Evaluation of Final Performance and Trio

Final Piece and Artistic Achievements

As part of our final stage of rehearsal, we did our group pieces to the rest of our year group and took it in turns to watch each others to give each other the experience of performing to about 40 people. I found this very interesting, as although we all had  the same stimulus - the Cabinet of Curiosities - all of the groups  pieces of work were incredibly different. Each performance had strengths and weaknesses, and to me, some were more effective than others. There were massive differences stylistically, and our group was the only group that relied solely on our bodies - the other groups used head torches and scarves as a crucial part of their performance. In this respect, I think our performance was the most impressive, as the other two pieces used visible props to move their story on which I thought was quite effective but not as impressive as actors altogether forming a piece physically. Upon watching the other group's performances I was slightly concerned as to how the piece would be put together and whether it would make sense to an audience. During the real performance, I was surprised at how well-received the piece was and how cleverly it slotted together.I think it worked purely because it was based on the 'Cabinets of Curiosities' where random objects were put together, and I think this left a very spontaneous feel about the piece. With the stimulus being the only thing that linked the pieces together, there was the opportunity for the pieces to be completely different, which they were. I think that the piece made great artistic achievements and personally, I have never done any performance like it before. I definitely believe that there was a unique quality to the performance that will stick in the audience's minds, and which they will not forget, as I will not forget performing it.

Level of professional execution

To an extent, I think that the professional execution of the piece was good. When we performing the piece, each time we did it I felt there was a commitment to the piece from all of the actors which made it very enjoyable to work in. As the audience were immersed in our piece, I didn't know how people would react to being around their friends and family but when performing, everyone was highly professional in my opinion. Something I did not think was professional was when we were backstage everyone kept talking loudly which negatively distracted the performers on the stage. If it was more professional, people would have just stopped talking until the end of the performance. Personally, I tried to remain silent but did get distracted at certain points, which is something I need to work on. Another thing that was not executed very professional was after the first group of trios, the people in our space did not clear up the jam they had left on the floor, meaning it was very sticky when we went to perform there shortly after. This negatively impacted our trio but thought on the whole, there was a good level of professional execution of the piece.

Evaluation of Trio

I thought our trio went quite well. We were able to adapt the piece from when it was not received very well in the first performance. We thought that as our piece was mainly physical, people lost interest and may not have got the clear message we were trying to portray. I thought that the mainly physical aspect to our piece is what made it experimental, as each of us were representing different groups in society. We changed it to say who we were representing more in the piece and allowing us to improvise if we wanted to - going and interacting with the audience that were walking past by talking to them and questioning them about our piece. I thought that we took a risk by making it mainly physical as after doing it for 15 minutes on loop in three performances, we knew we were going to be tired and that this may impact our performance. However, the adrenaline kicked in and I believe we were able to do our piece justice, hence why I think that overall for the second two performances our trio worked well.

Cabinet of Curiosities

The main parts of the lessons we have been doing have been concerned with 'Cabinets of Curiosities'. These were what came before museums in Renaissance Europe and were a collection of random objects from all over the world. They were typically put in one room and were for people to walk around and look at the objects, as many people would not have been able to travel abroad to see these things at the time. People were shocked and amazed by what they saw and the 'cabinets of curiosities' had great interest in them.

Below are some images of traditional and contemporary 'cabinets of curiosities'.

I found the lessons we had interesting because of the historical significance of these cabinets of curiosities. As the pieces were inspired by pieces of artwork that we saw at the Tate Modern and which inspired us, I found it very exciting to explore how we could get the message of the piece of art across to the audience in a physical way, like Artaud practised and directed. The piece of art that I suggested and which we ended up using as our inspiration for our group piece is the picture on the left, of a newspaper being scribbled on. The smiling televisions painted over a rather sinister news story show how the media and television reports mask the brutal truth of the story. Also, the writing being scribbled over just leaving the picture means that the reader will just get a snapshot of the story rather than getting the truth. We found this message very interesting as a group and thought we could get some good work out of it.

The process of devising that we followed was formulating a question based around the art and then answering it through physical improvisation. Our question was, 'who says what is important?' We thought that this left us a lot of space to really explore the topic but were slightly concerned that the vagueness of the topic would leave us with little direction. Our piece evolved greatly once we began devising. We began by using a large wire frame and pushing letters through it which Leanne, playing the Media, censored by pulling them out and scribbling on, then giving them to the audience. We felt like something was missing and continued to devise and develop for hours and several rehearsals before we came up with the idea we are going forward with. Our final piece is purely physical, with very little spoken language. We have a series of still images depicting dominance - the media's dominance over the government and the media and the government's domincance over the people. We link these images with movement, with everyone's objective being to write on a piece of paper and get their point of view across. However,  as the Media is the strongest power, it always wins.

The Commission

The Commission for our piece is:

"To give audiences experiences they wouldn't normally have. 

Building experimental theatre experiences with narrative at the core. We will tell tales by putting people in the middle of stories and giving them the option  to actively or passively watch as the story comes alive around them.

Think about what it means to be an audience member within our show?

We must be careful not to provide a passive experience like being in a gallery. Over dramatic experiences can sometimes get in the way. It comes down to narrative; a sensational scene should never be used for the sake of it, only when it adds to the story. That's why action films with an unnecessary amount of explosions are never that great. It's the same with theatre – sometimes people get away with giving enough of sensational experience to cover up the fact that there's no story. I disagree with that. Brook's hypothesis of theatre operating through "freeing the dynamic process". A question of emancipating, and not fixing, the human's instincts.

