Week 24: Classwork

On Monday, we didn't have a lesson because it was a bank holiday but our Berkoff group decided to have an extra rehearsal because we needed to change a lot of the staging and also the representation of Les and Mike. We went through the script and looked at the lines that were being said to help us define who Les and Mike at certain points. For example, the first line I say is "And round the back we went that night, the fog was falling fast, our coat collars were up and our breath like dragon's steam belch forth from our violent mouths," and I am Les at this point because I have introduced the fight that they are about to have and then the other two members of my group would then become Les and Mike and I would become the chorus member. If we had a cast of 5, there could be more of an atmosphere as they could be reacting to all the lines that were being said and then it would highlight the comedic qualities. If we did this as a duologue it would be much clearer who was playing Les and Mike which is why we had two main characters and then the third person was the chorus.

With me playing the chorus this meant that I had to change the wording of some of my lines. For example, one of my lines was "But we could hardly turn back now..."  and this would have been alright if I was playing one of the named characters, so I had to change it to "But they could hardly turn back now."

Wednesday

With all of the little changes that we made, we performed it to the class:

https://youtu.be/uLzS-IjmOP4


After watching all of the performances, we all got given a script called Lunch. I did a little research on the play and found out that it is mainly performed by 2 people; we're performing it with 4. I feel that we actually have an easier way of doing it because if there were only 2 people on stage, you would have to exaggerate your body language even more than your doing so that the audience would understand that you have become the conscious or if you have return to reality.

Our first reading made it clear that Lunch was completely different from East and we now had the consciousness of the man and woman speaking. Initially, the first thing that I found hard was deciphering between which lines were being said by the actual man and which ones were his conscious, as I was going to play his conscious. The lines that we thought were the consious speaking are highlighted in pink.

We decided that we should block some of the movements first and add in what we know about the Berkoff style and then proceed to learn the lines and speed up the gaps in between each line. The first thing that we had to decide was how we should show that the man's conscious and his body were going to look as one at the start. We decided that Sarah, who was to play the man would walk in front of me and I would have my arm around her waist and then we would walk with the same foot first and at the same time until I noticed the woman sat on the bench.

As we progressed with the script, we found that the consious' wanted their conversation to turn sexual which was completely the opposite of what was actually happening in real life. We wanted to show the juxtaposition between the thoughts and the reality so when the man says "Lovely day!" both the man's consious and the woman's consious react with groans and disappointing noises as they both thought that he was going to ask her something more personal or even sexual but instead he asked her about the weather.

Week 23: Berkoff

Monday

Today we were introduced to the new practitioner that we will be studying: Steven Berkoff. Berkoff originally studied drama and mime in London and Paris before creating the London Theatre Group in 1968. His plays have been performed in many different languages, in many different countries.
He has worked with a variety of practitioners like Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht and Jacques Lecoq who had similar interest to Berkoff: mime. Berkoff worked alongside Lecoq when he attended Lecoq's school in Paris in 1965, this meant that he was able to understand Lecoq's beliefs in theatre, including mime. Berkoff has clearly taken on board Lecoq's style of mime and made it something unique which was one of Lecoq's beliefs.

Berkoff is completely juxtaposing to the Stanislavski style that we have worked in previously in Antigone as its very eccentric and fast pace whereas we performed Antigone as real as possible because it was true emotion that was behind the lines and we were delivering a story that has actually happened.

We began to delve into Berkovian theatre with an exercise where we had to, initially, make the most over-exaggerated facial expression that you could and show it to the group. We then had to "peel" the face off as though it was a mask and throw it to someone else in the room. The person who "caught" the expression then had to cover their face and reveal the same expression that was past onto them. They then had to change their face into a juxtaposing expression and "throw " it to someone else. I feel like this represented the way that you can have an expression on your face but it's really just a mask that is hiding what you truly feel and Berkoff wanted the actors to extremely externalize their characteristics, for example, if we were doing that exercise with an audience present then they would be able to know what we were feeling and our intentions by our extreme expressions and body language.

We wanted to create a character that we could adopt and so we chose our favourite expression that we could sustain for a long period of time, so that the continuity made the character more believable, and we began to create our character by adjusting our body language first. Lecoq believed that a character's body language could be found by imaging that you have placed your nose on the edge of a wheel and you move your body in order for your nose to remain on the wheel. You then stop yourself at a point where you feel is most comfortable and suits your character, you then adopt this position as your characters body language. This part of process was called physicalisation.

As you walk around and begin to really immerse yourself in your character you feel your voice changing into an accent for your character. Once we had completed the process for getting our characters finished, we then began to put our characters in comical situations. Our first scenario was a blind date so one of the characters had come early and was already sat down. I found the actual act of sitting down very difficult as we had to maintain the character's posture the whole time and that included sitting down! My character was very lazy and grumpy so I had my arm crossed at all times unless I was reaching for something. My walk was on my tip toes with straight legs which meant that when I was sat down my legs were stretched out in front of me. My partner's character was constantly surprised and so when I wouldn't talk and only responded with grunts it became quite comical as the only word that she replied with was "OK."

We were then mixed up again so that we got to see in our characters in different situations and we became 3 aspects of someone's personality. Because I was so laid-back and lazy, I was the person's ambitions which this person obviously had none. Another character was the person's sex drive as she was very creepy and in your face and the last person in our group was the person's family aspect as all she talked about was her life on a farm.

We then put these 3 different aspects of one person in a job interview and decided what we houfht they might say if they were interviewing for a cleaning job in a school.
https://youtu.be/hqV3bgzxcVw

Wednesday

We got given a script of the Berkoff play, East to work on and get used to the Berkoff style.

Our group decided to watch a clip of the play West, which is also a Berkoff play, that was performed by some members of N2C theatre group to help us understand the style more.

https://youtu.be/nFBVRXvXxtQ

After watching the speed of the lines and the movements between the characters we decide to have a go at bringing the script to life.

https://youtu.be/iueZpy2Ybts

I think that we could have made our movements more staccato to accentuate the positions and body language of the appropriate characters more obvious. Also our group made the piece quite like Godber's style instead of Berkoff's as we have previously worked in a Godber style and I think that developing that into Berkoff's style with help us define the characters more and he audience will be able to determine who is playing what's character at which point. It was hard to figure out who was each character at certain points because there is three of us in our group and only two characters in the script so we had to work around that fact and separate the lines up but making sure that it made sense for the continuity for the style.

I also think that when we pause and/or freeze we needed to stick to one facial expression and stretch it to the extreme so that the audience can fully register what is happening and also having blood facial expressions will add to the comical element of the Berkovian style.