Atlantic Center for the Arts' Residency #170: Part III

Every year we make resolutions – as an author, it’s to write more, to keep growing and learning, but how?  Have you ever considered a residency? It’s a getaway that gives you space and the artistic interactions to keep you inspired and motivated. That’s what Storyrocket author, Linda Rodriguez did for the 6th time at Atlantic Center for the Arts.  Follow her journey, here’s part 3 of 4 of the blog series, and see why she keeps going back for more

 

Trust and Jump In

 

When I had applied for the residency, Build Your Own Labyrinth: Using Constraints to Challenge and Surprise Yourself, I only had a vague idea of what I was getting into. But often in life, as in ACA residencies, you have to trust and jump in!

 

Monday morning June 25th was our official first session with Matt Madden and as he walked in through the Charlotte Battle Everbach Painting Studio doors, he started offering us his creative mantra: “constraints as a way to freedom” and “more constraints, the more lucid frenzy to figure our way out.”

Soon we were at work with an exercise attributed to Lewis Carroll: Word Ladders. This “game” comes with one rule or constraint: Only change one letter at a time as you move down the imaginary ladder.

 

Well actually, in Word Ladders there is another constraint. The first and final words should be “opposites” as “head” to “foot.”  So if you start with the word DOG at the top, you should end with the word CAT on the bottom rung. If you prefer to start at the bottom and go up, then start with your unruly CAT and try to change it to an obedient DOG as you climb up. Give it a try! Good luck!

 

Constraints and Genre-Fluidity

 

As for Amanda, Dave, Nadia, Ken, Kevin, Jason, Christina, and I, down the rabbit hole we all went, headlong and furiously filling up pages with word ladders most of which did not completely work. After that initial tumble, we went on to our first lunch prepared by Chef Su.

Throughout our residency Chef Su not only prepared healthy and tasty meals but topped the whole experience with freshly baked cookies which she often personally handed out at the end of a meal walking around each table at the Commons. How could anyone say “No” to this delight even though now some of us are trying to lose a few pounds!

 

Re-fueled after our first lunch, the members of my group disappeared to our favorite workspaces to try to write stories using each of our “rung-words.” I came up with a story I never expected to emerge from my brain about the “true” origins of Gruyere cheese in the Swiss Alps. Yes! Another good reason to keep returning to ACA… your work surprises you!

 

During the next days, we continued our journey receiving “constraints” from Matt Madden. Then sometimes among ourselves, we also gave each other some game changing “obstructions.” Definitely, as we worked ourselves into states of frenzied creativity to overcome these “obstructions,” we discovered that this process gave us a new way forward to develop and grow our art. 

 

And our art practices had a wide range: Cabaret performer to a visual artist to playwright and screenwriter. In fact, for Residency #170’s INsideOUT there was a discussion on how to describe our group. Nick Conroy, Residency Director who has been at ACA for at least since 2002 when I first started going there, declared that we were “genre-fluid.”

 

Yes! I’ll take that! Genre-fluid!