The session began by us getting into our groups and being taken through the technical possibilities of the new Stratford campus, lights, sound, etc. We were told what the realistic assistance we can have from the tech department for our final piece.
We moved into talking about our final performance, as a group we talked about what we would like to do but were swiftly asked to not talk but start 'do-ing' and let the talking process come later, we did try this but most of us just ended up looking around at what everyone else was doing and getting side-tracked, so i sat down briefly and wrote a short story; a story about a detective who is on the trail of a murderer but then finds out he himself is the murderer, deciding to use shadows as the agents alter-ego and the colour red from the lights to show that he is about to kill again i was inspired to do this by the idea of 'the inner vs the outer' that was taught to us weeks earlier.
Ideas for our final performance:
Emotions vs Behavior
Confrontations over opinions
Character Transformation
Love/Hate
The truth vs What is Visible
Friday, 15 November 2013
Week 8
This week we had a visit from veronica from Trueheart theater who showed us about playback theater which is when you improvise using real life stories, we learned that play-back theater angles its material on the experiences of the community. In cinemas, classes, and a variety of educational and business configurations, Playback Theatre draws people together and allows fresh viewpoints.
In Playback theater therew are different roles:
The Conductor: Interviews the teller and collaborates with the audience.
The Teller: Communicate the feeling with the story.
I think that Playback theater seems like a great way to develop and devise as long as the story-teller is confident and descriptive in their story, communicating feeling through a story is one of the ways in which we interact on a daily basis and how we can spread unity through a passage for political and cultural change in much the same way as narrative can as Langellier writes (1998, p210) ''rather than seeing personal narrative as simply one person's story, we should look more closely in an attempt to see the political in the personal - 'the social, cultural, historical construction of difference' that personal narrative performances can illuminate.''
Langellier, K, M. (1998). Voiceless bodies, bodiless voices: The future of personal narrative performance, in S.J Dailey (Ed.), The future of performance Studies: Visions and Revisions, Washington DC: national communication association, PP 207-213
In Playback theater therew are different roles:
The Conductor: Interviews the teller and collaborates with the audience.
The Teller: Communicate the feeling with the story.
I think that Playback theater seems like a great way to develop and devise as long as the story-teller is confident and descriptive in their story, communicating feeling through a story is one of the ways in which we interact on a daily basis and how we can spread unity through a passage for political and cultural change in much the same way as narrative can as Langellier writes (1998, p210) ''rather than seeing personal narrative as simply one person's story, we should look more closely in an attempt to see the political in the personal - 'the social, cultural, historical construction of difference' that personal narrative performances can illuminate.''
Langellier, K, M. (1998). Voiceless bodies, bodiless voices: The future of personal narrative performance, in S.J Dailey (Ed.), The future of performance Studies: Visions and Revisions, Washington DC: national communication association, PP 207-213
Week 6
In this weeks session, Solomon was absent so we started with a brief warm up of 'wink murder'. We quickly discarded this idea as it was not 'warming us up'. We then turned to an idea of a relaxation exercise which some of us (including myself) did not take part of, as i wanted to use the time to devise and create not to get even more sleepy than i already was.
We decided to create a devised piece of work 5 minutes in length exploring ideas of movement by starting with a monkey walk. After doing the monkey walk for a few minutes we all had our own unique approach and energy level, we used this to develop characters by expanding on the idea/exercise.We also tried to work on the opposites of inner/outer energy/meaning but we briefly ran into a wall, when one functions according to ones ideas or principles he/she is usually set there until shown differently, usually by an external source. Therefore, we came to the summary, that it is hard to determine inner and exterior, because in almost all cases inner is designed by exterior, e.g. personal ethical principles of the individual designed by the social atmosphere he/she is in.
The roles that we came up with were influenced by heirachy and status as well as energy, we used the buto nmovements from the previous week to come up with inique postures, we had:
2 buddahs/buddhists - neutral status, the unifyer of the other characters.
King - high status, the ruler.
Kings Wife/ Queen - Medium status, the obsessive carer.
The Servant- low status, the bottom dweller.
We decided to create a devised piece of work 5 minutes in length exploring ideas of movement by starting with a monkey walk. After doing the monkey walk for a few minutes we all had our own unique approach and energy level, we used this to develop characters by expanding on the idea/exercise.We also tried to work on the opposites of inner/outer energy/meaning but we briefly ran into a wall, when one functions according to ones ideas or principles he/she is usually set there until shown differently, usually by an external source. Therefore, we came to the summary, that it is hard to determine inner and exterior, because in almost all cases inner is designed by exterior, e.g. personal ethical principles of the individual designed by the social atmosphere he/she is in.
