'Melancolias y Manifestaciones' & The Suicides process

I enjoyed this documentational piece featuring Lola Arias and her ensemble of amateur actors. It was visually something special, the use of projection, screens and lights were well designed and interesting. I now believe more than ever how effective projection of film within plays can be.
Our use of projection is one of the best visuals in The Suicides at the moment. The videos sourced of motorbike races and the asphyxiation games fit brilliantly with the smoking scene and the fast paced scene 2, and compliment an otherwise overly direct text.
We used a red gel in rehearsal today, and I thought the pink light used in Melancolias gave a brilliant garish glow to the karaoke village hall style dance scene. Coloured lighting works well in these types of pieces, as it gives a slight fantastical edge to the non-fiction stories.
We did all agree that Lola wanted us to do her play exactly her way, but we wouldn't be able to enjoy ourselves as much if we did that. From watching Chapito, I understand how important loving what you're doing is when it comes to theatre. Therefore, we're going to put some of our ideas into the play, not just stick to her stage directions.

Oedipus - Chapito

The adaptation of Oedipus by Chapito theatre company gave me lots of ideas about theatre:

• They showed how play is important - the director stated proudly that they would go into rehearsal without any idea of what they were going to do, and would just improvise once they got there, indeed he does this with a lot of his plays.
• The result of this is something fun, clever and extremely energetic. In fact, the plays by Chapito I've seen so far have been the most energetic pieces I've seen. I think this is because the actors aren't repeating a series of lines and blocking in rehearsal, following a script's stage directions, until they're bored of it. This comes out eventually on stage.
• We felt involved in the play, it was friendly and humorous. The fact that it was almost completely devised through their playing made something brilliant. The director allowed his actors to make spontaneous decisions and let their creativity flow, and the result was a piece in which some bright and unique ideas emerged, and the performers genuinely enjoyed their work.
• The most brilliant thing in their plays is the transitions between scenes. They never once use a blackout, which makes a play a thousand times better, and the flow of the piece was impressive. The transitions would seem like nothing, last maybe a second, and they would flawlessly move into the next scene in a feat of physical unison and control. 
• The beauty of the transitions made me think of how important they are, they can easily make or break a piece. Spending time working on the transitions between scenes is definitely worth it, instead of sticking a blackout there.

Reflection on The Chicago Story

11/03/13

The Chicago Story is an exercise linked to the Suzuki method we tried for the first time today. It involves walking in a slow and controlled way towards a partner, passing them, then reaching an opposite point, turning and repeating. This is repeated 4 times. As you pass them each time, you are supposed to connect in a magnetic way, and almost have to pull away from each other, without this being very obvious. Your partner is your enemy, and in the first pass, you acknowledge them. In the second pass, you think "I am going to kill you", and try and transmit this to them and to your audience, obviously subtly and silently. As you turn before your third walk, you decide on a weapon and hide it behind your back. You walk pass them once again, both of you holding your weapons and keeping the intense eye contact all the time. As you turn for the last time, you show your weapon, and you can then use it to kill them at any time during the next walk, the last one.
I enjoyed this exercise as there was an element of improvisation and play about it. You can be creative with the story you give your character, the weapon you choose, and how you kill them. When you choose to kill them is also important for the audience. The last time I passed my partner, just before he was out of my reach I stabbed him in the back, which I think is a more interesting moment than if we had both killed each other standing in front of each other, ready and looking each other in the eye.
People differed in who they found it most comfortable to work with, who they would giggle with and concentrate with. It is quite a social exercise, as it depends on how you feel about your partner whether you can maintain the concentration necessary while keeping eye contact.
It is a useful exercise to practice not only discipline for Suzuki training, but also to develop spacial relationships with others on stage. This is a vital skill for all theatre. It can also be applied to demonstrating silent stories and emotional connections between characters on stage.

Review - The Visit

Unimpressed by this adaptation of the play by Friedrich Durrenmatt. First thing - 3 hours long, by the interval I was yawning. Some unnecessary parts definitely could have been cut, to make it shorter and sharper, there were no "wow" moments, it was very samey. A couple of the main characters were quite engaging and acted well, but the acting and energy overall was poor. The male lead wasn't engaging and had little energy. The female lead acted "well" but it was slightly overdone, almost to the point of trying to upstage. The minor characters, townspeople, acted poorly. The story was interesting, and could have been interpreted much better. Some poor choices were also made: applying some uncalled for comic relief in the death scene ruined any tension. It could have been an exciting moment, but, like most of the play, was boring.
A couple of things I did like were the sets and the cartoonish quality some elements had. The sets were very simple and clean cut, the stage was large and the props were small, giving an attractive effect. The more outrageous costumes were impressive, such as the dress worn by the female lead and the leggings and stripy socks worn by two of the little men (who were played by women). The use of leggings gave them a cartoon-like look, as their bodies were round and their legs skinny. The costumes and set overall were attractive.

November Essay

How has my perception of what performance and theatre means changed throughout my brief learning process and experiences as a theatre arts student?

When I first started this course, I had quite a close minded view of what theatre could be. I barely knew anything about the sheer breadth of theatre and performance. I think many amateur actors are quite selfish in what they do, they only care about how their performance will affect them, meaning that they are unwilling to move out of their comfort zone. A great performer needs to explore every type of theatre available to them: curiosity and enthusiasm are every bit as important as talent in this field. Our study of different interpretations of theatre from around the world has greatly broadened our perception of theatre. We discovered that it was a lot more than merely reciting lines with a certain expression on your face, or even provoking an emotional response from the audience. An actor may think he is always in control, and controlling the audience, but at times, it takes a true performer to be able to lose control to create a beautiful and engaging piece of art.

When we began our Suzuki training, I liked the feeling of strength the tenseness and struggle gave me. It is an essentially physical method, but we incorporated text into the movements and I think it showed us the energy and effort required to transmit your message to the audience, whether you want them to see the effort your making (as they would in Suzuki) or simply for you to be a believable presence on stage. After our first training, I was surprised by how much strain was put on our minds and bodies, and how the breathing control and energy used puts your whole self into chaos. During the course of the training over the next few weeks I could sense that the entire group moving together and reciting the lines in synchronisation must have looked quite beautiful to an audience. For me, that's what makes theatre worthwhile, no matter how hard you work. During the training I also learnt about the importance of stillness, something Tadashi Suzuki emphasizes in his method. The experience changed my perception of theatre in that I was unprepared for the effort required to make something unique and remarkable such as Suzuki. I learnt that to truly impress an audience and give them a memorable performance will be a struggle, draining the performer physically and mentally. However, I found this training, although difficult and exhausting, one of the most rewarding theatre-related training I've been involved in.

