to share something about another historical/ literary figure similar to Sullam. It has been in my mind for the past 3 weeks and then when I explained to my wife what we were working on she also mentioned her. This can also connect with our work with Life is a Dream a bit. The name of this writer is Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz or Sor Juana. Although born 10 years after Sullam's death and eventually residing in Mexico some of the similarities are striking:
 
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz" redirects here. For the telenovela, see Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (telenovela).

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, O.S.H.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Miguel Cabrera
Born	Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana 12 November 1651 San Miguel Nepantla, New Spain, Spanish Empire
Died	17 April 1695(1695-04-17)(aged 43) Mexico City, New Spain, Spanish Empire
Occupation	Nun, poet, writer
Nationality	Mexican
Literary movement	Baroque
Relatives	Pedro Manuel de Asbaje and Isabel Ramírez (parents)
Signature

Sister (Spanish: Sor) Juana Inés de la Cruz, O.S.H. (English: Joan Agnes of the Cross) (12 November 1651 – 17 April 1695), was a self-taught scholar and poet of the Baroque school, and Hieronymite nun of New Spain, known in her lifetime as "The Tenth Muse." Although she lived in a colonial era when Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, she is considered today both a Mexican writer and a contributor to the Spanish Golden Age, and she stands at the beginning of the history of Mexican literature in the Spanish language.

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 Life
• 2 Death
• 3 Posthumous
• 4 Works
  • 4.1 Other notable works
• 5 Influence
• 6 Sources
• 7 References
• 8 Further reading
• 9 External links

Life[edit]

A portrait of Juana during her youth in 1666, which states she was 15 at the time, when she first entered the viceregal court

She was born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in San Miguel Nepantla (now called Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in her honor) near Mexico City. She was theillegitimate child of a Spanish Captain, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, and a Criolla woman, Isabel Ramírez. Her father, according to all accounts, was absent from her life. She was baptized 2 December 1651 and described on the baptismal rolls as "a daughter of the Church". She was raised in Amecameca, where her maternal grandfather owned a hacienda.
Juana was a devoutly religious child who often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. She learned how to read and write Latin at the age of three. By age five, she reportedly could do accounts. At age eight, she composed a poem on the Eucharist.^[1] By adolescence, she had mastered Greek logic, and at age thirteen she was teaching Latin to young children. She also learned the Aztec language of Nahuatl, and wrote some short poems in that language.^[2]

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Friar Miguel de Herrera (1700-1789)

In 1664, aged 12, Juana was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother's permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university there. Not being allowed to do this, she continued her studies privately. She was a lady-in-waiting at the colonial viceroy's court,^[3] where she came under the tutelage of the Vicereine Leonor Carreto, wife of the Viceroy of New Spain Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. The viceroy (whom Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography names as the Marquis de Mancera), wishing to test the learning and intelligence of this 17 year old, invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer, unprepared, many questions, and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. The manner in which she acquitted herself astonished all present, and greatly increased her reputation. Her literary accomplishments garnered her fame throughout New Spain. Her interest in scientific thought and experiment led to professional discussions with Isaac Newton.^[4] She was much admired in the viceregal court, and declined several proposals of marriage.^[1] In 1667, she entered the Monastery of St. Joseph, a community of the Discalced Carmelite nuns, as apostulant. She chose not to enter that Order, which had a strict discipline, and later, in 1669, she entered the monastery of the Hieronymite nuns, which had a more relaxed rule. She chose to become a nun so that she could study as she wished, saying she wanted "to have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom to study." ^[5] In the convent and perhaps earlier, Sor Juana became friends with fellow savant, Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, who visited her in the convent's locutorio.^[6] She stayed cloistered in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite in Mexico City from 1669 until her death, where she collected a large library of books, studied, and wrote. ^[7] The Viceroy and Vicereine of New Spain became her patrons; they supported her and had her writings published in Spain. ^[8]
One noted critic of her writing was the bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, who in November of 1690 published Sor Juana's critique of a 40-year-old sermon by Father António Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit preacher. ^[9] In addition to publishing this without her permission (albeit under a pseudonym), he told her to focus on religious instead of secular studies. ^[10]
In response to critics of her writing, Juana wrote a letter, Respuesta a Sor Filotea (Reply to Sister Philotea), in which she defended women's right to education. In response, the Archbishop of Mexico joined other high-ranking officials in condemning Sor Juana's "waywardness". By 1693, Sor Juana seemingly ceased writing rather than risk official censure. However, there is no undisputed evidence of her renouncing devotion to letters, though there are documents showing her agreeing to undergo penance. Her name is affixed to such a document in 1694, but given her deep natural lyricism, the tone of these supposed hand-written penitentials is in rhetorical and autocratic Church formulae; one is signed "Yo, la peor de todas" ("I, the worst of all women") She is said to have sold all her books,^[1] then an extensive library of over 4,000 volumes, and her musical and scientific instruments as well. Other sources report that her defiance toward the church led to all of her books and instruments being confiscated. ^[11]Only a few writings have survived, which are known as the Complete Works. According to Octavio Paz, her writings were saved by the vicereine.^[12]

