Journey

We have just put together our piece and the journey that our characters in the piece go on. This shows us the exploration of couples in the war time. I feel that our piece really explores and intricately looks at the emptiness of being away from the one that you love and that it highlights the love and need for the other person. 

 

Journey of the piece

 

• First meeting
• Melt into each other on floor
• Come apart from hold
• Explore floor for other half
• Find each other and rise together and part
• Woman walk round searching for man – touching men (for them it’s the effects of war)
• Woman get desperate and give up – walk emotionless in elision fields.
• Men walk behind woman saying letter and trying to balance the letters on them
• Men stop and fall to floor then come up again in position of start of duet
• Woman do mundane everyday routines – life becomes too much- fall to floor then get up and rejoin man in duet position
• Duets start
• Stop and watch the final veterans duet come together

First meeting

We explored and developed how our characters in the couples first met and physically moved through and expressed the emotions and instant love within one and other. In our pair we looked at how the physical touch can send and the tension and connection that goes though each other. We showed this through the small grazing of our hands touch. We used that literal situation of waiting for a bus and then taking it into a more abstract physical exploration. We took the small touch of the hands and showed how the connection travels through the body. Hopefully we show this through our facile and body expressions and how they change from neutral to a more exaggerated and abstract movement to show heightened emotions.

 

We then jumped in time to the moment when the couple start to explore and get to know each other. We show this through the physical and intimate movement and gentle touching of each other. We used this physical movement to show the personal and emotional development of the relationship. I feel that through the intimate touching and delicacy shown through the physical movements shows the care that went through the process of getting to know each other and the love that develops between the characters. We then moved to me being picked up and a turn to show the passion and love and fire that was also part of the relationship and the connection going from emotional to physical. Also contextually couples wouldn’t have had sex until they were married so this more sensual movement symbolises the marriage of the characters and them coming together as one. I feel that this highlights the pain when they get separated as spiritually and emotionally they have become one and are being ripped apart. 

We started to explore the relationship of our piece with letters that were sent in WW1 – specifically looking at letters between couples. We saw how it looked when we combined the walking and balancing letters on people’s shoulders with the letters being read over the top. I thought that this combination of movement and the letters created a really strong atmosphere and showed how the words were written but might never have been read as they might not have reached the wife or husband before they died.

As there is a lot of trans-like walking around we wanted to explore different planes and how the different levels enhance the stories. We started by exploring the floor and how we can move around it with our bodies and over and through each others bodies. We used the objective that we were in a double bed and in a half sleep looking for the partner that isn’t next to me in the bed. I found that doing this with the objective really drove the piece through and it gave it an underpinning emotion and storyline of which the audience could connect with and get drawn into. As an actor I found that having the objective really allowed me to get into the piece and that I could use this to drive my movement through the piece. We then developed this to finding our partner and standing up with them.

Once we were standing we explored walking around the room and the women searching for the men still. We showed this by going up to different men- that’s not our partner- and touching/moving their bodies to try and see if they are our partner. I thought that when we lived through this moment it looked and felt really effective. Within myself I found that as I went round looking for my man I became more and more frustrated and that effected my movements. I found that when I tried to find my man how I touched the guys I became more forceful with my touch as I became more desperate to find my man.

The men’s reactions to the touch of the women were that they took it all through their body, and to them it was the effects of the war. I think that this is really interesting visually as it shows the two different worlds in one place, yet the couples are so disconnected from one another that the emotional distance feels so large compared to the physical distance. The women then stood still while the men continued to feel the effects of war. I found that as a woman stood still and watch the men suffering that it was like I knew the pain that they were going through but couldn’t do anything to stop it. I think that we could explore this further and the women could try to move slightly but be forced into that space physically as they can’t reach the man. Even is this isn’t developed physically I think that it is something to look at and explore mentally and emotionally as we work through this section.

I think that our piece really shows a calmness of the piece however I feel that there needs to be more bursts of energy and tension as I think this is more representative of the issues that the couples went through. I think that the waiting and unknowing caused a lot of volatile emotions within the characters and although physically they could do much to deal with the pain and so we are representing this through the calmness. However I feel that we should show the internal turmoil in the characters and couples through more energised sections that continue to drive the piece.  

Group Piece Exercises

In this session we got put into three different groups that the duets all fell into. My partner and I were put into the group that looked at couples and how they were affected by the war. Straight away we started to look at the common themes and how we could create a larger group piece through the exploration of exercises. One of the themes that came through really strongly was a spiritual take our piece and looking at the pausing of time when one person dies and their reunion. A physical way of exploring this was through doing sections of our duet by ourselves. This really highlighted the loneliness and the huge gap that was left after the other person gone, consequently this lead into the first exercise.