Shanga Parker, an Associate Professor in the School of Drama at the University of Washington and a professional actor in theatre, film and television, reflects on his own Suzuki training in his blog. Parker writes that the point of the training was an “'inner sensibility'. This, it was explained to us, was the ability to focus over a long period of time—that one can exercise one’s will as one does a muscle—and that increased concentration was a primary emotion that an actor should feel.” I relate to this in that during the training I understood that if you are not completely focused, if your mind wanders for a second, you will either feel extremely tired or will lose your balance. This means that either the quality of the performance is constant, or there is nothing there at all. I believe this is true for all types of theatre. “Suzuki works on making all of the moments clear, strong, and consistent. The physical work is great. You will have stamina in Act V of Hamlet. More important than that, your mind will be clear and your intentions strong.” This consistency is something I had not considered before my experience of Suzuki training. However, I now realize the importance of clear intentions and continuity in every performance, even classical pieces such as Hamlet. For Parker, Suzuki has also increased awareness of the body: “Being able to hit your mark without looking down is the direct result of knowing exactly where your feet are.” This is something I experienced as well. In the training, I felt a sense of finality to my body, I knew exactly where I was and where I stood in relation to others. This training introduced me to spacial awareness.

Suzuki introduced me to spacial awareness, but Viewpointing perfected it. Viewpointing was fascinating because it showed me how relationships and emotional connections can be shown only with movement and proxemics, and text isn't necessary. From our first Viewpointing session, I loved how natural it felt and how creative we could be. I found a sensibility I wasn't aware of, in which I relied on kinesthetic response to make my choices. The method to me is a way for performers to communicate without the audience realising, a sort of telepathic connection fuelled by instinct. It was like playing, and we all worked off each others actions. I think we enjoyed it so much because we were the ones creating it, and we worked as an ensemble, we were never alone or unsure of what to do.

Viewpointing is not just a training method, I believe it is applicable, and in fact invaluable, in all genres of theatre. It is essentially a method of spacial communication for actors, and I'm sure it will help me effectively use space and proxemics in future performances. I'm really glad I discovered this method, as I think it was crucial in my understanding of space and time on stage.

"The Viewpoints are invaluable to all actors regardless of what kind of genre you're working in. The most important aspect of them is learning to listen to your body and the internal clues it's giving you in terms of the structure of a scene. I know after working with the Viewpoints I can look at a "conventional" scene and break it down into beats much easier. You learn to turn off the intellect a bit and just feel the rhythms of the scene and once a sense of rhythm is there the emotions just follow."
- Kristen Lee Kelly, actor.

Both methods increased my appreciation for physical theatre, and the beauty of simplicity. The floor patterns we created in Viewpointing felt like they would look intriguing to an audience, and the eye contact we used meant that we could provoke assumptions and emotional responses from an audience. These assumptions are important: everything that happens in a performance is translated into something (an event, a relationship, a shift in atmosphere) by the assumption of the audience, and it is our job to create our desire assumptions. I felt that the tension present during a Suzuki performance would captivate the audience and transmit a great deal of energy. It would be very exciting to watch, and quite unpredictable, something that is rare in conventional theatre. These two methods have changed my perception of theatre in relation to space and time, and shown me that stillness and silence can be as effective, if not more effective, than text or movement, something I was not aware of a few months ago.

In the course, one of our projects was to create our own ritual. As research, we all looked into rituals from different cultures, and read up on the meaning and connotations of a ritual. Whilst learning about different rituals, I understood the term as a type of applicable performance, with specific uses. Whether the Bororo people's celebration of death ritual, or the Berber people's call for rain through ritualistic dance and rhythmic vocals, I found ritual to be a type of group performance with a purpose. Our own ritual with the purpose of initiation combined the sacred and the secular, as it was not exactly spiritual but the elements of art and creativity we incorporated showed the “sacredness of the ordinary.” In our research we read a chapter from 'Performance Studies' by R. Schechner on ritual relating to performance. He put forth some interesting ideas, such as “no single feature of a ritual is peculiar to it. It is in the conjunction of its features that it is unique.” I found this intriguing, as it highlights the fact that all art is imitated, and new ideas are rare. Not only in ritual, in other art forms too, do the artists copy from other artists, but the combinations and structure of their ideas are totally their own creation. On some level, I already knew this to be true, but I understand it more fully now. This throws into question my perception of theatre, as it is never entirely original, but can appear to be, just because its structure is unique. Another quote I found was “rituals don't so much express ideas as embody them.” This is the main difference between ritual and conventional theatrical performance. An idea I found which I believe relates to Viewpointing is the difference between the ritual bees have when working (for they do demonstrate ritual) and human ritual: “Bees cannot improvise or express their feelings, but they communicate through a system of movements.” This shows that even rituals in different species have in common their basic purpose of communication through movement, which is in fact one of the main purposes of all theatre.

One of the first performances we went to see, Cadavre Exquis, was quite a unique piece of theatre. Most of my colleagues didn't like it, it was too “weird” or “unimpressive”. However, we also acknowledged that it was an experiment, by 5 different directors with different ideas. It reminded me of an organised game, as enjoyable for the actors as for the audience. Although it was unconventional, I enjoyed it, as I will any piece of theatre. There is something about the performers being present right in front of you, and giving you the gift of their time and energy, which is always a pleasure to watch, no matter how strange the play is. I was impressed how the performers danced repetitively for 15 minutes, using extreme duration and transmitting their struggle and exhaustion to the audience. This was most of my colleagues' favourite scene, which shows that visible effort made by a performer is always appreciated by an audience. The play challenged some people's theories of performance. I believe for us training to be performers ourselves, it is important that we try to experience any new theatre event that we can, so we can take in as much different information to give us a rich and varied perception of theatre. I now believe that a good performance doesn't have to be epic or tragic, it is enough to know that effort has gone into making this gift for you. It is entertaining enough to have people physically in front of you, because, unlike television, there is an element of unpredictability which makes theatre exciting.

