Tom Waits - Joker Comparison

Laban Efforts

In one of our voice sessions this term we discovered Laban efforts and we can utilise them to affect our movements and inform our vocal choices. I found this class really useful and will definitely be applying these methods to future characterisations. Laban said that all movement can be categorised into 8 descriptors. This can be separated into 3 different components that can be fixed together to create different qualities of movements. Direction; Weight; Speed. Direction = direct or indirect, Weight = heavy or light and Speed = sustained or staccato. So for example if you matched up an indirect, light, sustained movement you'd get float. Here is a list of the efforts and the links in order to make them.

Direct - Heavy - Staccato = Punch
Indirect - Heavy - Sustained = Slash 
Direct - Heavy - Sustained = Push
Indirect - Heavy - Sustained = Wring 
Direct - Light - Staccato = Dab
Indirect - Light - Staccato = Flick 
Direct - Light, Sustained = Glide
Indirect - Light - Sustained = Float 

These qualities exists in all of us but some more than others so some efforts I found easier than others. Flick was one of the less difficult ones to inhabit; on later discussion without realising it I'd applied flick to my characterisation of "Two" last term in contemporary. I guess because I'm quite scatter brained and my attention is always being pulled in many direction flick just really resonated with my personality. A lot of the heavy ones I found difficult especially wring. This one has quite an inner manifestation within my body and has quite a masculine angry quality too it. I feel like I eventually found this effort by picturing someone "wringing" the water out of a towel and letting this feeling come from my core. Glide was quite an interesting effort to find. It was hard to find that sustained quality; keeping moving was the moving was the toughest part. If I was to apply this effort to a character it would definitely be a king or a noble person.

We went on to do an exercise based on communicating purely through these efforts. I chose Flick and my partner chose slash. I feel like because we picked opposing efforts so it was easier to communicate. Every time she would slash my flick would react off of it. This exercise developed on to an argument which was easier than just having a conversation because their was a purpose to the two efforts conversing. When there was just two people it really worked because there was an important element of listening taking place. When more efforts were added in it became chaotic and didn't really work. This was because there was no acting and reacting, it was just a big mess of movements and noises. It also went a bit array when words were added in. I think this was because the sounds and movements communicated our intentions well enough and having to think of words to say took this element away.

In conclusion I found this class very helpful and will definitely be applying these practises to future work. It was very important to explore how movement and can affect my vocal choices and if I want to access a particular sound it might be good to start with a movement component.

Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud was born on the 4th September 1896 was a French dramatist, actor, poet and pioneer of the surrealist movement. He viewed the classical "bourgeois" as unintelligent and wished to replace it with his system: "The Theatre of Cruelty". This was a more symbolic meaningful form that wished to liberate the subconscious of man. Artaud believed society had turned humans into repressed, sick savages and the objective of this type of theatre was to unleash unconscious reactions. He didn't want his audience to be immersed and escape reality rather show them their deepest darkest nightmares and fears. Artaud saw that all humans wore a mask put their by society and wanted to create conditions to provoke the audience to take them of and have a good look at themselves.

Artuad said that "from a mental viewpoint cruelty means strictness, diligence, unrelenting decisiveness, irreversible absolute determination". This means that he believed that cruelty encompassed many elements of mankind; many of these words sound positive on inspection and to be honest I don't totally understand this quote but I  believe he was trying to characterise the dichotomy within his work. Artaud believed the theatre was safe to explore, he thought theatre was a tool and crosses barriers of language and communication. In order to get the most out of his actors and audience he utilised "Total Theatre". He would use any device at his disposal including sound, lighting, props, costume, sets etc. He wished to bombard the senses and batter the brain into submission. When this happens we stop intellectualising everything and just let the subconscious take control. Artaud regarded Theatre as a participatory and wished to tear down the fourth and let audiences become part of the action. This meant the audience wouldn't separate the play from themselves and see they were as much part of this world as the actors.

When Artaud was 18 he became ill with neurasthenia and to help him with his symptoms he was given opium. He later on became addicted to this drug. Then in 1916 he was inducted to the army but was released shortly after because of mental instability and drug addiction. In 1918 he committed himself to a clinic and stayed there for 2 years. When he was released he immediately went to Paris to train under the actor/director Charles Dullin. Artaud then pursued a career as an actor starring in films and plays e.g."The passion of Joan of arc" and "Six characters in search of an author".