Exercise one

This exercise started by us creating an Elysian Fields atmosphere within the room. This was made through us all getting complete control and focus of our bodies and walking around the room with all our bodies being connected. Once the focus and calm hit in the room and each person we all fell into a trans-like state. I think that this was really interesting and effective as it create the sense of an empty limbo between life and death. From an audience perspective I think that it would be really visually pleasing as it clearly creates another worldly feel on stage, building the tension on stage reflecting the tension within the characters waiting for their loved ones. When doing it I felt like I was moving into this trans-like state and that we were moving around in a limbo world where nothing really happens and time is frozen. It felt empty and that I was moving in a nothingness waiting for something to happen.

We then moved this exercise on to where half the group, for example the girls, stopped and did their section of the duet by themselves while the boys continued to walk in this empty world. I think that this is really shows the stories of the world that we have created and the characters and the pain that they are going through. I think that it highlighted the loss of the characters and how they have been stuck going through the motions of their life without the person they love the most. We then made the transitions from the walking to the movement sections have an objective and a meaning to it to push through the movement and give more depth to the stories being told. These meanings and stories were showing how the person died or got moved to this world, for the men it was how they died in war and as a woman I choose to use heartbreak as a driving force through the piece. I think that this really gave the sections more meaning and that they showed the development of the story so that the audiences can invest in the characters more.

Exercise 2

This exercise was also based on the Elysian Fields atmosphere and the trans-like walking. However this time half the group walked around the space while the others tried to balance and put pieces of paper onto their bodies and keeping them there through balancing. I think that this created a really interesting piece of theatre for audiences to watch and to use as symbolism as I think that it held a lot of stories and meanings within it. For me personally I think that the different pieces of paper could be written on with the labels that the men who went to war or the women who stayed at home were stereotyped with. I think that this would have shown how when they died the personal stories were lost and only the stereotypes and labels were left and remembered by the public. I think that this is really prominent for our performance as we are looking back and remembering these people but how much do we really know other than the labels.

Another idea that was seen in this exercise was that the pieces of paper were the letters that families and friends sent to one another while they were at war. Furthering this people putting the letters on looked as if they were trying to send it or say something but they were never sure if they reached there loved one and that there are so many things left unsaid. I also think that the paper that falls onto the floor holds a huge amount of emotion as it could symbolised that the letters never did reach the people. I think that this could be a really powerful section in our piece as it holds a lot of meaning and I think it could really pull the audience in to set up the piece for the audience.

EVALUATION

Overall I think that our performance was successful because of our detailed and extensive rehearsal process as it gave us time to explore, change and develop our piece. Throughout our rehearsal process the performance went on a real journey and transformation that I think was crucial to the development of the piece.

At the start of our rehearsal process, we found that getting inspiration from our stimuli was easy enough and we began to start to form a piece. However after getting feedback we realised that our piece had become very dance based and when we re-evaluated what we had already created we found that it was all focused on lifts and looking effective on stage rather than being an innovative piece of theatre. We found that this was because we hadn’t looked at the stimuli in detail but instead only taken them at face value, this had created an emotionally empty piece without any characterisation or development of the relationships within the piece. When we then went back to the stimuli we started to look into the pictures deeper and decided to look at the less conventional side of the stimuli as what we had originally created was very predictable. By re-approaching our stimuli with fresh eyes we found that what we started to create was more focused and relationships rather than just women. I think that this was really important as we had used improvisation to create the base of our new piece and the fact that we naturally went to relationships not just women I think gave our piece an instinctual element to it. Consequently we started to look at more relationship stimuli and things that related to shell shock, as we continued to discover new stimuli we constantly had new ideas and built on our other ones to keep our performance fresh.

Personally I think what made our rehearsal process effective was that Asa and I had a really goo, strong and open working relationship allowing us to create a safe place for us to rehearse and to discover new ideas. I think that our performance was good because we had created a secure place for us to be able to experiment in, so that our performance could stretch us as actors and could explore different themes as we felt comfortable to confront these problems.

Personally I think that we could have maybe included more elements from the stimulus in our performance and we could have explored them physically in our rehearsal so that we could have recreated some of the images in our piece. I think that this would have given our piece a stronger feel of the 1910’s and WW1, rather than just the idea of the aftermath of any war. I think that we could have made the time period clearer to show the audience the world that our characters were created in as this could have had a larger impact on what the audience see them go through, creating a stronger connection and reaction from the audience.

I was really pleased with our performance and how it all went down as I felt that we gave it 100% by really committing to the performance and being confident in the piece that we had created.