My research into theatre of the cruelty also greatly influenced my perception of performance. This type of theatre was introduced by Antonin Artaud, a French director and actor, who hoped to unleash unconscious responses in audience with his theatre. He tried to release the audience's primitive instincts and make them realise their worst nightmares and fears. This shows that not all theatre is just a beautiful thing to be observed, but can also become a psychological violation of the audience. This theatre would apply real physical pain on stage and disturbing and loud sounds of clashing tones and rhythms. This type of theatre is meant to disturb the audience, and I had no idea this type of theatre existed before I studied it. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I like the idea of different audience members reacting in different ways. My colleagues and I experimented doing a soundscape, in which we all used our voices to create an inescapable sound. I like the idea of theatre affecting a different sense other than sight, and surrounding the audience so that they can't ignore. It is exciting and possible frightening. Although this may sound negative, I am intrigued by this type of theatre which is more of an experience to the audience than simply a visual piece of art (they might as well look at a painting).

In conclusion, my ideas of theatre and performance have been completely changed by this course, and I feel I've become a lot more knowledgeable about the field. The applications of theatre and the ideas about theatre and art we have discovered have been fascinating. This quote is accurate and brilliant in describing my ideas about the purpose of theatre:

“Melting the ice within, of awakening dormant cells, of making us more fully alive, more fully human, at once more individual and more connected to each other”. - Franz Kafka

Parker. S., http://freeholdtheatre.blogspot.pt/2010/12/few-thoughts-about-suzuki-movement.html, 2010

Jucha. B., 'Working with the Viewpoints', http://www.jucha.com/viewpoints.html

Schechner. R., 'Performance Studies'. Routledge, 2006

Purpose of Theatre - 3 Articles

New organization uses theatre to help the hungry

Dallas  - Local author and businessman Tim Whitney is launching A Play for Food, a new matchmaking organization for theaters, playwrights... and food pantries.

“When I begin any project, I ask myself over and over...what if,” says Whitney in an email. The Dallas-based entrepreneur came with the idea for A Play for Food two years ago, after the release of his first novel, Thanksgiving at the Inn (Bancroft Press).

“I was amazed and humbled by the impact the eclectic characters had on people’s lives. They are larger-than-life figures that each teach an important life lesson. I asked myself... what if these amazing characters could be on stage? Once the play was done, I began realizing it is a story of family and forgiveness. There was no way I could charge a royalty for the use,” he continues.

Whitney decided to use theatre to create what he hopes will become the largest food drive in America. A Play for Food would serve as a ‘clearing house’ for playwrights and theatres willing to donate all ticket proceeds from plays to local food pantries. “This is a grassroots effort to unite communities in a time of need,” he says.

Since October 2011, A Play for Food has already put seven plays, including a musical from a retired Canadian broadcaster and an adaptation of Whitney’s novel. Thanksgiving at the Inn will make its worldwide debut on Sunday, November 20, 2011 , at Cheverus High School in Portland, Maine. Cash and food donations will be accepted.

How to make a drama out of a crisis

Chris Arnot meets James Thompson, a professor who uses theatre to resolve conflict, from prisons to war zones

Professor James Thompson went to San Quentin prison nearly 30 years after Johnny Cash. It's fair to say that his visit made rather less of an impact than that of the rumbustious country and western singer. But then he was not there to perform. He was simply observing a screen-writing course for inmates in his capacity as a Harkness fellow.

"I was attached to the University of Texas for a year, but looking at prison arts projects all over the United States," Thompson says. "One of the guards leant into the car as we were on our way in and said: 'Do you understand the state of California policy on kidnapping, sir? We don't negotiate'." Does that mean he was on his own if a homicidal prisoner decided to use him as a bargaining counter? "Yes, except that I wasn't entirely on my own. I was with the arts coordinator. Every state penitentiary had one in those days [1997] as part of a scheme called Arts-in-Corrections. It was scrapped in 2003."

By that time, Thompson had moved on from prisons to war zones. His speciality has always been using drama to explore and, hopefully, to resolve conflict. Initially, he did that in his capacity as co-founder of Theatre in Prisons and Probation (Tipp). More recently, he has used similar techniques to explore issues of reconciliation and justice with those caught up in tribal, ethnic or religious violence. Participants could be students or school children, refugees or non-governmental organisations (NGOs). From his base at Manchester University, where he is professor of applied and social theatre, he sallies forth to places even more dangerous for visitors than San Quentin - although he tends to play down the personal risk involved. "When you travel with outside agencies, like Unicef and the Red Cross, they tend to be very security-savvy," he assures me.

The second of two books he is publishing this year is called Performance In Place of War, which cites examples of the work done by a network he runs with colleagues in Manchester and Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. "We've just had our contract extended by the Leverhulme Trust so that we can carry on working in Kosovo, the Palestinian territories, Sri Lanka, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo," he says. The first book is published next month [May] under the title Performance Affects.

Note the A rather than the E at the beginning of the second word. "Applied theatre tends to explain itself through impacts," Thompson explains. "In other words, it's all about effects. My argument is that this has led to a failure to appreciate the affects - the emotional, sensory and aesthetic side of the work.

"For instance, it might be said that a certain project has increased the self-esteem of the teenagers involved and decreased the likelihood that they'll take drugs. What's forgotten is that this is theatre. It's beautiful, sometimes scary, and aesthetically interesting in its own right. We need to learn a language that can talk about these sorts of things in order fully to appreciate what the work is about.”

Simon Callow: The purpose of theatre is to melt the ice within

From a speech by the actor and director at the launch of London's University of the Arts, in the Banqueting Hall.

Nearly 35 years ago, I arrived at the Drama Centre, then a tiny fledgling independent school, now part of Central Saint Martins and thus the new University of the Arts London. One of the many challenges flung at us new students was the question: "Why? Why did we want to be actors?" What was the point of the theatre? Of film? Of any art?

Most of us had only thought of the idea of becoming actors from our own point of view - what we could get out of the theatre, why we needed to be actors, what kind of actors we'd like to be. If we thought of the audience at all, it was in terms of making them cry, or making them laugh, being released somehow and then applauding us a great deal afterwards.

This view of the theatre as a sort of relief massage did not go down well with those two terrifying and brilliant firebrands, Christopher Fettes and Yat Malmgren, co-founders of the Drama Centre. To them, theatre was a crucial mechanism within human society. A ritual re-enactment of the lessons mankind had learnt about itself, a way of restoring the spectators to their full human experience after the routine alienations of daily life, and a celebration of desire.