Work with the point at which the impulses of one conjoin with the impulses of another to resonate together.The exercises and improvisations facilitate a tuning of the theatrical ‘instrument’ that is the actor’s being, in addition to a circulation of "living dramatic flow"  in the actors as a group. The theatrical ‘miracle’ is produced afterwards, in the active presence of the audience."

My response to the Commission:

I find this an interesting read, and definitely a challenge to put into practice. With the stage we are at at the moment - close to the performance time, I need to keep referring back to the Commission to ensure that I am on  track with the performance's purpose. If I were to write a Commission for the piece, I think I would write the same thing, as the crux of Experimental theatre is creating an experience audiences would not normally have. I think the part of the Commission that I will struggle with most is creating a strong narrative - I feel that with our trio, there is the potential for the audience to miss out on the narrative and I think it will be difficult to maintain a strong narrative as time goes on, because it is very physical piece and I think I will get tired. To avoid this, I have been working on my personal fitness and stamina, and we have been refining our trio to make the chance that the audience do not understand the narrative aspect to our work very slim. The part I think I will most easily achieve is not creating a passive experience for the audience as I am finding it increasingly easy to enter into the atmosphere of the room and really connect with what I am doing. I hope that this will create another dimension for the audience and will help me to develop as a performer. I can definitely tell that the skills I am refining from the stimulus of the Commission are applicable to the other pieces I am creating at the moment and I will work to keep this up. As our group piece centres so much around emotion, I know I need to be entirely involved in the piece, and not 'act' so much as 'react' to what is going on, to make a believable and truthful performance. If I do this, I am sure that the 'theatrical miracle' that the Commission talks about will be achieved. I believe that the Commission for the group piece has allowed me to develop as a performer and think that it is wholly appropriate and achievable for us when doing our group piece.

Lesson 5 - 10/2/15

This lesson was slightly different to the lessons we have had in the past. We began by warming up and rehearsing our group piece in our classes. The order of our piece changed, showing how it is a piece in progress and is always being reformulated to create the best version of the performance possible. I found this quite tiring both physically (as we kept running through the piece) and mentally (as I had to be on the ball all the time to remember the changes that were being made and the notes I was being given). Overall I thought my general participation and effort levels in the group were good, and I was focused fully on getting through the piece and envisaging what it will be like in the real performance. I thought I could have worked slightly harder and taken on board more of the notes if I had written them down as I was going along - I think that note taking in general is something that I need to work on, as I remember them throughout the day but tend to forget some after a longer period of time.

After working on our class pieces, we came together as a 75-strong year group and began to devise our whole group piece around stimulus questions. The first steps of getting the work were very similar to what we had done in our classes - working first on our breath, then expanding on our bodies' natural ergonomic movement and transferring this to a partner. I really enjoyed this section - working in partners yet all the partners being part of a large group. However, I found it quite uncomfortable to improvise due to the confines of the space. The  very limited space was good for experimenting with proxemics with one another though and we played with being touching to being on opposite sides of the room but maintaining a connection with one another. I was surprised at how easy I found this - even when my partner was at the other end of the room, I was entirely focused on him and we worked together very well.

The main part of our piece came from being individuals within a group. We were posed a very ambiguous question and we had to answer it with purely physical movement. I was very sceptical about this, and was sure that it would not be very productive with 75 people all trying to work together. I was proved wrong - as with every improvisation there were many bland bits but moments of technicolour also. Below are some of the 'success criteria' that we came up with as a class for how to create an emotive piece and my interpretations of these criteria - what they mean to me:

• Make discoveries - allow yourself to be free and not held back by anything.
• Don't talk to yourself - instead interact with other people and ensure that you are making and accepting offers from other people.
• Respond to each new movement and moment - when working as an ensemble it is critical that you are always aware of what the others are doing.
• If you feel it your response is right - if your body tells you to do something, go with it and try to get out of thinking about what movements to do that will impress the audience; it is often much more impressive to do instinctual, honest movements.
• Be aware of others - safety is very important when working in a large group; be careful and cautious of other people, do not try to hurt them and be aware of how you may be hurting them.
• Focus on your breathing so you work with your instinct - if ever you feel stuck or completely lost with a question that is called out, go back to the breath and feel how it moves around the body.

By following these criteria, I think this will make the piece alive - especially referring to the breath, as getting 75 people to breathe in time with one another and be in sync with each other is something very special that work will come out of.

 

We were then asked what it feels like to be a part of the piece. I said that it felt like for some people it is clear that working in a big group empowers them, whereas for others it seems to swallow them up. This made the piece feel uncomfortable and chaotic to be a part of, whereas it should be freeing and controlled, yet with a sense of unpredictability and opportunity. I don't think we will ever get to this state of being completely harmonious with one another purely because people are in different mindsets, but it would be amazing to be a part of something close to that. Other people said that they felt claustrophobic and disjointed because people kept pushing - I agree with this fully as we were in a huge clump in the middle of the room which should have been ironed out, allowing us to be more creative.

From this very helpful group discussion, we decided to refer back to the success criteria and really hone in on creating an honest and beautiful piece. We tried it again with one person standing up and finding an answer to the question physically, then transferring slowly to the rest of us and the results were much better than when we did it the first time. It seemed less like a cluster in the middle and people were not on top of each other - everyone seemed much more free and it was much more enjoyable.

I think that if we achieve what we had at the end of the rehearsal in the real performance, it will be a very interesting spectacle for the audience. I hope that we will not get caught up in the middle of the room, and I know that I have a responsibility as part of the company to prevent this from happening and maintain a level of honesty. I think it is a huge risk to not choreograph or stage anything for the conclusion of our piece, and one I cannot say whether it will be a good risk or not because it is improvisation that will happen on the day. I have never had a level of spontaneity filtered into a performance before, and is something I find quite daunting yet exhilarating. 

