Sunday, July 6, 2003

Posted by raymon montalbetti, 7/6/03 at 10:08:04 PM.

Performance Studies

. . . the articulation becomes more exact . . . Schechner in Performance Studies An Introduction identifies Grotowski's Vertical Transculturalism - Barba's Horizontal Interculturalism - Brook's Transnational Theater - Gómez-Pena's Hybrid Culture . . . the distinctions are clear and provide a way of describing work which may touch these spheres . . . here are his definations to be used in the context of performance studies . . .

Intercultural: Between or amoung two or more cultures. Intercultural performances may emphasize the integrative or the disjunctive.

Transculturalism: working or theorizing across cultures with the assumption that there are cultural universals - behaviours, concepts, or beliefs that are true of everyone, everywhere, at all times.

Vertical/horizontal intercultural research: Vertical research seeks original or true universal performaces in the convergence of past cultural practices with individual deep experiences. Horizontal research locates transcultural or universal truths in similarities among contemporary cultures.

Hybrid performances: Performances which incorporate elements from two or more different cultures or cultural sources.

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Tuesday, May 20, 2003

POLITICAL THEATER

"Drama begins where politics and the civic and direct involvement leave off. It inhabits a different territory.

, , , And leave drama to the really dangerous world - the world of the imagination.

. . . And the irony is, all theatre is political in a profound way. Why? Because it is subversive. It can, without resort to the vote or the gun, alter climate, change opinion, laugh prejudice out the door, soften hearts, awaken perception. Of course it can, because humans learn not by precept (the exhortations of so much political theatre) but by imprinting. Yell at a child to be quiet and you are teaching him to yell.

. . . In the end, drama is, as Laurence Olivier said, “an affair of the heart”. It is to do with insight, at warp speed; it cuts to the quick. And it is - can be, should be - very potent. As René Descartes wrote: “Feeling is thinking.” And needs all the help we can give it."

(Guardian Unlimited | more ... Guardian Unlimited | a continuing series on political theatre)

Tuesday, April 8, 2003

Partner Work/ Script Proposal

I was raised
by an elder sister,
and we lived
on and on.
This is how
she raised me
in a little grass hunt,
and we lived on.

During this time
sounds of some gods fighting
could be heard rumbling
throughout the land.
Many gods dying,
countless gods dying
continued to rumble
uninterruptedly.

Now finally
I grew somewhat older,
and these sounds
began to make themselves heard:
atop our grass hut
spirits of the yankur
from time to time
would come rumbling.
Going out to meet them,
my own companion spirits
would send forth their rumblings
atop the grass hut.
Gods of the same family,
they would prolong
their rumblings together.
What could be the reason for this,
I wondered.
So
I spoke
these words:

"My elder sister,
you who have
raised me will,
tell me, I pray,
the story!"
thus did I speak.

She appeared
to be awe-stricken
to an extreme.
Her forehead
quaked with fear.
Many sparkling teardrops
did she shed.
After a while
this is what she said:

"I would have told you
after you were a little older.
Then,
even if you killed me,
my heart would have been content
even after death.
Nevertheless,
since you wish to hear it,
I will tell you,
but it would be dangerous
for a mere boy to act rashly
when hearing a story.
Do not act rashly!
This is the story
I have to tell you."

(Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans - Donald L. Philippi) )

Monday, April 7, 2003

Partner Work/ Phase 2

Session 1: Sunday, April 6, 2003
Focus - moving towards character
Beginning with voice & element:
(Rod the stick)(AeRan the silver jug) Each works alone establishing body/voice connetion towards character.
Text: The Epic of Kotan Utannai from (Songs of Gods, sons of Humans - Donald L. Philippi)

Session 2:Tuesday April 8, 2003
Focus - meeting in voice
Each rolls towards object establishing vibration & entering voice
Full sustained voice & many meetings

Session 3:Friday April 11,2003
Focus - finding the meeting Physical energy exchange & contact exercises.
Character meets non-character(shape shifter)

Session 4: Wednesday April 23,2003
Focus - establishing contact Full physical contact/ no voice