I think that what made our performance successful was that we really connected to our characters and invested in the relationship and the emotional journey that they go on. I think that this gave our performance more theatrical and making the audience buy into and get drawn into their relationship. I think it also got across the idea of the more personal stories in the war which was an aim of ours, we wanted to show a personal story that encompassed a larger idea and I think that we were successful in this. I also think that we were able to tell clearly a complex relationship through our physicality and that we took the piece into all of our body.

I think that in the moment we rushed the performance slightly because of nerves and although we were fully invested in the performance I think it would have been better if we had relaxed into it more and taken our time to enjoy it. I think this would have allowed the audience to take the performance in more as there was many sections in it and we might have rushed over a few loosing the emotional hook of that piece. I also think for us as actors it would have been nice to have enjoyed the moment a bit more so that we could be really present on stage and not let the nerves get in the way. However over all I was really pleased with how our performance went as we had worked really hard on it and  committed to it fully to perform an effective and thought provoking piece.

Space

In our lesson we looked at space and the effect of it and how it can change the meaning of the story. This was really interesting to explore as with our duets and solo’s we cant encompass all the space all the time, so it was helpful to see how we can use our bodies to tell the story or present a relationship in a smaller space and how this changes or develops the piece and characters in anyway.  

We first looked at the conventional setting of a lift and in the confined space we had a number of people and were given different circumstances to explore. The first was that there was a bee inside the lift, what made this really interesting was that as strangers we had to touch each other and often were all clumped in one of the corners closely touching. This was a good exercise because it made me think about reaction and how one can move or react to another in a small space and how that effects the way that I could express myself physically. I found that the small space made my reactions more intricate and detailed and that I was showing my emotions through my hands and areas of my body that I others couldn’t see so clearly. I also found that the tension in my body went to these areas and that I was having to hold the emotions in me so I became a lot stiffer in my body and that the effect of my suppression of emotions came out through my body as it became more rigid.

The next exercise that we did was taking a large story and seeing how we could tell it in a small space. This showed us how we could create space even out of the smallest spaces. For example one group had a person on each corner pointing outwards, this was effective as it gave the impression that there was more space around them and it created the illusion that they had more space then what they really did. Another group showed 4 soldiers going over the top; this also gave the impression that there were more of them but what I think it achieved was a close up camera shot on stage. I though this was really useful for a theatre piece because it allows you to extract the details from a large story and am able to tell a personal story and create characters that are full of detail that have been part of a larger story. I think that this could be really helpful for our performances as WW1 is a massive part of history and loads of people were involved but we can use the small space to show that we are zooming in a personal story and showing the intricate, sometimes forgotten part of the war.

More Rehersing

When we started to really explore our piece and the different techniques we could use to enhance it we started to consider juxtaposition. Most of our piece explores the breakdown of a relationship in a fairly linier way, starting with the meeting and ending with the emotional death of the relationship. We wanted to make our piece more abstract through the use of non-linier storylines and use juxtaposition to emphasis the destruction of the relationship. We did this by experimenting with how we could contrast the voice and the physicality to tell another layer of the story and to develop the relationship. We started to explore the poems that we had written in our characters and the different contexts that they could be performed in and how we could use the words and the movement in an interesting way. We used improvisation with the movements to see how they could relate to the words or symbolise them, we also started to say the words in a violent, angrier way. However from feedback we realised that is wasn’t effective keeping the emotion the same throughout the piece and actually it didn’t create another layer to their relationship as we had wanted. This is how we came to the discovery that by keeping the movements still linier with the rest of the story but juxtaposing this with softer, loving words showed the contrast as to what their relationship was before and after the war and actually emphasises the psychological effects of the war more. It also meant that as actors we could relate to the writing more as we spoke it as if it was being written at that time and it created a love that had clearly been destroyed by the war. It also created a more interesting piece of theatre to watch as it creates a non-linier storyline showing the audience flashbacks of their past and they love.

This last week that we have had to continue to work on our pieces has personally been really helpful and useful for my partner and me to really enhance our performance and to tap into the emotions of the piece more. Although our piece has been born off of improvisation and the exploration of each other and the stimuli we had rehearsed certain pieces so much that they had become over-worked and not instinctual like they had once been when we originally developed them. This last week has allowed us to revisit pieces of our performance that have become mechanical and overworked and get to reconnect to them and to understand why they are there and there relevance to the piece, the relationship and the characters. We did this by working out our objectives in our movements and what we were trying to gain and get by doing certain actions. On top of that we re-explored the reactions to the piece and why my character is reacting in a certain way to his touch and what that internally does to her and the psychological effect that it has on her. This also allowed us to look at the smaller details of the piece and to add purpose, emotions and characterisation to it, making it more believable.

STIMULI

 

These images are really good for our stimuli as the first one shows the affect of the internal thoughts and how they cant be rid and how that destroys you as a person. It also conveys a huge amount of pain and suffering which I think is really strong and could be looked at to show how badly these men were affected.

