Perhaps I’m looking at this the wrong way, perhaps my method is wrong. I bombard myself with so much, that I work in chaos; structured chaos. Minuted to the second on a comprehensive multi coloured computerised calendar. But when do I have time to stop, to disseminate, to take on board and to combine. Lepage said:
‘If you all have is energy and rigour, all you will create is energy and rigour. If you have chaos, the cosmos is born.’
The statement does not negate the fact that energy and rigour is important, but that there needs to be something else, an unknown.
Perhaps my research question combines clowning as a way of working in relation to the notion of ‘constructionism’ a term that I want to find a definition for. Perhaps it’s a stem of structualism? Or perhaps it is not.
In a PhD briefing, I questioned the notion of space and architecture in relation to theatre, summing theatre into three categories as away of articulating a facet of hat constructionism might be in relation to space. These three categoriess are
Site Specific – The idea that space takes president
Site Sympathetic – (idea introduced by Maxine Doyle during my BA) That space and performer have a dialogue
Space annihalitic – That the architectural space is destroyed through theatre in order for the construction of a new world.
It is the latter that interests me and is not limited to Proscenium arch theatre, but this is where my focus and interest lies, at present.
But space is only one facet of this world, you need things to create it. I want to be able to build a pathway into looking at this world, through the eyes of a clown, to rediscover what theatre could be. What it can be. Areas I might wish to look at
Space Annihilation
Objects and there transformation
Costume and creating multiple characters with ease
The Epic story
The true story
Building lighting states
Play
There are probably many more. Perhaps I should plan my second term as a series of workshops, a creative laboratory. Looking at a new aspect each week, or sticking with one thing or other. I’m not sure.
This approach seems far too simple to be of academic merit, yet perhaps this is a problem for academia and not mine. Joshi Oida said something similar in invisible acting.
I received a compliment the other day, that I have a clown presence. The comment comes out of a workshop I did with a group of Clowns form across Europe with Jon Davidson. It was received about a month after this workshop given by another PhD. She said
‘what I did on stage was very simple, but it worked’
If Kasia Zaremba-Byrne ever reads (Director of my company Lost Banditos and movement director of NIE) this I hope she smiles, because she has drilled this into me, and I’m grateful for it.
If my method is so ‘simple’ then what is my question.
Perhaps
‘Clown as a methodology for a theatre of constructionism’
But this is not simple. Long words that are not defined as of yet, but perhaps it is simple. Perhaps it means everything, or perhaps it means nothing. I don’t know
Perhaps what I mean is an unravelling of an image, a story, a stage bit by bit, with the naivety of a child, and the brain of a rocket Scientist. Is the clown all knowing or all stupid, the Defoe Lecoq debate, or he is both.
Perhaps, a word repeated many times on this site, it is the reason for being so abrupt with the media lab, because a cinematic experience does not let you construct, instead, it provides it all for you on a 2D plane. Where does space annihilation live here?
Perhaps constructionism has stemmed from the notion of deconstructionism. And like Space annihilation , deconstructionism focuses on the negative, the removal. Perhaps these words can not describe the process after deconstruction, when you have acknowledged the space as four walls, you nee to supersede it. Perhaps this is where works like bloody mess (forced ent) and just for show (DV8) fall down. They don’t go beyond anything but demonstrate that this is a theatre, an event. Theatre can be much more!
Perhaps space annihilation should be re-termed space nihalation, the cntrution of space?
Friday, 13 March 2009
Pedagogy
A student said to me that when I ran the hour warm up sessions at St. Mary’s she hated me. They all hated me. They wanted to kill me in-fact. Then she said, but we did it. You’d make us run and we hated running, but you were so enthusiastic, so loud, so big and we did it. She said that I always used to say well done to her when she was doing well; she thought she wasn’t doing anything special, but then he rest of the class all looked at her to find out what they were doing wrong. She said, “I remember your classes,” “I could do your classes even if I didn’t understand why I was doing some stupid movement.” “You know”, she says, “they weren’t that bad really.”