The roles that we came up with were influenced by heirachy and status as well as energy, we used the buto nmovements from the previous week to come up with inique postures, we had:
2 buddahs/buddhists - neutral status, the unifyer of the other characters.
King - high status, the ruler.
Kings Wife/ Queen - Medium status, the obsessive carer.
The Servant- low status, the bottom dweller.
Week 5
Another great warm up game today, STUCK IN THE MUD! this again brought about feelings of childish enthusiasm from which the core foundation of the lesson could be built upon, relating experience to memory and physical movement. Now that I've been in class for more than 1 week its also interlinking with ideas of how we use our bodies in space i.e when we play stuck in the mud we must spend time distancing our selves from one another (running from the 'tagger') and also coming together (the movement used to free one another from the grip of the mud).
Another exercise today - PROGRESSIVE RELAXATION. I was unsure about this one as we had just had a warm up that made me feel ready to take on the world, i was on a high and feeling like creating something, maybe in groups? But i let myself get fully into the mind-state and began to lie down and follow the said instructions.
I must admit i did not really understand the point to this exercise. I found it profoundly similar to the caterpillar exercise, except without purpose. Which made me feel like i was drifting in and out in terms of my attention focus to the point where i had to stop myself falling asleep. There were some positives however, like centering my thoughts - i felt like my thoughts were very clear in this state and i was able to think about devising but this did not come across my mind until the ending minute or so, if this had been a topic that had been placed in our minds before the exercise began i think the exercise would have been additionally beneficial.
I learned a new word in class today - ETHNOGRAPHY = 'the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences.' And this is what the reading by Quetzill E. Castaneda was about, it talked about Auguso Boal's 3 ''moments'' that are the sum of his work on the 'theater of the oppressed' and the idea of ‘Invisible Theater’ (the 2nd of the 3). The reading detailed how his type of street theatre was a powerfull tool for revolutionary, social change, in a non invasive or violent way using the ideas of ethnography in the process. Castaneda shares that 'ethnographic field work' can be understood as an art form in itself describing the similaritty between Augusto Boal's productions and fieldwork inherent performitivity. As theatre is the art of reflecting upon ourselves and our cultural community, first observing, then reflecting and this reflection can then be made into art (or is art already).
This reading, i felt linked into the game of stuck in the mud we played earlier, a game we played as a child that in some ways established our cultural standings amongst our school life not just how good we were at the game but also how creative, how artistic we were with the game (e.g doing a roll between someone's legs to free them). And here we are a decade or more later re-visiting this normal activity to generate art and ideas.
Castaneda, Quetzil E. (2006) ‘The Invisible Theatre of Ethnography: Performative Principles of Fieldwork’, Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 79: 1 pp. 75-104.
Another exercise today - PROGRESSIVE RELAXATION. I was unsure about this one as we had just had a warm up that made me feel ready to take on the world, i was on a high and feeling like creating something, maybe in groups? But i let myself get fully into the mind-state and began to lie down and follow the said instructions.
I must admit i did not really understand the point to this exercise. I found it profoundly similar to the caterpillar exercise, except without purpose. Which made me feel like i was drifting in and out in terms of my attention focus to the point where i had to stop myself falling asleep. There were some positives however, like centering my thoughts - i felt like my thoughts were very clear in this state and i was able to think about devising but this did not come across my mind until the ending minute or so, if this had been a topic that had been placed in our minds before the exercise began i think the exercise would have been additionally beneficial.
I learned a new word in class today - ETHNOGRAPHY = 'the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences.' And this is what the reading by Quetzill E. Castaneda was about, it talked about Auguso Boal's 3 ''moments'' that are the sum of his work on the 'theater of the oppressed' and the idea of ‘Invisible Theater’ (the 2nd of the 3). The reading detailed how his type of street theatre was a powerfull tool for revolutionary, social change, in a non invasive or violent way using the ideas of ethnography in the process. Castaneda shares that 'ethnographic field work' can be understood as an art form in itself describing the similaritty between Augusto Boal's productions and fieldwork inherent performitivity. As theatre is the art of reflecting upon ourselves and our cultural community, first observing, then reflecting and this reflection can then be made into art (or is art already).
This reading, i felt linked into the game of stuck in the mud we played earlier, a game we played as a child that in some ways established our cultural standings amongst our school life not just how good we were at the game but also how creative, how artistic we were with the game (e.g doing a roll between someone's legs to free them). And here we are a decade or more later re-visiting this normal activity to generate art and ideas.
Castaneda, Quetzil E. (2006) ‘The Invisible Theatre of Ethnography: Performative Principles of Fieldwork’, Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 79: 1 pp. 75-104.