Of course, art can be many things - playful, challenging, funny, frightening, romantic, classical, for five minutes' amusement or a lifetime's enrichment. But it seems to me that all the disciplines that now form University of the Arts London have within them the possibility of unlocking the closed chambers of our hearts, in Kafka's wonderful phrase, of "Melting the ice within, of awakening dormant cells, of making us more fully alive, more fully human, at once more individual and more connected to each other".

Argentinian Theatre & Lola Arias

Argentinian Theatre

• Buenos Aires is one of the worlds theatre capitals.
• The 1874 murder of Juan Moreira, a persecuted troubadour, provided dramatists with a new hero. Possessing all the elements of tragedy, the anecdote inspired Eduardo Gutiérrez's 1884 play Juan Moreira, and the work made the gaucho, the inspiration for the Argentine stage in subsequent years.
• The 1897 relocation to Argentina of Spanish theatre producer María Guerrero, and her company, popularized professional stage theatre in the country.
• 50s – realism, 60s – theatre of the absurd

Lola Arias

Lola Arias was born in Buenos Aires in 1976. She is a writer, theatre director, performer and song composer. She is the co-founder of Compania Postnuclear, an Argentinian group of interdisciplinary artists. Her texts explore the boundaries between reality and fiction, using biographies and real documentation in a surreal or poetic way. In her plays she works with actors, non-actors, dancers, singers, children, babies and animals. Lola Arias has been working with Stefan Kaegi on various projects, such as "Chacara Paraiso", an installation in a skyscraper of Sao Paulo showing biographies of policemen and their families and "Airportkids" (2008), a play with nomad children. Her trilogy "Striptease", "Sueno con revolver" and "El amor es un francotirador", directed herself, had its European premiere at steirischer herbst in 2007. Her work has been translated into English, French and German. Lola Arias 

Notes on her work (Striptease):

• Liked the staging
• Dialogue seemed spontaneous and natural
• Disturbed
• Everyday life - relatable
• Uncertainty of life choices
• Immaturity of adults - insight
• Tension - assuming story
• Sad - natural dialogue but baby between them - very real

Francotirador:

• Don't know what to think
• Scared
• Contrasts between characters played well with each other
• Atmosphered made her uncomfortable
• Too vague - no structure, found it sad, depressing
• Good acting
• Strange
• Actions were strongest point - help to understand characters

Forced entertainment: "Nothing makes sense because the world doesn't make sense."

Airportkids:

• Liked the boxes (safe, personal environment)
• relatable, nice & comforting
• good ideas
• exploitation?
• imagination, happiness, children, snails

Caryl Churchill & Steven Berkoff

Caryl Churchill

• English London-born playwright, born 3rd September 1938
• non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, dramatisation of the abuses of power, exploration of sexual politics
• contemporary of Brecht
• Dance-theatre and Theatre of Cruelty
• Cloud Nine (1979), "a farce about sexual politics"
• feminist themes main principle in her work
• Top Girls, Softcops
• Dominic Cooke, artistic director of the Royal Court: "the exciting thing about Caryl is that she always tends to break new ground. The degree of innovation is extraordinary. Every play almost reinvents the form of theatre."
• Invented the standard forward slash "/" representing overlapping dialogue 
• Quality of dialogue 

Sources: wikipedia and Guardian website

Steven Berkoff 

Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, London. After studying drama and mime in London and Paris, he entered a series of repertory companies and in 1968 formed the London Theatre Group. His plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and in many languages. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, directed and toured, are Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon after Aeschylus, and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. He has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare's Coriolanus also playing the title role, Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde's Salome.

Berkoff's original stage plays include East, West, Messiah: Scenes from a Crucifixion, The Secret Love Life of Ophelia, Decadence, Harry's Christmas, Massage, Acapulco and Brighton Beach Scumbags. He has performed his trilogy of solo shows, One Man, Shakespeare's Villains and Requiem for Ground Zero, in venues all over the world.

East (1975): "a play of boundless vitality. A piece of roller-coasting invention... Its two central characters are a couple of razor-happy randy tearaways of almost total moral repellence and absolute physical charm... Berkoff razzle-dazzles their lifestyle in a tumult of imagery; the language flashes from Shakespearean parody to the shatteringly profane... Restores one's faith and fills the cup of expectation to overflowing". Daily Mail.

As an actor, Berkoff usually performes as a villain (Octopussy, also played Adolf Hitler)

"Berkoff employs a style of heightened physical theatre known as "total theatre". Drama critic Aleks Sierz describes his Berkoff's dramatic style as "In-yer-face theatre": “the language is usually filthy, characters talk about unmentionable subjects, take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each another, experience unpleasant emotions, become suddenly violent. At its best, this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react: either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen, and want all their friends to see it too. It is the kind of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation.”

My thoughts on 'East':

I love the verse, it gives a poetic trill to the cockney colloquialisms and is very modern. The movement was well choreographed and effective, the simple unpretentious scenes are engaging without being fussy. The characters are likeable but the play also manages to transmit some moving messages within its comic and farcical dialogue and monologues. The physicality used when delivering monolgues in an empty set is essential. 

Review - Macbeth by Chapito

This play was a brilliant example of physical comedy, creativity and simplicity in theatre. The characters were 3 men who would alternate between the characters, the text was entirely different, and very funny. The story was the same, but with humorous twists the dark mood you would expect from Macbeth was absent. The actors manipulated their own sound (they had a sound board on the stage) and effects (they would turn a smoke machine on and off). They had barely any props, but where very creative, using dinner knives to hit against the metal microphone stands, creating believable sounds of swords in battle. They would make the sound of wind themselves, and the energy they transmitted to the audience was constant and impressive. They were very fast, efficient and well timed. The sounds were very simple but very well done, and the companies take on the play was very effective and provided some comic relief to a dark and morbid story.
The physical comedy was very intelligent and quick, they made the audience laugh for the first 5 minutes without saying anything. The effects of physical comedy were wonderfully shown in the play, and supported my ideas that physicality is the most important aspect to consider when attempting comedy, along with reaction.

Edward Bond - 4 Essays

FOUR LITTLE ESSAYS ON DRAMA

by

Edward Bond

HOPE

Its asked of a new play “Where is the hope?” The question misunderstands drama. You are in a room. The curtains are drawn. You do not ask “Where is the sky? – its gone.” The sky is always there. You have a lottery ticket. You hope it will win. But do you hope that the number on the ticket will change so that it will win? The playwright must point to reality – to the number on the ticket. The hope is the audience.

