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.
Sound as shape
I described the sound of the text as the movement of the muscles in a horse race. A race that didn’t end. At first the horse travels with ease, yet soon, lactic acid builds up. The horse does not slow, yet it hurts. The horse knows there is no point in running anymore, but it can’t stop. Something won’t let him stop.
The text had a song, and it stuck on my head. The song of the horse. Why?? I have no idea. Sound for me has a shape, a picture, a story. I get carried away by it. I tell a story, or I see images dance.
When I dance in a night club I become high. I was almost kicked out of the Punch Drunk after party in Wapping Lane, and was asked what I was taking at the Reading Festival. I come at it like an energetic child who just needs to do, to move. I sweat. I sweat a lot. In fact it is probably quite unattractive. But I do not want to stop. People laugh, or stare, or want to join in. They try to mimic, but the can’t. I don’t want them to mimic, I want them to take what I am giving and dance with me, not at me. I want a harmony. Not a chorus, the two step in the corner that barely finds the rhythm. I find it occasionally. It makes me smile
The text had a song, and it stuck on my head. The song of the horse. Why?? I have no idea. Sound for me has a shape, a picture, a story. I get carried away by it. I tell a story, or I see images dance.
When I dance in a night club I become high. I was almost kicked out of the Punch Drunk after party in Wapping Lane, and was asked what I was taking at the Reading Festival. I come at it like an energetic child who just needs to do, to move. I sweat. I sweat a lot. In fact it is probably quite unattractive. But I do not want to stop. People laugh, or stare, or want to join in. They try to mimic, but the can’t. I don’t want them to mimic, I want them to take what I am giving and dance with me, not at me. I want a harmony. Not a chorus, the two step in the corner that barely finds the rhythm. I find it occasionally. It makes me smile
Perfomativity Workshop
The BA DATE students at Central were great, throwing them selves into my performativity workshop with Gusto. Because of the very open atmosphere, students were able to feed back in real time how the various exercises could be useful for them as practitioners. The connections they were (unknowingly) bringing up with NLP, as well as the ways in which certain exercises could be used to generate material has somehow developed from the acquired knowledge of my BA, my TA position at St Mary’s, and the beginning of my MA a Central. I question the ownership of the exercises that I used, as the majority had been adapted from those taught to me, although I doubt there is a need to reinvent the wheel. Performativity for me is an acknowledgement that our body and surroundings perform continuously, intentionally or not. If we can harness this performative state for performance, then we already add to a performance creative landscape.
Wednesday 4 February 2009
Body Project, a body of work.
This extract makes me angry, because I have been instructed to write it. Somehow this entry feels like a chore, and the other entries haven’t. I have reflected on this project through an email in order to help me understand the structure, as well as the last blog entry which was an immediate reaction. This entry tries somehow to associate the work within a fictional context. What if the group were to continue working. This is not logical. We are not. It reminds me of Piagets fish in the tree that breathes air and the lets pretend exercise. So with this in mind lets pretend….
This project only forms a beginning, an introduction to an idea. We somehow defined presence as an ‘attitude’ to a space and those within it. We created an idea as ‘the body as vessel’, a body that needs to be reorganised in order to perform, not themselves as an individual, but a performative persona. To further develop this work we would look at his vessel through the eyes of Grotowski’s theory of embodiment, as well as continuing with ideas from Lecoq’s neutral mask. We might suggest that presence is the process of embodiment, in order to create a method / methodology to enable an actor to become free from themselves. It would be interesting to see how these methods differed from those already practiced.
This is the interesting bit!
If Piaget suggests meta-cognition is a way of learning for children, and it appears that meta-cognition is a method of how to approach researched based practice, perhaps this would be an interesting method to adopt in my practice. Furthermore, as this process comes instinctually to children, can we creatively learn from children?
This project only forms a beginning, an introduction to an idea. We somehow defined presence as an ‘attitude’ to a space and those within it. We created an idea as ‘the body as vessel’, a body that needs to be reorganised in order to perform, not themselves as an individual, but a performative persona. To further develop this work we would look at his vessel through the eyes of Grotowski’s theory of embodiment, as well as continuing with ideas from Lecoq’s neutral mask. We might suggest that presence is the process of embodiment, in order to create a method / methodology to enable an actor to become free from themselves. It would be interesting to see how these methods differed from those already practiced.
This is the interesting bit!
If Piaget suggests meta-cognition is a way of learning for children, and it appears that meta-cognition is a method of how to approach researched based practice, perhaps this would be an interesting method to adopt in my practice. Furthermore, as this process comes instinctually to children, can we creatively learn from children?