 

The quote on the second image I think is really interesting as we could use the paranoia and see how it could affect the relationship between a couple and we have begun to explore this with the letter and how the male may have to know everything that's happening and become very protective and controlling of his wife because of the illness and how this effects their relationship.

Research

 

These videos are what I looked at for research and stimuli to do with shell shock and how it effected people mentally and physically. I found some of the images really helpful as we could use the shaking and the static movements in our physicality to show that they had been effected. Also a lot of the images were quite distressing and uncomfortable to watch so I think that we could use this horrible atmosphere in ours piece to show the audience the reality of what was happening and how lots of people didn't understand what the men were going through.

 

I also found the insomnia really helpful to look at because in our improvisation we explored sleep a lot and how that is supposed to be a close time in a relationship but was being destroyed by the mans illness and how we could demonstrate that in our piece.  

 

This shows the physicality of how people were effected and what happened to them and some of the effects.

 

This is part of a documentary about the effects; physical and mental of shellshock. I found this useful because we can explore physically and through movement how they would have been seen and how others would have reacted to them.

 

 

I found that looking at a real example of what had happened really helpful because it gave us a real person to explore and look at how they were effected and the emotions that came with them.

This is about insomnia and this helps us because we are looking at nightmares and terrors and how this effected people and their sanity. I also found it interesting because it showed what was shown to some troops and how it wasn't always seen as a real problems - like when the cartoon is used to make it funny.

Rehersals

During our rehearsals we found that our improvisations started to explore more the relationships of people after the war rather than just women. Consequently we decided to do more research and find more stimuli that were to do with couples and relationships affected by the war and how that changed their love or life. When we were doing our improvisations and exploring each other and how we connected as two people after the war a common factor was shell shock and how the men became more distant after what they had seen.

We started to look at shell shock and how that still affected the men and their relationships once they returned home to their wives and how their couldn’t always get back into the old life that they had. I looked up the symptoms of shell shock:

• Hysteria and anxiety
• Paralysis
• Limping and muscle contractions
• Blindnes and deafness
• Nightmares and insomnia
• Heart palpitations
• Depression
• Dizziness and disorientation
• Loss of appetite

These are some of the symptoms and nightmares and depression are ones that really stood out to us as we wanted to explore the effect that they had on relationships and how a woman would have to try and understand what was happening – if they could. These lead us to improvise and explore how they would treat each other and at first how they would explore each other’s bodies after being apart for so long and if it would be like what they imagined or hoped, like they wrote in their letters. Another effect of shell shock was men not being able to get erections and the nightmare could lead to violence in their sleep and in real life, we wanted to explore if a woman could cope with this new man that had been brought back from the war and how the man would deal with the change that had happened to him.

POETRY

Pride can't explain the pain I endure everyday waiting, waiting, waiting, wishing, willing, wanting, the way you smell to suffocate, to smoother, to seduce my every instinct.

 

I want to be isolated, just weighted and consummated with you.

I want to be consumed and connected and craved by you.

I want to be sound and safe and secure in you.

- Me and my partner both used our stimuli to create a piece of writing/poetry that we could also use as an extra stimulus or put into the piece.  I found that this was really good to do because it helped us to understand and connected to our stimuli in a really creative and emotional way as we had to understand the emotions that was needed in our piece to make the movements more interesting and meaningful rather than empty. I also thought that it really helped me to get into the character of our piece and to understand and develop the relationship that we are portraying.

- Once we had both written our pieces we read them and thought that the juxtaposition of the position of the characters was really interesting to play with and that it would work well in our performance. As a result we improvised and explored different ways that the words could be used and contrasted with movement and the other piece of writing. What we discovered is that it works well when we say a line each of our own and then the other says their line and the piece overlaps, I thought that this was effective as it shows the different places that they are in but how they were still connected emotionally and mentally to one another.

THE ABSTRACT

In today’s session we looked at working in the abstract and being able to tell a story in a less literal way. I think that this was really useful because it showed us how we could still connect to an audience in a non-linear, more interpretive way, giving us inspiration for our performances.

