Continuing
Devising Work
Monday 5th
and Wednesday 7th January 2015
What should
theatre be?
Returning to a
new term, continuing our devising work towards Physical Theatre, our main focus
this week was to understanding the devising process and answering a question, ‘what
should theatre be?’
The warm up
exercises were simple and effective.
Serving in two purposes to get us physically and mentally prepared for
the session ahead. But together in a group
discussion our teacher gave us a sheet of paper giving us the top 10 devising
process tips, in order to succeed in devising workshop pieces/productions.
Knowing where
to begin is essential for devising physical theatre. As traditional theatre likes to take an academicals,
step by step, process in order to create perfection with their productions. Whereas Physical Theatre likes to take a more
effective process that involves three essential areas, a Stimulus, Originality
and Improvisation.
Stimulus This
is a starting point for the performers as it gives them something for
them to work
off. For example, a song, a picture, a
person or even a book.
Originality It
is important for the performers to have originality within their work, in
order to
keep their work unique and intriguing for their audience.
Improvisation A
great talent within the performing arts, this element comes in extremely
useful for devising
work. Because it keeps the practical exercises/processes
energised and
it allows every group member to participate and bring their
main performance
piece to life the way they all intend.
After knowing
and understanding these key areas once again, we then proceeded to answering
the questions: what should theatre be? The
purpose of this task, I think, was to show our passion and understanding of
theatre, by answering these questions we would be showing interest towards
future topics concerning theatre and devising theatre for that matter too. My initial answer was:
‘The chance to
break free from reality’ – This gained a good response and I personally was
quite proud of this answer. Because I
always imagined theatre and productions as being a chance for audiences to
break free from the real world and witness another characters life, whether factual
or fictional, it provides them with entertainment and frees their minds to
wonder and imagination.
But how? This was our next question, again linking
into the first question, showing how we would make our interpretation of what
theatre should be a reality. So my
answer for this question was:
‘Creating
convincing and engaging productions’ – Only through convincing performances are
the audience truly engaged and entertained.
Sure they can be entertained from pantomime productions, but that form
of theatre constantly reminds you that you’re watching a play. Whereas mature and well-structured
productions take a process that truly bring the audience into their characters’
lives and provide seriously engaging entertainment.
I felt this
session was a success as we all gave mature answers to the questions and showed
deep understanding of the process into devising theatre (and I will take the tips
into account for our main devising piece).
The Pacing
Exercise
It was in this
session that we now to begin a slight analysis of our own movement piece, in
the same style that devising physical theatre analysis is taken. Instructed to pace around the room, in no
particular style, in neutral, and without making eye contact with anyone else,
we did so and awaited more instructions to create a movement piece. Our instructed listed from:
1) Begin
to make eye contact with everyone, without making any physical contact.
2) Choose
someone in the room and follow them, without them knowing you were following
them.
3) Then
reduce the distance between you and your chosen victim.
4) and
Finally make physical contact with you victim, making it obvious who your
following.
As we
concluded the pacing around the room, there wasn’t much I could analyse from
it, but our teacher gave us a secondary task relating to the pacing. Taking notes we began to write what emotions
we could feel both when we knew who to follow and when we knew were being
followed. We all agreed that the following
of a victim gave a slight sense of a stalker-type-character to our motivations.
I strongly agreed, in fact the main
emotions I was feeling throughout that exercise were:
1)
Awkward
– Especially when each person came closer to their victim.
2)
Claustrophobic
– Which lead into the movement of us getting closer into a physical ensemble.
3)
Tense
– Particularly when the tension arose in the room when knowing each of us
were being followed by somebody else.
4)
Eagerness
– Bizarrely I did feel a sense of eagerness to get to closer, and keep up,
with my victim, which I felt kept a good sense of humour within the room and
made the exercise more entertaining.
5)
Worry
– As the exercise came to an end I did feel deeply worried for two reasons,
firstly being I didn’t want to lose my victim amongst the crowd, and secondly I
didn’t want my stalker to catch up with me.
I gained mixed emotions and feelings
throughout the exercise, but all in all I did strongly feel eagerness most of
all, as well as entertainment. But when
continuing the writing exercise we all wrote a sentence that summarised what we
felt, and through specific instructions we took away many of the words and
highlighted three words that I felt summarised the negative emotions that I
gained, or anyone, could gain from this exercise. My three highlighted words were:
1) Awkward
2) Claustrophobia
3) and
Followed
Using these
three words I had to use singular physical movements that defined the word and
put them in a repeated pattern. At first
the purpose was unknown, as each and every one of us were repeating three
singular movements that were unique to our written text. But it was all towards our final physical task.
Memorising our
three words and movements, one by one we all went onto the wide space that
would represent the stage and all in time with one another we all gave our
movements. Without the use of dialogue,
and using singular sounds that defined the emotion, then we were to take a
single step after doing all three of our movements and repeating then at a
different spot in the room, without interacting with anyone else. Half way through the sequence I was called
aside to watch everyone else’s movement on the stage, and without anyone interacting,
repeating the movements and sounds to me it created an image. All I saw was life.
From my
observation I could analyse this as a scene of everyday people walking
throughout their local town choosing not to interact with anyone and trying to
keep to themselves. It was quite an
interesting piece of movement, but what fascinated me the most was its
origins. We began with a stimulus of
thinking of what it would be like to step into a stalkers shoes, then extracting
certain emotions, turning them into a piece of physical medium, and finally
transferring the movement together to form a true movement piece giving off
multiple visions and interpretations as to what it could be.
It was an
interesting and entertaining exercise and I felt it was a brilliant introduction
to how to create and analysis and devising piece of physical theatre.
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