‘I am structurally special.’
So I said a few rude words and then I got over it.
I So I said a few rude words and then I got over it.
I love structure that is clear, that informs; where I find this lacking I need to create a structure that is clear for me. But in doing so it still needs to make sense to others. I need to start taking ownership over the language that I choose to use to explain ideas; to define for myself terms and be able to justify the definition in order to talk with authority. In doing so, my structuring of spoken sentences needs to be concise. Anything less suggests that I am a fraudster, even if I know the theory and practice inside and out. Presentation is performative. If I frame a toilet I can call it art because of the attitude in which we look at it but if the toilet is not framed, it is just a functioning part of a WC, no more, no less.
The written word differs from the spoken, because it disassociates from the authors bodily attitude towards the text. It is content and fails to reveal the immediate context of the time of writing. It is therefore necessary to explain how you are using words in footnotes or parenthesis. The act or writing forces you to slow to the speed of typing, or of placing pen to paper. It is an action that has a physical limit to its speed. It has visible structures that can be edited. The immediate spoken word differs. With it comes the context, the facial expressions, the conscious and unconscious bodily movements that stresses and adds importance to words. Yet with this, my mind races and finishes sentences before they have started. The result is a mess.
If Dr Joesephine Machon suggests that a synaesthetic play text is one that joins the word with the visceral body, then can the structures used to create this joining be adapted to real time speech and would this be useful? I don’t know. My mum used to say that you should engage brain before speaking, slow down and enunciate but what if it is not this that I need to achieve from speech? What if words quantify meaning instead of qualify meening. And yes I mean quantify. To quantify I assert a definite meaning, a limit to the possibilities of what it could mean. Quantify suggests numbers. I have one conker. This cannot be misinterpreted to having two conkers. But by saying conker you could imply a number of metaphoric things that you do not mean. Meaning is not qualified it is quantified. If speech acts in this manner, is this the most effective way to communicate?
I So I said a few rude words and then I got over it.
I love structure that is clear, that informs; where I find this lacking I need to create a structure that is clear for me. But in doing so it still needs to make sense to others. I need to start taking ownership over the language that I choose to use to explain ideas; to define for myself terms and be able to justify the definition in order to talk with authority. In doing so, my structuring of spoken sentences needs to be concise. Anything less suggests that I am a fraudster, even if I know the theory and practice inside and out. Presentation is performative. If I frame a toilet I can call it art because of the attitude in which we look at it but if the toilet is not framed, it is just a functioning part of a WC, no more, no less.
The written word differs from the spoken, because it disassociates from the authors bodily attitude towards the text. It is content and fails to reveal the immediate context of the time of writing. It is therefore necessary to explain how you are using words in footnotes or parenthesis. The act or writing forces you to slow to the speed of typing, or of placing pen to paper. It is an action that has a physical limit to its speed. It has visible structures that can be edited. The immediate spoken word differs. With it comes the context, the facial expressions, the conscious and unconscious bodily movements that stresses and adds importance to words. Yet with this, my mind races and finishes sentences before they have started. The result is a mess.
If Dr Joesephine Machon suggests that a synaesthetic play text is one that joins the word with the visceral body, then can the structures used to create this joining be adapted to real time speech and would this be useful? I don’t know. My mum used to say that you should engage brain before speaking, slow down and enunciate but what if it is not this that I need to achieve from speech? What if words quantify meaning instead of qualify meening. And yes I mean quantify. To quantify I assert a definite meaning, a limit to the possibilities of what it could mean. Quantify suggests numbers. I have one conker. This cannot be misinterpreted to having two conkers. But by saying conker you could imply a number of metaphoric things that you do not mean. Meaning is not qualified it is quantified. If speech acts in this manner, is this the most effective way to communicate?
Thursday 29 January 2009
Two Minds
There are 2 frames of mind. I am the thinking mind and I solve problems. Or I am the embodied mind, that reacts. I wear 2 hats. But it is hard to change between the two. The Gargenisa (Spelling) exercises ask me to not think and to ask questions, to be curious. Are the two not connected? Or is it, infact ,curiosity a very human instinct. A base.
A child acts to find its boundaries, the child is curious, cheeky and tries to push those boundaries. It is impulse that drives this child. The child does not think how might I break the rules, instead, the child asks, if I do this how do the rules apply. They have a goal, an objective.