 Around the late 1920's Artaud became highly interested in the surrealist movement and began collaborating with other artists, poets, film-makers and theatre makers and founded his own company (Theatre Alfred Jerry) along the way. In 1931 he saw a of Balinese performers and finally found what he was artistically looking for.  In 1932-33 he wrote his first drama theory book (Manifestos of the theatre of cruelty) then in 1935 he began working on "Les Cenci" to implement his own theories; this production could be cited as one of the first to be in the round. However his artistic aims were never met and heartbroken he retreated to Mexico. In 1937 in the middle of a lecture he began screaming at the audience and in the same year he was declared mentally unfit and sent to an asylum. During this time he wrote his most influential work "The Theatre and it's double". He spent nine years in different institution being treated for schizophrenia.

On his return to Paris he was labelled a genius after a 3 hour lecture attended by some very important people. In 1948 he died of intestinal cancer, seated next to his bed, allegedly holding a shoe. What a end to a very chaotic life.

Sources:
http://www.leninimports.com/antonin_artaud.html
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonin-Artaud
http://www.almaclassics.com/excerpts/Theatre_Double.pdf

Lesson 1: An introduction to Experimental Theatre

This term we enter a world of madness and artistic creativity . We will be exploring themes of mental health through the medium of experimental theatre which will culminate in a final performance examine this issue. However in this term instead of a single practitioner we will be focusing on the efforts of Antonin Artaud; Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook. I will be dedicate individual posts to research into their methods and schools of thought. Our first session was devoted to introducing us to practical exercises that these men made in order to create emotionally charged, truthful, extreme work.

Session 1 - Artaud methods: 

This session was centred around emotion and imagination. The first exercise involved passing an emotion around the circle and with each person the emotion becomes bigger. The first emotion we started with was joy. I noticed that this was quite an easy one to do. The feeling was infectious and as it got passed around it grew with ease getting to the point of jumping, screaming with happiness and laughter. We suspected this was because joy is an emotion you wish to share with everyone so you could use the person's energy before you and build upon it. We were able to find this instinctual element and bring it out in a truthful way. Now when we moved onto sorrow this exercise became more difficult, At first we found this simple enough but at a certain point we couldn't produce an honest reaction that was larger than the person before us. I believe this was because sorrow is a hard emotion to quickly conjure up and takes a build up and often in real life we don't wish to show our sadness to others. There was a really cool moment during this exercise where as the emotion was getting bigger people were getting louder but instead of following this trend Ed just drop to the floor. There was just something so real and authentic about this it actually triggered something within me. I think he really found the essence of a sorrow so great it knocks you off your feet. Applying this to a performance context I think this would read stronger and more genuine than a moment of shrieking and tears. This exercise also showed us how difficult it is to work with extreme emotion and how even when you go to those places it is imperative to keep and element of truth.

The second exercise involved us splitting off into smaller groups and working to show off an emotion without speaking. My group had trust; we thought the best way to communicate this would be trough trust falls. That was the first place our minds thought to go when portraying this. When discussing this we found that this was the intellectual response which was exactly the opposite of what Artaud wanted. Ben said that this was more of a Brechtian response to this which was to show the emotion and make a comment rather than instinctually feel it. If I was to do this exercise again I would try find a more abstract way of presenting truth that doesn't examine the nature of truth. A group that did this exercise really well was the lust group. There was something voyeuristic and wrong about watching them which evoked the feeling in us as audience members. When Yasmin passed round the back of a group of people simply the presence of her being their made us into active participants instead of silent observers. This exercise was good for highlighting how hard it is to portray feelings and how sometimes when you think you are demonstrating an emotion like fear you could actually be showing isolation.

Lastly we moved onto two final imagination exercises. The first one we had to lay on the floor with our eyes closed and imagine we are different situations. I feel like being trapped in the spider's web was the most effective with me. The feeling of anxiety and not being able to move was scary and easy to immerse myself in. I feel this was because I could bring this feeling into my entire body and squirm and wriggling all I wanted to which made it feel as real as possible. I think I also fed off the energy of the rest of the room as I could hear the panicked cries of other people. The chocolate eating exercise was actually the most difficult for me. I couldn't really content with the feeling behind the action. I could imagine the taste, the feeling against my face but I wasn't really being effective by it. I didn't feel happy about this chocolate, I didn't feel sad. It just kind of existed. Any attempts to vocalise felt fake and using my body didn't help take me deeper into my imagination. After discussion it seems that I wasn't the only one and most people find this difficult. Ben told us about a girl who did this exercise who really connected with it and let off this loud noise of joy which he said was unforgetable. She must have found a real sense of happiness in this moment and I wish to be able to go deep enough one day to find something as raw as that myself.