Tate Modern

In order to get inspiration for our trio pieces, we visited the Tate Modern art exhibition centre. I am not very artistic person, and do not usually enjoy going to art galleries so was slightly pessimistic about the trip. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were several pieces of art that I could find a deep meaning to, and which spoke to me in terms of getting inspiration for theatrical ideas. Below are the five most inspirational art pieces that I came across and why I liked them.

Title of art piece: Condensation Cube

Artist: Hans Haacke

Materials made of: plexiglass, steel and water

Themes of piece: nature, simplicity, serenity, control,  beauty, entrapment.

Why it inspires me: There is an overlap in form between physical and biological systems. I think it is very clever how something can be static, yet moving at the same time. Haacke wanted to create something inanimate and animate, and this is a clever way of allowing the spectator to witness nature happening in a controlled, scientific environment, which is what I really like about the piece.

Potential ideas for theatrical works: minimalism, butoh, portraying human innocence in its most raw form, not created to impress.

 Title of art piece: Méditerranée

Artist: Ellsworth Kelly

Materials made of: oil paint, wood

Themes of piece: experimentation, dimensions, clash, harmony, discord, repetition, vibrancy, perspective.

Why it inspires me: I love the way that depth is played with and how “any colour goes with any other colour”, as the artist wanted to demonstrate. I like the idea of something becoming different based only on perspective, and how things go naturally together without human intervention or over thinking.

Potential for theatrical work: a still image that reveals different things when looked at from different angles.

 Title of art piece: Untitled

Artist: Nam June Paik

Materials made of: acrylic paint and pastel on printed paper

Themes of piece: distortion in the media, experimentalism, true vs false, sugar-coating real stories, injustice, shallowness, anger.

Why it inspires me: This piece is again very minimalist but portrays an important message. The childlike paintings over the newspaper of smiling television screens suggests how that the true messages that need to get through to the public are distorted by the media and the power of television as a disseminator of information. It suggests that the real stories are overwritten by the things that people ‘want to hear’. I have found this a common issue in contemporary society and think this piece of art symbolises it perfectly.

Title of art piece: The Bigger Picture

Artist: Colin Blakemore

Materials made of: canvas, wooden frame

Themes of the piece: paradox, harsh reality, minimalism, intensity, anger, passion, violence against nothingness.

Why it inspires me: There is no disguise here - all that is displayed is a canvas locked in a frame with a slash in it, exposing what is behind: nothing. The sheer minimalism that this piece contains is very interesting to me; the idea that an artist can make such a bold statement from so little on a canvas.

Potential ideas for theatrical work: acts of violence revealing that we are all the same underneath and all have the capacity to be evil. Possibly involving masks?

Title of art piece: Burn Hole

Artist: Henk Peeters

Materials made of: scorched plastic

Themes of piece: space, time, human intervention in the world, destruction, hatred, passion, anger.

Why it inspires me: This piece strikes me as being a representation of our solar system,  yet shows how we are so small in the grand scheme of things; the white of the paper is much more dense than the scorched plastic. The fact it is scorched perhaps shows how human intervention in the world is ruining things, destroying the natural beauty until it will cease to exist.

Potential ideas for theatrical works: something to do with human destruction - the themes of anger being the cause of pain and suffering in the world,

Lesson 4 - 3/2/15

Today's lesson was mostly rehearsal and devising for the final performance.

One of the most important things that I picked up from the lesson was that I need to commit to improve every lesson. The philosophy of devising that we are working with is using instinct to devise so there is an instinctual feel to the end performance. From this, I am keen to get a connection between my body, the space and each other. This is something I feel I have achieved in the other two terms and really want to replicate this term in rehearsals as well as the final performance. 

Another aspect of performance that these sessions are helping me with is "playing" as a form of improvisation. In the past I think I have been stuck to the idea that rehearsals and devising techniques can only come from direct ideas and a stimulus, but this term I have come to realise that this is always the best way to devise. In class, we have been devising particularly 'soup' by just playing with one another and being bodies existing in a space together having fun and experimenting with what we can do. I have really enjoyed playing and am astonished at the amount of good work that comes from it - movements that may not have materialised the way they did if they had stemmed from 'an idea'. I think at the start I was not very good at this, and was slightly self-conscious but am getting better the more I do it and the more stimuli I have.

In the session today, we began by warming up (something I am getting better and better at and feel I would be able to do by myself now) and I worked hard meaning my body was relaxed and alert, ready to work. After the warm-up we began to do an exercise which we named '180 push hold'. We had to walk around the space, then our teacher would either shout out '180' (where we would have to turn around 180 degrees), 'push' (where we would have to push the person nearest to us hard and then move on) or 'hold' (where we could have to get the nearest person to the floor and then once we had, move on). I found the 180 part of this exercise relatively easy and found I had good concentration and was able to make the turns very sharp. At first, I kept bumping into other people when I turned but I managed to develop more spacial awareness as the exercise progressed. The hardest part for me, and the part I feel I was worst at was the 'hold' section because I am slight in stature, and found that I was simply not strong enough to pull anyone to the floor, no matter how hard I tried. I also found the 'push' quite difficult because of the same reason, and when I got pushed by others I found it hard to stay on my feet. I think to improve this I need to work on my physical strength and agility so that I will not fall over in the real performance.