Objectives on stage are a known event. The super objective the main goal, what I want to achieve, and the many mini objectives, the small games that entertain us, that keep us alive. Perhaps the garginisa (Spelling) approach is not abstracted from this. Perhaps they speak of the same thing only from different angles. The garginisa ‘sequences’ designed to make us curios with bodily reactions, and makes us ask questions of the space and each other. Where as ‘Objectives’ (Is this Stan?) ask us to construct action.
A child acts to find its boundaries, the child is curious, cheeky and tries to push those boundaries. It is impulse that drives this child. The child does not think how might I break the rules, instead, the child asks, if I do this how do the rules apply. They have a goal, an objective.
Objectives on stage are a known event. The super objective the main goal, what I want to achieve, and the many mini objectives, the small games that entertain us, that keep us alive. Perhaps the garginisa (Spelling) approach is not abstracted from this. Perhaps they speak of the same thing only from different angles. The garginisa ‘sequences’ designed to make us curios with bodily reactions, and makes us ask questions of the space and each other. Where as ‘Objectives’ (Is this Stan?) ask us to construct action.
Finding Form
What is it to look for form. Is this a mental process, a system to complete, or is this a bodily impulse, a need to control. I have spoken before about my body in chaos. It is pushed and pulled in many directions and I am unsure of where to go. By controlling, do I have to be limiting?
Working with the bones I see structure. The bodies structure. My bones are joined by muscles. These two structures limit movement. I cannot extend out five metres. Yet within the physical limitations of my bodies, it offers an endless combination of movements, from a micro, to a macrobody level. Furthermore my desire to expand five metres can be accomplished by expanding my kinesphere, by adopting a different attitude to the space. My control stimulates rather than hinders.
I am searching for a structure, for control. I never set out to find a ‘form,’ to find a limit, but by declaring myself as clown, I declared a form, a structure, a control. But I chose said form because for me, it is formless. It is content, it is naivety. It finds innocence and originality and therefore continually moulds its form. I contradict myself. To continually mould form then it cannot be formless. You have top have form to mould. It starts with the body. The form of the body. I am here.
I allow my body to lead. And my mind to extend. I allow my mind to lead and my body contracts. I listen, and my body moves. I speak, and my body shivers. How to find the speaking open body? Perhaps a god space to start, is my body…
Working with the bones I see structure. The bodies structure. My bones are joined by muscles. These two structures limit movement. I cannot extend out five metres. Yet within the physical limitations of my bodies, it offers an endless combination of movements, from a micro, to a macrobody level. Furthermore my desire to expand five metres can be accomplished by expanding my kinesphere, by adopting a different attitude to the space. My control stimulates rather than hinders.
I am searching for a structure, for control. I never set out to find a ‘form,’ to find a limit, but by declaring myself as clown, I declared a form, a structure, a control. But I chose said form because for me, it is formless. It is content, it is naivety. It finds innocence and originality and therefore continually moulds its form. I contradict myself. To continually mould form then it cannot be formless. You have top have form to mould. It starts with the body. The form of the body. I am here.
I allow my body to lead. And my mind to extend. I allow my mind to lead and my body contracts. I listen, and my body moves. I speak, and my body shivers. How to find the speaking open body? Perhaps a god space to start, is my body…
Monday 26 January 2009
On and off stage
On stage I do not deny the knowledge that I am Dave, a human being with my own habits, having what Bordieu would call my habitus, a system of learnt ways of being. I have my own performative, an outcome of my habitus, and I live in the world of the Gestus (Brecht). In essence, I am a construct of my past. I have a choice on stage to recognise this. I have a choice not to.
I am a multifaceted individual, and I can choose which facet I apply to each moment on stage. Some facets I cannot escape from. I have a body, this cannot be denied. It can be manipulated, dressed, make upped, but this is my body, this is its shape now in this moment. In essence, if I am nothing else, I am a body, and I am everything that comes with that. I am that social and political construct, I am what I have eaten, I am my memories and my past, all engraved in me. Yet all these parts create noise, each have their own stories, their own vriti (yoga), each can be read by an audience in many different and uncontrollable ways. If a performance requires you to get information across to the audience, then these additional stories can interrupt, or disrupt this dialogue between audience and performer. Or they can heighten this dialogue, enabling a new frame in which to view the performance.
As audience you too are ‘body’. You have disrupted your everyday life to sit and ‘engage’ in a performance. You come with your own stories, your own noise. As audience you do not lose your habitus, your construct of self, as this enables a frame to look at the performance with. Instead, you shift aside your stories and thoughts and become absorbed in the action of performance (when the action is engaging and enjoyable). Like the actor you use the facets of your own body to engage with the performance, you do not forget them, instead, move them to one side. You create space. But where is this space?