DRAMA

Drama is the text of democracy. When the Greek audience looked at the stage they saw themselves: “you saw you.” Later Rome took over. The soldiers looked at you. Later the church took over. It said the great creative fictions of Greek drama were real, were vulgar facts. Zeus was fiction, God Almighty was a vulgar fact. Oedipus was fiction who killed his father, Christ was a vulgar fact and God his Father killed him. And so on through the Greek dramatic cannon and Christian scripture. God looked at you and the Inquisition looked over his shoulder. Then science took over. The scientist looked at you. You were a specimen. Now commerce takes over: TV and film. The eyes on the screen cannot look at you – they are blind. So you are blind when you look at them. (It’s a bit difficult. It’s a mutation. Think about it. The eyes are the organ of sight. They cannot be touched, heard, smelt, tasted. Film is fiction in a particular way: film is the wink of the blind.) The modern stage is parasitic on the blindness of the screens. When it looks at the audience the blind are winking at each other. The stage has never before been so corrupt. There must be a new drama. In it the audience will look at the stage and see itself. It will be revolutionary because it will be democratic.

POLITICAL DRAMA

A recent article claimed “political theatre brings subjects into public and popular debate.” The things people write in newspapers! The opposite is true. Theatre takes subjects that are already in public, popular debate. Its plays are not political. They are current affairs. We have no political theatre. Yet politics is the core of drama. Drama deals with the relation between self and society. How each creates the other. It is how we create our humanness. Political drama must look at the profoundest human paradoxes. Greek drama did this for us. All Western culture and religion are founded on this inheritance. It is our patrimony. We have exhausted it. Our theatre – our culture and politics – are dead. Post-mortem not post-modern. If we do not create a new drama we will be destroyed. Evolution will wipe us out. The times have never been so serious. It is a species crisis.

PURITY

The Royal Court staged my second play half my lifetime ago. I was attacked as the ultimate degenerate vicious debased playwright. Last year the Royal Court told me my moral purity prevented me from making contact with an audience. My first play (also staged at the Royal Court) had a rural setting. There was a murder. The murderer was the good man. The complexities of humanness. Last year the Royal Court staged another play with a rural setting. In it there was a good man. He was corrupt (and a danger to his child) but he had a heart of gold. Mr Really-Nasty came along. He didn’t murder Mr Good but badly beat him up. The play was written with panache. It combined News of the World morality with Mills and Boon sentimentality. What has changed? Let us now be serious and for a start change everything.

(September 2010, revised September 2011)

Greek Theatre

Plot
A tragedy's plot consists of a serious action that stirs up feelings of pity and fear. A comedy's plot focuses on an ordinary problem that regular people face. Comedies aren't necessarily funny; they're stories of worthy people who succeed.

Characters
A tragedy's central characters are nobles. The main character is the tragic hero. A comedy's main character is the comic hero, who has average morals, and is generally ignoble.



Settings
Tragedies often occur on a battlefield or in the great hall of a palace. A comedy occurs in an ordinary room.

Events
Tragedies have episodes that provoke feelings of disappointment and fear. Due to the tragic hero's ego and tragic flaw, along with something going wrong, he will encounter a semi-undeserved tragic fall. The charismatic comic hero will prosper and his innate nobility will be be shown through tests of character. 

Chorus and audience
Since the tragic hero's fall is not entirely deserved, the chorus will still admire the hero. The hero will learn from his fall and, along with the audience, experience a catharsis. While the comic hero will not have high morals, he will have enough magnetism to win the audience over but not always the chorus.

Structure
Tragedy: Prologue - Episodes - Exodus
Comedy: Prologue - Agon - Parabasis - Episodes - Exodus

Characteristics of the theatre
Ancient Greek Theatres were very large, open-air structures that took advantage of sloping hillsides for their terraced seating. Because of drama's close connection with religion, theatres were often located in or near sanctuaries. 

Purposes
To honour the god Dionysus, to entertain, educate and instruct, to invoke pity and fear in the audience (according to Aristotle).

Forms of Theatre: Entertainment & Art

Theatre as a Form of Entertainment 

Commedia dell'Arte

Commedia dell'Arte is a form of theatre which began in Italy in the 16th century. La Commedia dell'Arte translates as "Artistic Comedy"; The form is based on the free improvisation on stage. It started in the second half of the 16th century, in a period when theatre plays were classing, stylish, cold and rigorous. Maybe as a reaction, the Commedia dell'Arte was the opposite: loud, colourful representations blossomed everywhere in Italy, and the rules of theatre were subverted. It is considered a type of comedy as it amused those who watched it at the time; improvisation and rebellion amused the audience of the period as it contrasted with their typical theatre, so it became a form of theatre to 'entertain'. 

Pantomimes

The pantomime first arrived in England as an "entre acts" between opera pieces, eventually evolving into separate shows.

These pantomimes gradually became more topical and comic, often involving as many special theatrical effects as possible. It was quite amusing for the audience as these plays often featured clowns; mime was still a very new and peculiar form of theatre at the period and so people found this new practice cheerful.

Performance Poetry

Poetry that is specifically composed for an audience.

This practice began with the performance of poems in pre-literate societies. By definition, these poems were transmitted orally from performer to performer and were constructed using repetition, alliteration and rhyme to facilitate memorisation. The performer would add their own flavour to the poem, although fidelity to the traditional version of the poem was favoured. 

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering. It gives catharsis to an audience through their experience of emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama. 

Often, humans are entertained by pretend suffering, so this can be a type of entertainment.

Black Comedy

Black comedy is a type of humour revolving around a subject that might upset or be offensive to the audience e.g. death or war. 

