Evaluation of performance

I thought the final performance went really well and fluent throughout the duration of time within the performance. On the day we decided to include 2 more scenes within the performance which I thought looked very effective and creative especially on an experimental point of view. The first scene we included was the roots/tree scene where each group had to get to the centre of the stage as an ensemble to form the roots to this tree. The actual name of the talking trees are called Ent’s and this were a massive part of The Lord Of The Rings as they conveyed to the audience nature fighting against industrialisation. This scene was very cathartic as we as a group created this incredible and majestic tree and then hacked it apart which then allowed people to separate from the root position and into their other groups. This whole scene gave a lot of focus and attention to the centre of the stage. The other scene we decided to include was the ending which involved the whole cast exploring the space and saying a certain phrase which they had recently used in either one of their groups.  

I thought the transitions between each scene were very impressive and precise as they looked very effective and interesting. I thought the transition from being a root of a tree to then separating into our own groups was very good and looked effective. I thought this transition looked very interesting as we all had a certain purpose when walking to our groups. We was all effected by the hacking of the root which then effected our walk making it look more interesting and fascinating for the audience. Also within the beginning scene with Tolkien and C.S Lewis I thought the transition looked very fascinating as there was a lot going on at that time. After we had done our alphabetical box we started crawling in a creature kind of way as an ensemble to our individual groups. I thought that all the transitions within the performance was not dull at any point as I thought they all had a purpose which made it look more interesting and intriguing.   

During rehearsals we was told by our director to quickly run up to an individual audience member as a soon as they come in and say “stay out of the light” and direct them to a position which is out of the light. We had to be a creature similar to ‘Gollum’ in The Lord Of The Rings adapting to his physicality and voice. I thought this really worked well for our performance as it gave the audience that imaginative and creative input towards the performance. It is also emphasising how important the lighting is within our performance and what effect it has on the characters which they saw. It’s representing that the light is being a gate for a fantasy world and reality.  

As our piece was immersive theatre I straight away thought of the company ‘PunchDrunk’ who have done a lot of immersive theatre productions such as ‘The Tempest’, ‘The Firebird Ball’ and ‘Sleep No More’. I thought our performance was very much like ‘PunchDrunk’ as we made our audience members wear hoodies at all times during the performance. Also we were interacting with the audience and making sure they wasn’t in a group. This would allow the audience to get out of their comfort zone and therefore be able to explore the different performances going on in the space more freely. This is something ‘PunchDrunk’ are known for doing as it allows the audience to experience more things within the performance and I believe this is what we done.

I believe one weakness within the performance was the audience involvement and participation. It was quite noticeable seeing that most of the audience members were on the side of the stage instead of on the stage and exploring the space. I believe we needed to interact with the audience members a lot more than we did as, I think we needed to persuade them in a more physical and vocal way on stage to then allow them explore and experience the space and see different performances and not just from the side. We did have a leaflet that I thought did suggest to the audience to explore the space provided as it said “not all who wander are lost” and “find your own way – be led by intrigue”. However, for some reason the majority of the audience didn’t really get this message therefore, I think this is an area where we need to improve. I think we needed to grab them into the space straight away so that they knew they were supposed to be there.

 

 

I believe the whole cast adopted a serious and professional approach to the performance as it had some quite distressing and real life circumstances scenes involved. I think one person I thought really impressed me within the performance was Lillian. I thought she was very professional and sensible with her character choices and I thought her physicality really suited her character. I thought her physicality with the alphabetical box looked effective and you could see she had a purpose and included effort with that scene.

I thought one of our achievements within the performance was to create an atmosphere and I believe we certainly done that. As there was 4/5 performance's going on at once with each performance being either quiet or loud the atmosphere on stage was amazingly unexpected from an audience perspective I believe. Also I think we were very successful from an Artaud perspective as we used a lot of taboo subjects like disabilities, sex, abuse etc. Therefore we explored many taboo and cathartic subjects within each performance and we tried to make the audience feel uncomfortable when watching these performances happen. So hopefully by showing the audience these uncomfortable subjects through theatre they will realise that it’s really ok to talk about these things and to not shy away from them. I also believe that we from some extent were quite engaging to the audience as I believe we got emotions from them at some stage.

