Final Performance Evaluation

Today we completed our final experimental theatre piece. This term was all about process and using different means in order to communicate our theme of: "The link between creativity and madness" I believe we achieved this very well and always work in an experimental way. The final performance certainly reflected our aims and hard work. I feel like we performed effectively as an ensemble but some areas could have done with tightening up. In this evaluation the key areas I will be focusing are "The artistic achievements we made; the level of professional execution; strengths and weaknesses and the future potential of the piece as a theatre product." I will analyse and evaluate both the promenade section of the performance and the main piece.  

The beginning section of our promenade piece was visually bold and striking. I believe it made the audience feel on edge and a little bit freaked out when they were greeted by a group of people standing still with trestle masks on tracking their movements. This meant that straight away we had their attention and were able to keep them engaged in our performance. When Georgie burst out of nowhere and began to frantically climb the tree (whilst reciting Tom Wait's lines from "Nirvana") this changed the pace and set up a foreshadow for our bar piece later. The moment when we all walk forward point and pull our masks back down could have done with refinement. This is because there was a lot of dead space which could have been filled with text from the poem. We could have also employed some Grotowski vocal techniques here and created some sounds as an ensemble to represent the hopeless search for Nirvana. This atmospheric cacophony of sound would have engaged the audiences senses and make our promenade piece more vocal interesting to watch. The transition into the next area of the piece could have been cleaned up too. We never really made a choice whether to run away into our positions in the corridor or to walk away in formation. This meant that some of the group ran and some just fizzled away moreover dissolving the idea that we were as one entity in this section. If we were to do it again I would suggest we ripped off our masks (so we could see better) and run away together so we don't break the illusion we had just set up. 

In the next section of our promenade piece we continued using the idea of clear simple imagery to communicate our point. I simple put on a piece of costume (goggles and hat) that I wear in the bar and began running up and down the small strip of corridor frantically "searching for my Nirvana". In the 4:30 showing as I came running down towards the audience they began to scream and stop in their tracks. This was unexpected but I made sure to use this to my advantage by taking a moment to pause and stare them down as if I was asking for help before I began to ran back. I believe this broke down barriers between the actor audience relationship and instead of them just being scared of what I was doing they would begin to sympathise with my characters hopeless search. I feel like this also provided a strong change in energy from Chloe slathering chocolate all over her face. To make this better I could have placed items around that corridor that I could find. This means I could have a big physical reaction to finding my Nirvana thus making the intentions of the promenade piece even clearer. 

In relation to our group performance "A Taste Of Waits" I thought we pulled it off with aplomb; it was by no means perfect however the journey from it being a concept to a fully fleshed out piece was remarkable. It was the culmination of ideas and different styles of performance that made this an effective and more importantly affective piece of theatre. As soon as the audience entered because we had already got into character for about five minutes they were greeted by this dank atmosphere. Was created by applying Artaud's principles of total theatre. We had intimate lighting to make the place look lonely and desolate (which would later on be used to fill the room with colour in relation to the drink e.g. Red = pleasure) we had bluesy jazz music, dynamic costumes, cardboard set, everything to spark the audiences imagination. One of the core things I learnt during this term is about filling gaps when needed; in the 4:30 showing during the story telling section I looked up and noticed nobody was at the mic. Reece was still holding the object and Georgie was walking towards an non-existent person. In the moment I realised that of no-one took the drink then the energy would drop stopping the performance dead in it's track. So I barged forwards, grabbed the drink, chugged it and threw the cup on the ground in style. In this moment I felt so instinctual, because I was really in character and switched on in the piece I think I was able to react quickly off any stimulus I was presented with. It was an amazing feeling telling the story of "The little black girl in the red dress" who was a champion. I felt like during this term I really struggled with story-telling as I was always speaking as Sam but for the first term I just let my self go, and it felt great. I feel like the whole class as an ensemble were behind me backing me up with soundscapes and when it was over Olivia took that perfect opportunity to do our moment. This meant that I had a huge sense of journey during the piece and went from being a champion to a loser. 

