Artaud

We have now started to learn about Artaud and how he used a different style of performance. This is my favourite kind of drama to act out of all that I have learned about so far. Artaud would like to make performances that would make the audience experience quite an uncomfortable reaction to the play as it often involves uses all of your senses. He uses two main methods of acting; One called Total Theatre and the other called Theatre of Cruelty.
Theatre of Cruelty involved having the audience feel uncomfortable and make them unleash their unconscious responses. Artaud believed that everybody had a hidden dark response inside them that would never show due to the civilisation of the person. He then made this kind of theatre to allow people to feel this emotion as they watched or experienced his performances.
Total theatre had the actors use as much space as possible for their performance and would often be performed in strange places like air craft hangers or barns. This gave a lot of space for the performance to take place in. The audience would not be seated in just rows like they normally would be. Instead the audience would be scattered around the location leaving lots of space for the actors to roam around in between them to mess with their senses. This breaks down into even more specific methods he used. Extreme movement would be used to exaggerate the movements of the actors in an over the top fashion to really make the audience see the emotion in the characters. He would also use a thing called universal language to make sounds or noises without specifically using speech to emphasise the emotion or feelings of the characters. Finally he would use soundscapes to set the scene without there being a literal scene by using sound. This could be like our lesson where a thunder storm soundtrack was used to set the scene in the middle of a storm without having to use backdrops or props.
After learning all of this, we were able to have a 5 minute trial trying to use some of these methods before the end of the lesson. Our group managed to get a pitch black room where we banged metal to make a sonorous ringing sound, shook platforms for a rickety sound and made grunting noises to freak the audience out. While doing this, we would poke the audience unexpectedly to give them a shock because they couldn't se us.
In the next lesson, we focused more on the soundscape. We did an activity as a class where we had to make a thunderstorm without the help of technology and mostly using only our bodies to make the audience. We whistled to start to make the sound of wind like the calm before the storm. Then we tapped the chairs we sat on to make the pitta patter of rain slowly getting faster and faster until we tapped our feet on the floor to make it sound like the rain was getting heavier and louder. We rustled paper and clashed chairs to the floor to make the sound of thunder. I was told to just listen for the second time we did it, rather than to take part in making the noises. It was really strange how, although I knew how all the noises were being made, it still sounded a lot like an actual thunder storm. It was quite impressive.
Finally for this lesson we had to do a small performance in our groups. The performance was to show a psychiatric hospital so we did our performance about a girl who could see ghosts and needed help. We sat the audience on a tiered rostrum facing one another with our performance happening in the middle. We had someone under the rostrum to grab at people legs for a shock while shouting like a ghost. Someone and I played the ghosts that whispered and stared at the audience. We whispered how we died and that we needed help and the girl was the only chance we had for help. Finally we had the girl who controlled the torch showing us to the audience. We had it performed in a pitch black room so the only source of light was the torch. The grabbing at people legs was unexpected to make the audience shocked while the whispered and the girl claiming she needs help because she hears voices made the audience uncomfortable just like Artaud wanted. The only thing that we needed to do to improve was to make it longer and include more soundscaping work.

Frantic Assembly - Beautiful Burnout

Lesson 1
It was our first lesson and I had just been told I am working with the same partner from last time to do this work. I was looking forward to this as I like this kind of drama and my partner usually works hard so it was going to be a good performance. We got told that the script we were going to be learning and performing was beautiful burnout. This is all about a boxer from when he was young and signed up to be a boxer, to when he became a professional boxer until he gets hit by a car and has a career stopping accident. From there it is about the recovery process however the scenes we had to perform were from when he was a child and how the coach trained him to be the best. We spent a few minutes reading through the script and stating to one another a few ideas for specific parts of the speech to act out to but these were just basic ideas. Nothing was written down at this stage because we just discussed the few ideas we had in the lesson. After that though, I believe the lesson time was wasted due to my partner messing around doing a Scottish accent as the play is set in Scotland. Instead of then decided who will say what line or who would be what character, nothing else was done so for the next 2 days, I had nothing to learn at home we didn't assign characters.

Lesson 2
In the second lesson, my partner was ill so rather than practicing some of the performance ideas, we just annotated the script with most of the blocking ideas we had but this left many blank spaces on the script we had to fill in later as we just ended up standing there to the audience just saying our lines with no movement. Due to his illness, we just decided to focus the lesson on learning some of the lines and writing down ideas on the script of where and when to move, and what style we should do it in. (Like chair duets, shift round and through etc.) I could tell at this point that our performance was going to fall behind in the class so I decided to try and get some more done in our spare time and free lessons but my partner went home ill and nothing else could have been done that day. At least at this point I had lines to learn.