The final imagination exercise involved us  using chairs to create a tunnel. This related to the way Artaud would use all the tools at his disposal to bring out the best in his actors; which included set, lightning, props, etc. Having a physical barrier around us help to recreate the claustrophobic conditions of a tunnel under the earth. Utilising us we were told to do things to make it feel more real. We banged on the chairs to make it seem like rocks were falling; we spoke like we were fellow trapped miners and I had to scream. The moment when I started yelling I could immediately see the physical shock of my classmates through their bodies. They tensed up and started shaking or moving with visible distressed. I believe that in their heads they were truly immersed in this imagine situation. Although when it came to our turn it felt less real. After seeing happen first time it was definitely less effective as I could foresee what was about to happen. It felt over dramatic having 20 people screaming and touching you. This was a good insight into how sometimes even when going to extremes less can be more.

Session 2 - Peter Brook methods:

This whole sessions was all about working with impulses and using our emotion centres. The first exercise illustrated how you can take away action and still have an interesting performance. Me and Olivia had to sit at the front of the class and stare at the wall; except Olivia had to clear her mind of all thoughts whilst I had to focus on an intense feeling (to which I chose sadness). It was a really weird sensation to be honest. I was discouraged from using facial expression however no matter how hard I tried I could feel my face reacting to the intense feelings. My lips quivered, my eyebrows twitched, my eyes watered and my the corners of my mouth were dragged downwards. The class were asked who was most interesting to watch. Some said me because they were intrigued by my eyes and wanted to understand what was going on behind them, some said Olivia because they wanted to know more behind her blank expression and some said they preferred to switch back and forth. This exercise showed me how you don't even need actions, gestures, movement or even text to create an emotional performance. All you need is an impulse.

Another exercise we did was working with any intense feeling and then vocal/physicalising it. I believe the people that chose more negative emotions had an easier time. I picked happiness; which was hard to pin down for a start. Every time I felt I hit peak of happiness I would let out this manic laughter but I couldn't maintain it. I would drop down into a state more akin to bliss. Eventually when I managed to sustain a level of happiness I kept letting out these mad shrieks of joy like I couldn't hold it and then I started yelling out the window as if I wanted to share this happiness with the world. It was actually quite scary. I felt more insane than I would if I was working with anger or sadness. This exercise helped to show me how to sustain and extreme emotion and how an impulse can grow into full voice and movement.

One of the final exercises we did was to get your partner to do an action using no verbal or physical communication. Just slightly facial expression. Me and my partner actually achieved this. It was more of a trial and error exercise. I wanted her to wave and I have no idea she ended up actually doing. Maybe it was telepathy or her being able to read the slight changes in my face. This exercise demonstrated how it if you play close attention you can through unspoken communication achieve many things.

Session 3 - Grotowski methods:

So this session mainly consisted of running. For nearly an hour. We began in the classroom then moved around the outside of the building, around the football pitch, then back in the classroom. I felt like I pushed myself very hard and did not stop for the duration of the exercise. This exercise was to demonstrate how physical exhaustion can break down barriers and reach a point where as an actor you are willing to go to places that you wouldn't normally go to. However we never got onto this part of the exercise. It felt a bit pointless to not actually create anything or do any acting exercises after we got to this point of tiredness; it felt like we'd done all this work for no reason. I wanted to test Grotoswski's methods but instead we just spoke about how it felt to run for a long period of time. This was a little bit disappointing. Hopefully next time we do an exercise like this we will use all this exhausted energy to actually create something. I did actually feel the artistic potential and I can guess that any work we would have made would have been very experimental and emotional charged.

In conclusion I enjoyed all these sessions (in varying degrees) as they gave me insights into what it's like to work on the extreme end of the theatrical spectrum. It was really important that we worked practically as sitting down and merely discussing these practitioners exercises wouldn't have been enough. We need to get a feel for them through our own bodies and own minds. I am really excited to apply these practices to our theme of mental health as they definitely gel together perfectly. Now here comes the hard part; creating the performance.