Performance Evaluation

In the weeks before our performance I was worried about the lack of work we had devised for it. It felt as though we were very unprepared. This was mainly due to the mix of three directors we had meaning we didn't create finalised work for about 2 to 3 weeks of our rehearsal time. However, when our director came back and we molded the first section of work it seemed like we had more direction to our piece.

The decision to improvise the second half of performance was a good one in the end. When I first heard this was the plan it sent me and other class members into panic mode where we just didn't feel confident in our performance or like we had any clue what we were doing. However, on the day of performance and we went through the different exercises we were going to do, I saw the potential of what we were going to do, and how it might be successful.

Improvising meant that the whole performance was truly experimental. Anything could of happened and we would have allowed it. The energy in the room felt very focused and as though we were excepting of each other and whatever movements we were going to create. This meant people could find something honest and new every time we rehearsed or performed. When someone found a moment within a movement that worked it suddenly became so interesting to watch, and audience members said they could often make little stories in their minds about what they think the person is going through or their relationships with other people. Even though this may not have been our initial intention I think it shows an element of success that people we able to do this despite us as actors not having stories or characters in our heads.

The section with the stories we told worked well. The initial story telling with just one person and the audience was really nice to have people open up about themselves and be honest on stage. When we took away the story and just had words and movements it seemed to delve deeper into the emotional impact of their stories. The more time that went by the more emotionally connected people got.

The feedback we got from other classes lead me to believe that they felt fully immersed into our piece. From how we moved the audience around the space, in and out of the circle. Someone even said that they felt like they were tempted to join in the piece and they would have done if they thought that would have been ok and it had not been our piece. I doubt the audience with our parents would have felt this as they are not familiar with this type of work but I'd hope that they also felt like they were part of our piece as much as possible.

This performance has made me re think how I look at experimental theatre and improvisation within performance. I think it can be successful and emotionally draining at the same time. I felt like I had worked harder in this performance then any other scripted or fully devised piece I'd ever done. I think this was because we were constantly being pushed to find something new within ourselves and support everyone in our class at the same time.

Improvisation

Our director made the choice to make the second section of our performance improvisation based. We learnt an exercise called physical riffing. We are going to use this in our performance. We began this by forming a circle and starting a continuous clapping, step beat. Then someone would begin a movement in the center  The idea was to explore different types of movement until they found something which maybe felt dynamic or interesting to watch or maybe had some kind of emotional connection visible to an audience. People began moving on their own then we developed the exercise to have more then one person in the center.

The clapping in the exercise worked as a way of encouraging people in the middle to keep exploring and to not feel embarrassed or alone. When people were in the middle they often closed their eyes. From what I saw I felt like when they did this they really let go and discovered something interesting in themselves. This may have been because they weren't concentrating on how they looked but more on how the movement felt. It was difficult to watch people when they felt self conscious because there was no reason to be. I felt this most when we were told to stop clapping and people had to move without us. This meant they didn't have a beat to work with or a support system.

We are going to use this in our performance by standing in two lines opposite the person/people in the middle, and allowing the physical riffing to happen in the middle. We will continue this for around 8 minutes, but it could be any amount of time depending on how well it is working. From this we are going to going into emotional flocking which we did a few weeks ago. As well as this we will be telling a short story of something that happened to us, then picking out the key words and combining it with an action, then again but just with an action and sounds. Then we will all speak about something we are passionate about.

Moral Transgressions

Moral transgressions are where people violate their own moral codes. Your morals are like personal standards and rules you have for yourself which can shape your behavior as a human being. These can be influenced by your friends, family and personal experiences. Examples could be, not to cheat on your partner or to physically harm another person. At some point in your life, almost all people will break their own moral codes. When we hear stories in the news about people doing horrible things, that break the standard morals of society we can be disgusted and hateful of them.

Many people with traditional or religious views may have more constricting moral codes. Most religions and traditional societies place a high value on virginity and see sex as something that should be kept within marriage. This particularly refers to women. Men's virginity's were not so precious. Part of a moral code with people like this would be to not have sex. In the poem 'The Flea' the man is trying to get a women to break her moral code by convincing her that in a way she already had.

Uganda is known for being the worst place on earth to be gay. But last year they celebrated their first gay pride despite the punishment for being homosexual being the death penalty. Despite how much their society and government told them being gay was wrong and they may have even believed it they accepted it as a part of themselves and protested for their rights. This reminded me of Artuad's idea that we all have evil and darkness inside us. In most youth British society homosexuality is seen as acceptable, of course with many exceptions. Artuad believed that showing the evil inside us onstage meant that people would be less likely to commit the evil things within society. In a way this protest was trying to work in the opposite, to allow people to be themselves, even if they believe what they are is wrong.