I believe that this type of theatre is very important as it explores subjects society doesn’t really like to talk about and just shies away from. I think immersive theatre has a massive part to play in the future and in modern society as, it is a wonderful type of theatre to experience as you can take a fantasy world like ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ or ‘Narnia’ and compare it to modern society or other historical content in the past and explore important subjects in today’s society. Immersive theatre allows people to experience these types of subjects from a different perspective and see a different story and understanding towards that certain thing.

What influenced Antonin Artaud to write the things he did?

I believe that Antonin Artaud lived a very interesting, fascinating and depressing life. He suffered from drug addiction and spent many years in a mental institution. I think that as a practitioner Antonin Artaud was very successful and experienced many theatre productions and screen performances. I think he is a very experienced man within his profession as an actor, director, playwright and poet. I believe that the experiences he gained throughout his life gave him the ideas and creativity to direct another play, to write another poem, to act in another show and even write another script. Antonin Artaud believed that theatre should be able to communicate to the audience and also represent reality. Therefore, I believe that Artaud came up with the ideas from the experiences he gained in his life.

At a very young age of around 10 year old Antonin Artaud experienced a lot of death for such a young boy. Both his sister and grandmother both died while he was relatively young and that must have come as a real shock to him. For any young child experiencing death they must have gone through a lot of sadness within their childhood which would then have only caused his depression a get a lot worse while growing up. Therefore, as he has had such a deep and dark childhood he has probably started to get familiar with them type of things which probably inspired him to write or performance them certain things.

Because he experienced at a very young age such drastic things such as death he probably believed more in reality and realistic theatre rather than melo-dramatic and over the top theatre. Antonin Artaud believed that theatre should be horrific and disturbing and very uncomfortable to watch. This was massively influenced into his ‘theatre of cruelty’ as he didn’t want his audience members to shy away from these types of subjects he was exploring.

 

Emotion (anger and happiness) exercise.

Within this exercise you had to stand in a neutral position with your eyes closed. You would then have to visualize and remember the most recent moment that you were happy and angry. Once you have found the rawness of emotion you would access that emotion through the stomach and would only be able to release it through your physicality and voice. Then you would work your way up with a scale from 1-10 with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. 10 would mean that either emotion (happy or angry) would have to be at its most extreme moment this means being very loud with massive over the top gestures. While 1 means that either emotion would have to be at its lowest moment and that you are quiet and have very little gesture within your movements.

I believe that this exercise was very beneficial in allowing me to relax and not be self-conscious of myself. While undergoing this exercise I discovered that once I was less conscious of myself I began to contribute and engage fully with the exercise. During some parts of the exercise when releasing the emotion it actually felt quite natural and very relaxed afterwards. From my own experiences of doing this exercise I found that portraying anger was a lot easier than happiness. I believe this was due to the anger emotion being a lot bigger and important to me personally therefore, I was able to express that emotion with a lot more passion and desire than the happy emotion. 

While undergoing the exercise with the rest of the group while my eyes were closed I started to get a bit curious and worried especially when doing the anger emotion. As I was unable to see what was actually going on around me plus I could hear all these angry and depressing voices. 

expectations of this assignment

I believe that this topic and type of theatre we are currently studying is going to be very exciting and interesting. I believe that there is going to be many exciting things within this term like the idea with the Lord Of The Rings movies and also especially as there’s going to be a lot of experimenting within our theatre. I am looking forward to working with The Lord Of The Rings themes and characters as I found it quite fascinating and very interesting while watching the films. However, I would prefer to do a more nailed to the floor piece of theatre but, I think this will be a challenging topic but a challenge I will be cable of achieving. I think that throughout this term there is going to be a lot of physical theatre related into this topic/type of theatre. The practitioners we will be studying and exploring are Antonin Artaud, Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski. These practitioners sound very interesting within the theatre industry and I look forward to learning new and exciting techniques and methods from these experienced practitioners. I think that throughout this assignment it will entail a lot of creativity through different body languages and movements. 

By the end of this assignment I hope to become a more creative and imaginative actor. Learning new and exciting ways of telling stories through the movements of my body and the different sounds I am able to produce through my voice. As a theatre practitioner I hope to develop my skills in devising a piece of theatre. I also hope to become more confident within my own acting by experimenting and trying different and new ideas with my acting. I also think that I need to be a lot more structured within organising my work, therefore I hope by doing a blog that my work will be a lot more presentable and organised. Also within my blog I hope to use more things like visual images and links that have good research and are relevant to the practitioners we are studying or theatre we are creating.