The theatre is a transformative physical space. With it comes its own histories, its own inhabited memory, yet unlike the actor and audience it cannot move this aside, it is not a sentient body. It is the actor-audience dialogue that is sentient, and this dialectic communicates across the space that moves its historical stories, that allows it to transform. Bth actor and audience have created space to allow this transformation to occur. This space is not just physical, instead, liminal?
I am a multifaceted individual, and I can choose which facet I apply to each moment on stage. Some facets I cannot escape from. I have a body, this cannot be denied. It can be manipulated, dressed, make upped, but this is my body, this is its shape now in this moment. In essence, if I am nothing else, I am a body, and I am everything that comes with that. I am that social and political construct, I am what I have eaten, I am my memories and my past, all engraved in me. Yet all these parts create noise, each have their own stories, their own vriti (yoga), each can be read by an audience in many different and uncontrollable ways. If a performance requires you to get information across to the audience, then these additional stories can interrupt, or disrupt this dialogue between audience and performer. Or they can heighten this dialogue, enabling a new frame in which to view the performance.
As audience you too are ‘body’. You have disrupted your everyday life to sit and ‘engage’ in a performance. You come with your own stories, your own noise. As audience you do not lose your habitus, your construct of self, as this enables a frame to look at the performance with. Instead, you shift aside your stories and thoughts and become absorbed in the action of performance (when the action is engaging and enjoyable). Like the actor you use the facets of your own body to engage with the performance, you do not forget them, instead, move them to one side. You create space. But where is this space?
The theatre is a transformative physical space. With it comes its own histories, its own inhabited memory, yet unlike the actor and audience it cannot move this aside, it is not a sentient body. It is the actor-audience dialogue that is sentient, and this dialectic communicates across the space that moves its historical stories, that allows it to transform. Bth actor and audience have created space to allow this transformation to occur. This space is not just physical, instead, liminal?
Saturday 24 January 2009
And we found a room and played
My degree centred around the physical body. The body as a tool, taking excruciatingly long hours to work with the spine, the muscles, the nerves And somehow I found something new when Nikkie told me to lay down and breathe. I have always had a problem of finding the spine in a straight line. I naturally (or habitually) lay so that my shoulders are not even, and by head leans to the side. Friday night was no different, yet because I know I have this problem I have fought to try and become straight, however, last night I did not fight when directed. And found straight. And was somehow peaceful in this resolution.
The sprinter who tries to hard will not win, the sprinter who does not think of winning becomes the victor. (Analogy is found in John Wrights Why is that so Funny)
The sprinter who tries to hard will not win, the sprinter who does not think of winning becomes the victor. (Analogy is found in John Wrights Why is that so Funny)
A direct response after the Gabriel Roth 5 rhythms workshop
There is a place that cries and screams
That crumples and darkens my soul.
How to find a place that exists
How to find me as a child.
Where do I exist, where do I find me
Where does my body find a line?
My perceptions of me in my mind?
I have a jumbled mess that
I would like to iron, to straighten, enlarge, play
A way to live to be with me
All day
I am me, but in me, it is through my shadow that I find me.
Thoughts
Idea of exhaustion, after exhaustion, I can only be what I am, as I cannot functionally do anything else. Connections with Baush, Grotowski? I need to read more on Grotowski need to find a book!
In a performance am I subject or object? Is form an object? Is play a form? If play is subject then it is an ideal, an idea of play, it is not play. Play then is object, but you cannot touch it? If it is neither subject or object then what is it?
Lyrical as a mean to find lightness and play. Lyrical as a mean to find naivety?
That crumples and darkens my soul.
How to find a place that exists
How to find me as a child.
Where do I exist, where do I find me
Where does my body find a line?
My perceptions of me in my mind?
I have a jumbled mess that
I would like to iron, to straighten, enlarge, play
A way to live to be with me
All day
I am me, but in me, it is through my shadow that I find me.
Thoughts
Idea of exhaustion, after exhaustion, I can only be what I am, as I cannot functionally do anything else. Connections with Baush, Grotowski? I need to read more on Grotowski need to find a book!
In a performance am I subject or object? Is form an object? Is play a form? If play is subject then it is an ideal, an idea of play, it is not play. Play then is object, but you cannot touch it? If it is neither subject or object then what is it?
Lyrical as a mean to find lightness and play. Lyrical as a mean to find naivety?