As people you want to be accepted by peers, friends and families so often you will go along with what other people in order to do so. Seeing other people in a gay pride protest when you are struggling with being gay yourself may give you some confidence in yourself to maybe break the moral codes of your family or religion or maybe what you once thought of as normal. This is an example of moral codes being broken in a positive way. But this can often work in a totally opposite way. In gang culture peer pressure can cause people to break moral codes of themselves and of the society around them.

The sociologist James Patrick studied gang culture within Glasgow in the 1960s. What he did was known as covert observation. This is where he joins in with the group he is studying and they do not know about it. In this case he needed a way in. The gang leader knew what he was doing and allowed him in. However, he nearly got caught out by other members due to what he wore and him constantly taking a back seat in operations. If it wasn't for the input of the gang leader he could have found himself in serious trouble. There was one incident where the gang were sent to raid a library. They were burning books and demolishing the place. James had the role of look out in case the police came. He saw the gang were about to cause real damage so he called out saying the police were there even though they weren't. He got away with it luckily. The issue with research like this although it is the only way of getting truthful information it has complications. If James was ever to have been caught with the gang having committed a crime he cannot then get out of it by saying he was doing research. In the eyes of the law you are a person who committed a crime regardless of the reasoning behind it. However, in a situation like that people might break their moral codes in order to get information or fit in with the culture.

What we've got so far...

We have decided to perform in 413, in traverse. The audience will come into the room, sit in the dark and they will see to projections on either side of the room. There may be a projection of a video of a man bleeding himself to death. The projections will show pictures of members of the class on them. The audience will have a piece of paper in their hand and they will be told to write whatever they want about the person they see on the screen. We will assure the audience that these will not be used in the performance. However, we will use them later on. This will encourage  them to break their own moral codes and prejudgment and 'being nice'.

Then Sarah and Tom will demonstrate a Meisner style conversation which will demonstrate the development of a relationship from the first meeting, to trust, to arguing, to forgiving and then to loathing. This piece works well as a way of showing a truth which romantic and sexual relationships can hold. I think audience members our age, or our parents age would be able to relate to at least an element of this.

The rest of the class then enter the room and hug them in the middle. Then we find our partner and begin the lustful walk which then develops into the almost kiss. We do this moving around the space then find a still space. We then will have some mating rituals of humans showing. Me and my partner are doing the 'grabbing' ritual of gypsies. This is where the male grabs hold of a girl he wants to kiss and physically forces her to kiss him. This is a violent and patriarchal ritual. Then we go into a humanized demonstration of an animal ritual. We are doing that of a Zebra. This is where the male cleans up their space around them making it look nice so when the females come around they like the space and if they do they mate, then the female leaves.

We then all go into a line with the almost kiss locked, then go into other rituals. We start biting each other  then intertwine like swans, then spit on ourselves to rub our scent. We then smell the scent on the other person. After this section we then go into the section where the two people start kissing and everyone else pulls them apart.

The ideas we have but haven't developed yet is to have some of the skinnier people in the class shoving their faces with food. As if they were breaking a moral code. A group of girls smearing make-up of their faces to cover insecurities. Someone pretends to wee in a bowl and someone else drinks it. Of course, it will only be apple juice.

Our piece isn't using a linear narrative. We have a strong theme of courtship rituals and moral transgressions. We want the piece to focus on moral transgressions and courtship rituals and how the two interlink.

It is difficult to allow yourself to just exist onstage and for a relationship to develop between you and your partner. You just have to allow yourself to look into someone eyes and let go of any awkwardness you may feel. You can't let yourself just connect with another person, without acting anything in this piece and a story emerges. I think this is why it worked so well as an initial performance idea.

The part where we have to spit on themselves is difficult to do. We have been directed to actually spit on ourselves which is a concept people in society would view as disgusting. This is how a lot of us feel. This will be a challenging part of our piece to do. We will just have to try and let go of these feelings towards it and allow ourselves to be disgusting and unattractive onstage.

Lust and Fear

Today we got into pairs and stood opposite them in a line, on the other side of the room. We had to walk towards them, as though we were full of lust for them. As soon as we touched them, we were repelled by fear.

The first time, it felt like what we were showing was love then fear. The second time we did it we had to focus more on wanting to rip someones clothes off, as opposed to wanting to meet their mother. I felt like this worked better when people let go of their boundaries and allowed for the feeling to linger.

