LESSON 4

Performance workshop 

Today's we made the bar and created different stories and scenario of what can happen in the bar:

- post man brings box 

- Someone one picks somethings out of it and then makes a story

- Then 5 people make a story out of the situation 

-The bar is called " The Tastes of Waits"

Circus Street freaks 

Fire boy - Edgar

Lizard kid - Hannah

Delainey-  on a space hopper 

Acrobatic boy - Tobi (twins)

crumpit - razzkay (twins) 

Mute girl - shanay 

Forced entertainment 

Forces entertainment are a experimental theatre group that focused on work to do with live art, video and digital media , as circus street freaks, we can use their ideas and concept to help us stage our promenade for the show. 

We thought of using there idea of art to paint our faces as clowns and interesting characters that we believe we can use to help bring our characters more to life for the promenade. 

Museum of mental health

The maze 1953 by William Kurelek

William Kurelek was a man with mental health and his life and how he has related over the years of his relationships and family members is what this piece of art work is meant to be. He felt that other people's relationships are being manipulated by other people, therefore, this resulted into them doing, bad things. People that tend to have mental health, may use the arts as a way to escape how they feel and to find peace in certain situation in their lives. The picture below exaggerates the life that William had and how he had to deal with these certain situations and sometimes how he couldn't deal with these situations. The maze shows that William constantly felt like he was in his own little world because the people of his time didn't really understand mental health so no one understood how he truly felt.

Out of the maze ,1971 by William Kurelek

Out of the Maze is a piece of art that William Kurelek did later on when he got the help that he need and when people truly understood what mental health was and how they could help people that had mental illnesses. This picture named Out of the maze dramatizes how William Kurelek felt later on when people understood him. He felt a sense of freedom and communicating with everyone that he loved and knew because they knew how he truly felt and how the mental illness effected him,

This is a piece of work that I saw and thought was very effective because its shows how mental patience may actually feel because most of the time they do not really have anyone to really talk to because not everyone understands them. The picture shows that even though all three of this girls all have mental health and are around each other , they still feel alone and emotional disconnected from the rest of the world.

It is interesting that the artist used children instead of adults, this could suggest that mental health for him/her ripped away their child like joy and wonder and just left them to be scared and confused with who they were and who others around them were because the characters are around each other , however, they still give off a hint of being alone in their own thoughts or maybe feeling alone physically as well as emotionally.

Bryan Charnley called Sleep

This is a piece of work by Bryan Charnley called Sleep made in 1988. This is a painting of a figure sleeping beneath a window through which swans can be seen flying. The key message of this painting is that it is meant to celebrate the power of dreams and the existence of dreams and reality.                                                                                                                                           What I like about the piece is that when looking at it, you can really feel the idea of freedom that Bryan Charnley is trying to elaborate, this is effective because as a piece of art it actually makes you feel something, This piece of art can be really effective because in our production since we are working on the theme of mental health or madness , we could use this vibe of freedom in the play to show a moment where the character or characters actually feeling free and understood.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

This piece of art work is called Despair. I believe this picture is effective because it made me feel something, i felt like the person that drew this picture felt like they was not "light at the end of the tunnel". what I really like about this painting is that it makes an immediate impact with whoever that see it, it makes anyone question their fears or even what the picture is really about.

I think that this picture is a little insight into how this person with mental health felt inside and what they may or may not of found hard to live with. This picture suggest that there is no happy ending but just darkness in life and confusion. The foot steps in the picture is quite interesting and effective because it makes us ask questions of who's foot steps are those and where did they go? etc.

Lesson two exercises

Lesson Two 

Research On Tom Waits

Tom Waits is a american blue singer, actor and composer , who was deemed to have mental health because he did things and enjoyed things that were seemed to be weird and not "normal", for example, He enjoyed going to funerals and just watching and he ended up having a great laugh because he found them so funny the way people were crying so intensely.

Research On Mental Health & Madness 

The way society has place us , if you are someone who thinks outside the box , you are seen to be crazy or mentally Ill , therefore, as artist we should not conform to society and just be our self and not care. Theatrical practitioners like Artaud, peter Brook, Grotowski were seen to be mental ill because they decided to embrace madness and mental illness as a good thing instead of the rest of the world who have decided  

to "be mad is to be bad ".