We looked at different forms and forces and how they can be embodied physically and create an emotion or story. The first exercise was an individual one where we were told a movement and we had to recreate this in our bodies, for example; melt, shatter, freeze and disintegrate. Some of the movements were a lot harder to create and had to be interpreted individually and what it meant to us, where as others created a more instant response and a lot of people seemed to have the same idea of the word. One of the first words that were said was melt, this seemed to create a unanimous idea across the class of what melt meant, and instinctively we all began to slowly collapse into the ground. Personally I found that my body dropped and my limbs all became very heavy and were pulling me into the ground. The movement was a very slow, soft movement as I felt I was turning into liquid and that is a lot more fluid and less harsh. As soon as melt was said I got the image of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz melting in my head, I thought that this was bad at first because it was a stereotypical image, however I felt that it gave me a base to work of and to explore and develop into something more abstract. Another word that was said was shatter and although similarly to melt it was going into the ground, shatter was of a higher, more violent speed, of which there was a lot less control and fluidity within my body. I also found that my movements became a lot more ridged and sharp. One of the hardest words I found to interpret was disintegrate, I think this was because unlike melt your body wasn’t turning into another substance and unlike shatter is was falling apart but it was disappearing and dissolving into nothing. Physically I found this quite hard to explore because I felt I had to try and make my body become nothing, however I explore the movement of falling to the ground but it felt like a contrast of melt as it was a slow, steady, controlled movement to the ground, and shatter as there was a slightly harsher edge to the movement. I found that these explorations were really useful to develop and to work with because it could be applied to different characters, similar to Laban, and to show an internal turmoil. For example you could show someone being loss and suffocated from their problems through melt or the end of a relationship through shatter.

We then developed this exercise so that we were working with a partner and we had to explore a piece of movement where we a playing opposing forces, for example melt vs freeze, solid vs liquid, shatter vs fragile ect. I found that this was a really interesting way of developing the exercise and it opened different avenues within a relationship and showed the different elements to a story or characters and this could communicate and connect to the audience. One thing that is interesting about working in the abstract is that the audience have to invest in it more however the all get out of it an individual story and message from the piece. With the partner that I worked with, we explored solid and fragile. At first I found this difficult to work with, especially when we worked together, touching, as it was two completely contrasting movements trying to work as one and I think that it when watching it really said something about the relationship but when doing it, it felt unnatural. However once I got into the exercise I found it was about reacting physically to my partner’s movements and how they changed or affected my movement. From watching others work I thought that it showed and expressed really interesting story and I could have my own personal interpretation. I think that the individualism that the abstract gives the audience creates a great sense of personal interaction between an audience member and the actors and I think it creates a really special piece of theatre. For example one couple that I watch was one melting and he collapsed in on himself around his partner’s legs, while his partner was freezing and he stayed strong but had a few sharp movements. I thought that this showed the different ways that two people experience and reactions to the war. One who had a complete emotional meltdown and lost all stability and focus on reality and only way of surviving is by clinging onto his friend. I thought that the friend on the outside had to remain strong and stable, however lost all emotional and sentimental ability as he wanted to help his friend. I think that this demonstrates the power of the abstract and how it can connect with an audience and they can develop their own story.

Stimulus

For our piece, my partner and I want to look at women and the role that they played in the First World War. One thing that we discovered when looking at women and how they were portrayed at the time was that we see them being used as tools for the men during the war.

When we looked at these photos, we thought that women were being used as propaganda to push the men further to war. For example the "Women of Britain say - GO!" Shows women being used as encouraging and wanting the men to go and fight for them and their country. It also shows them as being weak looking out the window and needing men to protect them. Also the other one shows women needing to do work and supporting the men in the war.

We saw this as showing women as being used as tools to keep the country running and working however they still weren't in power as they didn't have the vote and men were telling them what to do while they worked.

We saw this photo as showing men that the women were pleased that they were going to war and that they were wishing them luck - keeping their moral up and in good spirits. It also shows how everyone was excited by the war and the prospect of the men fighting for their country.

 

