Stage Combat - 19/10/16

This session looked at two parts of Antigone: the chorus and the fight between the two brothers.

It was during the half-an-hour warm up that we looked at the chorus, trying to create a synchronised cast doing odd movements together through following someone. To create an effective Antigone chorus we need to be able to move in distinctive ways as one, therefore we need to work on coordinating with the rest of the cast whilst following the leader's movements. A bit ropy this week, I reckon that the synchronicity and inventiveness of our movements will improve quite rapidly over the next few weeks.

Moving on from the chorus, we began to look at stage combat in relation to the brothers' fight learning moves such as the punch, slap, hair grab and strangle. This was extremely fun and I think that I got the hang of the punch pretty quickly as well as the strangle though I think I need to work on the hair grab and slap a bit more. Using these movements, we had to put them into a sequence alternating in our partners: left-hand block, punch in the stomach, punch to the face and swap and repeat. With the help of my partner who had some experience in stage combat before, we managed to get a good rhythm going though I often found I lost coordination or our place in the movement.

Using this routine we then slowed the movement down trying to access the basic movement of the fight and softening it. This required a huge amount of concentration especially in coordinating our movement with each other and because of this I found I kept leaving out precision or aggression in my movement.

Stepping this up, we distanced from our partners and start adding frenzy to our movements gradually which I found meant I lost control of my body, and got confused as to where I was in the movement meaning that I often flung punches in the wrong place but tried to get the pasic to and thro of the movement whilst just making it fast paced.

All of this was combined together in a sequence: combat sequence real-time, slow motion, distance with real speed and gradually gaining frenzy. The performance of this is shown in this video:

Pina Bausch

Pina Bausch is a German dancer and choreographer (1940 - 2009) she pioneered a style of dance which combined everyday life with a poetic quality, she was able to do this when given a role as a choreographer where she renamed her ensemble Tanztheater Wuppertal.

Looking at some of her own works as well as those inspired by her on YouTube, I'm amazed at the beauty of the movement with all the pieces requiring a huge amount of skill and trust e.g. in one clip I saw, it required the girl to fall forward till nearly falling on her face without putting her hands out and relying on her partner to catch her by the shoulders. Although I do not think I would ever be able to execute something of that beauty with that amount of skill, I'd love to give the type of dance a go and have a go at choreographing something like it.

You can see echoes from Pina's childhood in her dance pieces; music is heard, people come and go, and talk of their yearning for happiness, but there is also the influence of her experience of WW2 as there are sudden bursts of panic and fear. 

After already having been trained in ballet, at the age of 14 she attended Folkwang School in Essen and studied under Kurt Jooss who was a significant person in pre- and post war modern dance, teaching his students both the freedom of modern dance whilst keeping a classical form allowing Pina to break away from the restraints of classical ballet. 

With funding, Pina attended Julliard in New York for a year as a 'Special Student' as this was seen as the centre of dance with classical ballet being reinvented and modern dance being advanced. She decided to stay another year but had to fund herself so got a job at the Metropolitan Opera where she gained a respect for Opera equal to that of her love of dance.

She returned to work with Kurt Jooss in Folkwang Tanzstudio and eventually began to choreograph her own pieces winning prestigious prizes for her work.  In 1973 the director of the Wuppertal theatres Arno Wüstenhöfer appointed her head of the Wuppertal Ballet, which she soon renamed the Tanztheater Wuppertal.

In an unusual move while producing a version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Pina was able to finally find her form for her work: dream-like, poetic imagery and body language. She took people's essential emotions as its starting point allowing the Tanztheatre Wuppertal to be understood throughout the world, sparking an international choreograph revolution.

Stanislavski Workshop Pictures

N2C Week Three

For the first hour, we started the play from the start and went through the first scene with the Girl and the Boy. As I wasn't in this scene I was asked to critique on it to help Jermaine with direction and say what worked and didn't from my perspective. In this respect, there were a couple of problems with the girl looking to confident and comfortable as she entered the room, they huddled in the corner and barely moved. During the course of the hour, however, the were moving more and came out of the corner and by the end the first scene was going really well.

In the second hour, we started to go through the scene containing the band which included me! This rehearsal felt definitely like an improvement from my own perspective as I felt comfortable in my position on stage and how I interacted with the other characters. However, when we performed it to the rest of N2C, people didn't quite stand in all the right places making it a bit awkward, but with more rehearsal this will be amended.

The Unavoidable Machine of Tragedy - 11/10/16

Tragedy: an unavoidable disastrous ending for the tragic hero where nothing they can do will change the course of fate.

We see tragedy in Shakespearean plays such as King Lear where Lear's downfall begins with his act of hubris which leads to him banishing his youngest daughter bringing on a chain of events which ultimately lead to madness and death, and Macbeth where his meeting with the witches begins his chain of events in pursuit for power which also leads to his death. The classic genre of Tragedy comes from Athens in ancient Greece where part of the festival of Dionysus (City Dionysia) was for three playwrights to compete through each writing three tragedies and a satyr (three other playwrights competed in the comedy section). The general form is to have a tragic hero have a moment of hamartia due to their hubris leading to a peripeteia as a series of events roll out which lead to the unavoidable moment of  anagnorisis and eventually the protagonist's death.

