“When discussing the building process of a performance Barba… says that although there can be no general message contained within a performance, as each spectator hears something different, there are key ideas and realities that are embodied by a culture in a particular time and space, and these ideas and realities might constitute a shared understanding on a general level.” (Turner, J. 2004, p31)
This quote is true in relation to the ‘validation’ and ‘performance’ process of Four Ways To Speak Out. There was ‘no general message’ due to the complex narrative, enabling the audience to decipher the ‘ideas and realities’ and each to have a unique reading of the piece. The ‘ideas and realities’ or common themes and issues were explored and embedded in the piece creating the complex narrative. Common themes explored in the work included; curiosity, confusion, loss, domestic violence, community, guilt, blame and commercial love.
The sense of community was instrumental during the creation of the piece, as it was our initial relationship to ‘the street’, the area that we all lived and existed in, that allowed us to explore the individual dynamics within our created community. However, the piece didn’t start with a tight-knit community, it started with a realistic community, where each individual character stuck to their secular group of friends and only through the course of the piece did the community unite through the story of this missing woman.
The discovery of the woman’s suitcase was the catalyst for the community’s first shared experience. A series of movements were performed and each character was drawn into the action. Not everybody joined at once; it took some time for the realisation of what was taking place and the implications of this, to filter through the whole community. The feelings experienced here were different for each character; personally I felt confused by the situation but had an almost overwhelming sense of concern for the woman. Consequently during the set movements, I was looking for the woman and looking to Andy, who started the movements, to find out what was happening. Turner notes that, “Rituals can also confirm a sense of collective identity for a particular group and involve the participants in some sort of transformation.” (Turner, J. 2004, p8) The drawing in of all but one of the characters to this repeated set of movements, helped to establish us as a community. We were a community that had come together after the strange occurrence of a woman’s suitcase being found. Due to one character’s resistance to join our ‘ritual’ (Dan), the focus of the community changed from Andy, who started the ‘ritual’ to the person refusing to be involved with it. At this moment I felt that because Dan was avoiding the community, he must know something about the woman, subconsciously the community started to blame him.
Through a dialogue between the two male characters, Dan and Andy, the suitcase opened to reveal the woman’s diary. The communal reading of this diary and the unloading of the woman’s story, forced the community to examine its past actions that had led to her disappearance. My character felt an overpowering sense of guilt, I felt that I could have and should have helped the woman. This guilt manifested itself in the second ensemble, whereby my body hit a wall of shame and just wanted to throw itself to the floor. The group then shared an intense experience of fear as Andy tried to separate us and get one of us alone. He succeeded in this by convincing Dawn to take his hand, and make contact with him. At this moment the group were shocked but let her go with him as they felt that they could not stop it, it would be a never-ending circle of entrapment. This led the group to feel despondent to their situation and this showed during the subsequent movement section, where the characters kept throwing themselves to the floor.
For Four Ways To Speak Out, the transition from studio to theatre space was fluid, but not without certain difficulties. The main problem that we had to quickly overcome was the change in the shape of the space; the theatre space was deeper and narrower than the studio. This meant that in the ensemble sections we had to be aware that instead of spreading out length-ways as we had in the studio, we had to spread out towards the back of the stage. This brought into question the placement of people, as some people were concerned that if they stood at the very back of the stage, they would not be seen. This obviously was not the case and was inevitable as many of us have experienced the Western traditions of ‘rich theatre’, which is big on spectacle and which attempts to keep up with cinema and television. (Grotowski, J. 1975, p19) “Work in such an ensemble can never be stable. It is nothing but a huge challenge and, furthermore, it awakens such strong reactions of aversion that these often threaten the theatre’s very existence.” (Grotowski, J. 1975, p45) This was true to some extent, since people wanting to be constantly lit did create unnecessary challenges; however these were quickly ironed out during the technical rehearsals, with a word from the directors. Therefore ‘reactions of aversion’ were not given time to manifest.
