Two local Mandan guys, Abu and Answar, who have been friends for 16 years and who own a Dhow (sail boat), invite Christopher and myself for a sunset ride. On the way to the boat, after rehearsal, we see a young guy washing his two donkeys in the ocean. The donkeys aren’t too thrilled to be dragged up to their necks in the salt water but the guy perseveres and the donkey’s get their bath. The boat glides through the waves and up through the Mangroves where we understand the rich catch of crab is plentiful all the time. (which is also why we’re eating so well.)
At the Lab over the last few days, participants are hitting their proverbial ‘walls’ which is what always seems to occur as a Lab gets to its midpoint. Sitawa has decided that the project she came with is not the project she wishes to ‘re-write’. Instead she will start a new piece, and so all of the creative advisors meet with her Friday morning to bounce some ideas around. It’s brave and it’s one of the freedoms of working at Sundance – to change mid-stream, to go out on a limb and start afresh. We work hard to ask the right questions, to inspire her to think specifically about her writing, and when the meeting breaks up I sense that she is truly ready to plunge in. (Later that day she tells me she has pages of a first draft of several stories and I look forward to reading them in the next day.)
In other rooms different activities continue to take place – choreographer and music in the Rwandan and Tanzanian project, lots of detailed re-writing in the Ugandan play. People are spread out all over our various living and working spaces, and sometimes we have to corral everyone to remind them to let us know just where they are meeting and rehearsing. It’s more free-form than at Utah, but equally intense.
We are becoming real Mandan citizens, it seems. Always a bit sticky from the weather and either salty from the sea or covered with a tiny film of mosquito repellent. Lots of smiles. Lots of excitement. A bit of anxiety – will the work get done?