Wednesday 21 January 2009
Interplay, Interaction and the space that they create. A battlefield for war?
Interplay? What do I mean by this term. ‘Inter’ the space connecting, and ‘play’ a mode of action. Thus Interplay could be described as a space connecting a mode of action?
Interaction could then be defined as the space connecting action.
If performance is a space that connects both performer and audience, because they exist within a shared space within an act, then interplay suggests a malleable connection between action and performance, as play is a dynamic action that relies on both parties to be active or engaged.
Engagement suggests that both parties have an ability to inform an event or shared experience; if I am engaging in the act of war, I have the ability to affect the others in my troupe who are also engaging in the act of war. The army advances over the threshold onto the battlefield and meets the other army on the other side, and the act of war is carried out with a quantifiable outcome, a death toll.
Both audience and performers are engaging in the act of a theatrical event, both are on opposite sides of the battlefield, the theatrical space, and when they meet the act of performance happens, yet is there a quantifiable outcome? Perhaps this is in a sense of a review, but this heavily relies on opinion. In the case of The Dreamers of Inishdara at the Jermyn Street Theatre (2007), three reviews credited the play with two, three and four stars. Who was correct? If performative engagement is not quantifiable, then we cannot be purely talking about the physical presence of the actor and performance, a physical being. Instead a connection that is not physical; a metaphysical connection? A force or an energy?
A war cannot exist without at least two sides, me and my enemy, as theatre can not exist without two sides, the audience and performer. Yet clearly the sides can be blurred, terrorist groups and guerrilla warfare changes the dynamics of the encroaching army, as performance art, ideas of performativity and any other mode of theatre that displaces the ideas of proscenium arch (end on theatre) changes the dynamics of the actor performer relationship.
Does interplay have any musical connotations? Luckily I have walked home to a house of musicians. One suggested that an interplay is to have two melodies play over each other, they could be said to interplay, another then said that is called a harmony. Which is could propose an interesting definition for the actor audience relationship?
Interaction could then be defined as the space connecting action.
If performance is a space that connects both performer and audience, because they exist within a shared space within an act, then interplay suggests a malleable connection between action and performance, as play is a dynamic action that relies on both parties to be active or engaged.
Engagement suggests that both parties have an ability to inform an event or shared experience; if I am engaging in the act of war, I have the ability to affect the others in my troupe who are also engaging in the act of war. The army advances over the threshold onto the battlefield and meets the other army on the other side, and the act of war is carried out with a quantifiable outcome, a death toll.
Both audience and performers are engaging in the act of a theatrical event, both are on opposite sides of the battlefield, the theatrical space, and when they meet the act of performance happens, yet is there a quantifiable outcome? Perhaps this is in a sense of a review, but this heavily relies on opinion. In the case of The Dreamers of Inishdara at the Jermyn Street Theatre (2007), three reviews credited the play with two, three and four stars. Who was correct? If performative engagement is not quantifiable, then we cannot be purely talking about the physical presence of the actor and performance, a physical being. Instead a connection that is not physical; a metaphysical connection? A force or an energy?
A war cannot exist without at least two sides, me and my enemy, as theatre can not exist without two sides, the audience and performer. Yet clearly the sides can be blurred, terrorist groups and guerrilla warfare changes the dynamics of the encroaching army, as performance art, ideas of performativity and any other mode of theatre that displaces the ideas of proscenium arch (end on theatre) changes the dynamics of the actor performer relationship.
Does interplay have any musical connotations? Luckily I have walked home to a house of musicians. One suggested that an interplay is to have two melodies play over each other, they could be said to interplay, another then said that is called a harmony. Which is could propose an interesting definition for the actor audience relationship?
Tuesday 20 January 2009
Yoga allowing you to see the big and the small in one moment?
I often feel like I go around with my head in a bubble. Its great in that bubble don’t get me wrong, I can look up at a tree and see how the sun dances with the dust that shines through a dense canopy, or admire the sheds of light that pours out of an overhead window, exposing the chewing gummed pavement that lies beneath my feet. It all sounds rather poeticised and romantic. But what is void, is people, other people. My head in the clouds? I perhaps focus on detail to ignore the bigger picture, a way of escaping the moment, only so that I do not have to be afraid of the hustle and bustle that is London, the city. Experience asks do we ever just do 1 thing at a time, to just be?