Session 5: Thursday April 24,2003
Focus - Text Work Full open vibration to working with obstacle and moving into text with meeting. Poetic Narrative emerges:

buried
just beneath the surface
voicing past darkened songs
the ancient dust and ashes sister
broken waits whatever comes

approaching
brother listening the skyward way
brought to his knees
by earthly whispers
like an archeologist brushes aside
depths of anger and despair
seeking what hasn't happened to happen

tenderness reveals
mercy fragmented utterances
parsed into
blind and deformed invisible hand witness

the warrior shock breath
stillborn turns

Session 6: Saturday April 26,2003
Focus - Bringing objects to character meeting Text, chararacter, physical memory, contact & all the enviroment of the past work.

Phase 2 ends.

Tuesday, April 1, 2003

Partner work AeRan & Rod

Session 1: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 Establish beginning (the space and centering) Free Improvisation Song exchange Contact Improv. Terminology: impulse

Impulse digging the well & finding the source. . . two people in the empty space touching the elements of impulse through body and voice . . . moments of contact . . . song . . . pause . . . follow . . . drink from the well . . . the water is fresh . . .

" And now, what is impulse? 'In/pulse' - push from inside. Impulses push from inside. Impulses precede physical actions, always. The impulses: it is as if the physical, still almost invisible, was already born in the body. . . . impulses are the morphenes of acting. " (Grotowski in At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions by Thomas Richards.)

Session 2: Friday, March 21, 2003 Focus - Exchange begin with repetitive gesture exchange and transform Vibration exploration Terminology: reaction, response, intention

[Sunday, March 23, 2003 Individual session with AeRan working on transformantion of movement.]

Session 3: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 Focus - Body/Voice connection begin with gesture and organic sound full exchange followed by transformation ending with physical impulse

Session 4: Thursday. March 27, 2003 Focus - Giving physical impulse begin with gesture/organic sound exchange - transformation - physical impulse - sharing creating the living action

Session 5: Tuesday. April 1, 2003 Focus - Sharing the action begin with strict exercise: switching between mirror/delayed mirror/pose/contact followed by gesture exchange & impulse giving with opening the moments of sharing.

Session 6 : Friday. April 4, 2003 Focus - Discovering the territory begin by preparing the space with materials (cloth, cattails, sticks, basket . . .) Active meditation to work with elements and finding place & relationship

terminology: convention, stereotype, archetype tradition & ancient/archiac

Sunday, March 2, 2003

. . .the artist/the soul of the artist/what it is to be human. . . a hazardous pilgrimage beyond the moment of resignation . . . an individual and yet universal meditation on the theme of living in a world of stress, doubt and peril . . . a symbolic expression on the perception of lonliness - and the inextinguishable hope for an existence beyond bodily death . . . a redemption . . . . a ressurection . . .

When you don't have this dying and becoming. You are only a sad guest on the dark Earth. - Goethe

Resignation Redemption (screenplay by niki, kristin, matthew, jeremy, anna and andrea)

INT. STAGE - DAY

Two actors on stage rehearsing a scene from Dracula. Half painted flat behind them being painted. Director off-stage.

ACTOR (playing Dracula, full emotion) The children of the night! As you say, Mr. Harker - six wolves. Listen! The Director howls for Wolves.

ACTOR (stepping out of character) There's going to be a real wolf howl, isn't there.

DIRECTOR (voice exasperated) Of course. Please continue. Stay in character. The Actor fumbles with the script just finding the lines, reading, then mumbling them and towards the end slipping into character.

ACTOR Mmmmm. Come now. There are many things you must tell me tomorrow - of England and of the estate there you have purchased for me.

ANTAGONIST (playing Harker) Ah yes.

ACTOR (playing Dracula with full intensity) The estate is called . . . . (long dramatic pause) . . . Carfax, I believe.

ANTAGONIST (Playing Harker quickly replies) Yes, that's so.

ACTOR (playing Dracula fully engaged now) But now, I will detain you no longer.

DIRECTOR (side-coaching) Try it with an accent.

ACTOR/DRACULA I vill detain you no longerrr. You vill find your rrroom in rrreadiness. DIRECTOR (side coaching) Sinister now.