The actor audience relationship definitely differed between showings. The first crowd was young and slightly rowdy. You didn't have to do much to get a reaction out of them. If I wanted to start talking to one of them they would almost immediately laugh but at least it gave me something to go off. With the parent audience this was a lot harder. This was because they had more sense of inhibition and were on edge. There was an ineffective moment where I followed an audience member all the way from the door to her seat noticing every thing about her. Then when it came time for me to talk to her she just apologised and kind of willed me to go away. As a performer I should have continued interacting with her but as a person I knew she felt uncomfortable and that was an undesired response. This goes against what we've been learning this term; Artaud purposefully made his audience members uncomfortable to uncover truths within themselves so in order to make this aspect of my performance better I should have pursued the conversation instead of moving on to someone different. Another area of weakness in the performance was during the second time I performed the promenade piece. I was exhausted after putting so much punch into the first peformance that my second bout of running up and down the corridors lack energy. The frantic searching objective was not played as strongly therefore the theme would not have been received as clearly. In order to fix this I will make sure to have better endurance when doing multiple runs of a show in a single day and make sure I am properly hydrated and warmed up. This means that both runs would have been just as effective as each other. 

Finally, as a potential future theatre product I believe our production has legs. The piece would speak to audiences of all ranged as the themes of mental health and creativity resonate not just on a young platform but speaks to older audiences too. In the end of our piece we gave a group performance that was educative and poignant highlighting all the key aspects we were trying to convey. I believe we could use this piece as a platform to talk about mental health on a level that goes beyond just hitting the audience with arbitrary statistics but rather challenges them to really look at mental health and actually empathise with suffers. As it was an experimental piece of theatre it is a very malleable production and could be shaped and changed to fit any audience we would want to see it. We could extend the end creativity test to include more audience participation and maybe even attempt to have seem verbatim sections within our promenade performances. This would elevate our performance to a level that is complex but still enjoyable to watch.

In conclusion I believe we created a poised and boundary pushing piece that applied all the techniques we learnt this term effectively. This has been a steep learning curve about working in an experimental style and I can't wait to discover ways to apply this to all the work I hopefully do in the future. 

Bethlem Museum Trip

In today's session we took a nice educational trip to Bethlem Museum of the Mind. It was a very fruitful trip and I gained a lot of knowledge especially about how people with mental health issues can create fascinating art work.

The first thing that surprised me was how clean and normal the place looked. I expected it to be dark and very harrowing; instead we were greeted by a friendly tour guide and nice open spaces with white walls. One of the first things I noticed in the actual museum part was this open window out looking the picturesque greens of the grounds. This made me consider how this mental hospital might not be prison, maybe in fact it is a sanctuary - a safe haven where people with mental disorders were free to live away from persecution and torment. However next to that section was an exhibit showcasing the various constraints and shackling devices. This created a conflict in my mind. In this place they had some element of freedom but also none at all. I feel like this juxtaposition is very prevalent whenever we talk about issues dealing with mental health.

There have been many studies into links between creativity mental health problems (see article *) so it was really interesting to see art work created by some of these people. There was one piece of work that really caught my eye titled "It has not worked". The words have quite a hopelessness to them like the artist has given up. The facial expression is filled with melancholy and the exaggerated open palms give off a sense of baring all, this open gesture shows how this woman isn't hiding her problems from the world. It also makes the painting look even more distressful. I think this also makes a comment about how treatment doesn't always work and not every mentally ill person can be helped.

I can use what I've learnt from Bethlem and apply to my character I have been creating over the previous weeks. I definitely want their to be a sense of conflict within the character. A switch between melancholy and madness.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/08/new-study-claims-to-find-genetic-link-between-creativity-and-mental-illness)   

Video

What did I learn?

• I have got some context into the mind of someone who suffers from Bi-polar/manic depression 
• I can use the information to inform character choices 
• The scientific language used in the video could make our piece sound profound and researched 
• What Tom Waits' brain works like and how he might process stimuli 
• The symptom section of the video could definitely inform movement choices 
• The "Mania" could be linked to the laughing exercise we do  
• Now I can relate to the piece more and start making more educated links between mental health and creativity 

Lesson 3 - Story and Character

In today's session we started creating some material for our piece. A lot of the practices we used centred around the ensemble work, story telling, character and Yoshi Oida energy and natural progression (Jo-ha-kyū):

Clapping - In traditional Japanese theatre they believe in performance there should be an element of beginning slowly, speeding up, reaching a peak then losing it to then start back up on this process. This simulating with a simple clapping game. We all started off clapping slowly out of time then slowly came together reached a climax, petered out then started the process. This exercise was really good at demonstrating how this natural flow is present within the natural world thus it should always exists within the theatrical world. It also helped us as a cast to get in tune with each other. We can use this progression within all areas of our performance.