Most people I worked with got really close with lust, but not to a point where the audience would believe anything was going to happen, then they would make contact and repel. It worked better when after the initial lust and the contact was made, we stayed close despite the fear. This is because it could show more of a real relationship. People often stay with their partners out of fear, either of the other person or of being alone and many other factors. It felt to me when people repelled instantly that the story they were telling was dishonest. If we were to use this in our piece I think we could combine it with the almost kissing exercise, this would allow people to linger more.

The 'Almost' Kiss

In our physical theatre and workshop lessons we have explored an exercise where we almost kiss people. To the point where you are centimeters from  peoples faces. Then you duck away last minute. We played several different versions with different objectives. The first was where we were in pairs and one person was saying no and the other trying to kiss them. So they would give in for a moment maybe then lean away again. The other person was trying to persuade them but not be too rough.

We then did it where we all moved around the space and when we made eye contact with another person in the room we would lean in towards them, allow the space to linger then move away. At some points it felt like people felt awkward through the experience, allowing yourself to get that close can make people feel uncomfortable. I felt comfortable with most people but I had that security of knowing we were never actually going to kiss. When people didn't let the closeness between their faces linger slightly it felt like the feeling behind it was lost. As though they weren't telling any story with it. If it were to be a performance it wouldn't haven been believable.

The idea behind this exercise could be to explore this idea of 'the chase'. How sometimes the moment before that first kiss can be better than the kiss itself. This works well with our performance as we are looking at this idea of men chasing women. What are they trying to achieve? What happens after they get the girl? After your with someone and the chase is over, do you stay with them or do you decide to move on?

From this exercise we created a small section of work which may be in our final performance of where we are all moving around space almost kissing who we pass. Then two people find each other and really kiss. Everyone stares at them, then they get jealous and try to tear them apart.

Courtship Rituals

In our piece we want to explore the different courtship rituals of different eras, cultures and species. A traditional Austrian ritual is that women put bits of sliced apple underneath their armpits. They then partake in a dance. At the end of the dance she gives the sweat coated apple slices to the man of her choice, if he accepts or returns her feelings, he will eat it.

In Cambodia there is a tribe in the remote regions where when the daughter reaches a certain age (usually puberty age, mid teens) her parents build her a love hut. Various men then can be invited to stay in the love hut for one or more nights until the women finds a man she wants to marry. Divorce among this tribe is almost unheard of, so people must know what they are getting into before they commit.

We discussed the similarities and differences behind modern day and traditional rituals. In some cultures a daughter would be bought by the husband with money or live stock given to the father. Now when you are in a meeting place like a bar, a man may offer to buy a women a drink if they wish to date or sleep with her.

We also looked at different animal mating rituals. Here is a video with some interesting ones:

A strange but interesting idea we could look at is this idea of animals who reproduce asexually. We could compare this with people who are single and alone and trying to find somebody. A piece where maybe we have an animal looking for its perfect mate, and we can link in human emotions to it. Then to find that there is no perfect mate, only themselves to depend on.

Meisner and the repetition technique

Sanford Meisner was the son of Jewish immigrants who grew up in New York. He was born 31st August 1905 and died 2nd February 1997. He developed an acting method based on Stanislavskis method. This is known as the meisner technique. After his brothers death he became resentful of his parents and turned to playing the family piano. He went onto study at Damrosch Institute of Music now known as the Juilliard School. When the great depression hit, his father pulled him out of the school in order to help out in the workplace. He found that the only way he got through it was by remembering the classical piano tunes he learnt at school and playing them back to himself in his head. By doing this he became almost pitch perfect. Later on his life he would often close his eyes when assessing actors performance. He said he did this in order to feel when the true emotions were expressed during a performance or rehearsal.

The Meisner exercise we did in class was a repetition technique. We got into pairs. In these pairs one person would say something about the other persons appearance, something they saw but no opinions. Then the other person would repeat it about themselves. For example the first person would say 'you have brown socks' and the other person would respond by saying 'I have brown socks'. This could be tossed back and forth until one of the partners pointed out another thing and you would carry on like this. At the first stage of this we put no emotion into it, and we were told not to act it. We just let the words transfer from person to person. Then we played it with objectives. Linking it back to our performance idea of courtship rituals the boys were often given objectives of trying to get a girl to admire you or trying to ask a girl to go out with you. This meant the exchange had more substance to it. The purpose behind this exercise was to create honest reactions onstage. The next level up would be to use words from a text or script we were using and throw the lines back and forth like that. Rehearsing using this technique can allow you to develop honest reactions between you and your scene partner. Instead of working out how you want to say your line, you are reacting off of what the other person is doing. This means you are not acting out a conversation but that what you are doing really resembles one.