Lecure notes on WW1

• 70,000,000 troops mobilised
• 20,000,000 died
• Trigger of the war – Archduke Ferdinand was shot by a student –heir to the Austria-Hungry throne.
• Build up to war – arms race, tension in Europe, two separate groups – Brit, France, Russia, against Germany, Austria-Hungry.
• 1914 – was started – celebrated
• Women in war- Victorian feel to them- long dress and headwear
• Britain was full of WASP’s – White, Anglo Saxon, Protestants. – very patriotic – owned the world – empire- British troops were also from empire from India, Africa.
• Most British people were working class – uneducated, in poverty, e.g no running water in house. – MASSIVE IMBALANCE IN SOCIETY – Upper class very small and owned everything
• Age expectance – men 50 and women 54
• Industrial revolution – rural communities became more rare
• Women very restricted- no vote, no work
• Homosexuality illegal – imprisoned or labour
• Cinema was black and white – accessible to all
• Train was transport and used in war
• Austria-hungry invaded Serbia and Belgium got invaded so Brit went to protect = WW1 BEGAN
• Western front in stalemate – Russian invade Germany-  Turkey join war
• Russian empire starving. – revolution – killed Zar- set up socialist republic
• 1917 – America join war – lead to win – VICTORY FOR ALLIES
• Empires die – brit, france, germany,, turkey, Russian
• League of Nations created
• WW1 lead to fascism and WW2 and humiliation of Germany
• Horses and bikes were used in war
• Military techniques wasn’t gaining but technology was
• British used colonial wars as technique – used to fight people with bad weaponry- not ready for people with modern technology – machine guns, barbed wire ect.
• 1916 – walk over the somme valley – walked into death as Germany covered it with machine guns and killed the Brits- Brits did not learn and 80,000 were killed in very few hours
• Used untested weaponry – flam throwers, bombs- thapnol, tanks, machine guns à killed masses
• Shell shock – PTSD – psychological àhypnotised, electrocuted, imprisoned as a result – seen as coward- didn’t understand the illness. à Symptoms- shakes, flashbacks, insanity, trench warfare à relationships were destroyed.
• Trench warfare- brutality of war – overwhelming, disturbing, living in constant fear and distrustàout of mind with fear and distrust – living in mud –scummy/ fear, rats, no sleep. 
• Deadly gas- chemical war fare – outlawed since 1920’s. à mustard gas – 1915- blistered, blinded, corroded lungs- filled with blood –drowned in own fluid.
• Poem – Wilfred Owen – knocked knees, clumsy/fumbling, white eyes, trudge, limped, choking, hanging, fatigue, drowning
• “old lie” – sweet to die for victory
• Women forced to work – ran country, new opportunities, vote in 1920
• Russian revolution -1917 socialist
• USA super power
• Art changed – surrealism – more realistic with T.S.Elliot- none linier
• Labour movement and empire dead

20th September

In today’s session we focused on working with partners and how we can use the other person to create interesting stories through sharing weight and exploring moving as one. I found this really useful as we are working towards solo or duo physical theatre performances and as I am performing in a pair this allowed me to explore and experiment with different interesting ways to work together.

We did various exercises that relied on us being in tune with another person and being connected with them to make the exercise work. One exercise that we did is that we had to walk next to another person and explore how we could connect to one another by simply walking around in time with them and feeling when to stop or turn or start without talking or communicating it, just when we felt the moment. I found this exercise really opened up my awareness to working with another person and it made me think about working as one rather than two separate beings. It also helped me to be able to connect with another person without having to talk about everything but just being able to feel it in our bodies. I think that this is really important when doing physical theatre especially when we are in such a small group. I feel that it allows you to explore more daring and interesting physical movements and pieces, it also creates and builds trust between the two people as you can know that you are connected to them, even if you are not touching or in view of each other. For me personally I think it creates a stronger working bond with the person and this transpires to the performance as there is another layer to the working partnership.

We then developed this walking exercise so that the pair had to be constantly touching with a part of their body and sharing weight with one another. I think that this again develops trust between the pair as you can feel yourself being supported physically and this can transfer to being supported in the performance and as a pair. Furthering this I think that the sharing weight allows you to explore and experiment with physical connecting to another person and what is created out of this and how interesting it can look and what movements it can move into. It also allows you to take the subliminal connection to a physical one so that you can start working with one another to learn to move as one body rather than two connected bodies. We also moved this exercise on further so that we looked at moving at different levels connected and sharing weight to do more complicated and interesting movements. I found that not only was it good to explore yourself but also it was really interesting to watch other pairs moving as one as I felt that it started to tell a story and that a relationship was being created through the sharing of weight and the movement. For example one pair had one of them leaning over the others back while the other one crawled; when I watched this I got the feeling of one person emotional carrying the other one and having to support them through something difficult or having to pick someone up when they were down. I thought that this was a really useful thing to have experienced as it made me start to consider more abstract ways of portraying relationships.

We also did an exercise where as a pair we had to come up with a sequence of movements following the markers of around, through and pass. So we had use going around our partner and through them and pass them to create a small section of physical theatre. However we were also given the title of “Goodbye” and the background of WW1, this allowed our pieces to have some context to them and created a story and relationship between the two actors. I found that this was a really good way to start creating a small section of theatre in a really simple way to show an audience the relationship between characters and the time period that the piece is set in. Different pairs focused on different relationships, for example my partner and I looked at a couple separating, while others looked as friends having to say goodbye and others explored a parental relationship, however they all we able to encompass the emotional state of WW1. The pieces that I thought were really interesting to watch and to draw a story out of were the ones that didn’t simply move from around to through to pass but had other movements within them allowing the audience to get a greater sense of the story that was being told. I also liked ones that explored with the floor and different ways of moving through or around their partner rather than the obvious, conventional ways because I felt it was more engaging to watch and it added a more complex layer to the relationship. However the pieces that I like most and thought worked the best were the slightly more abstract ones as it told a really interesting story not only physically but as an emotional metaphor as well, and it really looked at the different ways to tell a story with your body, which as an audience member was a lot more interesting and fulfilling to watch.