Object inspired character - This part of the session didn't go so well. This was because as an ensemble we weren't comfortable enough to just throw ourselves and take risks with spontaneous characterisation. It is quite scary when you don't have confidence in what you are about to experiment with. I personally feel like the character I created was too complex to create a simple and interesting story with. This isn't all entirely negative though. We learnt that in order to be comfortable within our own performance unless we have a strong character to pair it with. We now know if this piece is going to work we are going need to have well mapped characters within this bar.

One sentence story - In order to get our minds into the mind space for creating spontaneously. This did actually help with getting our heads ready for bigger things. There were some really interesting moments in this exercise most of them comedic. It is much easier to create funny moments on the spot than predetermined. If we wish to use comedy within our piece it should definitely come from an improved place.

Lesson 2 - Let's get down to business!

In today's session we mainly focused around exploration and played many games to stimulate our imaginations and start working in an experimental way. I will not be explaining all the exercises, instead I'll be evaluating a few and how they made me feel and how we can apply them in a performance context.

Discussion: What is art? 

In a group talk we debated about what art is; It is interpretive, it evokes emotion. It makes you feel something you don't feel on an everyday basis. Feels colourful and personal. Freedom without judgement. Someone made a point about it being subjective and very hard to define. This discussion made me think deeper about what the nature of art is and whether or not it is quantifiable. 

Exercise 1 - Duel in the Dark:

The first time we played this exercise it was the unpredictability that made it so interesting to watch. That sense of dramatic irony that us as audience members know what is happening but the players do not. I feel like we can apply this energy within the actor audience relationship. That tangible uncertainty could be harness by having the audience watch a scene that is completely up to their own design. The second time we played this game we added in another variable of the newspapers being in a different place (on top of a table). Changing an element allowed the game to be interesting another time. Returning my idea to the actor audience relation we could utilise this rule changing idea by allowing them to change the "rules" of the performance meaning us as actors would need to adapt ourselves. Moreover this would make the performance dangerous and exciting and unpredictable. When we played this game one final time in a session with Chris we had to pick some moments we thought were brilliant. All the moments I seem to isolate were the "Are they gonna do it?" moments; Adjei poised with the Newspaper and Chloe jumping out the way just in time. I believe it's the potential energy that makes these moments so fun to watch. They are charged with something raw. 

Exercise 2 - Trapeze 

I found parts exercise quite difficult. The initial moment of take off I found easiest to connect with; that nervous/excited energy like the kind you find before you plunge on a roller-coaster is something I can find within myself. However stabbing myself in the stomach I could never really find. It was a quick transition from a feeling of elation to that of self inflicted pain. I couldn't find the switch meaning the truth within the moment was lost. If I was to do this exercise again I would work harder and try find an equivalent feeling that I could relate to in order to find this sensation of stabbing myself in the stomach.

Exercise 3 - Mother and Child

I really enjoyed this exercise if I'm honest, It felt cathartic to just release some sorrowful sounds. Watching Eve and Olivia just have a moment of natural acting and then have a circle around it just filling the room with these horrible but truthful noises of loss and pain. It became sort of animalistic and beautiful at the same time. I let out this cry that slowly crescendoed and evaporated. It came from the energy in the room and filling the soundscape with what was needed. I feel like this exercises was a represnation of the sounds we can't express because of our societal conditioning which pairs well with Artaud's work about man being savage. We could harness this by showing the audience a "normal reaction" to a stimulus then showing a "true reaction". 