Lesson 3
This was the lesson were the teacher was not in due to his illness however the lesson was after school and I wanted to stay for the lesson even though there was no teacher, just to get more practice. I asked my partner to come up to the drama room but instead he said he was needed in music for the drama production. I let him go there and went home to learn my lines because he said he was needed to learn songs but I later found out that he left not long after I did. It was just an excuse not to practice. This annoyed me but life goes on and it was just one lesson.

Lesson 4 and 5
I spent the hour trying to do as much as I can for the performance, because at tis point, I still hadn't acted out and practiced any of the script. We just had ideas written down that should work in theory but still hadn't actually practiced. Every time I tried to practice anything though, my partner would stay focused for about 5 minutes then just not block anything and would just stand there reading the script. There was no effort from him to learn the script in his spare time because he still didn't know any of the lines. Rather than working on a scene until it was finished, he would work on the scene a tiny bit then just stand still saying his lines then just move on to another part of the script. The movements we had were either really basic or quite scruffy with lots of pauses and gaps for no reason. Yet he just wanted to move on. Near the end of the lesson, we discussed what song we were going to use in the scene were we do the quad exercise. We decided on a quad exercise because the character repeats his words quite a lot so we decided to make it a quad exercise and take turns acting to the song what the movements were. Once we had got the song in mind, we tried it with about 2 movements before my partner said it was good enough and moved on. It clearly needed work as we only had 2 movements out of 8 for it yet he didn't want to work on it. The only movements we had were jumping to the beat of the song (Which we chose to be Wipe-out) and punching on certain beats. Then my partner got distracted by picking the song, even though we already agreed on what song to use and slacked off for the last 10 minutes. He really needed some motivation but he obviously wasn't in the mood to work at that point. This was starting to get extremely annoying due to his lack of effort. This was the case for both lessons and nothing properly was rehearsed except for the 1st page of the script.

Lesson 6
My partner finally realised at this point how late into the rehearsal stages we were and he was quite motivated at this point. This may have been  because he missed yet another free lesson to practice because of another silly reason and this was our last lesson before we had a technical rehearsal and then the marked performance. He also skipped on a few other free lessons because he couldn't be bothered so this was our last real chance to practice and get some of the script actually blocked. We started by improving our very 1st scene by adding more shift, round and through movements to what seems like the prologue. Then we worked on the quad exercise movements too add more punches, dodges and general movement to the second scene. This improved it a lot and increased the flow of the scene. Next we worked on a chair duet and this scene was a little awkward to rehearse due to multiple characters speaking but there only being two actors. (Me and my partner). We decided to have it, so that if we stood up, we were another character but when we sat down and got back into the rhythm of the chair duet, we were back to the original characters we are playing as. I though that this was quite a good idea and should look effective. Finally we added another shift, round and through scene to show a boxing match. Rather than just acting out the boxing, we did the movements and to show a punch, I would move my partner's hand to my shoulder. To show a dodge, I would swivel though, under his arm placed in a punch position. These moves, although they were basic, when put together were quite effective to show a boxing match without an actual boxing scene. I have to be honest though, I am not fully sure I remember all of the movements we practiced and we still had another 2 scenes to block but that is what happens when your partner leaves it until last minute to get motivated.

Lesson 7 and 8
For these lessons, my partner went on holiday and he will be there for another lesson yet. When he gets back, we will have a quick run through but I am worried about it. I can't fully remember what to do at the moment and I doubt that he will remember much after going on holiday for a week. For these lessons, all I have done is watched other people perform their scripts and then practice my lines due to more of his absence. I really don't think this performance will get me a good grade but we will see when the time comes (being only a few days away).

Porphyria's Lover Chair Duet

We continued with our chair duets however this time, we had to change them a little bit so that they could tell part of the story, 'Porphyria's Lover'. We at first had to just remember our performances from a week ago. Once remembered, we had to add little changes to our performance to tell part of the story. Two lines to be exact.  The lines we chose were 'In one long yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around'. To incorporate this into the duet, my partner waved his hand above my head as I lay in his lap to represent him grabbing the hair. He also spoke the first line as he did so. Then I sat up, moved his hand of my shoulder to my other, then back and then back to his lap. This was to signify the wrapping of the hair three times. At the end of the lesson, he performed all at once and each got up, in our groups and partners, to watch the other groups perform. Then we would sit back down and continue our looped performance. The only problem was my partner couldn't focus again when we sat back down. He then made a small mistake and rather than just move on, he decided to chat to me about it. Then rather than keeping a straight face, he decided to keep smiling at me and not perform properly. Considering it is a chair duet, we both need to be focused and he really let me down.