MUSIC AND CHARACTERS

In today’s session we looked at music as a form of stimulus and how characters and worlds can be created through listening to music and responding to it. We listened to three different songs and with each song we spent time letting our imaginations react instantly to the music. After listening to the song once, we played it again and started to move around as our characters and explored how they walked and lived within their world. We also exaggerated and under-exaggerated our characters and noticed how this affected or changed our characters. This is a Steven Burkoff technique and we are exploring him more through these exercises.

The first piece of music we listened to was a very fast pace piece and when listening to it I instantly got the image of a congested train. This simple image led me to create a character that would be around during rush hour on the trains and combining this with the fast tempo of the music I thought of a constantly busy business man. When I got up on my feet, my walk and rhythm as a character fell into the tempo of the music and this really helped me to set the pace of my character and to find objectives that would fit this tempo and this character and what their headspace was like. Although I had created a fast person when I exaggerated this character I found myself moving slower as my body and physicality got bigger, I felt this created a slightly more stereotypical business, suit wearing, male character. However when I went down of the exaggeration scale I found myself folding into myself but moving quicker, in a mouse-like movement, and this created a shyer, more introverted, slightly older, bit awkward business man. I thought that this was really interesting to see as from the same stimulus two very different characters were born even though they had similar qualities such as their profession.

The next piece of music we listened to was a more metal, heavy, slightly violent piece of music and for most people this created a defiant, outcast character that was a bit more negative. However oddly for me I found the music exciting and intriguing and immediately a child-like character was created and I wanted to explore the world around me. When I got onto my feet with this character I constantly wanted to move around in a bouncy-light way, looking and searching for everything and anything. Contrastingly to my first character, when I heightened and lessoned this character I felt the core of her didn’t change, she was still a child exploring just got more and more excited as I exaggerated and slightly more cautious when I lessoned her physically. Interestingly I felt that the character didn’t change but perhaps the circumstances and environment around her didn’t, resulting in her being more cautious or more confident.

The last piece of music that we listened to was a lot slower and lower of tone and instantly I felt more negative and alone when listening to it. Consequently the character that I created was one I felt that was suffering, I felt suppressed and isolated and so the physicality was slumped and enclosed to itself. This one I found the hardest to exaggerate and under-exaggerate as I was doing very few movements already but I changed and experimented with my positions and as I exaggerated I moved more and more into myself and scrunched up even more to hide away from the world, where as when I went down on the exaggeration scale I opened up a bit more and wasn’t as alone.

I found music really helpful and interesting to use as stimulus to create characters as it opens up your imagination to feel instinctual reactions. It also gives you so much to work off of, for example you could go with the tempo or the lyrics to create a character or you could go against the music to layer a character. I also think that it gives you a really strong core of a character and that you can then develop these characters through exaggeration and exploration. 

6th September

In today’s lesson we looked at Steven Berkoff as a physical practitioner and did some exercises that help to develop and explore characterisation. Berkoff often works with non-naturalistic texts with grotesque and exaggerated characters.

We started off with a Jacques Lecoq exercise, where the top half of your body hangs over the legs, imagining there is a sheet of glass in front of you, you roll up pushing out the knees, hips, chest and nose so that they touch the piece of glass until you are standing straight.

Knees: We then repeated this roll down and up but stopping at the point when the knees are touching the glass. We took this stature for a walk around the room and we saw what characters were created by the physicality. I immediately created an older more hunched character as I had the top of my body still rolled over, creating a slightly weathered element to my character. This made me consider her back-story and previous life that may have been difficult or just had to work had at getting what she wanted. My character also had a lower status as she was so introverted and almost seemed to shy away form the world, this made me think of the old ladies who become so scared of leaving their homes because of the media and how the world is portrayed to them. Other people created different characters such as one person straightened their back but still lead from their knees, this created a character that was of a similar age to mine however the straightened back and having her head raised gave her character a much higher status than my characters and gave her a snobbish, looking down on people element.

Hips: Again we rolled down and when we rolled back up we stopped at the moment when the hips were touching the glass and we started to explore what types of characters were created through leading with the hips. I had my pelvis thrust out and so it felt natural to lean my to half back as much as possible. This created a very relaxed posture for my character and I had the feel that they didn’t care much about what was happening around them and this gave them a slightly higher status because they seemed unaffected by the world. I also went for a male, very “laddish” type of character as I felt he was being lead by the penis, combining this with the casual attitude coming out of the physicality I felt I created a quite popular, sexual confident chap. It was very interesting to watch the other characters that were created and the small differences in their physicality that changed the intention of their character. For example another character was also a male and being lead by his penis in a sexual manner however instead of having a relaxed, laid back upper body, he was hunched over and wringing his hands. This gave the character a much more creepy and sinister feel and implied that he had bad intentions sexually within him. Instead for going for a male character someone choose to do a female and by simply placing one hand on her belly and one on her back she created a pregnant woman.