Exercise 4 - Passing a laugh

This was another exercise I found quite hard, maybe it was because I wasn't in a laughing mood, maybe because I found it hard to go from a neutral place to a middle ground of laughing, maybe it was because I was thinking too much. It was probably a combination. However I did think this exercise was good at switching between manic and "normal". It was coming back to neutral after the big laughing moments that made this effective. I think as an ensemble it creates a weird atmosphere to whoever is watching. It poses questions; why are they laughing? what makes them stop laughing? Are they laughing at me? We could definitely use this silent communication to our advantage to make the audience feel on edge.  

Peter Brook - The Empty Space

Peter Brook was born in Turnham Green Chiswick in 1925. He is an English theatre/film maker and director and has been working for many decades meaning he has seen theatrical styles come/go and evolve. His work definitely reflects this as he doesn't limit himself to one kind of theatre and will work with many forms such as "The Mahabharata" which incorporated traditional eastern Kathak dance. He has won many awards including an Olivier, a Tony and a an Emmy. Brook's work is inspired by Antonin Artaud and his Theatre of Cruelty. (see previous post) Peter Brook undertook a season at the Royal Shakespeare Company, aiming to explore ways Artaud's ideas could be used to "find new forms of expression and retrain the performer". This indicates how Peter Brook would not be afraid to use other practitioners methodologies to enhance his own work; exploration and deviation from the conventional and commercialised was Brook's objective. 

The Empty Space - Condensed contextual seminar: 

"Any empty space is a place of infinite possibility, objects too taken out of context are full of potential"

Deadly Theatre: This is a contrived, formulaic and commercialised form of theatre. Most prevalent in the West end and Broadway where profit is the most important part of the production, Bad acting, bad everything! Introspective, atypical stories, "Man finds himself learning lessons along the way" However to be deadly isn't dead; it is still capable of resurrection. It is alive just in the wrong way.

Holy Theatre: Transcends ordinary life, is like a temple; deep messages and symbolism good theatre although there is not a big enough audience doesn't speak to many people. Artuad/Grotowski work. Limited to itself.

Rough Theatre: Any form that doesn't not exist in a conventional theatrical space. Source of most of renaissances in drama throughout history. Usually political or satirical theatre that makes a comment on society. Brechtian theatre can fall into this category; opposite of Holy Theatre.

Immediate Theatre: Actors become like mediums; totally in the moment. Translating feelings and impression to an audience who are carried along with them. Instant creativity; spontaneity, impulses raw instinct.

Peter Brook's work can all be summed up in three words:

Simplicity. Honesty. Truth 

Tom Waits - Research

Tom Waits (1945 - Present) is a singer, songwriter, composer and actor. He is know for his distinctive voice which has been described as "soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smoke house for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car" by critic Daniel Durchholz. His music is influenced by pre-rock styles e.g. blues, jazz, vaudeville etc. It has an atmospheric quality and paints portraits of grotesque often seedy characters and gives them a narrative. He has quite a strong fan base and has accumulated a cult following. Alcoholism was a huge problem he faced and a lot of his work seems to be fuelled by this.

In our experimental piece we will be playing different characters within a bar that is actually a meta-physical representation of Tom Waits' brain. In his songs he usually portraits grotesque seedy characters. I could possibly use one of these songs to inform a character I will be creating during this project. For example in his song "Step Right Up" a character of a fast talking salesman who literally can sell anything. This could be interesting to play around with as there's lot's of possibilities within Tom Wait's songs in relation to character creation.

Tom Wait's has also been involved in many films, not just musically but acting too. This shows that he doesn't just want to limit his artistry to one single medium but wishes to create in many different ways. I feel we could use this idea within our own piece. We shouldn't just stick to the single medium when creating this piece. We should definitely have elements of song, lighting, video maybe even taste and smells. I feel like Tom Waits his an artist before he's a musician and we should treat him like one and paint our piece with loads of varying colours. This would also help to indicate the mania of his brain and how nothing is predictable.

Just another interesting side note here's a list of some other creative people who struggled with mental heath issues:

• Carrie Fisher - Bipolar 
• F. Scott Fitzgerald - Depression 
• Ernest Hemingway - Bipolar/Anxiety 
• Elton John - Depression 
• Laurence Olivier - Depression 
• Ben Stiller - Bipolar 
• Barbara Streisand - Social-phobia