After we had done that activity, we watched a video clip of Auschwitz and the horrors that were committed from human to human. A part that particularly stuck out to me was dead bodies being thrown on a pile, something that disturbed me a lot. We used this image and the exercise we had just done so that if someone was pushed over or pulled to the ground, they had to stay on the floor. Unsurprisingly, I was pulled to the ground almost immediately and the people who were left standing dragged all the 'dead bodies' onto a large heap. I found it difficult to be limp when people were dragging me, as it was painful to be pulled across the floor, and it was instinct to tense my body. I managed to overcome this though, and found it much less painful to be limp which surprised me. It was a very shocking emotional experience being put on a pile of people, and the mood in the room was very solemn due to the harsh reality of what we were re-enacting. I thought that this was a very Artaud style of working, highlighting the brutality of human nature by showing a disturbing scene and could see how it related to experimental theatre. 

Lesson 3 - 20/1/15

Process of devising 'soup'

Today's lesson was a Brook and Grotowski style physical workshop session. I really like their style of working from the inside of the body (the emotions and gut feelings) outwards to the movement, so was looking forward to the session before it began.

The first part of the lesson was composed of devising 'soup' to go in our final piece. We began by doing a warm-up, laying in semi-supine position and focusing on our breath within our bodies. I found this useful because it helped me relax, get focused and be in a position of alertness. Still laying in semi-supine, we moved our knees and heads to either side in unison, warming up the lower and upper spine (the atlas and axis). Throughout the lesson we were using our spines a lot to control our movement so it was imperative that this part of the body was warm.

Continuing with our spines, we rolled from prayer position into the 'table-top' position, a luxurious cat-like movement rolling on the floor, feeling our heavy bodies pressing into the floor. I really enjoyed this part, because it is rare that the chance is given to luxuriate in moving around and stretching different parts of the body. However, I did not find it easy because to progress in the session we needed to cut off our brains and our thought process, and I found that on several occasions my mind was wandering off. I think my instinctive movements improved as the warm up continued and I eased in to "not thinking". This was particularly necessary in an exercise where we spent time alone working as an individual experimenting with the use of our hands and the ways they can move. This was the exercise I think I got the least out of, because I was always aware that my brain was telling me to move my hand, so I think I ignored the ergonomic flow of my hand. If I were to repeat the exercise, I would do this differently and really try to shut out my thoughts.

We then knelt in front of a partner. They stayed sat upright watching us while we felt the moment and moved our bodies according to what we were feeling and in response to the music which was a slow, meditative piece. The music impacted our movement hugely, as we were moving in a neutral,  gentle way. Responding to the music really helped to build up my confidence, as without it I am sure I would have not known what to do. Once we felt we had made a statement, we passed it on to our partner through a part of our body. For me, it felt much more natural when both of us were moving together and interacting with one another because when it was just me by myself I felt like I was having a one-sided conversation, but with the other person being there it seemed to flow better. When working together the stimulus for our movement shifted from 'the moment' to 'each other' as well. There were still bland moments in what we were doing but whenever I felt like I was thinking too much or had come to a stagnant place, I refocused on my breath which centered me ready to work again. We were not acting at all, just responding to one another and letting our instincts move us. This is why I think the partnering exercise where we pushed energy into one another worked so well and was so beneficial for unlocking parts of the body.

After that exercise, we put sounds to movement. We were encouraged to make all sorts of sounds with our voice, and I surprised myself with the amount of sounds I could make. I found it difficult to stay focused in this exercise and maintain eye contact with my partner because I kept giggling as making those sounds is not what I am used to and is out of my comfort zone. We were taught that emotions are rooted from our lower abdominals so I tried to subconsciously use this area to formulate the sounds and I found that this was where the sound was most honest.

That was our process of devising 'soup' in its entirety; a mix of movements and sounds together in partners communicating and having conversations without words. I think that overall I was quite good at this part of the lesson once I got my thoughts to shut down, and I think I will just get better at it as time goes on and I devise more and more. It helped me to understand how Brook and Grotowski worked and their philosophies, as they believed in communicating by redefining language and the way that actors interact with each other.

Process of devising 'butoh'

To begin doing butoh the body and vocal chords must be warm, as ours were from doing the previous part of the lesson. We had briefly touched upon butoh in physical theatre so I knew what to expect from this part of the lesson but I was still sceptical about being able to do it myself. Although I knew briefly what butoh was, I decided to do some more research after the lesson to see if my experiences of butoh were the same as documented about. 

What is butoh?

Don McLeod, a butoh performer, defines butoh as "an avant-garde performance art that has its origins in Japan in the 1960s. Butoh loosely translated means stomp dance, or earth dance. The founder (Hijikata) believed that by distorting the body and by moving slowly on bent legs, he could get away from the traditional idea of the beautiful body, and return to a more organic natural beauty. He sought a truthful, ritualistic and primal earthdance, one that allowed the performer to make discoveries as she/he created/was created by the dance."

ButohUK defines butoh as "a step within."

Masaki Iwana, a modern day butoh performer, defines butoh as "a form of contemporary dance created in the late 1950s by Hijikata. It is contemporary in the very precise sense of the term, reflecting as it does the necessities and demands of the times."