 

Inspiration from sentences and words

Throughout the two days of devising we looked at songs and poems from different extracts from The Lord Of The Rings. We had to either pick a song or a poem that inspired us in creating a piece of theatre that is related back to England. Once our group had found a song we started analysing it, highlight certain words and important sentences that inspired us into creating a piece of theatre. These specific words and sentences influenced us as actors into creating our piece of theatre. Many of us had different interpretations on certain words and sentences however, we decided to create our piece around a mental asylum. Lizzie, who was in our group, remembered a documentary about a mental asylum in England that kept drugging their patients so that they kept thinking they was crazy themselves.

We decided to choose this song from the extract we was given.

‘All that is gold does not glitter’

‘Not all those who wander are lost’

‘The old that is strong does not wither’

‘Deep roots are not reached by the frost’

‘From the ashes a fire shall be woken’

‘A light from the shadows shall spring’

‘Renewed shall be blade that was broken’

‘The crownless again shall be king’

 

When analysing this song there was many things that stood out for me such as the sentence ‘not all those who wander are lost’. From just that one sentence I got a lot of interpretations and ideas on a story that could become a theatrical piece. Straight away from that sentence I thought of hope, ambition, desire, dream, and aspiration. I started imagining a man who had lost all hope but then suddenly he regained or earned back his honour and pride. Because we are exploring fantasy world’s I wanted to try and include king, queens, orc’s etc.

Our theatre piece was about a mental asylum that kept on drugging this patient so that she kept thinking she was crazy, very much like the documentary Lizzie was discussing to us about. However, in our piece we explore the loss of hope and how that affected the character mentally and physically. The doctor/king controls the patient through drugs and mental health issues caused by the drugs. The patient then over powers the doctor/king and kills him but because she is so mentally and internally ill she doesn’t know how to react or what to do.

When watching the other performances I notices that almost all the other groups decided to use the same song from the extract. I didn’t think it was by accident that we all choose the same song however, I believe the song had a lot of importance to it within the words and sentences that nearly everyone decided to go with it. Therefore, I found it even more interesting watching the performances as it was good to see different interpretations and ideas from the same song. I really enjoyed watching everyone’s performances as they were so imaginative and creative it was really enjoyable. Some groups decided to use taboo related themes that was quite theatrical while other groups decided to include a song in their performance which was very fantasy like.

Differences and similarites between Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht and Konstantin Stanislavsky

Each three of these practitioners wanted their audience to experience something different and unique, something they haven’t experienced before. All three of these practitioners have different types of theatre, such as, Konstantin Stanislavsky, who believed in naturalism and realistic theatre and also wanted his actors to connect psychologically and emotionally to their characters as well as physically. Stanislavsky always looked at a certain theatrical experience that was real and especially comfortable for the audience however, he wanted to create similar and relatable experiences through his theatre for the audience. However, I believe that Antonin Artaud is quite similar to both Konstantin Stanislavsky and Bertolt Brecht’s style of theatre and acting.  Within the acting side of theatre Artaud and Stanislavsky are very similar practitioners who want to achieve the same thing and, that is to access the emotions towards both the character and actor.

I believe that both Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud share similarities within their style of acting and theatre. When researching and experiencing some of Brecht’s and Artaud’s style of theatre straight away you could notice that both practitioners were quite melo-dramatic within their style of acting. I believe that this was possibly easier for both practitioners to convey their message across to the audience as it was more emphasised and accessible within a melo-dramatic piece of theatre. On the other hand, I also discovered that both their types of theatre are quite uncomfortable within an audience’s perspective, as an audience member you find both types of theatre difficult to watch. However, both practitioners share some differences within their own style of theatre and acting, such as, Antonin Artaud’s type of theatre is quite personal and looking at the details of humanity. However, Brecht is trying to represent humanity and what we stand for within society and the world. Also both Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud wanted to convey different messages to their audiences. Antonin Artaud wanted his audience members to come away from his plays/shows with a confused and bewildered manner however, later in a short period of time realise the message the performance was trying to convey. Whereas, Bertolt Brecht required intelligence from his audience members and he wanted something going on with the brain that was connected with his shows. However, most of Bertolt Brecht’s theatre shows were trying to convey political messages.  