Continuing With Shift, Round and Through

Today, we had to continue with the shift, round and through work. At the start of the lesson, we had a small warm up by doing the quad exercise for 10 minutes. I like the quad exercise even though it is a lot of work. It is a good way to teach how to be independent in work because you have to be able to do your own movements when it's your turn. After that we continues with the same work as last time. Due to more people being in the class this time and have a few people away ill, some of the groups had to change. Our group however didn't have to change so we were able to get on with our work from the start. Because of this, we were also able to use the same choreography as the last lesson giving our group more practice time because we didn't need to use the time to make a new performance piece. After rehearsing it a few more times, we decided to always look in a certain direction each. In our group, we made it so that we always looked at the same person all the way though it. This began giving the piece a small story. Then other groups when performing experimented with different speeds and performing it over a different song. This too gave the performances a small story to follow.

Shift, Round and Through

Today to start our lesson, we did an exercise of literal exercise. This was called the quad exercise. we had to stand in lines of 4 people and bounce on the spot to the beat. Next we had it arranged to that every 7th beat, we would turn and face the back of the room. Then on the 7th beat again, we would turn to face the front of the room all while still bouncing. Then we had to be able to do it in turn to the beat so the person at the start of the rows will turn then stop, then the 2nd and so on. After that, we repeated all of before but each time we did it, we removed 2 beats meaning that each turn, the twist came earlier and earlier. This gave us good rhythm practice which is helpful in performances to keep the pace. It was also quite fun to do but also tiring.

Next in the lesson, we were trying to practice doing the shift, round and through activity. To shift around people you could easily step around them. What would be better to do though is shift your partner to the side and step forward. Then you have both stepped around them and included a shift. To go through somebody seemed easy but we were told not to just go between our partners legs. This meant all we could do it go under their arms. Although this seemed quite basic, it was challenging to do something different. We managed to twist under our partners arms or because I ended with a group of 3, have someone pull you under the arms of someone else. When we were working on our piece, we got told to include a lift. This was a good way to perform a shift. The way that we were told to do it was to have a person clench their arm over another person. when the other person stands up straight, the person will be held in the air as their arm will be hooked on their partners shoulder when clenched.

At the end of the lesson my group performed and we were told to speed up the pace every time we finished a sequence. By the end of the lesson we had performed it many times at a great speed which improved the way we worked because we didn't have to think about our movements, we just did them as a force of habit after having performed it many times before. Each movement also looked well as there were no gaps in between each movement due to the increased pace.

Chair Duets

We had to make basic duets on chairs the way that frantic assembly has done them. Our task was to make a few movements to each other in partners while remaining to stay seated. This was to music but didn’t necessarily need to have rhythm. At first it was a little strange doing this work as there was initially no story to tell. All we had to do was to create movement that could repeat itself in a loop without having to stop. It started quite strangely as we had to move our partner's hands as well as our own and having to get really close together made it whole thing awkward.

Another thing that made this strange was how there was originally no emotion to it. As there was no story, there was no emotion until we changed a few things later in the lesson. We started by doing some basic movements and it was a little uncomfortable doing so as it involved sitting close to one another and using each other for the movement. After a while though, I got used to it.

Late in the lesson we learned that slowing the performance or speeding it up can have an effect on what it looks like to the audience. Eye contact with one another also did the same thing. With this knowledge, we then decided to try different things with our piece until we each found a position that is both practical and comfortable for us to use in the cycle of movements. I ended up looking away from my partner the whole time. As for the tempo, we decided to slow our piece down a little because it looked to wooden otherwise.

Finally in the lesson we learned to make some of the movement look more realistic by adding a few shrugs of the shoulder and more realistic looking falls rather than just leaning forward in the chair. This made our performance look more naturalistic even though it was all in a slow pace. For a finishing touch to our piece, we decided to make some of the movement faster than others. The pace was mostly slow with the falls from the chair faster to show it is actually a fall forward and not just a lean forward. The music used for the performance was a slow piano which made the piece look like a romance scene however when the song was changed to a rock song, the performance looked like it was a forced relationship. The perspective can change the outcome of a story to the audience even though there wasn’t really a story there for our performance.

In the next lesson, I tried to direct a performance rather than be in one. This was the most strange of all of it because I was unable to act out what I wanted to happen. Instead I was telling people what to do but I was unable to tell if it was uncomfortable for them as I wasn’t acting it out. They too felt strange because it wasn’t their ideas being used even though it was their performance. If anything it was awkward.