From these definitions, it was made clear to me that butoh is a form of interpretative and meditative dance that if done well connects to the performer's and the audience's emotions. We watched a video of someone doing butoh first to give us a clear idea of what we should be aiming for and I found it both captivating and transfixing with the nasal noise he was making whilst he was doing the movements.We went back and practised our own versions of butoh which had a less range of movement to the 'soup' that we had been devising but the movements we did do were expressive and centred. After practising this individually, we moved together as a group fusing sound with movement. We tried to vary tone and pitch of the sound and it took a while for us to get the sound quality to a good level, but once we had it the noise was electrifying. I took a short amount of time to enter in to the activity; at first I was nervously laughing because the task is so exposing, but once I moved past my ego I think I was quite good at making the noise and connecting the noise to my body. I found this part of the session really therapeutic and found it interesting to engage with the core. The transition from the voice to the movement seemed very fluid for me, and this was something I was worried about. One part of performing butoh that was clear to me was that it is not only for the audience's gain, but for the actor's too. Being completely tuned into oneself is something that an actor needs to become a better performer, and this experience really helped me. It also was beneficial to me because I had no reason to be self-conscious, as we were at one with ourselves all doing the same thing. Building on from this, it was very invigorating to be individuals within a group, as we were synchronised and built up the skills to be comfortable in a company of actors which I think really helped.

Below is a video of a practitioner doing butoh who I think is truly remarkable due to the strength and control that he has over his body. There is a real sense of truth from his movements and he is not trying to impress anyone; he is doing the movements for himself. He does butoh without the ululation that we did, but the movements are similar to what we were attempting to do.

Sources for information about butoh;

http://www.zenbutoh.com/history.htm

http://www.butohuk.com/

http://www.iwanabutoh.com/butoh.php

Lesson 2 - 13/1/15

This lesson was focused on 'emotional riffing'. We were expanding on our understanding of Artaud's work; 'the cost of the actor' and 'being cruel to oneself'. My experience of it was that it scared me at first, due to the sheer unpredictability of everyone in the space together. I thought that this fear may have held me back at first, but I quickly entered into the mindset of the activity. For me, the exercise went very well - I felt it progressed very fluidly and I think I got a lot out of it, having  never done emotional riffing before. I felt like it got rid of the tension that was both in my body and mind, and I thought that the whole class had a strong connection. I was improvising with my body, a skill I have built up in physical theatre but found it interesting to apply with a different group of people and in a different subject. I can see how the exercise could have gone wrong though - it required everyone in the room to be on the same wavelength and to communicate by disconnecting their brains. Luckily, this happened in our session meaning it was interesting and eventful.

I found the exercise difficult; it did not come naturally to me, something that suggests social conditioning because expressing extreme emotion is not natural to do. It took me a while to disconnect my brain but even so, did not ease into the exercise straight away. Our teacher suggested we should "get rid of the internal critic", a quote that I can really relate to as I think the only part of the exercise that was hard was to stop thinking. I do not think I was particularly bad at this exercise once I got going; I think that anything goes in emotional riffing, it just took some time for me to get used to the idea.

One thing I learnt from the exercise was how fundamental warm-ups are, as we could have seriously hurt ourselves if not warmed up properly. We were exploiting our voices through screaming and making strange noises out of our vocal range, and doing expressive movements. If done without a warm-up we could have got injured easily, so it taught me that experimental theatre always requires the body to be warm and in a state of readiness for whatever activity is asked of it.

The Spurt Of Blood

Also in the first lesson, we looked at Artaud's play entitled, 'The Spurt of Blood'. We were set the task of reading the text, then trying to stage as much of it as we could. My initial response to 'The Spurt of Blood' was confusion; I could not make any sense of the meaning of the piece, nor how it was possible to perform it using minimal effects, as the stage directions suggest grand special effects. For example,

 "There is a noise as if an immense wheel were turning and moving the air. Two stars are seen colliding and from them fall a series of legs of living flesh with feet, hands, scalps, masks, colonnades, porticos, temples, alembics, falling more and more slowly, as if falling in a vacuum; then three scorpions one after another and finally a frog and a beetle which come to rest with desperate slowness, nauseating slowness."

When I read these stage directions, I thought they were ridiculous and bizarre, but they intrigued me as to the vision that Artaud must have had about how he wanted these words to be interpreted and performed. I think that from his text it is clear how Artaud's personal circumstances affected his work, as he took lots of drugs and was declared insane. Just from this section of the text, which represents the text as a whole in it's bizarreness, the vivid imagery stands out to me. The stage directions are  much longer than the actual lines that the character speaks, linking the Artaudian idea of actions and physical representations of things being more powerful than language spoken. I still do not really understand what the text is about, and I think that even Artaud may not fully know what he meant at the time he wrote the play. From the feeling, tone and repeated images of the play, I would suggest that the play is about construction and destruction but done in a very surrealist way.

 I am not sure about my opinion of the play. At first I thought it was quite pointless to create a play that no-body understands, but then I thought that this was exactly what Artaud wanted for people to experience about his work. He did not think that everything should be understood and he wanted the audience to go away thinking about what they had just watched, and this happened to me: I went away thinking about the play I had just looked at, trying to work it out.

I found looking at Artaud's work interesting because I was able to apply his techniques to his own work, and I really felt like this helped me understand him slightly more. His techniques that had seemed very strange to me (like the Theatre of Cruelty and 'cost of the actor') seemed to make slightly more sense when put alongside a piece of work that Artaud created. 

After going through as much of the play as possible and performing segments of these to the class, we had to choose a scene from the play and perform a non-verbal version of it. This was a challenge for me as an actress, because I wanted to portray the initial section of the script that is an exchange of love between two lovers, but there were no stage directions for this part so I had to think of an alternative way to put this across. To get around this, in the middle section of our piece we used jibberish and sounds to communicate rather than actual words. We thought this was effective because we wanted to get the meaning of the scene across so used physical actions and sounds to talk to the audience members. When using the script it felt like there were no boundaries to what we could do, and we had the concept of 'assaulting the audience's senses' in our minds when we were staging it. Therefore, we created an immersive piece using the first scene of the play having three main sections to our performance: 

1 - act out the hurricane scene described with all of the audience packed tightly into a circle in the middle of the room and us circling them. We then ran into them and dispersed them putting the boys on one side and the girls on the other. All the lights were turned off apart from one small light so it was very dark and the audience felt vulnerable, hence how we assaulted their sense of sight.