Warm up game - Duel in the dark 

You have to find a newspaper and hit the other person by exploring the space around you while blind folded. We are doing this to think what is a performance? & what is a show? , does it inform? , does it entertain ?etc.

In the game there is a chase , and everything is a chase scene and conflict in the game. There is a bit of dramatic irony in the game because the audience knows and the actors doesn't do it make it more interesting for us. The relationship between the audience and actors is very intersecting because when the audience know before the actors know something it makes it very involvement in the game and it feels like it will never be the same because it's a type of organic nature of a rehearsal space. 

While playing this game you need to make sure that you are very spacey aware of the place you are working in. The main objects of the game is Simplicity , honest , truth. This game is very beneficial because it helps us as actors to become very spaciously aware and listen more to our surroundings more and react off that instead of what we see. 

Moments 

1) When people are so close to the paper and just miss it that is a very dramatic moment 

2) The audience knowing things that the actors didn't really know 

Warm up game 2 - Newspaper Game 

This game is when we put two newspaper on the floor and a person has to jump over it and there was a little type of danger that oh he may step on it and this makes us emphasis with Edgar because we wants him to win. This makes us fill on edge because when the actors is seemed to not know what they are doing , it makes us feel like we don't know what we are doing and this makes it interesting and intrigued. We like danger as a audience , however , as actors we need to make sure it's quite controlled. Edgar hesitated and he was unsure so we were unsure and it was a very theatrical moment because he breathed in and took time at the last newspaper and it seemed to be seen as he felt like he was about to jump off a cliff etc. This is a effective game to play as actors Because it helps us to play with the audiences emotions and it helps us become emotional connected to the character/person, I strongly feel this was a effective exercise because it helped me to understands the tension that a character can build for the audience. 

Traipse Dance 

It's was really gentle and beautiful because each person look like they had there own story and the connection of the music and actor made it more darker and meaningful, this is effective because it makes the Traipse Dance more engaging to watch and it make it more understandable for the audience to strongly believe how the person feels through the use of their body actions.

Lesson On The Three Practioners

Artaud the practitioner 

In the workshop on Artaud we played a game to help us get into the savageness of Artaud methods and to try get more out of our own comfort zone & go beyond what we will normal do to keep us on a creative mind set. We used his method of savageness to show a emotion of joy/happiness,sad,angry & excitement. The aim of the game is so show the emotion selected for example, happy , however, you had to make sure you were seen to be more happy than the person before you. This was challenging at first because we realised that we had to work as a team and build up the emotion from the beginning to the very end, moreover, Artaud uses workshops like this to help the actors/performer to work more and become stronger as a Theatre company.

Artaud methods are effective because they teaches us that it is not all about how you look while doing theatre but it is truly about how you feel and that is what will truly make a good and effective type of theatre to be watched. 

Peter brook the practitioner 

In the workshop on Peter brook we played a game with emotions, in which 5 people in the class go to one side of the classroom and the rest of the class goes to the other side and sits down and watches them. Then the 5 people chose a emotion to present and a body part to show it in and then they make sure the rest of their body is neutral and relaxed except for that one body part showing an emotion, for example,I chose the emotion anger and showed this in my hand by rubbing them together and constantly showing a fist and then the class guessed anger because they saw that is the only part of my body not flowing with the rest of it. This game was effective because it helps us as actors to use more physical movements to show emotion , instead of saying how we feel , we can show it, therefore, making our work more creative and intriguing to watch.




Grotowski the practitioners

In the workshop on the Grotowski we ran around the football field & beside outside theatre block because Grotowski main methods in theatre is to wear out his actors in the rehearsals because it helps them to become focused and for actors to bring out Untapped emotions. After we did this we talked about how we felt and surprisingly I felt very calm and at peace with my self as-well as the people around me. Grotowski does this technique to help his actors forget about the world they come from and everything about them, resulting into them only caring about and concentrating on the work that they are doing at hand. As an actor i think this is a very effective technique because after doing the exercise it go me very calm and ready to work on what we were planing to do in the lesson.  

The task of us running around was very relevant because it was a key ideal of Grotowski to make his actors tired to make them , emotional connected. This was effective because after I finished running around I felt very emotional drained and this made to feel certain emotions for different exercises, for example, we walk around as a characters and it was easier for me to show the certain emotions of the character after doing Grotowski's theatrical exercises we did. 