Jerzy Grotowski

Jerzy Grotowski was born on the 11th August 1933 and died on the 14th January 1999. He was born in south Poland. He was a theatre director who concentrated on his own form of experimental theatre. Much of his work was influenced by religious writings like the bible and the koran. He created a theatre company called 'the theatre lab'. He wanted to create the 'holy actor'.

He wanted his actors really physically fit so they would be able to do anything. He often went on long runs with his company in order to tire them out as well as build up fitness. He wanted them tired because when you are tired you tend to be more emotionally vulnerable  This would mean his actors were emotionally available all the time. We did an exercise today based on his ideas where we ran around the space in a circle for around 10 minutes. I felt energized after and ready to start work.

He wanted to create 'poor theatre'. This was where the theatre was stripped back of lighting, costume and all those excess props. He felt the most important thing was the relationship between the actors and the audience. He used a concept called 'via negativa'. This is the technique of elimination. It is where you get rid of anything that will stop the actors living in the moment. A way of doing this is prior to rehearsals get the actor to face a wall and spill out everything going on in their mind and in their personal life in a made up language. This aims to allow them to clear their heads and begin work with an open mind, not distracted by the outside world. When an actor achieves this moment it can be known as a moment of self penetration.

Grotowski wasn't well know for many actual performances. The general consensus is that in practice he was better in a rehearsal process then for creating effective pieces of theatre of successful plays. 

Antonin Artaud

Artaud was a french theatre practioner, director, actor and playwright. He was born on 4th September 1896  and died 4th March 1948. He suffered with meningitis throughout his childhood, and was given medication. Into his adult years he became drug dependent, and known to be addicted to opium. He became addicted to the substance when he was using it to treat his mental illness, as he suffered often from clinical depression. Despite this, he was one of the pioneers of what we might call today, experimental theatre.

He had a belief that inside every human was a dark side. The side which secretly thought about being a murderer or a rapist. He felt by showing people onstage doing this that it would stop them from doing it themselves in wider society. I think this is the idea that if you see a situation played out and all the possible consequences of your actions whether them good or bad may often stop you from doing the thing you wanted to or planned to do. 

One exercise he would do with his companies would be called 'impossible tasks'. We did this today and it was where we all wrote an impossible task to be done within the room, on a piece of paper then mixed them up and got given a different one. My one was to eat the ceiling. We were told to push ourselves as much as possible. We had to go as far as the boundaries of the room and being in a school would allow. I managed to get up onto a cabinet, touching the ceiling and a section of the ceiling plaster fell into my hand. This is where I found my limit. The idea of actually eating it seemed like a step to far. However, if I was to push myself fully that would have been the next level to go to.

He believed that theatre should be as effective as possible. He did not want to merely entertain but make the audience think and effect their views. In this sense his aims were similar to that of Brecht.  One of his famous sayings about the purpose of theatre was 'not to entertain, nor to instruct - to affect'. His ideas were often to assault the audience. Which seems like a harsh word. What I think is meant by this is that you do not show them something that will distract them from their lives and make them happy, but something that demonstrates this darker side of people he believed in, and allows the audience to question it. This means they may start to question themselves and this side of them, or of people they know. Often during Artaud's time when his work was shown people would just leave the theatre midway through performance. This was a sign of his time and how the theatre was much more 'in your face' then people were used to then. 

'The Flea' By John Donne

As a stimulus for a devising work we are using the poem 'The Flea' by John Donne. This poem is about a man trying to seduce a women, in the 1700s. He is doing this by convincing her that because a flea bit him and his blood, then bit her and has her blood, they have basically already had sex. She is unconvinced and kills the flea. This poem can be related to today. It has themes and truisms that are universal of men and women.

Themes and truisms:

• Men wanting sex, women saying no
• Wanting something you can't have
• No sex before marriage (17th Century)
• Religious Virtues
• Men bullshitting to get women into bed
• Men allowing their penis to control their brain
• Stereotypes of women as being innocent, and not wanting sex
• Sexual socialization of women; society viewing a women who sleeps around as a slut but not a man who does the same thing
• A mans power of conviction when sex is involved
• A person who won't admit when they are wrong

I think this poem can give us a lot of material to devise from. We could stick with this idea of sexual conflict between men and women and have lots of scenes within boy girl pairs. If we didn't have enough boys then create different types of scenes with girls. We could have people in different stages of relationships some married, just got together, been going out for years and the different conflicts they have regarding sex. We could show situations where men are taking advantage of girls and using them, and really talk about why that happens, who's fault it is, and how it feels. We could have these shown in different ways. We could create a physical section showing the conflict between a man wanting to seduce a women and the women saying no. Depending on the different issues we could decide on different ways of communicating it. 