ACTOR/DRACULA (over dramatically) And I advise you not to leave it during (sinister laugh) the night.

DIRECTOR Not so much this is not a melodrama.

ACTOR/DRACULA (frustrated and angry) Accent. Sinister . . . too much . . . I give up . . . (throwing script in the air) . . . I QUIT. Papers flying everywhere.

INT. STAGE ENTRANCE - DAY

Door slams. Actor runs in carrying a mirror, watch, books,binders, agenda and heavy backpack Constantly stumbling and dropping things in haste. Reaches the stage and drops everything. Agenda lands open and a messy schedule of scratched out and replaced times and dates is displayed. Actor rummages through backpack looking for something and pulls out papers throwing them about till at last finds a stapled booklet. A script. As the script is pulled from the backpack it falls apart. Papers flying everywhere blowing across the stage transforming to silver, surreal foil.

INT. BACKSTAGE - DAY

Actor curled up into a ball in a corner.

ACTOR (Despondent) I can't do this. It's just not who I am.

ANTAGONIST (with authority) You've got to. You've done it before. Snap out of it.

ACTOR (looking up) You don't understand. Papers ripping, garbage swirling, dishes smashing.

ANTAGONIST (pleading) You're an artist it's in your soul! Ripped papers reassemble, dishes repair, garbage is sucked back.

ACTOR (Long deep breath. Inhale . . .hold it . . . exhale.) Scream

INT. WINDOW - PITCH BLACK

Tape of voices and collage of imagery. STRANGE RASPY VOICE Give up - it's useless you'll never make it.

ACTOR I can't do this. STRANGE RASPY VOICE Jump! Jump! Tiny spot of light magnifies into blinding light which then focuses to rooftop.

EXT. ROOFTOP - NIGHT

Actor on rooftop looking down with one foot dangling. STRANGE RASPY VOICE (very faintly like the whisper of the wind ) Jump. Actor jumps off roof. Antagonist running to roof edge eyes wide biting lip shouts.

ANTAGONIST NO! Cut back to actor looking over the edge in defeat. Antagonist stands behind both looking tired and defeated. Antagonist sits down and grabs the actors elbow motioning to sit down. The two sit and lean on each other. A chorus of dismal, lifeless people walk up from behind them and pass by. All assemble on the edge of the rooftop, hands on their sides falling one at a time.

THE END

Sunday, February 23, 2003

Spring Awakening/Summer of love is clearly a structured work and in performance the director has the power to create a montage oriented to you watching, and through this montage, to capture your attention and tell you something . . . nevertheless there are moments where this function of the director - to direct the attention of the spectator, the associative flux - is as if given up: as if abdicating from this position . . . what happens if one lets an "action" have its natural development, even in a situation that up to that moment was adhering to a theatrical logic? . . . at some moments during Spring Awakening/Summer of Love (SA/SL) this abandoning is attempted . . . as an experiment to let go and see what happens . . .

questions: . . . what happens . . .

[preamble]. . . the working premise seemed: it's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening sexuality . . . it can also be confusing, disorienting and painful . . . awakening is like the crossing of a frontier - one step and you are in another country . . . the eye of the cast of SA/SL reveals a deep fatalistic pessimism . . . isolation, self-pity, numbness . . . creative sexual energy is fast running out . . .what remains is its self-generating energy for destruction . . . SA/SL is a hybrid that combines a variety of performance conventions

[traditional response] . . .the vignettes/numbers are either mundane, elliptical or opaque . . . and though thematically related the connection is obscure . . . most involve sexual repression . . . in one or two instances, images reappear, and previous events are referred to, but for the most part the only consistent link is a dubious one: the lights come on, the curtain is pulled, the blindfold removed, the door opens, (an awakening) . . . at best there were promising theatrical devices yet each felt a little anti-climatic and what was achieved reminded me of a phrase by Kate Bligh, "What was achieved in every case was the banalisation of the dramatic, rather than the dramatisation of the banal. Perhaps this is what Jerzy Grotowski meant by 'post-theater'." . . .

[the process] . . . SA/SL is incomplete . . . now if the nature of the approach demands an ensemble and rehersals require not a preparation for the opening but are for the actor a terrain of discoveries . . . what happens . . .