"The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure." - Sigmund Freud, 1927

Theatre as a Form of Art

• The horrors of the Second World War showed the total impermanence of any values, shook the validity of any conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness. The trauma of living from 1945 under threat of nuclear annihilation also seems to have been an important factor in the rise of the new theatre.
• At the same time, the Theatre of the Absurd also seems to have been a reaction to the disappearance of the religious dimension form contemporary life. The Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out of an existence that has become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mystical experience in confronting the limits of human condition.
• Parodies language, no dramatic conflict, no logic, scenic effects
• One of the more extreme manifestations of the avant-garde was the Dadaist movement, which took the desire to do away with obsolete artistic conventions to the extreme. Some Dadaist plays were written, but these were mostly nonsense poems in dialogue form, the aim of which was primarily to 'shock the bourgeois audience'. After the First World War, German Expressionism attempted to project inner realities and to objectify thought and feeling. Some of Brecht's plays are close to Absurd Drama, both in their clowning and their music-hall humour and the preoccupation with the problem of identity of the self and its fluidity.
• French surrealism acknowledged the subconscious mind as a great, positive healing force. However, its contribution to the sphere of drama was meagre: indeed it can be said that the Absurd Theatre of the 1950s and 1960s was a Belated practical realisation of the principles formulated by the Surrealists as early as the 1930s. In this connection, of particular importance were the theoretical writings of Antonin Artaud. Artaud fully rejected realism in the theatre, cherishing a vision of a stage of magical beauty and mythical power. He called for a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce collective archetypes, thus creating a new mythology. In his view, theatre should pursue the aspects of the internal world. Man should be considered metaphorically in a wordless language of shapes, light, movement and gesture. Theatre should aim at expressing what language is incapable of putting into words. Artaud forms a bridge between the inter-war avant-garde and the post-Second-World-War Theatre of the Absurd.
• Similarly, Franz Kafka's short stories and novels are meticulously exact descriptions of archetypal nightmares and obsessions in a world of convention and routine.
• The idea of a theatre of cruelty was first introduced by Antonin Artaud to describe a form of theatre that he hoped would unleash unconscious responses in audiences and performers that were normally inaccessible. Artaud was opposed to theatrical productions based on venerated classical texts or established literary forms and thought they merely represented worlds that were irrelevant and highly artificial constructions. He wanted audiences to find in the theatre not an area for escape from the world, but the realisation of their worst nightmares and deepest fears. He therefore tried to provoke conditions that would force the release of primitive instincts he believed were hidden beneath the civilised social veneer masking all human behaviour. Describing the energy and impact of a radical new way of performing and responding in strong and often dark imagery, he envisioned a theatre that rejected rational interpretation. Instead, he welcomed the irrational impulses that could be stimulated by suffering and pain and argued that every facet of theatricality should be employed to increase a sense of danger, violence and disorientation in the audience. However, Artaud argued that his concept of cruelty was not sadistic. He wanted to stimulate what was honest and true and the cruelty he envisaged required a rigour and determination that was necessary if performers and audiences were to confront and experience the dark and terrifying responses that lay at the heart of each human being.
  
  
  

Short Reviews: The Tempest and A Tender Thing

I was lucky enough to see the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company perform The Tempest and A Tender Thing in Stratford-Upon-Avon, these are my short reviews.

The Tempest

I enjoyed the production of the Tempest, although there were some aspects that I didn't like. I thought the level of energy dropped in the second half, and the actors let themselves become a little more passive. I thought many of the actors were fantastic, but some faltered in character at times. The effort the audience senses from an actor is an important feature of a good play. I loved the set and the fluid entrances and exits, which happened almost without us noticing. I thought the comedy duo, Trinculo and Stephano were very good, they transmitted a lot of energy to the audience. Ariel acted very well, he was quite mesmerising.

A Tender Thing

This performance was amazing, unique and moving. Kathryn Hunter was brilliant, I loved how she could be so flexible with the emotions she showed on stage, and it seemed to genuine. The projection of the sea on the back panel was effective because it supported the colours and mood of the play. The simplicity of a two character play was also a positive factor. Seeing the play reinforced my belief that the simplest plays are usually the most memorable. A clean set, a clear plot and minimal but deep characters are the best. The play gave my inspiring ideas about physicality on stage. I had never understood the importance of it until now, but after seeing Hunter use her body to demonstrate emotions, strength and weakness, I will always be sure to consider physicality as a crucial aspect of theatre. 

Review: Cadavre Exquis

24/09/12
Thoughts as a group:

• Seeing if 5 different directors with different ideas can create 1 play - demanding for audience and actors
• Some disliked it - uninteresting/unimpressive
• An experiment
• An organised game
• A good way to spend an afternoon
• Weird
• Everyone can enjoy any theatre - it's a physical gift, people are there in front of you
• We appreciate the effort that was real and shown by the actors when they danced
• Extreme duration
• They played with theories of performance

My review:

The performance was a gift - the actors were giving the audience their bodies and minds. What was special about this play was the effort they showed, the sweat and exhaustion. An audience appreciates this effort and it adds something to a play which engages an audience. 

In the play the actors explored different theories of what acting and performance should be, and were ironically discussing it in jerky, monotonous tones, as if they were acting very badly. I thought the idea of the play was interesting and innovative, and enjoyed it. I thought there was an element of naughtiness about the actors, as if they were defying the director by saying how they hated acting, and by all trying to outdo each other in the dance. The play made me consider performance: I now believe that performance doesn't have to be particularly epic or tragic, or famous or extravagant. I think it is enough for you to know that effort has gone into making a gift just for you. Just the fact of actors physically being there is entertainment, and a pleasure, no matter what they are doing. 

Japanese & Chinese Theatre

Japanese Theatre

The theatre types being covered:

• Kabuki
• Noh
• Bunraku
• Butoh

Kabuki Theatre:

• Kabuki is one of the traditional forms of theatre and its performance is rich in showmanship.
• Elaborately designed costumes, interesting makeup, outlandish wigs and accentuated actions performed by actors all make up this theatre type
• The accentuated actions are very important because they allow the audience to understand the story through use of visuals when the ancient Japanese language is difficult to understand
• Revolving platforms and trapdoors are used to facilitate the changing of the scene and the appearance or disappearance of the actors. The footbridge is situated in the middle of the audience to allow powerful entrances and exits.
• Instruments used are traditionally Japanese.
• The stories usually revolve around historical events, warm-hearted dramas, ethical conflicts, love stories, and stories of conspiracy. The performance is usually only of part of the story, and usually of the best part
• It originally was performed only by women, but this changed during the Edo Period (1603 - 1868), where it was performed only by men, this is continued today
• Assistants dressed in black appear on the stage to help with props, called "kurogo", meant to be invisible
• It is normal for audience members to call out the actors name to show support and appreciation

Noh Theatre:

• Involves music, dance and drama, derives from 14th century
• 5 main Noh groups have been established, and are still performing today
• The movement in Noh theatre is very slow, its language is poetic but tone is monotonous, and the costumes are elaborate
• Stories come from legends, history, literature and modern events
• Themes may relate to ghosts and spirits, the supernatural or dreams
• Performed on a square stage with a roof (usually performed outside)
• All sides of stage are open except the back which holds an image of a pine tree
• Only men can perform, leading man called the Shite
• Waki - supporting actor
• Hayashi - musicians (4 people, flute and 3 drums)
• Jiutai - chorus
• Kohen - helpers dressed in black, meant to be invisible
• The Shite wears a unique mask for his character made of Japanese cypress
• Kyogen - short story performed in the interval

Bunraku Theatre:

• Traditional Japanese puppet theatre
• Puppets 1m tall, controlled by 3 people, principal actor and 2 assistants, no strings, body parts manoeuvred and puppeteers dressed in black
• Single narrator who also does voice for all puppets, must have good vocal range
• Accompanied by music
• Stories are heartbreaking love stories, heroic legends and historical tales

Butoh Theatre:

• Stands for various actions, techniques and motivations for performance, dance and movement
• Involves good humoured and ugly imagery, forbidden subjects and intense or ridiculous environments
• Actors painted all in white and move in a slow, controlled way
• Perform with or without audience
• Actions performed inside and outside body, with purpose of "full movement control"
• Reaching correct Butoh state requires actor to be experiencing starvation, intense pain or sleep deprivation
• This is because those were the sensations of the actors originally, to help them have immense power

Chinese Theatre

Dynasties:

• Shang Dynasty (1766-1066BC) - started as haunting dances, animal movements still used in martial arts and theatre today
• Tang Dynasty (618-907)
• Song Dynasty (960-1979)
• Yuan Dynasty (1279-1369)
• Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644)

Modern forms:

• Beijing Opera
• Cantonese Opera

Early period:

• Origins lie in early religious rituals
• Different theatrical approaches through different dynasties
• Started out with hunting dances and dances imitating animals
• Developed into chorus dances
• Displays of acrobatic skill
• Emergence of martial arts demonstrations

Shadow play:

Style of Peking shadow theatre developed into two major styles: Western with large puppets and Eastern with elements of opera.

"Chinese shadow puppets vary in size from some 20cm to 1m. They are cut from leather that is treated and coloured so that they became transparent. Their legs, waists, shoulders and elbows can be bent, and their arms are constructed from two parts. Thus the puppets can imitate human movements when they are operated with rods behind a paper or muslin screen. Their reflections on the screen are colourful and their finer details are chiselled in the leather as a kind of filigree ornamentation." 

Suzuki

Tadashi Suzuki

Born 20th June 1939, Tadashi Suzuki created the Suzuki training and composition method.
He is a theatre director, writer and philosopher working out of Toga, Toyama, Japan. Suzuki is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT) and organiser of Japan's first international theatre festival (Toga festival). He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Japan Performing Arts Foundation, a nation-wide network of theatre professionals in Japan.

Suzuki's Fundamental Technique and Theory of Acting:

• To act, one must have a point of view
• For acting to begin, one must have an audience
• To sustain acting, an awareness of the invisible body is required

Tadashi Suzuki's explanation of his method:

"The main purpose of my method is to uncover and bring to the surface the physically perceptive sensibility which actors originally had, before the theatre acquired its various codified performing styles. This works to heighten the actors innate expressive abilities. The method first occurred to me when I was examining the differences in physical perception among different people. These differences are found while the actors on stage just stand still, or have an impulse to move of speak and take some action. I wished to integrate these differences into something we humans could share as a common property, beyond all differences in race and nationality. First of all, I felt the necessity of inspecting our human orientation, in sensibility or feeling, toward the ground – the attraction for the ground which the lower half of our body feels. I extracted some basic ways of using the body to perceive various nuances of feeling, and then arrange them to formulate my method.

Technically speaking, my method consists of training to learn to speak powerfully and with clear articulation, and also to learn to make the whole body ‘speak’, even when one keeps silent. Thus the actors can learn the best way to exist on stage. By applying this method, I want to make it possible for actors to develop their ability of physical expression and also to nourish a tenacity of concentration.

In short, this training is, so to speak, a grammar necessary to materialise the theatre that is in my mind. However, it is desirable that this “grammar” should be assimilated into the body as a second instinct, just as you cannot enjoy lively conversation as long as you are always conscious of grammar in speaking. These techniques should be mastered, so that they serve as an “operational hypothesis”, allowing the actors to feel themselves truly “fictional” on stage. For actors to realise the images they themselves pursue, they will have to develop at least this basic physical sensibility.”

Our progress

10/09/12

Started Suzuki today - it was definitely a memorable experience. I was surprised by how much strain it puts on your body and your mind, it truly does put your whole self into chaos. 

We began by attempting to slowly walk across the room, in an extremely controlled way, with a partner clinging to our back. We were supposed to not let our heads move up and down, and for our journey to be very smooth - we glided. Suzuki puts your body to the test, the key word is struggle. And the struggle is supposed to manifest itself to the audience. We repeated the exercise with no weight on our backs, but maintaining the strong stance, tense centre body and controlled movement. We were supposed to pretend to still be struggling from the weight. And with your whole body tense, with the utmost concentration I found myself genuinely struggling. I was even short of breath, and felt bound up with energy. The days Suzuki training culminated with a ferocious session of stomping and falling to the floor, then moving slowly. When I was struggling I felt like I looking intriguing to the audience. We were also challenged to recite lines from Dante's Inferno as we moved, with breaths only between sentences, and everyone speaking in synchronisation. 

The whole experience was draining, physically and mentally, but also inspiring. I could sense that the group moving together must have looking quite beautiful to an audience.

17/09/12

Suzuki today: Exhausting, exhilarating, felt powerful. 

19/09/12

Continued Suzuki: stomping exercise tiring as ever. Did something new: Standing statue. We had to spring up and down into different positions, it was tiring on the ankles.

14/01/13

Exercises today:

- Sitting statue - working with someone else improved my focus, maintaining eye contact helped us achieve stillness more easily. Some people found a partner distracting though.

- Standing statue - we found it difficult because we hadn't trained in ages, discovered I would have to train regularly to keep the strength needed.

- Someone providing resistance while we moved in extreme slow: Found it helpful because I had to use more strength and felt the image was more powerful.

Viewpointing

What it is

The viewpoints is a technique of composition that provides a vocabulary for thinking about and acting upon movement and gesture. Originally developed in the 1970s by choreography Mary Overlie as a method of movement improvisation, The Viewpoints theory was adapted for stage acting by directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau.