In the middle of Antigone, this idea of the tragic end being unavoidable is addressed by the Prologue/Chorus who says, "Now the spring is wound. The tale will unfold all of itself." this is the section that we explored in our lesson. Indirectly, we produced a set of movement in groups which represented a machine with one trying to get out, another trying to stop them and the others representing the tragic ending waiting for one of them. We got to this stage first by coming up with a series of actions meant to represent a profession. I decided to portray a Physiotherapist helping someone regain use of their legs through massaging and moving their legs gently up and down. These movements then had to become more abstract and dynamic so I increased the size of the movement and started to use the whole of my upper body within the motions.

With these movements rehearsed, we had to coordinate our own movements with a partners and try and make it blend together. This worked quite well with my partner as I was kneeling and she was standing, and once she was behind me, our movements worked in similar directions with her arms sweeping in the same direction as mine, purely by coincidence. At the start, it was hard to get close and coordinate without being able to speak, but after a while we had a good connection and felt comfortable in moving together.

This had to be added to another partners to create the motion of a machine working together, this was extremely difficult to do though conveniently we had two kneeling and two standing so the levels worked well. However, the two standing moving around the two kneeling meant that we had to be continually conscious of where the others in the group were and were you could do your movement without obstructing or colliding with someone else's. This was made harder by the addition of sticks. I think I hit each member of my group at least 5 times. The sticks created a more powerful image and with more time I think it would have been extremely effective, but it took a long time trying to get our heads around how to do our own movements with sticks and then how to have others working around this bigger movement also.

I think it went quite well considering, but if I did it again I would try to work out how to make the story more clear within the moves as well as make my own movement more effective.

Here is the video of our final piece:

Antigone: The Plot - 9/10/16

The session centred around Antigone, the play which the class will be doing for our Performing Arts. The task for the lesson was to represent the  main aspects of the plot through a series of movements and images.

The version we are doing is a contemporary version written by Jean Anhuil in 1942 as a social commentary on the Nazi occupation of France at the time. It has the same plot line as the original Antigone written by Sophocles in Athens BC, but it has contemporary twists with some comments made about modern things and the use of metatheatre e.g. at the beginning when the Prologue introduces the characters and the fact that some will die.

Using the plot line we came up with a series of movements in groups of five however, in the time we had we spent far too much time on the start of the sequence trying to get it synchronised leaving us too little time to come up with anything to do with the three suicides at the end and had to end with the sentence of Antigone to be immured.  I felt the ending was ineffective and we should have come up with something more striking such as a dynamic movement as a group representing Antigone hanging herself, perhaps with some lifts adding height. Furthermore, I believe that my part as Creon could have been played better by exuberating more power and having more of a conflict with Antigone.

Here is the film of our final performance:

N2C Director Challenge Week 2

In this session, we had our first look at the script as a whole which revealed how the play was set all in one scene, with the characters and action centering around the boy who entered in the first entrance and stayed until the last. It also felt like the play was split into four sections with the girl and the boy at the start, then the argument between the boy and the drummer, diffused slightly by the singer and the bass player in the next, and ending with the girl and the boy again.

For the first hour we looked at a scene involving 4/5 of the cast: the singer and bass player enter the rehearsal space following an extremely heated argument. At first, accessing the odd layout of the script and the situation as the bass player proved to be quite tricky especially when I first enter as I feel quite trapped and stationary in the corner. However, the scene seemed to start flowing a bit more as we began to get our heads around the text and the staging, moving and interacting with the characters. I liked Jermaine's decision to place the singer and the bass player so that they physically and figuratively diffused the tension slightly through being positioned between the two. This rehearsal definitely allowed me to understand both my character and the script we're working with a lot more.

Stanislavski Workshop - BTEC

A session I'll probably never forget: entering  the space we joked, 'is he going to get us to lie on these mats and make us think of our worst memory?' basically, yeah.

With dark lighting and odd music in the background, we began the session in semi-supine, and did some breathing exercises to focus our minds. This was so that we could focus on a memory of strong emotion. Trying to recall a memory that strong was hard for me, but I found one where I remember just experiencing a harsh, ache in my chest from the pain of missing loved ones. It was painful recalling this memory, even more so trying to immerse ourselves in it to feel the strength of the emotion again, as the feeling I had chosen is one I always remembered as one I never, ever wanted to experience again. Remaining focused, we then had to try and imagine writing our emotion on a blank, white sheet of paper placed in front of us. Another hard, and painful task as I had no words really to describe my emotions, (if I had written physically, I'm pretty certain no-one would have understood what I meant).