2 - each member of our group went and got a girl from one side and a boy from the other, took them by the hand and placed them together. We then used the audience like puppets and we were the puppeteers so we made them do simple gestures whilst we were speaking jibberish and making sounds that accompanied the movements so they could grasp what was going on. I think this was a crucial tool that we used because the audience did not always get what was going on which made them feel even more vulnerable and victimised, an Artaudian technique. This didn't work as well as we anticipated, however, because some people were reluctant to be taken and moved around. This was an interesting learning curve for us though, because we needed to know how far was too far to ask the audience to do something. This was testing for me as a performer because it went against what I am used to doing, and it took me out of my comfort zone. 

3 - when everyone was in pairs we pushed them all into the centre of the room and repeated the 'hurricane' section we had at the beginning, but with all the lights turned off completely to create a cyclical narrative. We wanted to portray the recurring theme in the play about creation and destruction, so just as the hurricane created the piece and section in the pairs, it also destroyed that and began again.

Being the first experience of Artaud's writing, overall I think the performance went well but was not as good as it could have been. The problem arose in our planning and rehearsing time, because we had so much freedom to do whatever we wanted that we found it hard to make strong choices and stick with them. I, personally, found it difficult creating an experimental piece in such a large group (there were about 12 of us) because there were lots of leaders and I found it a struggle to get my voice heard. This is something I need to work on as a performer because I should be more forceful and direct when I have an idea that I think could be beneficial to the group. 

Lesson 1 - 6/1/15

Over the past few terms, I think that as an actress I have developed greatly. In my skills, I feel like I have built up a toolbox with a number of different ways to approach texts, learn lines, become a character, represent a character and research a practitioner but I am sure that the 'experimental term' will continue to add to this greatly. Before starting the course, I had fixed viewpoints about what theatre was - something I would now describe as bland and narrow - and was extremely naive to the vast amount of artwork that comes under the title of 'theatre'. 

We had a discussion in class about "what theatre is", something we were hesitant to answer, finding it almost a trick question, but upon exploration of the question and the discussion that it sparked up, found that it was the most important question that had to be asked. Some people thought that theatre was "fictional and physical", others that it was "something happening in a space with someone watching" as Brook proposed, "expressing opinions in an artistic way", "believing something although knowing that it is not real", "people pretending to be other people and people watching". 

From all of the answers that we gave, it was very interesting to see that a group of people who had been drawn together by the same interest all had slightly different thoughts on what that interest was. 

We then moved on to talking about what the purpose of theatre is, again a question that divided the class in a number of different ways. Some thought that theatre is "only successful if it breaks ego boundaries and goes straight through to the heart", others that it is to "entertain", others that it is "not only to entertain". I initially said that it was "to present a problem, either with a solution or not; either way, it is intentional". I am not entirely sure how much I agree with my initial thoughts, as all of my classmate's opinions seem plausible too, and I am sure that throughout this term my thoughts will change again as I know that Artaud wanted "to shock" an audience, but whether this is what they went for is a different matter.

After those discussions, it was clear that experimental term is going to challenge, question and confuse me but in a way that I am excited to see the direction it takes me in as a performer and, perhaps, a human. I knew from the reading I had done that the three practitioners we were going to study were all very experimental in different ways, and their work was clearly subjective; many hated their work, whilst others loved it. This is something I am expecting the term to be like: I imagine I will hate parts of it, while loving other bits. 

I have never watched a piece of experimental theatre before, as far as I am aware, and this is the only thing I am slightly upset about upon entering the term. I would have liked to be able to talk about a piece of experimental work that I have actually experienced being a spectator to, rather than having to be a participant of straight away. This worries me slightly, as I am sure there has been the opportunity to go and see the work, it has just never appealed to me or I have inadvertently been too scared to branch out of my comfort zone to see the work. However, this is something that I am sure will change in the near future and I will not shy away from again.

The first lesson was both challenging and extremely interesting for me. It was not what I was expecting to go into as although I had read about Artaud, Grotowski and Brook before entering the term, I did not presume that we were going to be doing such a full out session on the first day back. I thought that I was fully prepared for the start of this term, having read all the literature and researched the appropriate people, however finding the practical element of the first lesson a shock told me that as an actress, I need to be much more open-minded and ready to do such tasks in the future. We did a number of Artaud-style physical exercises which each revealed different things to me. They were:

•  'walking across grid-lines'