Recently my head has not been in a bubble that looks up, but a bubble that looks in straight lines. In the still points that are few and far between I update my ical and set a reminder to do something, to meet someone. I have to see people about work or an idea. I forget the detail and attach an agenda, a prioritised list. A Daves guide to getting through a day. But this is as little help as looking to the clouds. Where one is chaotic the other is dizzy. I have no time to be still and breathe.
Today during yoga I noticed two things, which were probably little stories or the other word…. (Not sure). One of which I had forgotten, and the other a nag.
I had forgotten how the light gets brighter after you breathe deeply. A heightened sense, I had forgotten the still excitement that it provokes. Almost as if my buddy surges with vitality, that comes from my feet through my spine and out from my eyes, or from my eyes down to my feet. A sense of alertness.
The second thing I noticed was a pain coming from my eyes when they were shut, and just as I was about to breathe to that pain I noticed that my eyes were moving back and forth in REM. A condition, for what I’m told is often induced whilst asleep and dreaming. It’s a condition that I have started clocking more frequently as I close my eyes for a moment to rest, or to think. I wonder why that is? I don’t have an answer.
In the cold outside, Nikkie was talking of her experience as a dancer, how when she dances she does not notice the audience a individuals, the space becomes infinite. She compares this to a child being watched and a child not being watched, and made connection with Satre. It goes back to the ideas of the actors paradox and bad faith. Yet for Nikkie, instead of describing the audience as a forth wall, she describes them as energy. If I understand correctly, she dances in black, a void and when in contact with that void, her energy makes a light, calving a pattern within that space. The audience too appear to give off a light, and as a performer you need to be sensitive to this, because you cannot see a torch light in the day. Perhaps I’m getting to arty farty?
For a performer that knows they are both actor and character being watched, the dynamic of this situation changes. The PhD student that asks the question about the magician on Mondays Seminar tried to approach this very topic using the idea for the magician, but with a magician, the audience chooses to buy into the fantasy. With a clown, by choosing to clock an audience, you break the fantasy of the action and make the situation real. In this moment the clown reveals what he or she is truly feeling, adding to the humour. In this moment does the clown witnesses being witnessed and is he aware of his awareness?
...Thoughts to be completed on Grotowski and presence and links to puppet and objects.....
Recently my head has not been in a bubble that looks up, but a bubble that looks in straight lines. In the still points that are few and far between I update my ical and set a reminder to do something, to meet someone. I have to see people about work or an idea. I forget the detail and attach an agenda, a prioritised list. A Daves guide to getting through a day. But this is as little help as looking to the clouds. Where one is chaotic the other is dizzy. I have no time to be still and breathe.
Today during yoga I noticed two things, which were probably little stories or the other word…. (Not sure). One of which I had forgotten, and the other a nag.
I had forgotten how the light gets brighter after you breathe deeply. A heightened sense, I had forgotten the still excitement that it provokes. Almost as if my buddy surges with vitality, that comes from my feet through my spine and out from my eyes, or from my eyes down to my feet. A sense of alertness.
The second thing I noticed was a pain coming from my eyes when they were shut, and just as I was about to breathe to that pain I noticed that my eyes were moving back and forth in REM. A condition, for what I’m told is often induced whilst asleep and dreaming. It’s a condition that I have started clocking more frequently as I close my eyes for a moment to rest, or to think. I wonder why that is? I don’t have an answer.
In the cold outside, Nikkie was talking of her experience as a dancer, how when she dances she does not notice the audience a individuals, the space becomes infinite. She compares this to a child being watched and a child not being watched, and made connection with Satre. It goes back to the ideas of the actors paradox and bad faith. Yet for Nikkie, instead of describing the audience as a forth wall, she describes them as energy. If I understand correctly, she dances in black, a void and when in contact with that void, her energy makes a light, calving a pattern within that space. The audience too appear to give off a light, and as a performer you need to be sensitive to this, because you cannot see a torch light in the day. Perhaps I’m getting to arty farty?
For a performer that knows they are both actor and character being watched, the dynamic of this situation changes. The PhD student that asks the question about the magician on Mondays Seminar tried to approach this very topic using the idea for the magician, but with a magician, the audience chooses to buy into the fantasy. With a clown, by choosing to clock an audience, you break the fantasy of the action and make the situation real. In this moment the clown reveals what he or she is truly feeling, adding to the humour. In this moment does the clown witnesses being witnessed and is he aware of his awareness?
...Thoughts to be completed on Grotowski and presence and links to puppet and objects.....
