Before entering the
course, I considered myself to have a fairly good understanding and perception
of theatre. At the time, to read the classic plays (such as Death of a
Salesman, The Threepenny Opera, Oedipus etc…) was to me, a considerably solid
knowledge of performance and play. Back then, performance was to me the simple displays
of entertainment with the stereotypical Hollywood’s purpose of “make ‘em laugh”
or “make ‘em cry” that I was exposed to. I honestly (and naively) expected that
in these two years, we were merely going to learn the basics of acting and
performing, like voice-projection and elementary body language for example. In
terms of texts, western pieces were my prediction and thought that I had a
pretty solid basis to start the year with. However, I was in for a shock.
The very first play we
watched as a theatre company was called “Cadavre Exquis” and was my very first
contact with experimental theatre which deviated a lot from the conventional
form that I was accustomed to. In this theatrical experiment, there were four
actors and four directors and each director assembled a 10-minute piece with
one rule: they were only allowed to see the last 60 seconds of what the
previous person contributed. Though I was familiar with the concept of Cadavre
Exquis on paper and with words, this theatrical version was completely new to
me and some of the scenes were quite surrealist. The part that I liked most,
not only because of its visual impact but mostly due to the fact that I never
saw anything like it, was a scene were the stage represented the sea and all
four actors were standing on a small floating piece of wood and acted for 10
minutes in that minimal amount of space. The plays that I saw up to that day
always followed the conventional and ordinary stage use, by this I mean that
the actors were able to use almost the entire stage at all times. I believe
that that scene worked very well, because their common goal and cooperation was
greatly enhanced by their extreme physical closeness (which could have
symbolized their psychological similarities and purposes) and was palpable to
the audience.
We spent quite some time
researching and learning about different rituals in different cultures and the
impacts they had on the lives of indigenous people. Regarding this topic, I
found defining performance, ritual and play very helpful. I found out that
ritual, play and performance have a similar history, and often are mistaken for
being the same thing. However, each of them has a different set of
characteristics that makes them unique. Performance is probably the hardest one
to define, since it is included both in play and ritual. It can be
stylized/congruent to everyday behavior/ improvised... According to the
Performance Studies Textbook, performance is "ritualized behavior
conditioned and/or permeated by play". Play and ritual are similar in purposes,
however it’s the duration that varies. In both cases, the objective is to
change the audiences and/or the actors either permanently (in the case of
rituals) or temporarily (in the case of play). Play also gives the audience a
change to experience something out of the ordinary and that they wouldn't
normally experience in their lives. Rituals can be secular or sacred
(non-religious and religious) and date back to 20 000-30 000 years ago. This changed slightly my perception of
performance because I never knew how similar ritual and play really were in
terms of concept and impacts. My knowledge on indigenous rituals was quite
shallow, and this topic gave me a chance to research in depth a specific ritual
(which was the Aboriginal initiation ritual).
An element that I found
was more important than I thought to a performance and/or play is the unity of
the ensemble. I confess that I didn’t expect the unity of our theatre group to
be a big issue, but it turned to be one of the most important components of
these last few months. On most performing projects I’ve been in, there was
always a need to unite as a group and do some trusting exercises before the
rehearsals actually began. But most of the time, the actors would usually
forget that and ignore the remaining ensemble group, and would care about their
time on the spotlight. I was quite pessimistic and expected the same with our
theatre group, but I was wrong once again. In order for our (and any) ensemble
to work, there is a need to work on our unity on a continuous basis. I honestly
never thought that we would get along so well, and that definitely had an
impact on stage (which I will discuss further on). The composition of the
ritual was a big stepping-stone to out unity as a theatre group because that
was the first time we ever stressed together and needed to actually cooperate
to get something done. And even there were some missing elements on the actual
performance of the ritual, it was the journey that counted. And that journey
ultimately did what a ritual was supposed to do, which is to change someone or
something permanently and we experienced that first hand. Not in the way that
we expected it to be, but in a different way, that shaped our unity as an ensemble
nonetheless.
Suzuki and View-pointing
were the first topics we focused on. I had never heard of them before, and I
was surprised that we didn’t start off with a western classic and instead we
began with an alternative oriental method. The method of Tadashi Suzuki was
designed to centre de body through the use of the feet, through a series of
exercises to through the body off centre.