Emotional flocking

How to do emotional flocking

The first level of this you can begin in a circle. One leader begins an emotion or noise, like crying. Everyone else picks up on this emotion and mimics it. The leader can choose when to change to emotion or story. You do not need to remain in the circle. As you develop and make it more complex you do not have to have one person leading but you can allow anyone who wants to start something new. It works best when everyone commits 100% to whatever is happening in the space. 

Level 1

At this stage we just mimicked and reacted to one persons decisions. So if they started crying so would we. You could pick up on the energy in the room without having to look at the person directly. This worked well as everyone committed themselves so what was happening. This meant I didn't feel self conscious of what I looked like or if what I was doing made sense. As an actor is was an enjoyable experience. I felt like I had the chance to go crazy on stage, which is often hard to do. It meant we had the chance to push our sound and emotional and see what happened. It was like an experiment of ourselves. It felt like this could be used as a tool to begin devising some work. The only issue was that the emotion we were showing was fake. We were simply copying one persons ideas and there was no personal connection for each of us. In this sense any performance we created from this would be shallow and have no depth to it. 

Level 2

Instead of just copying and mimicking fake emotion we had to tie in our own emotion to what was happen. Also, we didn't have any one leader, if somebody felt to start something they could. This was difficult because it meant that instead of copying we had to think through why we would find something disgusting, or why we were sad. If you were to use this version of it to create work it would be a much more emotionally effective piece. This version worked as well as the last because everyone still committed to what they were doing. When we did it more of a story began to emerge. Rather than random emotions, people had purpose with what they were doing. At one point somebody started banging on the walls, asking for help as though they were trapped. Everyone picked up on this. Even though we had copied or used someone else's idea it felt like everyone still had their own internal thought process behind what they were doing. We were told that we needed to try and trick ourselves into finding something scary, or disgusting, as a way of developing our own emotional connection. This was a helpful way of working through it but it was quite challenging. The ability to do this will help me to adapt to many situations within plays. 

What does it take to do it well

You have to commit fully to the process. If everyone does this then nobody feels self conscious of what they are doing and are more likely to push themselves. For this to be effective you need to be able to find your own emotional connection to what you are doing. You must allow a story to develop. As this is an improvisation based activity it is important you say yes to everything that happens and not block anyone. Let yourself react honestly, think about your own emotions within the space. This will allow real emotional depth and will mean that if an audience were to watch they would be able to connect with it as well. 

How does it benefit actors?

It can be used as a devising technique. You can begin to develop a story from it which could be interesting to watch. It allows you to work through situations reacting honestly within your company. I felt it helped working through it today as it was our first session with a new group. It started to build up a respectful relationship between everyone in our class. The same logic could be used within a theatre company. It really gave me the chance to express emotion. It can allow you to remember how to let go onstage and push the limits of your emotional expressiveness. 

What is experimental theatre?

The definitions of what experimental theatre is varies between different actors and practitioners. Experimental theatre is theatre which aims to push boundaries of conventional theatre. An art form without limits. Essentially it can be anything you want it to be. Effective experimental theatre, and theatre in general is where the audience can sympathize with the actors emotions. Often experimental theatre can just be a use of cheap thrills to force emotion from the audience. This type doesn't allow for a real connection to be made with the audience and the actors. An effective piece of experimental or if fact any kind of theatre, will communicate what is important about life. This means it will tap into universal truths about the nature of humans, or our society and discuss this through a story, music, movement and many other mediums.

Peter Brooke identifies a triangle of relationships inside a performance. The performers internal relationships. Performers relationships with each other onstage. The relationship between the audience and the performers. All these things are accounted for during a performance and they can all effect the success of a piece.

There is an argument that it is difficult to create a connection with an audience through rehearsals. This is because when a company rehearse there is no audience. I would say that as long as the emotional content in your play, or devised piece speaks from the heart then it will connect with any audience. If through your piece you are examining what people are like or what we find important about ourselves and in life then any audience member who watches it will be able to relate to it. This is why people still study Shakespeare today, because in his plays he taps into the core of human behavior  That's why so many years later we still celebrate his work. Even though Shakespeare isn't who you think of when you think about experimental theatre, it is important to remember him and the core ideas of theatre when creating experimental work. Otherwise you may end up loosing any emotional depth in your work, and resort to cheap thrills and artistic sequences which have no real theatrical value. In experimental theatre I think you can do whatever you want, so long as what you want to do has some purpose, meaning and an emotional message it is trying to communicate.