Chest: This time when we rolled back up we stopped when the chest was touching the glass and walked this character around the room, developing and exploring their characteristics and what was created. As my chest was sticking out I created a confident, sensual female character and the breasts are quite a sexualised part of the female form. It made me do a more feminine walk, crossing my feet and wiggling my hips to highlight the other assets of a female. Also because I was very upright, as a result of my chest being pushed I felt very powerful as a character and that I had a lot of confidence and looked down on people. This power and confidence was mirrored in the male take on sticking the chest out. The character became very proud and puffed out like a cockerel demonstrating his status and his masculinity. This one was driven more by his own appearance and pride to have confidence, where as the men with their hips out were driven by the sexual wants to have confidence.   

Nose: When rolling up this time we stopped at the nose touching the glass and explored what types of characters were created when they were being lead by their nose. Again I went for an older character and hunched the rest of my body but kept my nose up in the air, as my head was up and open I was of a higher status than my character that I created with my knees. Also this character moved around a lot, twisted their head to try and smell out what was happening and what they could see. As I live in a village this character reminded me a lot of the older members of my community who like to be nosy and know everything about other peoples lives. Other characters that were created were very high status as they had their bodies kept straight and with good posture, with this as well as the nose being pointed up into the air it seemed to created a very stereotypical view of posh people. It looked as if they were looking down on everyone around them and were disgusted by people who were lower class than them.

 

This was really useful because it showed us how different types of characters can be created from the same bases of being lead by a certain part of the body and how more detailed characters can come to life by the simple things you do with the rest on the body, such as moving your hands. It also helps to see and acknowledge the stereotypes of different characters and then decide whether to follow them to present a certain group of people or to go against them to show a slightly more interesting and real character. This exercise also tied in really well with looking at Berkoff as he would use this to see where a character was lead from and how this defined a character or not and what it said about them. Also he works a lot with exaggeration and this exploration of their physicality allows an actor to connect with their bodies and to see how different characters could be exaggerated with their physicality’s to create a grotesque version of them. 

 

As I have said Berkoff works a lot with exaggeration and he uses the scale of 1 – 10, 1 being the smallest and 10 the biggest, to explore the characters exaggerated and under-exaggerated and see what affect that has on them and the situation that they are in. We did an exercise where we had to go through eating a certain meal; first we did it at 5 – naturally. I choose to be eating spaghetti bolognaise and we had to go through it a couple of times to get a set routine and then we started to play with the scale. As the scale went up the amount and size of the food got bigger and as a result our reactions to the food got bigger as well. When we were going up through the scale I saw my spaghetti getting bigger and this meant that I widened my feet so that I could encompass all of the food. I also made the movements of turning the food onto the spoon bigger and had to use two hands when I got to 10 and had to physically crouch and turn my face upwards to lower it all in. I feel that this created a much greedier character as I was really tucking into the food and it was getting more and more open and grotesque, because of this there was an off putting element to the character as they were so messy. The physicality getting larger created a more animalistic and boisterous character in the way that they ate. However when we started to go down the scale my physicality became a lot more insecure as it was very introverted and turned inwards, with my face down I felt that a more timid and shy character was created compared to the larger numbers on the scales. I felt quite suppressed and very conscious of what was happening around me and never really comfortable in what I was doing. This exercise was really interesting to see what changed when you played around with exaggeration and what types of characters are created when you push them to one extreme or another. It also really engaged my body and made me aware on my physicality and how that affected and changed characters and what was happening on the inside as well as on the outside.

We then extended this exercise with a partner and put the characters, which were created, into a situation such as a restaurant. We had the characters separate from each other and one was large on the scale with the other small, then we introduced another character who we both greeted however the greeting provoked the characters to swap positions on the scale of exaggeration. I started off being an 8 or 9 on the scale and I was really digging in and eating my food manically, as if I really enjoyed it, then when the third character came in and I greeted, I moved down to a 3 or 2 on the scale. I made this move purposeful by having an emotional attachment on the third character of fancying them and then being embarrassed of how I was caught eating and that making me shrink into myself. Where as my partner started eating in a really small way, showing insecurity and low self-confidence but when she was the third person she lit up and became more exaggerated and her motivation was of being really good friends with this person and them giving her confidence. I thought that this exercise was really useful because it showed how people and characters can be affected by others and how that can change their confidence or attitude inside them and consequently affect their outside physicalisation. It shows how important reactions are when action and how your physicality can tell a lot to an audience about how the character feels or how someone makes the character feel and it can build and explain relationships between characters.