The exercises used in this method are made to recalibrate the way the
actor moves, and my first impression of these exercises was that they were very
physically demanding. I initially thought that being an avid sportsman would
help endure the cardio that Suzuki training requires, but I then discovered
that it was the walking and stomping that was the most demanding. Having a good
sense of stillness was another big part of the Suzuki method and I believe we
all struggled with keeping our body position strong and perfectly still at the
same time. This was quite in showing that a still image could have a big impact
on the audience, even more so if the actor is actually physically struggling
and being still at the same time. Controlling breath, enhancing focus and
reflecting struggles into movements are the basis of Suzuki’s training. In
class we often used these three elements at the same time, which was very
difficult at first. One of the exercises with those three was reciting text
while on a strong position. We were already quite exhausted and we had to
maintain a still position while reciting a passage from the Divine Comedy,
which was arduous due to our trouble breathing.
Along with Suzuki, the SITI Company’s View-pointing training
was another method we focused on in the beginning of the year. The very basic
definition of the Viewpoints is to help the actor deal with time and space. We
have mainly focused on topography, spatial relationship, tempo, duration,
kinesthetic response and repetition. This was the topic that really showed the
evolution of our ensemble. Whenever we trained view pointing, we spread across
the hall and try to create interesting stories without any dialogues.
Individually, we could only work with stillness and extreme fast (sometimes
extreme slow) in terms of tempo, and we were free to choose our floor pattern
and repetition to make have an interesting spatial relationship. What really
showed our development as a group was the Kinesthetic Response. If the exercise
involved music, then we needed to react as a group to the different musical
changes (using mostly our hearing to control our movements). But after being
told that the music was for the audience, we did the same exercise without the
music and then we needed to communicate as an ensemble to know when to stop and
when to move. In beginning, we were completely disorganized and uncoordinated but
as we began to know each other on and off-stage, our group reaction to
Kinesthetic Response was much better and it seemed like we could almost
telepathically talk to each other.
Recently, we’ve looked at the different uses of theatre in
different times. I focused on Greek Theatre, and I found it very interesting to
learn more about the origins of modern theatre and the actual structures of
Greek tragedies and comedies for religious purposes. Another use of theatre we
learned about was one based on the work of Augusto Boal that went from town to
town using theatre to help people get through social problems (like alcoholism
for example). By using the whole community in a series of role-playing
exercises, a person or group would be confronted with their problems and
everyone would try to find a solution to the issue that affected him/them using
theatre. We did a similar exercise in class focusing on the inferiority complex
that a member had towards her siblings, and I then realized the impact that
reliving those episodes really had and how theatre was indeed a powerful weapon
that can both hurt and help. Antonin Artauds’s Surrealism and Theatre of
Cruelty was probably the use of theatre that took me most of my comfort zone.
With this type of theatre, Artaud hoped to unleash unconscious responses in
audiences and performers that were normally inaccessible, plus he wanted
audiences to find in the theatre not an area for escape from the world, but the
realization of their worst nightmares and deepest fears. In the exercise we did
on this, we had to lie down with our eyes closed and make surreal noises, and
that was exactly what happened and I kept fearing that I would eventually get
attacked at any moment. Although this quite a terrifying experience for me, it
helped see the darker side of the theatre that I wasn’t aware of.
Lastly, we
are currently working on a piece of Documentary Theatre written by Lola Arias
that focuses on the deaths and lives of 5 teenagers that committed suicide. I
was completely unaware that this type of performance existed and I quickly
became excited about this project. Being an enthusiastic of biographies and
documentaries, the thought of making a piece of theatre with a similar form was
a breath of fresh air regarding a concept that I thought could not evolve more.
I believe it is needless
to say that my perception of theatre has changed a lot during these last few
months. I had a very narrow and shallow understanding of performance, and now
it seems that the more I learn, the more I see how big and different the world
of theatre really is. Even though I became more open-minded and more
considerate of the different uses of theatre, I know see performance everywhere
and how theatre is all around us, without us really noticing it. As a theatre
student, learning about documentary theatre and theatre of the absurd has made
me become more attentive to different sounds and possibly news that could
inspire a play or even a scene. As an individual, learning about the work of
Augusto Boal made me aware of how theatre could possibly help me and others get
through hard times, and my ensemble experience has made me realize how unity
and cooperation can really make a difference when working with a group of
people. What amazes me is that all this information was gathered from (not
even) a term of Theatre classes. What other uses and types of performing arts
future holds for me to learn, only time will tell.