These were imaginary vertical and horizontal lines on the floor which we had to walk across with precision and at a fast pace. I found this very simple and was able to concentrate easily on making my turns at the corners crisp. The next part of the exercise was that music was added which kept stopping and starting. I found this quite difficult to deal with, as the music was very irritating and the irrational element to the music made my pace vary: sometimes I would speed up, sometimes I would slow down and this annoyed me that I couldn't shut off and ignore the music. As I was concentrating so much on the music and how much it was putting me off, I was thinking less about the pace and sharpness of my turns, something I should get better at. As well as this, the leader of the session, Sarah, kept shouting at us telling us that we weren't working hard enough and should be doing better. I felt this was harsh as I was working what I thought was my hardest, but when she kept on saying it needs to be better, I noticed an improvement in my drive to walk quicker, bump into less people and make my turns sharp. She then introduced an objective: at the end of the grid-line was something we wanted very badly, so I imagined my parents. I thought this made my performance improve as I was able to shut out the music after a short period of time and really imagined my parents being at the end of the line. The drive that the lines kept changing so I was always trying to get them kept me motivated and I managed to stop crashing into people, inadvertently using my peripheral vision to change just in time. I learnt that as an actress, I find it distracting to have disorientating music and lighting, and in the future shouldn't let this put me off. I also found that I am very determined and will push myself to the maximum, always striving to be better. At the end of the exercise I noticed that I was quite exhausted from working so hard, and I was pleased that I had worked hard. I also found that we were in sync as a group of actors occupying a space, as although the music changes were getting quicker and our pace was very fast there were very few collisions by the end, showing that we had united together. The exercise linked to Artaud because he was very interested in the effect of music and lighting on actors and stimulating the brain a lot in rehearsals. At the time I was slightly confused as to how it would relate to me as an actress, but upon reflection I know that it was to get us warmed up, to get us concentrating, and to push us to keep getting better in preparation for the next exercises.

• 'knee fights in pairs'

We were paired with the nearest person to us and had to have one hand behind our backs and with the other, try and tap the other person on the back of the knees. I found this exercise extremely difficult. Firstly, I was worn out from the first exercise and there was no time in between the exercises to catch my breath or cool down (now I realise this was part of the effect). Secondly, I was paired with a Judo champion, someone very agile and tactical. This is something I am glad of though, because knowing she was so good made me up my game and prepare to fight properly. I was surprised at how much tactics had to do with the success, as based on fitness and agility, she had the upper hand, but my determination and tactical approach to the fight made us quite evenly matched. I knew that I had to defend primarily, and then attack because she was a strong attacker. Going into the fight, I had a negative, defeatist attitude which I have found that I often have if I think someone is better than me, and often I just let this take over but on this occasion I used it to propel me to fight her. The lights were turned off for this exercise which I think helped me a lot because I detached from the fact that we are good friends and concentrated on her being a body that I needed to overcome. The music was like the first exercise: kept getting turned on and off and was very unpredictable. This did not distract me as much in this exercise possibly because there were two of us trying to get the same outcome, meaning I had to ignore whatever else was going on in order to win. This links to Artaud because he was focused on 'assaulting the audience', so the actors had to have some experience of this and how it impacted them before putting it to an audience. We were both extremely competitive (although very good friends outside the fight), each wanting to get the other out. I found this exercise quite gruelling and fully entered into the mindset that it was a life-or-death fight, which I felt really helped me to get the most out of the exercise. I have heard the expression 'fight or flight', where people generally fall into either category and I learnt that my body has a 'fight' reflex. I would not say the exercise was enjoyable but it did help me learn how my body works and how successful I am when I put my mind to something. The purpose of this exercise was to engage the muscles in the body and to get the actors into the mental state of having a fight. This concept of actor training and rehearsals by tiring out the actors so they are in a state in which they are able to take on any emotion was something Artaud was very passionate about and which featured heavily in his sessions. 

• 'fishing lines'

In the same pairs from above, we stood at opposite ends of the room from each other. We began by having my partner as the 'fish' and I as the 'fisher', having to use an imaginary fishing rod to catch her and then reel her in. The most difficult thing about this exercise was the weight of the other person. It caused all my muscles to really engage and I felt like I was really dragging her across the room. I think I would have been able to do the exercise more effectively if we had done it at the beginning, because my muscles felt weak, but part of the effect of the exercise was battling through the weakness to draw them close. This was the exercise in which I felt the least impact from the changing music and lighting because I was very focused and converted my frustration at the irrational music into energy that I could use to drag my partner. I think I was most effective at pulling her rather than being the one that was pulled because I found it hard to judge how much I should move when she was pulling me. This task completely tired me out but I felt there were a number of things that I got out of the exercise as an actor; a developed understanding of my body's muscles, engaging my imagination and working as a partnership. After the exercise was finished, I felt both relaxed and alert, that I was able to move around freely. This told me that I had worked well in the exercise. 

Those are the three exercises I felt benefited me the most throughout the lesson and really made my body exhausted, a feeling that was interesting to have because I felt like I could take on any emotion. It was very interesting to experience an Artaud-style workshop and I enjoyed it.

Research on Peter Brook

The final of the three practitioners we are studying in this experimental term is Peter Brook, an English dramatist. It is very difficult to say what type of work Brook produces because it changes based on which group of actors he works with, a key part of Brook's work because he wanted to try many different styles regardless of whether they were popular at the time.  I find Peter Brook the most interesting person to study because he is still alive, and still making work according to an interview he did with The Guardian in 2011 (there is a link below).

Brook was born in 1925 to a privileged Latvian background and was transfixed on film and theatre from an early age. He became a successful director and was renowned for innovative ideas and an alternative style of working in the theatre. Brook was keen to move away from 'commercial acting' and concentrate more on experimental and pure theatre. He began making his own style of work - often taking a pre-existing text and changing it or even re-writing it to focus in on the key message of the piece in his eyes. This brought him many critics but also many supporters; his audiences were often  divided in their responses to his work.

Brook is probably most well known for his book, 'The Empty Space' and its famous quotes including- "“A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.”  I have read this book and found it very grabbing and interesting. Brook divides theatre into four sections; deadly, holy, rough and immediate and expands on what he thinks theatre is within these categories. I enjoyed reading the book, reading it in only two sittings because of the simplistic nature of what he is talking about and the complexity and layers of the language.

