Week 10 - Group Performance Work

In today’s lecture we introduced our idea to Dan for some advice, we wanted to know if ideas that we had discussed would be suitable for a performance. We were told to go with our Game of Thrones option, but base it more around the themes within the show rather than doing key moments this is because of how popular the show is if we just recreate those scenes, we are not creating any original ideas. To begin creating our piece we discussed themes and words that pop into our head when we think of Game of Thrones, this was an easy task but was something that benefited us a lot in terms of how these word could spark an idea for the piece.  Although we chose to use GOT as our stimulus, Roosa hasn't seen any the show therefore only had a basic knowledge of the show from what other viewers have told her about it, this was also a good thing for the performance as it means that we have varied opinions on it rather than one. 

Here is the list of the words and themes we came up with.

Steph suggested that we take some of these words and add movement into it, to make it look visually interesting for our audience, after playing around with idea we made a scene that starts with the group walking in the space (apart from Roosa) doing the Butoh walk, to create a state of tension and rivalry between us. This also highlighted that we were using techniques we learnt throughout this module.We also used Laban's effort actions to choreograph an small fight scene.

We wrote down our ideas from today’s lecture and what material that we could use for our performance.

We have now created foundations for our performance that we can continue to expand and create a well structured performance. After seeing what we produced in this lecture Dan gave us some feedback which we will take on-board and use to improve our piece.

Week 9 - Lewys Holt

In today’s session, rather than have a regular physical theatre session, we were visited by touring practitioner Lewys Holt, who delivered the session. During the session, we explored things such as contemporary dance and freeze frames before watching Lewys’ performance ‘Of, Or at A Fairly Low Temperature’, a piece that ‘examines being ‘cool’. It mixes contemporary dance with storytelling and comedy to question what is ‘cool’?’ (Theatre Royal Concert Hall, 2014). The session was very useful in relation to our groups devising process as it gave us ideas of what we could add into our piece and allowed us to explore some of the different forms of theatre (such as storytelling and semi-autobiographical narrative).

We began the session by completing a full body warm up, before moving into a dance sequence which included a variation of different movements and levels. It involved us doing things such as pivoting on the spot and crawling along the floor and gradually rising until we were back on our feet again. This was to allow every part of our bodies to be warmed up and practice our flexibility. After this, Lewys made us get into a circle and perform a group exercise that involved us at first passing a clap around the circle. Once we got the hang of that, Lewys then proceeded to add an action rather than a clap to the game, which reflected a struggle, like carrying a heavy object. We all began to copy Lewys and complete a relatively similar action to the one he had done. We then broke out of the circle and started to move around the space while still performing these actions, until we all began to gradually fall to the floor until the last person with the power was standing. I believe the purpose of this task was to allow us to explore group dynamics and how we effectively use the stage space.

The next task we had to complete involved us creating a series of 3-5 movements that reflected specific words, such as ‘badass’ and ‘cool’. Once we had completed this, we were made to get into pairs and perform our movement sequences to each other. After this, Lewys made us add a word to each movement in our sequence that related to the topic ‘nature’. The reasoning behind this was because Lewys wanted to us consider the effect of adding random words to a sequence of movements and see how the audience reacted to it. A majority of the performances that were showed came across in an amusing way because having added words such as ‘wildlife’ and ‘leaves’ to my sequence, I found this added a comical effect to the piece.

For the final exercise, we again repeated the process of adding words to a sequence of movements but rather than using a random topic, we based it off of set topics Lewys had given to us. For my piece, myself and my partner based our movements off the topic ‘Coronation Street’, and created a set of moves related to the programme. This included using different levels and gestures to recreate notorious parts of the show. I found this task interesting because it made me consider how to use my body to create different things and how I could do this effectively (I recreated one of the characters and one of the businesses that are reoccurring in Coronation Street).

 Reference List

Theatre Royal Concert Hall (2014) Lewys Holt (UK) presents: Of, or at A fairly low temperature. Available at: http://tickets.trch.co.uk/single/PSDetail.aspx?psn=125980 (Accessed: 17 April 2016).

Week 8 - Mime

During the lecture, we looked at mime and slapstick comedy and ways in which we could use them physically. 