Kevin Finnan, the Artistic Director of Motionhouse Dance Theatre, describes “the strong link between space and performance” (Finnan, K) and creates his work using the space and set as a stimulus. For Four Ways To Speak Out we used an imagined space, the street, as our stimulus. This meant that we encountered another setback in the movement from studio to theatre space; this being the placement of set and props. In the studio we had imagined where each of the set items, such as the bed and the bar, would be placed but you can never truly appreciate how much space the bed is going to take up without seeing it in the space. Therefore, once in the space we had to achieve a heightened awareness of this space as well as with the community. “The requisite state of mind is a passive readiness to realize an active role.” (Grotowski, J. 1975, p17) The ‘active role’ described here is a responsibility to the safety of the performers, this was realised in our piece during the second ensemble when people nearest the bar moved the stools so that nobody fell onto them. This was done effectively and with great common sense.
Once in the space we had a technical rehearsal where we mechanically marked out where we would stand and move. This mechanical movement carried on into our further rehearsals and it felt as if the group was just going through the motions, without attaching emotion or intention to the movement.
On the principle of the ‘decided body’ Barba,
“… suggests that it is achieved when an actor is immersed in the theatrical reality that is their tradition to the point where the artificiality is experienced as normal behaviour within that space; the work no longer needs to be mentally considered or translated by the mind for the body – usefully, mind and body are working as one.” (Turner, J. 2004, p56)
After absorbing the mechanical and clinical learning of where we needed to be positioned, we re-entered the space afresh the next day and found that our artificial movement from the previous day had been replaced as ‘normal behaviour’. There was no longer a “hierarchy of word over body” (Murray, S & Keefe, J. 2007, p7) our minds and bodies were ‘working as one’.
Grotowski notes that,
“during a rehearsal an actor may reach a climax that he will work on. He keeps the same gestures and the same positions but never again reaches the same intimate climax. The peak of a climax can never be rehearsed… The climax itself can never be reproduced.” (Grotowski, J. 1975, p172)
The cast of Four Ways To Speak Out experienced this point of ‘climax’ in the final rehearsal before the performance; subsequently the two performances on that day had us keeping ‘the same gestures and the same positions’ without achieving the same intense performance as in the rehearsal. During the two performances, I found myself thinking ‘you were here on the bed last time when you cried, so you need to be there again to feel that same emotion’. This completely impeded the growth of my character, as I stopped living in the imagined space, I became more like an outside party analysing my past actions.
This is where Robert Lepage’s ‘RSVP’ model still came into use, as after performing for an audience we were able to gage what worked and what did not. An example of this was when the characters in the bar scene went into a slow motion series of gestures. When performed for the rest of the group, this section was found quite funny however when the first audience saw it they didn’t give a humorous reaction. It was only through analysing the audience’s reaction that we realised that, they were seeing a grotesque nightmare and this is something that was brought up and embedded into the actors. It is important to remember that the ‘RSVP’ model empowers the creative journey rather than the final performance. For that reason, one must note that the creative journey isn’t over until the end of the final performance, so the company needed to continue to ‘Score’ and ‘Validate’ between each performance.
After two slightly disappointing performances, the importance of a focused warm-up, before the final performance, was great. During this warm-up, we did similar exercises to the ones we had done prior to the previous performances, however before we began I made a mental decision to forget about the usual physical positions my character adopted and to find new ones within the space. This really helped me to find new dimensions of my character that I had not yet explored and sparked a renewed excitement in the work. This carried across into the final performance where my character was fully engaged throughout the whole performance and I was not preoccupied with remembering where I needed to be to feel a certain emotion.
Murray observes that,
“in live art and certain types of physical theatre, the body is regularly used to investigate the unspoken, the forgotten and the silenced, thus bringing marginalised or hitherto excluded experience to the foreground of the performer’s arena.”
Four Ways To Speak Out certainly falls into this description, as we investigated the difficult and often unspoken subject of domestic violence. Through audience feedback, I think we handled the subject delicately and were able to give an example of a strong woman who leaves her tormentor.
Bibliography
Finnan, K Interview With Kevin Finnan (Online) (Accessed 25 April 2010) Available at:
http://www.motionhouse.co.uk/documents/SyndicatedinterviewwithKevinFinnan_002.pdf
Grotowski, J (1975) Towards A Poor Theatre London: Methuen
Murray, S (2003) Jaques Lecoq London: Routledge
Murray, S & Keefe, J (2007) Physical Theatres: A critical Introduction London: Routledge
Turner, J (2004) Eugenio Barba London: Routledge
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