Artaud Research
Before the rehearsal, we were having a discussion about many different practitioners who had interesting styles that we could experiment with putting into our piece. One of them was Artaud. He established Theatre of Cruelty which was described as " a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself. A communion between actor and audience in a magic exorcism; gesture, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting combine to form a language, superior to words, that can be used to subvert thought and logic and to shock the spectator into seeing the baseness of his world. Artaud wanted to put the audience in the middle of the 'spectacle' (his term for the play), so they would be 'engulfed and physically affected by it'. He referred to this layout as being like a 'vortex' - a constantly shifting shape - 'to be trapped and powerless'. He also placed a great emphasis on sound rather than words or dialogue, by incorporating loud cries, screams, eerie sounds, or noise causing the audience to become uncomfortable. Words were an insufficient medium of expression." This links to our piece as we also want to make the audience feel uncomfortable, not in the extreme way that Artaud wanted to, but none the less when they are just sat watching people say their lines onstage they will start to feel uncomfortable as there is literally nothing happening onstage. We could use the idea of loud sounds as one of our movements especially when the cast address the fact that they don't know whether there is anyone behind them as they haven't looked as that is quite spooky and if we put a loud noise in that can constitute as our movement.
"The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid." - Antonin Artaud, The Theatre of Cruelty, in The Theory of the Modern Stage (ed. Eric Bentley), Penguin, 1968, p.66
We had a director's discussion about the research we had done separately and how we would fit Artaud into our piece (or at least some of his ideas) and we thought that it wouldn't really fit as he is too extreme and majority of the movements that we have previously choreographed are minute compared to Artaud and so the juxtaposition would be too much for our piece. We liked the idea of some of his work and if we had a longer period of time to do the piece as a whole then Artaud could be an interesting practitioner to look at in regards to adding in movements.
Run-throughs
We had another member of our cast missing this week and we stressed to the other cast members the importance of the full cast being present in rehearsals as we only have a small cast and when one member is missing it has an impact on the amount of work we can do and also the effectiveness of that work and we will have to repeat ourselves to the person that was missing. I stepped in as Peter so that Alexis could take the role as the lead director and she could make the changes that might need to be made.
As we are getting closer to performance date, we made it clear to our cast that it was now up to them to step-up their line learning as we are at the point in the rehearsal process, when we are beginning to tighten up the movements and we are really refining the speed of the lines and getting a feel for the real performance. We began with a run through of the whole piece and we limited the cast to only having their scripts for sections 1 and 2 again because the cast are still needing them for section 3, which we have made clear will not be acceptable after next week. We have given them this week to learn their lines for section 3 and some of section 4 so that we are using the scripts less and less.
The only things that needed to be stressed during the rehearsal was the speed of the lines and how fast we want the past to be. We need to cut down the gaps in between the lines so that the pace of the whole piece is kept up. Throughout section 1 and 2 the cast are completely still but when we start to move onto the later sections the small unchoreographed movements start to come back in. I know that this is because they are looking at their scripts for prompts on their lines but we still need to make the cast conscious of their own movements and hopefully we will be able to focus on that next week when they have learnt their section 3 lines.
The only things that needed to be stressed during the rehearsal was the speed of the lines and how fast we want the past to be. We need to cut down the gaps in between the lines so that the pace of the whole piece is kept up. Throughout section 1 and 2 the cast are completely still but when we start to move onto the later sections the small unchoreographed movements start to come back in. I know that this is because they are looking at their scripts for prompts on their lines but we still need to make the cast conscious of their own movements and hopefully we will be able to focus on that next week when they have learnt their section 3 lines.
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