Perhaps

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?

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.

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?