Monday 19 January 2009
In the works of Experience Bryon ‘Isn’t that interesting’
(Bryon says that a dancer knows when a part of the body is not quite right and so works to fix it or backs off from it)
There was a point today that I was scared. Not a rational sense of fear (the sense of fear you have when you are about to get attacked by lions) but an irrational sense of fear, (the fear of the unknown). New people are an unknown quantity, and although often there is a gut instinct, an In/tuition (concept opened up in RecSen project) of whom you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with, within a new group the dynamics of group relationships is in constant flux (Our comfort zones move and break down as we learn about other people in the group). We automatically prejudge an individual without even getting to know somebody, either positively or negatively, because we can or can’t relate to them. But perhaps, it is what we cannot relate to that is most interesting for an artist. Perhaps confronting the visceral response, to reject, abandon or throw up, creates the confrontation that theatre needs. Was it Aristotle that said theatre is conflict?
Group dynamics are equally as interesting. What is my role in a group? I am an individual with a way of dealing with a group situation in a certain way. I find I need to clarify, objectify a discussion to move it on, but to do this I need a group sensitivity. With a new group, no doubt, the first attempts to do this will be wrong. But by identifying that something was not quite right, I can attempt to find a common language between us.
There was a point today that I was scared. Not a rational sense of fear (the sense of fear you have when you are about to get attacked by lions) but an irrational sense of fear, (the fear of the unknown). New people are an unknown quantity, and although often there is a gut instinct, an In/tuition (concept opened up in RecSen project) of whom you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with, within a new group the dynamics of group relationships is in constant flux (Our comfort zones move and break down as we learn about other people in the group). We automatically prejudge an individual without even getting to know somebody, either positively or negatively, because we can or can’t relate to them. But perhaps, it is what we cannot relate to that is most interesting for an artist. Perhaps confronting the visceral response, to reject, abandon or throw up, creates the confrontation that theatre needs. Was it Aristotle that said theatre is conflict?
Group dynamics are equally as interesting. What is my role in a group? I am an individual with a way of dealing with a group situation in a certain way. I find I need to clarify, objectify a discussion to move it on, but to do this I need a group sensitivity. With a new group, no doubt, the first attempts to do this will be wrong. But by identifying that something was not quite right, I can attempt to find a common language between us.
Sunday 18 January 2009
I suck and I love to fail
'We start with what we know.' A sentiment echoed by many of the practioners / speakers at the Post graduate conference (January) at CSSD. So what do I know, what aquired, learnt knowledge do I bring with me?
‘I suck and I love to fail’ was my first discovery within my BA at St Mary’s University. All we had to do was repeat the phrase over and over again, until we found enjoyment in it; in the knowledge that it was OK to muck up. The exercise was instigated by Tom and Deborah of The Spontaneity Shop and has resonated within me until today. It is important to note that the concept is not new. Undoubtedly they ‘stole' the exercise or phrase from ‘Jon Wright’ in Impro for storytellers (Did he write this?), who no doubt acquired the idea from Gollier (spelling incorrect), and he from someone before that.
The notion parallels with the working methodologies in research, highlighted by Experience Bryon in our first ‘class meet.’ It was this day that we had to explain our theatrical background and reasons for being on the course. My response was that of clowning and to find a pathway out of the many influences and experience I have, an attempt to find a commonality or link between what I already know; without the chaos that ensues in my head? ‘What is my research question?’ Experience asks, and my response was I do not know…
I didn’t like the out come of the conversation. "I do not know?"
What I’m interested in is the life of theatre. The notion that Theatre is a transformative space, for not only actor, but audience and indeed the space itself (and everything in it). I identified with the clown because you cannot hide yourself behind character; the clown is allowed to make a mistake and it is OK. In essence Clowning is a method in which I explore the transformation of space, the life of the theatre, because its very form is present; alive. The clown can play with a situation and create something out of nothing, (not necessarily out of laughter, but through tears and the range in between), and its ability to perform to these situations in real time acknowledges the space of the theatre, and plays between what it is, a theatrical experience, and what it becomes, the transformative space created by that experience.
Labelling myself as a clown however destroys the countless possibilities within theatre. Labelling myself as clown suggests this is my methodology, a way of analysing or playing with the methods of what it is to be clown. (Methodology can be broken down to preffix, ‘method’, and suffix ‘ology’, ‘method’ a way of doing, and ‘ology’, the analysis of the preffix). However this is not my only experience of theatre, nor is it all I want to play with. In effect (or affect), I want this course to find my methodology for the methods I already enjoy performing, as well as learn some new. This includes, but is not finite, puppetry, dance, singing, acting (in its traditional sense actor has script) and writing. Looking to learn silks and anything else I can find that physically challenges me.