Week 4
This week we were supposed to go for a theater visit to Stratford circus but this did not happen and instead we did some interesting work on narrative in the lesson, an exercise related to the reading that i had done in this class i found that it that benifitted me and helped me perform the best, fully embodying the topic and assisting me further into linking it with academic research. During the beginning before the interval Soloman asked for each individual of each group to come up with some conditions that best described our outlook on the course thus far. Soloman then returned back to us with a poetry piece created from the feedback given, we were then instructed to begin laying down on the floor with our eyes closed and use the suggestions from the poetry to create graphics within our minds to then use as a activation to create dynamic action from. This type of exercise is inspired and taken from the art of Butoh-fu.
Butoh can be best described as an imagistic dance form. The dance has a wide range of techniques and these techniques that began to appear during 1950′s Japan with dance teachers Tatsumi hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. It involved us creating movement actions from narrative. The narrative was retold in the form of a step-by-step story read out by out tutor Solomon at a tranquil pace and accompanying relaxing music. I very much enjoyed this exercise and felt like i was thinking with the mind of a caterpillar, my wants were the wants of a caterpillar (or what i myself perceive the wants of a caterpillar to be). This is a different approach to the Stanislavsky type model which involves a more analytical, and somewhat polarizing 'systematic' approach similar to the 'inside vs outside emotions' we learned in the previous lesson.
Week 3
This week was my first week of attending classes due to the university not fully processing my enrollment and confirming my inclusion on the course, we began the lesson with a warm up exercise, DODGEBALL! i loved this game as a child, we used to play this game in the playground and i was always pretty good. This exercise warmed up our bodies and prepared us for physical activity, but not only that it invoked memories of being a child that i think opened up the creativity inside of us, warming up our creative brains if you will.
The lesson this week focused on memory and autobiography, we began the session by being shown about using different types of techniques from which to gather ideas in performance and devising, namely, wrestling. Solomon started this wrestling exercise by showing us a unique way to move about the space in the form of a move called 'the shrimp', this is a move that gathers the bodies energy to break free of a grip by an opponent, this felt like a totally new approach that i could use in my work because instead of focusing on things like memory of visual, i was focusing on how to use a fighting move to gather a new perspective on devising and idea generating.
We got into pairs and did some grappling which for me was a great experience as it immediately surpassed the boundaries of personal space and i got to know my partner on a level that advanced our interaction, not having to deal with the usual politeness and custom of greeting and getting to know someone. With the movements we used they were all about action following re-action, as each move was fed off of the previous move from your partner.The unplanned nature of this exercise, allowed us to improvise on a level that very helpful and i can see how this concept would help very much in the devising process.
Pearson, Mike. (2006), In Comes I, Performance, Memory and Landscape, Exeter: University of Exeter Press
The lesson this week focused on memory and autobiography, we began the session by being shown about using different types of techniques from which to gather ideas in performance and devising, namely, wrestling. Solomon started this wrestling exercise by showing us a unique way to move about the space in the form of a move called 'the shrimp', this is a move that gathers the bodies energy to break free of a grip by an opponent, this felt like a totally new approach that i could use in my work because instead of focusing on things like memory of visual, i was focusing on how to use a fighting move to gather a new perspective on devising and idea generating.
We got into pairs and did some grappling which for me was a great experience as it immediately surpassed the boundaries of personal space and i got to know my partner on a level that advanced our interaction, not having to deal with the usual politeness and custom of greeting and getting to know someone. With the movements we used they were all about action following re-action, as each move was fed off of the previous move from your partner.The unplanned nature of this exercise, allowed us to improvise on a level that very helpful and i can see how this concept would help very much in the devising process.
Pearson, Mike. (2006), In Comes I, Performance, Memory and Landscape, Exeter: University of Exeter Press
Intro
This is my Blog for World Theater 2, i am starting this year late as there were enrollment problems with the university saying i could not re-enroll at UEL but then changing direction after my week 2 class causing me to miss the first two lessons but i have done some research in my own time and i have an idea of what is in store this semester.
On this module we will be focusing on 'Memory and Narrative' as a base from which to devise our performance work.
I have a new Tutor, Solomon, who is a mixed martial arts fighter that teaches theater, (this should be fun!) his aim is to interlink the various martial arts and something called 'Buto' into the theater practices of world theater 2.
I have had done some research online to try and find out what Buto is and here is a picture.
It seems that this Buto art for will provide great insight into how theater is a part of and interacts with worldwide culture and society.
On this module we will be focusing on 'Memory and Narrative' as a base from which to devise our performance work.
I have a new Tutor, Solomon, who is a mixed martial arts fighter that teaches theater, (this should be fun!) his aim is to interlink the various martial arts and something called 'Buto' into the theater practices of world theater 2.
I have had done some research online to try and find out what Buto is and here is a picture.
It seems that this Buto art for will provide great insight into how theater is a part of and interacts with worldwide culture and society.
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