To achieve something that you don’t want to do, something you found difficult or “annoying” makes the pay off even bigger when you achieve it.
Teaching can be fun, and often, when things are fun you absorb information that you later find remnants from, but if you are solely enjoying yourself and carried away by something, and classify it as something that is fun, then you label it as something unimportant.
To achieve something that you don’t want to do, something you found difficult or “annoying” makes the pay off even bigger when you achieve it.
Teaching can be fun, and often, when things are fun you absorb information that you later find remnants from, but if you are solely enjoying yourself and carried away by something, and classify it as something that is fun, then you label it as something unimportant.
Monday, 2 March 2009
A plethora of inactivity
This blog has seen a plethora of inactivity by myself over the last two weeks. Why? Because I hit overload. Trying to make use of 24hr days seven days a week, cramming in rehearsals for this that and the other my mind became numb and I became ill and tired. This feeling heightened by the first day of media lab that assaulted my senses draining me of any energy I had left.
On a side note, I like sessions to have a clear path, broken down, with each section headed with what we are going to do. Or, a continual flow moving from one thing to another. I do not like sitting down and idly talking, or asked to faf about, without being tod what we are trying to achieve with a set up!
On another tangent, the idea that theory holds up practice is a little relieving. That a performance can be created out of a soup pot of ideas and theories, and that what is created is new in it self, stemming from the soup pot to create soup. This soup is new, and in the tasting you can find out new ideas and thoughts. I already knew this, but somehow it seemed wrong at the beginning of the course, now, perhaps not.
On a divergent path, trains are great, but not if you are sitting next o a large man who is continually farting!
We live in a plug and play society; yet often today’s theatre forgets about the play part, where audiences lust watch and consume passively. Theatre was born out of a meeting place to talk. This still exists on the rural theatre tour, in town halls and community centres, the theatre playing second fiddle to the act of meeting.
How can we create a theatre that is truly interactive? Where an audience is asked to respond, even if it is just a smile, a laugh. Where they can truly plug and play?
On a side note, I like sessions to have a clear path, broken down, with each section headed with what we are going to do. Or, a continual flow moving from one thing to another. I do not like sitting down and idly talking, or asked to faf about, without being tod what we are trying to achieve with a set up!
On another tangent, the idea that theory holds up practice is a little relieving. That a performance can be created out of a soup pot of ideas and theories, and that what is created is new in it self, stemming from the soup pot to create soup. This soup is new, and in the tasting you can find out new ideas and thoughts. I already knew this, but somehow it seemed wrong at the beginning of the course, now, perhaps not.
On a divergent path, trains are great, but not if you are sitting next o a large man who is continually farting!
We live in a plug and play society; yet often today’s theatre forgets about the play part, where audiences lust watch and consume passively. Theatre was born out of a meeting place to talk. This still exists on the rural theatre tour, in town halls and community centres, the theatre playing second fiddle to the act of meeting.
How can we create a theatre that is truly interactive? Where an audience is asked to respond, even if it is just a smile, a laugh. Where they can truly plug and play?
Monday, 16 February 2009
it is only when I have not got access to it, that I realise how much I rely on it
Isn’t it great when technology lets you down. I’ve been without my laptop for a week and it is only when I have not got access to it, that I realise how much I rely on it.
A lot has happened since Wednesday. A chance to play with text as sound, an impro workshop with Cartoon de Salvo, and a clowning workshop with Jon Davidson. In which ever environment I was in, I was very conscious of the fact that I was being watched by others and it created an irrational fear. I perform and enjoy doing so. But in each of these situations I felt the need to perform well; in doing so, the contrary occurred. Tell somebody to ‘not look down’ and the opposite is true. The ReScen project speaks of the performers ability to revert back to craft when creating. An ability to work in chaos, but having ‘craft’ to ground the work in. I am conscious that my craft is not polished yet, and by trying to portray it as such instead shows its weaknesses. This paradox lives in the Psyche, my craft in my embodied self. The only way to stop smoking is to think about smoking….