Anne Bogart 

Born September 25th, 1951, Anne Bogart is a prolific and award-winning American theatre and opera director. 

• she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bard College in 1974
• then a Masters of Arts degree from Tisch School of the Arts in 1977
• in 1992 she founded SITI with Tadashi Suzuki, of which she remains Artistic Director
• between 1980 and 1992 she taught at various colleges and universities
• since 1992 she has given workshops and master classes around the world

Actors talking about The Viewpoints

"It's difficult to describe working with the viewpoints in words. It's like breaking the barriers of your mind and letting your body follow. It's changed the way I approach work more than anything else. Particularly if you're working on something very structural like a film for instance - to find freedom within the structure is very challenging." - Lisa Welti, actor

"The viewpoints allow an actor to create a 'physical' script, an invaluable asset when conventional means of entering a theatrical world are difficult financially or emotionally. They are the finest enhancement of an impossible test, begrudging character, or totally inappropriate song can be blessed by." - Megan Spooner, actor

When in doubt:

• Be someone's shadow
• Make a diagonal
• Repeat others' gestures
• Use pillars
• Use corners
• Stand too close/too far away
• Chase someone

- Sheryl Dodd, actor

Sources: www.jucha.com/viewpoints.html

Our Progress 

10/09/12
First session: Apparently we're good for a group new to viewpointing. Loved imagining how it must look to the audience - I tried to use angles and patterns.

12/09/12
Developed viewpointing more - used floor pattern and eye contact. I felt we made interesting and visually pleasing movements and decisions.

31/01/13
- Exact copy
- Transfer
- Transform
- Recycle

Architecture - hold a bar then let go, keep position of holding, others imitated
Stories - short, sharp movements, conflict, emotion, appearances
Outside sounds & kinesthetics - act like you're scared of them, run faster, be breathless
Run simultaneously
Eye contact with others, connections, distances
Change perception of space, don't stop running at edge of space
Listen to heartbeat

Devising for Dido and Aeneas:
Using viewpoints to explore and explode the opening of Dido and Aeneas:
- duration and flow worked well with music
- opening door transformed the space, gave insight into outside world
- treat chairs gently - for chorus

Zen Zen Zo's Ingredients of Great Compositions

• Extremity

• Contrast/Juxtaposition

• Broken Expectations

• Surprise Entrances and Exits

• Revelation/Transformation of - Space/Object/Character

• Moments of Simultaneous Action/Unison

• Moments of Stillness/Silence

• The Elements - Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Metal

• Sex, Death, Food

• Humour

• Interesting Relationships with the Audience

• A Journey

• The 'WHOOSH' Factor ('wow moments' that combine and roll on)

• Articulate Use of All the Viewpoints

• Metaphor/Moments that use Theatrical Poetry

Edward Gordon Craig

"Towards a new theatre" by Edward Gordon Craig

"Theatre is a mountain (...) the largest mountain I have seen (...) Had it been easily accessible, it would have been climbed long ago (...) People have wandered about its base for thousands of years, no one has ever gone to the top."

Dido and Aeneas 

When Craig presented the opera with his friend and colleague Martin Shaw, he had only a plain blue background. This challenged the busy, realistic stages of the Victorian era, but this background is still used today, has almost become a staple for a production of Dido and Aeneas. Craig was not rich and was merely making use of the resources available to him, but he used them simply and efficiently, in the best way possible. 

Many of Craig's often-reproduced images have coloured perceptions of opera ever since the first staging. His approach advanced the idea of an entire production in the hands of one designer, a modern focus we now take for granted.

Dido and Aeneas was Craig's crucial first appearance as a designer. 

He interpreted the opera through vision and movement rather than through music.

Facts and theories

• He had been put onto the stage by his mother (a famous actress) at 16, and performed under Henry Irving. He soon became dissatisfied with his performances as an actor, and retired. 
• Craig began his work in the field of scenery, and W.B.Yeats stated that scene-painting 
  ‘would be a new and legitimate art appealing to a taste formed by itself and copying but itself”. 
• Craig said of his own theatricality that he took "particular care to be entirely incorrect in all matters of detail", very much the opposite of Lepage. 
• Craig despises the manner in which all theatre people rely on the dramatist. He wished to restore theatre as an independent art. Craig has been hailed as one whose designs and theories influenced and inspired the 20th century, but who "explodes everywhere except upon the English stage." They must have not been ready. 
• He said: "after practice, the theory", meaning that he would try something out and then figure out what it meant later. This was the best he could do with the resources he had, but his talent and creativity brought him success.
• He wanted to remind the audiences of recurrent theatrical values- “those single images which serve for a thousand words, the associations which transcend real life while giving to that life a greater meaning”
• He always looked to the future of theatre, saw no point in trying to reconstruct the past
• He greatly appreciated puppetry: In his opinion marionettes were the last echo of some noble and beautiful art of the past civilisation. He said that they have now become low comedians.
• He believed that masks where the “means” of expression and that without them, acting was destined to degenerate.
• "The art of the theatre is neither acting nor the play, it is not scene nor dance, but it consists of all the elements of which these things are composed: action, which is the very spirit of acting: words, which are the body of the play; line and colour, which are the very heart of the scene; rhythm, which is the very essence of dance.”
• Shakespeare never wrote stage directions because he considered them 'tasteless'
• Acting is not an art. It is therefore incorrect to speak of the actor as an artist. Art arrives only by design. Therefore in order to make any work of art it is clear we may only work in those materials with which we can calculate. Man is not one of these materials.”
• He believed that no non-borne actor should be taught to act, therefore he disagreed with Stanislavsky’s System, which said that he and his system could make a good actor out of any man.
• His early works promoted verticals, arches, cliffs, towering walls
• He developing the sliding panels and pillars to have easy flawless scene changes.
• Theory that gesture ruins dramatic poetry, as dramatic poetry is to be read not acted thus they have nothing to do with one another
• Acting in the eye more powerful and fast than any other sense
• The director must be a visionary, unique, who "knows but no longer handles the ropes"
• He defines theatre as a ‘place in which the entire beauty of life can be unfolded not only the external beauty of the world but the inner beauty and the meaning of life.’
• The aim of modern staging : to intensify the reality of things
• Against realism
• Short-tempered. When something went wrong he would have 'explosions of anger'