We started the lecture with a warm up like we usually do but this time, it was a lot different to the full body warm ups which we do on a normally weekly basis. The warm up we did was the Charleston dance, which is a highly physical dance that contains a particular sequence of steps made to a rhythm. The Charleston became famous during the Ragtime/Jazz period and it was said that the steps originated with the African Americans who lived on a small island in Charleston, South Carolina. It became most prominent during the 1920's, which was when most performances of the dance started to arise, travel and develop further all across the globe. We learnt a short sequence which lasted for about 3/5 minutes. Most of the moves were quick and repeated but very easy to learn once we got into the rhythm. Here is a video of the 1920's Charleston to get an idea of what we did. Also attatched is a video of our own, admittedly, not very good version of the Charleston.

We then moved on to a character development exercise which required us to use physical improvisations to create a character from scratch, starting with the feet first. This exercise was used by both Jacques Lecoq and the physical theatre group Complicite. We had to find two characters with different physicality. For example, Rhys' first character was an older, miserable character that would move slowly with his feet turned inwards, whereas the second character the Rhys created was more graceful in terms of movement, with a poised, upright posture. We then did a smaller exercise to create a story with two character played by the same person that never meet. This was quite comical and similar to slapstick. There was no speech involved, with sounds to emphasis the moods of the character being portrayed. Some people chose to do theirs in pairs which turned out to be slightly more challenging as we found it harder to bounce of one another as we had to think on the spot without conferring what we wanted to do.

We then did an extra exercise of Lecoq's which was a cafe sketch. This was where three characters would be in a scene at a cafe and character A and B would be sitting together and character C would try to flirt with character A, whilst character B is oblivious to what is going on. After watching all of the groups, even though they were slightly different, they all had the same comical effect. We took inspiration from the following video (0.00 - 0.27 secs).

During the session, we also learnt about several theorists who have influenced mime and slapstick over the years. Here is a list of practitioners and how they influenced mime.

• Jacques Copeau - He removed all stage lights to concentrate on the physicality of his performances. He was known to use physical games and improvisation exercises to get actors in the right frame of mind when performing characters. He was nicknamed the 'father of modern theatre'.
• Etienne Decroux - He preferred to use poetic force rather than imitating life. He would rather create more abstract characters than characters based on somebody else.
• Jean Louis Barrault - His work was influenced by the 'total theatre' theory which was an artwork that followed Richard Wagner's 'total work of art' or 'Gesamtkunstwerk' theory. No single discipline would gain more weighing than the other. He would use all areas of performance such as dance, music, text and visuals and have them at an equal presence. Here is an example of his work:

• Jaques Lecoq - He believes that play is important in training and taking time using trial and error when developing characters. He believes that clocking the audience is paramount to any mime as you have to get across those comedy moments. He says that when theatre loses it's way, it resorts to mime to renew itself. He also introduced 'disponibilite' which is a state of discovery and physical and emotional/psychological openness and are symbiosis with each other. He also said an authentic and profound ensemble cannot be complete without complicity as it requires constant attention to rhythm and tempo. He came up with the four different types of mime, which are as follows:

1. Pantomime - mime the word to communicate.
2. Figurative - the actor becomes the environment or re-enacts the environment (mimicry).
3. Cartoon - similar to silent movies and slapstick comedy. e.g. Charlie Chaplin.
4. Storyteller - combined narration and mimic interpretation.

We then saw a few videos which showed different types on mime and how effective on stage it can be. David Armand performs songs with no speech, just physical actions. I found that it was more enjoyable to watch as the comedic value is seen more through each action of a word. We then saw another piece from Buster Keaton called 'Scarecrow'.

The final activity that we did during the session was creating a mime to a well-known film. The film that our group chose to re-create was West Side Story as all of us within the group knew it well and we found it easy to break down to pick key scenes we wanted to physically create. We also felt that it was easy to effectively show different emotions such as anger, sadness and love. The scenes we chose were scenes that were full of emotions so it came across when adopting our characters.

Here is a few pictures from the session of our group during the final activity:

References:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/978278105591242/1006916702727382/?notif_t=group_activity&notif_id=1460203872721061
http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3chrlst.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR32Ths4WX0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfkWC3zCmxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgAAzj82moY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUpAcPAipDA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U2DKKqxHgE