Today in the workshop I was bad. I did things in halves, meeting half way. I neither collapsed on the floor as my chair is being pulled away, nor did I stop myself from falling. I did an odd bum shuffle. It was as if everything I had learnt I had forgotten. Look to the audience, still point. “Who are you? I don’t know who you are so I do not care about you?” “How do they do this” “I don’t know that’s there problem?!” Who are we and where are we, two obvious yet fundamental questions that pop up in actor training all the time.
I need to do to understand, I need to do to remember I need to do and fail to find what I know and what I don’t. I am a child that forgets and tries to pretend I don’t. I need to revel in this failure! What have I done badly today? I missed the urinal and some landed on my leg. I was late for my RMO meeting. I smoked too much. I misjudged somebody. I tripped down the stairs. I ate with my mouth open. I have a bit of BO. Perhaps this is the ideal material to start creating with, something that you know is not perfect?
A lot has happened since Wednesday. A chance to play with text as sound, an impro workshop with Cartoon de Salvo, and a clowning workshop with Jon Davidson. In which ever environment I was in, I was very conscious of the fact that I was being watched by others and it created an irrational fear. I perform and enjoy doing so. But in each of these situations I felt the need to perform well; in doing so, the contrary occurred. Tell somebody to ‘not look down’ and the opposite is true. The ReScen project speaks of the performers ability to revert back to craft when creating. An ability to work in chaos, but having ‘craft’ to ground the work in. I am conscious that my craft is not polished yet, and by trying to portray it as such instead shows its weaknesses. This paradox lives in the Psyche, my craft in my embodied self. The only way to stop smoking is to think about smoking….
Today in the workshop I was bad. I did things in halves, meeting half way. I neither collapsed on the floor as my chair is being pulled away, nor did I stop myself from falling. I did an odd bum shuffle. It was as if everything I had learnt I had forgotten. Look to the audience, still point. “Who are you? I don’t know who you are so I do not care about you?” “How do they do this” “I don’t know that’s there problem?!” Who are we and where are we, two obvious yet fundamental questions that pop up in actor training all the time.
I need to do to understand, I need to do to remember I need to do and fail to find what I know and what I don’t. I am a child that forgets and tries to pretend I don’t. I need to revel in this failure! What have I done badly today? I missed the urinal and some landed on my leg. I was late for my RMO meeting. I smoked too much. I misjudged somebody. I tripped down the stairs. I ate with my mouth open. I have a bit of BO. Perhaps this is the ideal material to start creating with, something that you know is not perfect?
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Long days - Le Navet Bete Workshop, RMO session and then Sound
There is a point when you blur what you have done and what you are about to do. Today I reached that point, but today it didn’t matter. The people around me guided me to where ad when, and the how just came. Structures made, and a path starting to form. Today was a good day.
It is interesting how other clown companies interpret theories of clown. In essence, clowning all sings out of the same hymn book, where each page is an epitaph of Lecoq, or Gaulier. Where phrases of bouffon, the idiot and impro comprise the themes and rythems of the hymns. Yet the timbre, the quality of each song can be sung very differently. La Navet Bete, focus on the grotesque. What is your clown? Discover your clown? It suggests that I have one character that I boil down too. One base. But this is not what I am interested in. The clown I found today is much different to the one I play in my company: the Obelix strong, yet sensitive giant, clumsy and a fool. Today I was vulgar, lustful, dirty. It was a fun character to play, it was a clown character of mine, but it was not my clown character. I have many. I am multi faceted. I exist in all regions all at once and I can choose which facet I accentuate, what I make big. How we were guided to find each character, its voice, its movement, used many if not all of the exercises I know, yet the condensed structure in a day was simple, an d got results. I build with movement into text. Annabelle Arden says that the body is the bow and voice is an arrow that fires and hits to make something happen. You first have start withy the bow, before you can fire the arrow.
It alo interests me the merging of yoga, feldenkreist and capoieara methods in there warm ups and movement practices. It appears that this is a vocabulary that speaks to the clown, and I have been taught moments of each. An applied interdisciplinary practice becomes a tool for the clown, or the body. In clown, I am honest, stupid and vulnerable. I know everything and nothing all at once. A paradox. NB: Dave look at conflict between Defoe and Gaulier.