I had no idea walking into this lesson, that within half an hour I would be in floods of tears. I think this feeling was probably amplified by the amount of emotion through the room as you could feel the atmosphere and hear the sobs of other students.

The hardest part, for me at least, was yet to come. Individually, we were taken to the centre of the room, into a spotlight. Then another student would walk up and do something with the white piece of paper. It was hard, not only to be a part of the interaction, but also to listen and be aware of the others, who were having their paper torn up,or laughed at and the sobs were at time heart-breaking.

In my case, I felt extraordinarily self-conscious entering the spotlight in the centre of the room, with tears and snot streaming down my face, (lovely, I know) and I just felt fear at what would happen to my piece of paper. Caitlin came up, and took my piece of paper, read it, and laughed mockingly at me. Feeling more embarrassed and self-conscious than angry at the way she looked at my piece of paper, I didn't react strongly but rather tried to hide my face and half move towards the paper, then half move back.

Thankfully, when it was my turn to take someone's paper, I was given the far-less harsh job of looking at the paper compassionately, then giving a comforting hug. This was a relief after my experience as I knew how painful it was to be in the middle and actually comforted me as well as Emily.

To be honest, the Stanislavski workshop was extremely emotional and slightly harrowing, but it also gave me a sense of relief afterwards as I felt that I'd released a lot of pent up emotion, and it also gave me a stronger insight into the methods some actors take and to what extent you can go to express the emotion of a character. However, I don't think I could use this method as it took me at least 20 minutes to access the emotion and after that, it was almost emotionally exhausting and doing that in a performance could be ultimately scarring.

Yet more...

(sorry: there's a lot to say)

After the hour long workshop from hell, we had a quick break to emotionally recover, and were then plunged back into another dark, tragic setting as we began to explore the play we will be performing as a class for our BTEC: Antigone (a contemporary version).

First of all, we were asked to imagine that a box was the image of our dead brother who we had admired and respected throughout our lives, and that inside would be revealed the true, despicable nature of our brother. Using this, if we felt able/ready, we were to approach the box as if we were grieving then to find the truth inside and react. It took me a while before I felt able to express this, and truthfully, even when I attempted it I'm not sure I really had the right state of mind on. I believe if I had focussed more on the emotion rather than thinking about how I would go up and then react, I may have been able to offer a more convincing performance. However, I felt that the silent mourner, then shocked reaction worked well, though I could have been more daring.

Using these emotions and movements, we then had to react as Antigone and Creon (Mr Chipp) came in and revealed our brother to us. It was extremely shocking when he came in and almost stunned me with the violence and harshness with which revealed the truth of our brother, reacting violently to students who reacted as Antigone. I was in denial and tried to put the dirt back into the box which he had ruined, but he came up again and chucked the mud all over me. This exercise was extraordinarily dramatic and slightly shocking, and gave me a huge insight into what sort of situation and emotions Antigone must have gone through.

N2C Directors Challenge Week 1

In this first session, our groups were selected. The main purpose of this session was to bond as a group and to understand the themes of the play. I was put into the group with Jermaine as our director, and we found out that our play was going to be Purple, by Jon Fosse. Jermaine decided that this was going to be a Stanislavski performance with the lack of personal pronouns for the characters lending itself to the idea of, 'just being a ball of emotion.'

I was given the part of, 'The Bass Player' who acts as a bit of emotional relief in the play, entering in the midst of a tense scene involving 'The Drummer' and 'The Boy' along with 'The Singer'. Having not been given the script, I wasn't able to explore my character fully but got the idea that 'The Bass Player', if not a calming character, tries to subdue the tense atmosphere.

Monday 3rd October

During this session, we explored the feelings of fear and that of wanting to be close to be somebody, and from this, ways in which we could present this through realism, followed by using movement.

To begin with, we began to try and understand the feelings we would portray through doing an exercise in which we had to concentrate on someone we cared for who didn't know, and try and stay close. Then we concentrated on both this person and someone who we were afraid of. This allowed us to try and combine the two at once and work with avoiding one person while caring for another.

As groups, we then had to present ourselves together in a room with each character presenting a different feeling: wanting to be close to somebody, being uncomfortable with the former, and then simply being afraid and withdrawn. As our group had four rather then three like the others, I attempted to present a character caught up between it: interested in being close to the one who was afraid, friendly with one who was uncomfortable and annoyed with the one being close to another. We presented our scene in a staff room at lunch time as we felt this would be the ideal setting for odd relationships and tension.

After performing these, the class then sat in a circle and we used physical movement to describe what the person on the left looked like. Using these movements, we went back to the scenes we had just come up with and tried to incorporate it into all our movement. For half the characters in the scene, this worked effectively as they were directly interacting and were able to work off each other. However, I didn't do very well at this activity and though I tried to portray some movement and feeling in these actions, I didn't effectively interact like I did with the realism. If I had had more time, I think I would have been able to come up with something to interact with another character to effectively show the tension in the room.