[speculation] . . . SA/SL acknowledges our shadow, the personal unconscious.

"Jung called the shadow "a moral problem which challenges the whole ego personality." The complete personality is composed of light and shadow. Primitive thought defined a man that cast no shadow as a demon - and we're surrounded in every age by the rankness of the virtuous. The strain of a life spent portraying excessive goodness tends to exaggerate the darkness we all shelter and defend."(Dressing Saint Sebastian by jessica kardon)

. . . what happens . . . the work under "touristic" hands wallows . . . i can only refer to a previous statement: open lesson

Saturday, January 11, 2003

. . . finished working on Pinter's Mountain Language with students . . . a plunge into the language of silence . . . the silences shape the dominant ideological power . . . questions haunt with so many unspeakable, yet knowable answers . . . too terrifying . . . utterances beneath the breath . . . please stop it . . . why is it so easy to speak this playlet and so hard to continue the performance research . . .

Monday, December 16, 2002

. . . the open lesson . . . acting students open their 'work' to an interested public . . . the question "what is the lesson?" hung in the air as the students bravely, though for the most part, presented ill-prepared material around the theme Hospitals . . . what is the actor's research? . . . the actor's processes? . . . what is theater? . . . questions which circulated as the action began . . . two hours later very little remained but shallow wallowing in pools of dissipated energy . . .

. . . most of the material hinted at the compellingly humane which unfortunately resolved into the hopelessly mundane . . . there was movement but no developed study of the movement . . . no attempt to test limits or boundaries of space&time; whether physical, imaginary or theatrically . . .

. . . the students exercised a presentational stance - posturing and playing for an audience who might catch much of their 'in-joke' humour and pathos . . . the overlong improvisation could be excused if at the core was an act of self-penetration . . . too often the humour was cheap, gag-like and self serving . . . at the expense of rather than serving the material . . . lines were lost and sloppily delivered . . . bold actions dissolved . . . the collective voices were weak and unsupported . . .

. . . occasionally a deep and rich moment would surface in both the traditional and more experimental . . . two moving monologues from classic world theatre touched the power of the word incarnate . . . a powerful étude between a man and a woman mesmerized with a precise and engaging, meditative, ritualized rhythm of understated life-or-death urgency in a landscape that was beautiful but chill and depersonalized - the actors had skin, bone and a sinew of their own, a subtle spin . . .

. . . the lesson learnt seemed that without careful, sustained, and vigilant work students will lapse into bad habitual practices, will lose the point of concentration, may miss the focus on the eternal act of creation, betray their craft and stray from the way of the actor . . . the lesson learnt was that the educated imagination demands a rigorous self-sacrifice and deep study . . . again & again . . .

Friday, November 22, 2002

Greystone Theatre 's Loveplay by Moira Buffini skims tantalizingly along the surface . . . the ideas have a breadth and depth which pique the interest but what remains is nothing more than fragments - unfullfilled & unrequited . . . a horrific scene of brutal rape haunts a place and begs to be remembered . . .

. . . linear time cannot erase the past despite all the future clever intentions and inventions . . . the actors seem to struggle in the darkness against a misplaced, unresolved environment where the music is loud and contrary . . . often there is a tension full of expectancy . . . a pregnant wife cries out in anguish to her unfaithful husband that she is so happy . . . two men, school friends, meet again and the unexpressed bond so long left unspoken embraces them both . . .

. . .the characters touch and kiss . . . over and over again the kiss of betrayal between two nuns, two actors, two men, two love children of the sixties, two . . . and, at times, humour . . . still sex is such a topic where laughs come cheaply . . .

nudity does not reveal rather numbs and this, to me, was the clue . . . the nude student actor plays numb to the nudity . . . in order to protect ourselves from the simple intelligence of feeling, more than often, we humans numb ourselves . . . and then the numbness becomes accepted as the truth . . . we play in the shallows not feeling so as to ignore the pain . . . what is love?

. . the archeology of love demands a courage to play at the nerve ends where raw feeling lives . . . at the heart's tendril. . . where is the place?

. . . where is the place?