For the latter part of the day, things started falling into place. Our RMO seems now structured, has focus in something practical. Or sound project was led by practice. This is exciting. I do, therefore I think! (who said this?)
It is interesting how other clown companies interpret theories of clown. In essence, clowning all sings out of the same hymn book, where each page is an epitaph of Lecoq, or Gaulier. Where phrases of bouffon, the idiot and impro comprise the themes and rythems of the hymns. Yet the timbre, the quality of each song can be sung very differently. La Navet Bete, focus on the grotesque. What is your clown? Discover your clown? It suggests that I have one character that I boil down too. One base. But this is not what I am interested in. The clown I found today is much different to the one I play in my company: the Obelix strong, yet sensitive giant, clumsy and a fool. Today I was vulgar, lustful, dirty. It was a fun character to play, it was a clown character of mine, but it was not my clown character. I have many. I am multi faceted. I exist in all regions all at once and I can choose which facet I accentuate, what I make big. How we were guided to find each character, its voice, its movement, used many if not all of the exercises I know, yet the condensed structure in a day was simple, an d got results. I build with movement into text. Annabelle Arden says that the body is the bow and voice is an arrow that fires and hits to make something happen. You first have start withy the bow, before you can fire the arrow.
It alo interests me the merging of yoga, feldenkreist and capoieara methods in there warm ups and movement practices. It appears that this is a vocabulary that speaks to the clown, and I have been taught moments of each. An applied interdisciplinary practice becomes a tool for the clown, or the body. In clown, I am honest, stupid and vulnerable. I know everything and nothing all at once. A paradox. NB: Dave look at conflict between Defoe and Gaulier.
For the latter part of the day, things started falling into place. Our RMO seems now structured, has focus in something practical. Or sound project was led by practice. This is exciting. I do, therefore I think! (who said this?)
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Extension in a soundscape?
Ok. So. Everything resonates. Everything moves, it vibrates. I respond to this. My body also has it own way of moving, its own rhythm which is directly affected by the world around me, and the world around me reacts to this. Ideas of impulse and the passing of energy. Somebody said (Probably dead) acting is reacting and the most important people on stage are the other people you are playing with. You offer; the more you offer the more you receive. We interact. None of this is new but perhaps something clicked?
Characters also have there own rhythm, a character can lead with one part of the body and that will create a way of speaking, laughing, moving. What does my body want to do when I am in this position with my centre lowered and my arms bent. Well at that moment I wanted to be lustful, I wanted to be somehow dirty, and because of the way I was standing I became this odd perverted character, I pass on this energy and it changes, that body is not in that poition. That person has not had my day, and so it reacts differently. The energy transforms, so then when I get the energy back, it has changed and thus my impetus changes; my body shifts, and suddenly I am somebody else, a new character.
I made a pre-judgement at the beginning of a session that I don’t usually do. I believed, arrogantly, that was I was being asked to do was masturbatory. Go where you body wants to go move where your body wants to move. I rub my foot, it hurts, I rock back and forth because I need to massage something of loosen something. I attended my body. But I couldn’t grasp the framing; we’re doing soundscapes? I usually don’t get it at first and so I just accept. Usually it does not disturb me. In fact, my training is from a school that did not explain things, and that you had to find out for yourself. This is your path. But what was being explained to me was something that I new, yet could not connect. Why do I focus on this is? Because there was a clear movement arc. Where I ended up at the end of the session, a rocking, an unbalance, was where I started, yet this time I found the play in it. The ability to find laughter and joy not because I was embarrassed, but because laughter was as much an impulse as touch.
Harmony suggests a blending of things. And in theatre the idea of putting different stuff together is not new, we have a chair and a stool, a light that seems disco like, and somebody bopping away on a light up dance floor and we see a disco. They blend, they make a picture, a landscape that we experience bodily, yet is constructed semiotically. What if the picture was not constructed as such. What if the blending of theatre merged from what our body wanted to do with the space.