"To make my methodology work for me and not work for my methodology". Experience in a seminar chat week1)
Perhaps to find out what I know I need to identify with what I don’t, and here a list would be endless, but I feel it is important to identify gaps in knowledge that come out of discussions and I am exposed as a fraudster of authority to myself, or to others.
Perhaps the best example of this was my attempt to fuse my understanding of what performance based research (PBR) is, with that of Blast Theories 'new technologies' and the actor director relationship. In my understanding Blast Theory man (name?) set out a systematic approach to performance based research. A try and fail account that is not new to a devising process or infact, to any sort of experimental understanding. I jumped at this notion because it appeared to be underlined with ‘I suck and I love to fail.’ Yet in questioning, the method was split open. It suggests that research is passive or reflective, to happen out of mistake. This line grated on the nominal notion of research. We set out to find something surely. I think this is a blurred area in my understanding. By disaccrediting ideas or concepts found in the ‘happy accident’ we exclude knowledge that is just as valid of that in which we set out to find?
….. thoughts to be completed on directing and a fraudsetr of authority, move to reflections on 'critical reflection'...
‘I suck and I love to fail’ was my first discovery within my BA at St Mary’s University. All we had to do was repeat the phrase over and over again, until we found enjoyment in it; in the knowledge that it was OK to muck up. The exercise was instigated by Tom and Deborah of The Spontaneity Shop and has resonated within me until today. It is important to note that the concept is not new. Undoubtedly they ‘stole' the exercise or phrase from ‘Jon Wright’ in Impro for storytellers (Did he write this?), who no doubt acquired the idea from Gollier (spelling incorrect), and he from someone before that.
The notion parallels with the working methodologies in research, highlighted by Experience Bryon in our first ‘class meet.’ It was this day that we had to explain our theatrical background and reasons for being on the course. My response was that of clowning and to find a pathway out of the many influences and experience I have, an attempt to find a commonality or link between what I already know; without the chaos that ensues in my head? ‘What is my research question?’ Experience asks, and my response was I do not know…
I didn’t like the out come of the conversation. "I do not know?"
What I’m interested in is the life of theatre. The notion that Theatre is a transformative space, for not only actor, but audience and indeed the space itself (and everything in it). I identified with the clown because you cannot hide yourself behind character; the clown is allowed to make a mistake and it is OK. In essence Clowning is a method in which I explore the transformation of space, the life of the theatre, because its very form is present; alive. The clown can play with a situation and create something out of nothing, (not necessarily out of laughter, but through tears and the range in between), and its ability to perform to these situations in real time acknowledges the space of the theatre, and plays between what it is, a theatrical experience, and what it becomes, the transformative space created by that experience.
Labelling myself as a clown however destroys the countless possibilities within theatre. Labelling myself as clown suggests this is my methodology, a way of analysing or playing with the methods of what it is to be clown. (Methodology can be broken down to preffix, ‘method’, and suffix ‘ology’, ‘method’ a way of doing, and ‘ology’, the analysis of the preffix). However this is not my only experience of theatre, nor is it all I want to play with. In effect (or affect), I want this course to find my methodology for the methods I already enjoy performing, as well as learn some new. This includes, but is not finite, puppetry, dance, singing, acting (in its traditional sense actor has script) and writing. Looking to learn silks and anything else I can find that physically challenges me.
"To make my methodology work for me and not work for my methodology". Experience in a seminar chat week1)
Perhaps to find out what I know I need to identify with what I don’t, and here a list would be endless, but I feel it is important to identify gaps in knowledge that come out of discussions and I am exposed as a fraudster of authority to myself, or to others.
Perhaps the best example of this was my attempt to fuse my understanding of what performance based research (PBR) is, with that of Blast Theories 'new technologies' and the actor director relationship. In my understanding Blast Theory man (name?) set out a systematic approach to performance based research. A try and fail account that is not new to a devising process or infact, to any sort of experimental understanding. I jumped at this notion because it appeared to be underlined with ‘I suck and I love to fail.’ Yet in questioning, the method was split open. It suggests that research is passive or reflective, to happen out of mistake. This line grated on the nominal notion of research. We set out to find something surely. I think this is a blurred area in my understanding. By disaccrediting ideas or concepts found in the ‘happy accident’ we exclude knowledge that is just as valid of that in which we set out to find?
….. thoughts to be completed on directing and a fraudsetr of authority, move to reflections on 'critical reflection'...
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