Sources:

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/discover-more/platforms/platform-papers/peter-brook

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/81172/Peter-Brook

Brook's interview with the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/mar/16/peter-brook-magic-flute-interview

Research on Jerzy Grotowski

Another of the practitioners we are studying throughout the term is Jerzy Grotowski, a Polish dramatist born in 1933. Grotowski, like Artaud, was part of the surrealist movement, focusing more on the experimental, 'avant garde' side of theatre.

Grotowski had a very different upbringing to Artaud, being able to study theatre and become director of  a theatre near to where he lived. He was also able to establish a theatre company which he named 'Laboratorium' which was where he formulated many of his thoughts about theatre: his 'laboratory'. He wrote a book called 'Towards a Poor Theatre' in 1968 where he stated that acting in the theatre and in film were two very different forms which should not be compared/put into competition. One of his key ideals was that theatre should be stripped down to it's lowest form which was concentrating on actors being in front of an audience in real time.

Grotowski completely opposed Artaud in the fact that Artaud was concentrated on shocking the audience using all the means available to them, whereas Grotowski thought acting should be raw; separated from special effects, as he thought these took away from the acting itself. He famously said:

"By gradually eliminating whatever proved superfluous, we found that theatre can exist without make-up, without autonomic costume and scenography, without a separate performance area (stage), without lighting and sound effects, etc."

This quote shows how Grotowski wanted to strip back theatre productions to their most raw form, with the acting being the most important part of the production and if any special effects were needed, they only complimented the acting, not enhanced or masked it in any way.

However, much like Artaud, Grotowski believed that actors should be pushed to their limits in order to get the best work out of them, and was renowned for holding arduous rehearsal sessions that put the actor's bodies in a suitable state to get the most out of. Grotowski was highly influential having developed on Stanislavsky's 'method acting' and using this as inspiration to formulate his own plans and sessions focusing on actors.

I had heard of Grotowski before, but have never had the privilege of studying his work, so am excited to be able to approach it. However, I am slightly confused about how Grotowski will be studied alongside Artaud as from doing this research they seem very different. I like the idea of focusing back to the actor as I think that in productions I have watched before, the special effects have taken away from the acting, so I am keen to know more about it.

Sources:

• http://culture.pl/en/artist/jerzy-grotowski?gclid=Cj0KEQiAz7OlBRDErsTx47LKz-8BEiQAY0OlYn7UFwyZYD0zJLo0Y_2LANn09_RrqjR6SG0KSK7DpBMaAkbJ8P8HAQ
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Grotowski
• http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/67868.Jerzy_Grotowski
• http://www.jbactors.com/actingreading/actingteacherbiographies/jerzygrotowski.html
• Google Images

Research on Artaud

One of the practitioners the 'Experimental' term focuses on is Antonin Artaud, a man renowned for being controversial in theatre and turning the world of early twentieth century theatre upside down. Artaud was born in France in 1896 and the influences of the nature of his work can be seen established from an early age: he contracted meningitis at the age of four and this gave him several dire side effects including chronic depression, a stammer and a temperamental nature. This led to his parents sending him to a sanatorium to seek help for him, something that affected him greatly. In one of his most famous quotes Artaud stated, 

              "I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat."

This quote demonstrates exactly what mental state Artaud was in at the time when he was writing and gives a small insight into the experiences Artaud had whilst he was in the sanatorium. Mental illnesses plagued him throughout his adult life and due to his illnesses, much of his work was created whilst he was on intense pain killers, as well as having a heroin addiction. 

The work that Artaud is most well known for is his creation of 'The Theatre of Cruelty' which reinvented the definition of theatre, stepping away from the naturalistic and romantic eras of art which happened prior to Artaud's work to almost the complete opposite. Artaud was concerned with surrealism and experimental theatre which deviated from regarding the sole purpose of theatre being 'to entertain' and moving more towards 'to represent' and 'to shock/disturb'. Artaud was also one of the first dramatists to break the fourth wall and test the boundaries between audience and performer, something very interesting as the naturalism movement was occurring at the same time in amongst practitioners such as Stanislavsky and Chekhov. 

Artaud was not solely a dramatist; he was an actor, poet and artist, evidently someone dedicated to expressing themselves through the means of art. As Artaud's work was so unique and innovative at the time he was working, he faced much criticism but continued to make the work the way he wanted to. However, lots of Artaud's work was never documented as he only wrote one book: 'The Theatre and it's Double' 1938, and he did not write down much of the content of his practical sessions. 

From doing this research on Artaud, I am extremely interested to delve into his work further although I am slightly sceptical as to the nature of the work we will be doing surrounding him. I  have the feeling that this term, especially the work on Artaud will challenge me in a way I have not been challenged already on the course, but equally, I am looking forward to this challenge. I think it is very sad that Artaud lived the life he did; suffering for all of his life and dying at age 51, but already he has taught me that art can help people overcome their adversities, something that has never stood out to me as much as it has with Artaud.

The pictures above are of Artaud at two different stages in his life; when he was in his early twenties on the left and a few years before he died, when he was in his forties on the right. I found it shocking that Artaud was not older from looking at the picture on the right, but to me it gives an insight into how much he suffered with mental illness and trying to portray this strife successfully through art.

Sources:
http://www.leninimports.com/antonin_artaud.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/antonin_artaud.html#cyVQfJ1yfrX6zLO8.99
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/academy/theatres/artaud,%20antonin.htm
http://www.biography.com/people/antonin-artaud-9189906
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/144642/Theatre-of-Cruelty
Google Images