We tell stories, we create stories, but first and foremost; we communicate. There is a dialogue between actor and audience. How can we create an environment that speaks from our bodies with our bodies. How can environment play our bodies and then how can we relate this to an audience?
Its interesting that I found complicites new show Shun-kin more engaging than a disappearing number. It allowed an audience to see the construction of an image, see how it begins and ends. There was a clear impulse to start, and you could see the energy being passed on, transforming the space. It is this transformation that something happens that is exciting. I have my quarms with Shun-kin, but there ability to find an extension in a movement or phrase creates atmohphere and is truly engaging.
Characters also have there own rhythm, a character can lead with one part of the body and that will create a way of speaking, laughing, moving. What does my body want to do when I am in this position with my centre lowered and my arms bent. Well at that moment I wanted to be lustful, I wanted to be somehow dirty, and because of the way I was standing I became this odd perverted character, I pass on this energy and it changes, that body is not in that poition. That person has not had my day, and so it reacts differently. The energy transforms, so then when I get the energy back, it has changed and thus my impetus changes; my body shifts, and suddenly I am somebody else, a new character.
I made a pre-judgement at the beginning of a session that I don’t usually do. I believed, arrogantly, that was I was being asked to do was masturbatory. Go where you body wants to go move where your body wants to move. I rub my foot, it hurts, I rock back and forth because I need to massage something of loosen something. I attended my body. But I couldn’t grasp the framing; we’re doing soundscapes? I usually don’t get it at first and so I just accept. Usually it does not disturb me. In fact, my training is from a school that did not explain things, and that you had to find out for yourself. This is your path. But what was being explained to me was something that I new, yet could not connect. Why do I focus on this is? Because there was a clear movement arc. Where I ended up at the end of the session, a rocking, an unbalance, was where I started, yet this time I found the play in it. The ability to find laughter and joy not because I was embarrassed, but because laughter was as much an impulse as touch.
Harmony suggests a blending of things. And in theatre the idea of putting different stuff together is not new, we have a chair and a stool, a light that seems disco like, and somebody bopping away on a light up dance floor and we see a disco. They blend, they make a picture, a landscape that we experience bodily, yet is constructed semiotically. What if the picture was not constructed as such. What if the blending of theatre merged from what our body wanted to do with the space.
We tell stories, we create stories, but first and foremost; we communicate. There is a dialogue between actor and audience. How can we create an environment that speaks from our bodies with our bodies. How can environment play our bodies and then how can we relate this to an audience?
Its interesting that I found complicites new show Shun-kin more engaging than a disappearing number. It allowed an audience to see the construction of an image, see how it begins and ends. There was a clear impulse to start, and you could see the energy being passed on, transforming the space. It is this transformation that something happens that is exciting. I have my quarms with Shun-kin, but there ability to find an extension in a movement or phrase creates atmohphere and is truly engaging.
Friday, 6 February 2009
The Structure of Science
The Science Museum, on the 3rd floor, in South Kensington, in the corner, made me smile. I played with tempo, echo and waves. I saw sound jump, and swim and move. It was all explained on small white plaques, by each ‘exhibit,’ at child height. It was all so simple. As I did it was fun and I found out why sound does things. Yet I walk away and I am not hungry to find more, I do not need to solve those mysteries anymore.
‘Stoned’ at the Royal Court was the same. It was very clever, structurally slick, moving across three generations in one space. The sounds of the past coming to haunt each generation. It is an hour long, and you are thrown into the mix, and you enjoy working out who is when and where and why they bicker. But by the end it is all made clear. I know the story. I knew it in the first half hour. It was fun to work out, but once that is done I just sit. I do not need to solve the mystery any more.
‘Stoned’ at the Royal Court was the same. It was very clever, structurally slick, moving across three generations in one space. The sounds of the past coming to haunt each generation. It is an hour long, and you are thrown into the mix, and you enjoy working out who is when and where and why they bicker. But by the end it is all made clear. I know the story. I knew it in the first half hour. It was fun to work out, but once that is done I just sit. I do not need to solve the mystery any more.
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