Buffini invites us to locate this not only in the body but in some specific space . . . to transform place into a haunting, eternal quest for that unspeakable union, the moment of falling 'in' love? the moment of physical orgasm? the power of everlasting love? . . . the actors speak clearly and articulately the lines about this . . . the words circle around like moths around a flame not daring to touch . . . dare to . . .

Thursday, October 31, 2002

. . . Enemy of the People . . . overheard an audience member leaving the theater . . . "What an important work. Every student of history, in fact, all of us should be here watching!" . . . the ideas came at us with breath-taking speed . . . each scene moved relentlessly as the actors shaped the characters around the face of political intrigue . . .

. . . the student actor created a Mayor revealing a depth of understanding the multifaceted aspects of the deceptive, deceitful & misguided leader in a performance well beyond her years . . . Dr. Stockman transformed from a determined visionary full of hope and conviction to a beaten victim wrestling with his own futile belief in truth & ended somewhat bravely though certainly not a heroic figure . . . the supporting cast delighted with clear, articulate portrayals . . . varying the shades of response to the 'truth' as the 'truth'/whose truth shifted beneath them like the sands of time . . .

. . . the stark and paradoxically colourful set provided a stimulating environment which burst to life at the exquisitely choreographed and wonderfully executed newspaper scene . . . the music haunted as the lighting seamlessly shifted from moment to moment . . . what was particularly remarkable, especially for those familiar with the Ibsen script of 1882, was not only how Charles Marowitz's adaption strengthened the core ideological questions with a montage of flashbacks but how the cast deconstructed the characters, switching gender and dividing voices which generated fresh, new insights . . .

. . . so much was attempted in this production that it's only failing was that it deserved to be seen more than once to be fully appreciated and/or fully grasped . . . the grandmother, the great matriarch, lurked sinisterly around the action never quite allowing herself to be pinned down . . . did she support the Doctor or was she just another of the selfish . . . representing only the past . . . the past desperately desiring to preserve a legacy . . . the weak weasel of moderation played impeccably by the chairman was balanced perfectly by his strident and aggressive cohort . . . she delivered her lines with passion and sincerity . . . Stockman's family was a tight unit that clearly displayed family values . . . the press played the duplicity of objectivity to perfection . . .

. . . all in all a fabulous evening . . . thank you students for sharing a classic . . . no, much more, thank you students for breathing life into a classic of world theater . . .

Directors notes:

These are turbulent times. It seems that everyday somewhere humanity is placed on trial. Henrik Ibsen articulated the ideas of Enemy of The People in 1882 and Charles Marowitz adapted them anew in 1982 and we look at them again in 2002. An individual, one man, stands up against his brother, the establishment and a whole town when he discovers that the very core of the town's existence, the health spa which is the economic life of the town, has poisoned water. Set on a stage of black and white labels meant to deliberately evoke Brecht, another great theater thinker of the past century, the cast and crew welcome you to witness the story.

"A man like Dr. Stockman who has been continually battered by Establishment forces does not emerge victorious; more likely he is methodically destroyed . . . The reward for committed idealism is not the accumulation of inner strength but a one-way ticket to oblivion." - Marowitz. Counter-Polemics.(from the forward to Enemy of the People)

Monday, September 2, 2002

Mortal Man meets Death The Room of Decision

 Black lady lies invisible beneath the chair of decision, death≠s messenger with the task to escort souls to the afterlife.

 Mortal Man enters. Walks slowly & deliberately towards the chair - last breath.

The characters contact each other through breath.

 Black lady breaks into the room, cracking through into the realm of the visible and reaches out for contact.

 Mortal Man first hears then sees Black Lady.

The characters contact through sight.

 Black Lady is pulled away from Mortal Man to a gateway of the afterlife. She has violated her task by attempting to talk.

 Mortal Man, as a child or newborn to this afterlife, watches and is curious about this light cloth. Examines where it begins, where it goes, touches it . . .

 The White Lady emerges & introduces the game of hide & seek. A mother calling her child to come.

 Mortal Man hesitates then begins to play - even when he hides among the living (the audience) he is found.

The characters contact through play.

 The White Lady coaxes Mortal Man to rest his head on her lap and then shocks him with the voice of terror.