Death[edit]

She died after ministering to other nuns stricken during a plague, on 17 April 1695. Sigüenza y Góngora delivered the eulogy at her funeral.^[13]

Posthumous[edit]

An early translation of Sor Juana's work into English is Ten Sonnets from Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz [sic], 1651-1695: Mexico's Tenth Muse, published in Taxco, Guerrero, in 1943. The translator was Elizabeth Prall Anderson who settled in Taxco. One musical work attributed to Sor Juana survives from the archive at Guatemala Cathedral. This is a 4 part villancico,Madre, la de los primores.

Works[edit]

Statue of Sor Juana in Parque del Oeste, Madrid, Spain

Modern interpretation of the portrait of Sor Juana by Mexican artist Mauricio García Vega.

Arguably the most important book devoted to Sor Juana, written by Octavio Paz, Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, 1989), is a work contemplating Sor Juana's poetry and life in the context of the history of New Spain, particularly focusing on the difficulties women then faced while trying to thrive in academic and artistic fields. Paz describes how he had been drawn to her work by the enigmas of Sor Juana's personality and life paths. "Why did she become a nun? How could she renounce her lifelong passion for writing and learning?"^[14] Paz knew that such questions could be answered only in the context of the world in which she lived, and so he begins his study with a portrayal of the cultural, political, and ideological forces of New Spain, wherein the subjugation of women was absolute.

First part of Sor Juana's complete works, Madrid, 1689.

In his book, Paz makes a thorough analysis of Sor Juana's poetry and traces some of her influences to the Spanish writers of the Golden Age and the Hermetic tradition, mainly derived from the works of a noted Jesuit scholar of her era, Athanasius Kircher. Paz analyses Sor Juana's most ambitious and extensive poem, "First Dream" ("Primero Sueño") as largely a representation of the desire of knowledge through a number of hermetic symbols, albeit transformed in her own language and skilled image-making abilities. In conclusion, Paz makes the case that Sor Juana's works were the most important body of poetic work produced in the Americas until the arrival of 19th-century figures such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

The former Convent of St Jerome inMexico City.

The Dream, a long philosophical and descriptive silva (a poetic form combining verses of 7 and 11 syllables), “deals with the shadow of night beneath which a person ^[15] falls asleep in the midst of quietness and silence, where night and day animals participate, either dozing or sleeping, all urged to silence and rest by Harpocrates. The person's body ceases its ordinary operations,^[16] which are described in physiological and symbolical terms, ending with the activity of the imagination as an image-reflecting apparatus: the Pharos. From this moment, her soul, in a dream, sees itself free at the summit of her own intellect; in other words, at the apex of a own pyramid-like mount, which aims at God and is luminous.^[17] There, perched like an eagle, she contemplates the whole creation,^[18] but fails to comprehend such a sight in a single concept. Dazzled, the soul's intellect faces its own shipwreck, caused mainly by trying to understand the overwhelming abundance of the universe, until reason undertakes that enterprise, beginning with each individual creation, and processing them one by one, helped by the Aristotelic method of ten categories. The soul cannot get beyond questioning herself about the traits and causes of a fountain and a flower, intimating perhaps that his method constitutes a useless effort, since it must take into account all the details, accidents, and mysteries of each being. By that time, the body has consumed all its nourishment, and it starts to move and wake up, soul and body are reunited. The poem ends with the Sun overcoming Night in a straightforward battle between luminous and dark armies, and with the poet's awakening.”^[19]

Other notable works[edit]

• Loa to Divine Narcissus, (Spanish "El divino Narciso")
   

 
 
The work we are doing reminded me of a one person show that I saw years ago...I believe some of you were probably just babies. It was based on her work The Dream/ Sueños and done by Mabou Mimes/ Ruth Malechek.