Physical Theatre Blog: Week 8

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:

Pantomime - mime the word to communicate.

Figurative - the actor becomes the environment or re-enacts the environment (mimicry).

Cartoon - similar to silent movies and slapstick comedy. e.g. Charlie Chaplin.

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: