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?