 Mortal Man experiences the full pain of the physical self collapsing.

The characters contact through voice.

 The White Lady prepares the body for the afterlife (washing ritual)

 Mortal Man rises looks to audience & consciously decides to stay in the world of the living or to enter the afterlife.

We do not die because we have to die: we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary. - Artaud

Oh,
I
know

I too shall cease and be as when I was not yet, only all over instead of in store. That makes me happy, often now my murmur falters and dies and I weep for happiness as I go along and for love of this old earth

that has carried me so long and whose uncomplainingness will soon be mine. Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate, and drift through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me.

A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought a ton of worms, I believe it. --- Samuel Beckett in From an Abandoned Work

Friday, July 26, 2002

Many a great director (Brook as example) and ensemble have faltered on this work & even more have chosen to write about what they have seen and experienced ... i join the slide into obscurity & so I add to this endless work of sisyphus ... shakepeare on the saskatchewan 2002 ... all worked hard to chronicle the narrative with clarity, pace, energy and a sense of purpose - to share the shakespeare story trippingly well ... filling the space in front of us ... the actors presented the complexity of action with a fresh & direct simplicity without denying the richly textured language ... the feel of the performance, though in a setting removed from contemporary time, felt amazingly today like ... Hamlet searched the stage with a neurotic passion ... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern patterned the stage with a cold, suspicious rhythm ... there was a stroke of fortuitous brilliance in casting one actor as the Ghost, Player King, Gravedigger & the final words ... all worked, even when moments flattened into mere illustration, to drive the narrative line ... risks, at least what seemed like risks were attempted ... opening the play with a collage of voices penetrating our overplayed use of 'to be or not to be' & allowing ritual time & space for the burial of Ophelia ... so ... so ... it was only in the unrealized act of imagination, beyond the mundane denials, where I saluted Hamlet for his passionate, heroic, negation of everything that causes us to be dead while alive ... Hamlet is one of the great examples of the imaginative retrieval of a life & circumstance gone beyond repair ... a torch through the dark nights of all our souls ... yes there was madness ... but not the tortured darkness which tears the body into ten thousand notorious aspects from which a new body will be assembled in which you will never again be able to forget hamlet ... this night will fade & be forgotten ...

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

. . .my heart leapt with amazement at the talent that flowed in and out of the two studios in the past two weeks. And as I looked around at all the campers I realized that it was not age, degrees, or experience that marks people, it is simply ones ability to reveal their pure untouched soul, and you chose to share that with me. . . - Sara Sutherland. An instructors experience http://drama.antville.org/stories/92924/#99156

Friday, June 28, 2002

Attended two performances this past weekend: Shakespeare's Macbeth & Three in the Back Two in the Head by Jason Sherman.

I lament as each work was seriously flawed . . . flawed in intention & in the playing . . .the use of a theatrical language where actors speak their lines motionlessly and without consciousness and thus lose all meaning . . .

I lament. . . a ruthlessly dead theater . . . Sartre further demands a theater:

" . . . dedicated to self-examination and the exploration of greater depths." & "In essence, there are three forms of rejection in the contemporaty theater: a rejection of psychology, a rejection of plot, and a rejection of realism of any sort." (Sartre. Myth and Reality in the Theater - 1966 Lecture published in Sartre on Theater p.155)

. . . to explore situations fully and authentically the creative actor must rise above simplistic notions of character psychology and approach life nurturing sources . . . not the banal realistic representation that hoists attention to the self-display . . .

. . . creative actors (see Chaikin. The Presence of the Actor.38) . . . actors able to collaborate with directors, writers, musicians, dancers (all practitioners of the stage) & actors who care about the whole theater event they are engaged in must not reduce theater language to unconscious signifiers of sound nor must they use their skill in shaping sound & language to reduce the action to some conversational tale . . .

. . . shakespeare understood & celebrated this . . . some consider through experiencing & studying shakespeare our modern notion of becoming human is invented . . .

the theater will not be used to gain recognition . . . to ignore the subterranean forces is . . . well perilous . . . living . . . work of the theater, in the theater, for the theater . . . living

(April 2,2002)