Concretising Humor

The MOST has worked out a very loose framework for how participants in the Das Arts program will spend their time.

The information below is meant to give suggestions for the overall arc, daily and weekly content that the MOST would provide during the block with the intent that participants will take, amplify and modify the content to fit their needs and interests.

One of the M.O.S.T.'s strongest beliefs in the idea of mentoring the Humor in the Arts block is that humor – specifically, comedy – does not have to play a role in the day-to-day of the Block itself. By the nature of the name of the Block, the participants will know what they are expected to explore. We believe that the experiences presented within the course of the Block can encourage Humor in Art without necessarily being funny in their own right. We believe in the abilities of the participants to explore humor in their own art without being presented with ten weeks of stand-up routines, and that sometimes exploring completely humorless topics can open up new insights to really funny stuff.


Additionally, we believe that the visiting artists that we invite will play a large role in the creation how to explore the thematic presented, but also expect that we, as moderators, and the participants will be intimately involved in developing and modifying content for the block. We will consider the visiting artists as experts who bring with them their particular expertise and help shape the overall weekly themes/processes. A good example of the type of structure and spirit of working together is the format embraced by the American sketch program Saturday Night Live, where the host (i.e. visiting artist) is introduced to the participants at the beginning of the week. Over the course of 5 days, the visiting artist will be invited to help us explore themes such as humor, current events, personal histories, fears, etc. and to create some sort of project within the week. We will be suggesting this as a possible format to our visiting artists, although we intend to be flexible.

We envision that the beginning weeks of the block would be focused on activities that encourage everyone involved – the participants, the mentors, and the staff – to become very comfortable around each other, and to really learn the personalities of one another. In exploring the theme of humor, it is integral to be able to do it in an emotionally safe environment, and we would enable this by practicing group activities. Examples of such activities are:
• Making a seven-layer cake as a group
• Playing the card game Apples to Apples (where players have to guess each other's aesthetic tastes)
• Experimenting with something The MOST calls "Getting to Know You," which is a form of interpersonal show-and-tell. During this, participants would be invited to show and tell about current work, inspirations, fears, life stories, a photo, a story, a style, or a clip from a favorite movie etc.

These actions taken on their own may appear inconsequential but as a whole will form a common bond of camaraderie. We want to start by giving participants opportunities to try new things within the group that are less about struggling and more about opening up and sharing successes.

Starting with the first or second week, we will introduce the idea of "practices" where we would be setting up a context for working on these same activities throughout the duration of the term, even if they end up drastically morphing over time. Some possible examples of these are:
• Hosting a twice a week Mostlandian fancy dancing class, or other particularly difficult choreographed exercise
• Once a week band practice
• Walks along a specific path throughout downtown Amsterdam
• Afternoon writing hour (or half hour)
• Compilation of a reader of sorts with historical humor, images, projects, recipies, any research or writing we find or do
• Experimentation with improvisational acting
• Morning movement sections lead by us and participants
• Guided meditations
Having a regular weekly schedule of activities will reinforce the idea of togetherness as well as providing a repetitive structure that allows for surprising, absurd and possibly humorous deviations.

As humor is not created in a vacuum, we would foster an environment where the participants work in groups to create finished products. The middle portion of the ten weeks would focus on participants working in pairs or small groups over longer periods of time to create pieces with the intent of going deeper and wider with our initial explorations. Examples of ideas for this portion of the block include:
• Working to make costumes or uniforms
• Inviting a trained facilitator to guide us in developing consensus on a subject or action plan
• Interventions at or further exploration of places discovered during our walks.
During this time projects would be guided by us, the moderators, but not developed by us.

Additionally, we would like to propose that on two weekends (possibly the 3rd and 7th weekends) we try to accomplish some sort of activity that is grand in scale and completely out of the ordinary. We haven't yet established what this might be, but have talked about the creation of a large puppet, a weekend "retreat" for reflection, writing or work-shopping actions and explorations or other event.

The very end of the program would culminate in final displays of our weekly explorations and attempts, such as:
• A final attempt at the difficult choreographed work
• A "best of," or reenactments of events developed in conjunction with the visiting artists
During the final 2 weeks, we would like to develop a very specific, "psychic" closing of the program, in order to acknowledge the finality of the experience. We feel that this would be lead primarily by participants, but would involve developing events towards a conscious ending of the program. We would be working towards acknowledging what we accomplished, discussing the meaning of our time together, displaying our work, and reflecting on how to take it forward into our future work.