The three practitioners and their work

The three practitioners and their work 

Artaud the practitioner 

The theatre of cruelty and pain, cruelty means strictness , diligence , never giving up , irreversible. 

Artaud was mental ill and spend most of his life going in and out of hospital. He believes humanity does not change even to do with are back grounds, under the skin we are all the same and should be treating equally because everyone is the same. 

Artaud may idea was the idea of man being a savage, for example if the world toke away the rules that they have put into place , we will be free and become the true savages we were meant to be.He used theatre to show society's positives and negatives. 

Artaud is trying to show us how savage we truly are and how we need to embrace that  savageness we own and how to be pushed to the extreme to truly expose what we truly are like. Artaud wants to push the boundaries and think outside the box in a creative way through the idea of cruelty, pain and mental health. 

To Artaud words are not enough to show the story , therefore you need to push it to the extreme. Artaud believes that they are should express modern life and emotions. 

Total theatre - the heighten means of which we achieve things. He feels that modernised human beings have always chosen to start using their mind straight away instead of their body or an emotion. For example , we think oh I want to look good so I'll do this or this etc. 

Peter brook the practitioner 

Peter brook is very hard to define. He creates a very define type of theatre & talks about his 4 stages of theatre that he uses in his work. He strives to understand what theatre is and defining what different types of theatre can give and influence because of him being influenced by so many different types of theatre. Peter brook is influenced by Europe types of theatre as well as international types of theatre that he takes and uses to add to his type of theatre.

He does commercial theatre , which is drive by the need of theory and formulas ,repetition theatre. He is interested in the variety of audience and actors and their relationships and theatre that does not have that is known deadly theatre. Deadly theatre are like referred to things that are lost their artistic values and are just in it for the fame or money.  To be deadly doesn't mean it is dead , it is alive ,however, it is not alive in the right way. 

Brook the theories 

The categories of theatre 

- Deadly

- Holy 

- Rough 

- Immediate

Deadly theatre 

The one thing that is particularly depressions about deadly theatre is that it is pretty much alive and well. To be deadly doesn't mean it is dead, it is alive but in the wrong way. The fact that it is struggling along , however it contains one element of theatre , a theatre which is deadly but contains one aspect of hope. deadly theatre is about commercials , inner man , introspective, etc.

Holy theatre 

Holy they are is about giving expression & feeling to mans holy soul. Brooks believe that holy theatre is something that no one will be engaged with it because it doesn't speak to enough people. A theatre limited to its self, It is to narrow and to limited. No one tends to understands that type of theatre. 

Rough theatre 

It is the most vital theatrical form , it relates to political theatre , similar to Brecht techniques it aims to try change theatre in modern day. Rough theatre is popular theatre , a they are that doesn't happen in a formal they are building. It is the source of the Renaissance in theatre today. It is also known as the opposite of holy theatre, it is so popular theatre. 

Immediate theatre

Theatre when actors are living in the moment and are In touch with their own creative. Actors are constantly in the moment as middians , translating feelings and oppressions to the audience that are carried along in the moment. 

Jerzy Grotowski the practitioners

-Jerzy Grotowski is a theorist Theatre Director as well as a well know theatre practitioner. 

- He was born in south Poland,Rzeszow in August 1933.

- He was influenced by religious books , bible , karan etc

- He set up his polish company , called "the polish lab ". It suggest that his work is experimental theatre because the title refers to the experiments and lab work. 

- Theatre that was protraling real life on stage , nothing exciting is what his work came from . He believed more in theatre showing a form of theatre , instead of theatre showing a story. To them they wanted to crest theatre without characters but with just the actors and the stage. 

- He wanted to get rid off anything to do with the stage ,e.g. The lighting , props , costume, the set. 

- His style of theatre was extremely spiritual , they most likely lived together and lived as a type of people. His style of theatre was called Holy Theatre, poor theatre is about the actor getting back to truth of work, the live communion between actor , audience me space. 

- He wanted his characters to make sure that they are "being in the moment" , to feel that emotion as they perform it and it's not a rehearsed feeling but something that takes you out of what you are thinking about.

- he believed the relationship between the audience and actor was the key in the rebate because he believed that the actor would be able to change the audience, so they can have a moment of revelation(he called it self penetration) .