The effect that lighting can create within a performance and total theatre

 Within today’s rehearsals and devising sessions we looked at how the lighting would be useful and effective within our immersive pieces. We blacked out the room so that the only lighting we could see was the one we purposely set. We watched all the other performances from the other groups including ours with the lighting and darkness. I can honestly say that I think the lighting was very effective and successful within each individual group performance. From an audiences perspective with the main lights off and only a couple of specific lights on you could hardly see the actor’s faces as they were blacked out. This definitely affected me personally as it impacted and influenced my illusion on the performances. Just from the blacked out faces I definitely felt an evil and monstrous presence on stage and that was just all through lighting.

I thought the lighting looked very fascinating from an audience’s perspective as it made the piece look more effective with some of the characters .I thought the front and back lighting really worked well with effecting individual characters and performances. From an audiences perspective you can see from the front and back lighting massive and gigantic shadows emerging from the floor and walls. I believe this looks really theatrical as it impacts the characters and performances in highlighting the presence of evil or good from that certain character on stage.

 

 

I believe that the lighting can have important effect on individual characters as well depending how the lighting is shown on that character within the scene. With the picture above you can see Lucy in the chair and the light is shining on her. I believe this will look very effective as it will highlight and emphasise the importance from that character in that scene.

 As our theatre performance is going to be immersive theatre I thought it would be a good idea to have more lighting on different group performances at a certain time. This will then signal the actors to either get louder or quieter depending on who has the most light on their individual group performances. If you haven’t got that much light shining on your scene then that would signal to the actors that you have to be quieter. Whereas if another group performance had a lot of light shining on their scene then that will signal to the actors to get louder.

When we watched these group performances the physicality from each actor was very creative and imaginative. As we are doing Tolkien’s fantasy world of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ you could easily see the physical reference from actors trying to physicalize goblins and orcs. I thought they were very well portrayed as I started visually imagining these horrific creatures coming to life. They looked very interesting and effective towards that group’s performance.

Within today’s devising sessions we got familiar with the alphabetical box exercise we did at the start of the term. Again we had to spell our name from the different angles of the alphabetical box while adding tempo, effort and caution to our movements. While we are undergoing the alphabetical box exercise Tolkien and C.S Lewis will be discussing the stories the invented.

During today’s devising/experimental session we created a scene where Tolkien and C.S Lewis are at a pub that a group of writers go to and they talk about their individual stories and fantasy worlds they have created. We decided to base our scene around the quote from peter Brook who said “a man walks into an empty space, there is your beginning”. This basically gave us the idea of our setting as, we only have 2 chairs and an open space for Tolkien and C.S Lewis. The only things we as audience members were able to see was the chairs and shadows which made the piece look very theatrical. Then while they are talking about each other’s fantasy worlds (The Lord of the Rings/Lion Witch and the Wardrobe) they created the rest of the actors start performing their own individual alphabetical box. We decided that within our performance this was going to be the beginning of the show.

When rehearsing this scene it felt very ritualistic, enchant and sacred it was like something is happening all over again. It also felt very cathartic as it allowed you as an audience member to psychologically engage with the scene through the open expression of strong emotion. I thought that this scene definitely worked as I liked the simplicity of the piece being very calm and simply but then having so many meaning towards the piece like, the importance of both characters and the contrast between both fantasy worlds they created.  Once again the lighting had an impact on this piece as I imagined the lighting being the gate way into entering the fantasy world. Therefore, the lighting allows you to include more interpretations into the piece. Again linking back to the simplicity of there just being silence for about a minute was very effective as it highlighted the importance towards the rest of the performance. As both characters enter the stage in a very slow tempo, as an audience member you can feel the importance of each character as they have effected and influenced our performance pieces. I thought the piece looked really beautiful as there were just two chairs in an empty space and we managed to create a scene from just that setting.

 

During today’s rehearsal we spent a lot of time cutting and adding bits from our group performance. We have decided to take out most of the dialogue as it will allow the piece to look more theatrical and effective. I believe this will allow the audience to focus more on the characters and less on the dialogue within the scene.  We have also included important things towards our characters such as giving them a purpose in doing something, even something simple like walking. We as a group have also decided to include a lift when Lillian is giving birth and I believe it looks very spontaneous and neat when doing the lift.

Total theatre is where some practitioners and directors believe that all the elements within a theatre should be considered equally important. These things vary throughout the whole theatre as they could be things such as sound, lighting, visuals, movement, text etc.