The Woman In Black

The Rehearsing

People involved: 

• Costume lady
• Meg who does everything
• 2 stage managers who also do everything - Constanza & Beatriz
• 3 actors - Me, Ces and Keith
• 1 director - Grant
• Lighting and sound - Zoe, Meg and a bunch of guys

Thoughts on rehearsal process can be summed up by this quote:

"Until discipline is understood in a theatre, to be willing and reliant, obedience to the manager or captain, no supreme achievement can be accomplished."                - Edward Gordon Craig

Craig says theatre is like a ship, the captain knows what's going on and knows what everyone should be doing, and the crew gets on with their job. The biggest problem rehearsing was the lack of organisation. Time was poorly managed and if I wasn't so stubbornly devoted to theatre I might have not bothered. During production week, we all agreed after that we should have focused LESS on the acting (which should be perfect already) and MORE on tech (aka me and Mariana's entrances and exits). During rehearsals I discovered how painfully slow tech can be, and how important it is to repeat things (gestures, lines, whole scenes) over and over again until they're perfect. People think theatre is an easy option, but it takes a lot of hard work and constant energy. The sound also took a long time to work out, it needed to be at the perfect volume to hear dialogue over it, while the sound effect was still audible. Setting the stage and stage changes in the interval are complex, as is the lighting. I'm just glad I wasn't a stage manager. In terms of marketing, independence and initiative are crucial. The rest of the ship's crew aren't going to leave their own jobs to help you with yours. I learnt how precise and organised stage managers need to be, and how much passion and persistence is needed from actors and directors. I found it interesting, while watching them rehearse, how different companies must interpret the same script. This play could so easily be not scary in the slightest, but Avalon managed to make the audience scream - an impressive feat. 

The Show

The show received praise from the audience, and was generally a success. Although we were panicking slightly in production week the show ran smoothly (except opening night, obviously). I enjoyed playing the Woman in Black, and it reminded me why I love theatre so much, the best feeling is generating a genuine response from your audience, and making a whole room scream without even opening my mouth made the days of tech worthwhile. I love the feeling of working as a company too, I know that's how I want to work later in life: you just can't have a laugh with fellow doctors like you can with actors. 

Some moments of the show I liked:

• Keith jiggling up and down to pretend to be riding a pony and trap - easy comedy
• Spider the Invisible Dog and Keith's narration of her being sucked into the marsh - really image provoking
• The thumping sound - a rising action provides great tension
• Keith's versatile change of character - It is extremely natural, great acting

Robert Lepage and Ex Machina

Robert Lepage

"This sense of playfulness is my big argument for why we should do theatre in this day and age," says Lepage. "Nowadays there's sometimes too much acting and not enough playing. In Shakespeare's day we referred to players, not actors."

One of Canada's most honoured theatre artists, Robert Lepage is a playwright, actor, film director, and stage director. His source of inspiration is contemporary history. In 1985 he created The Dragons' Trilogy and immediately received international recognition. In 1994, Lepage founded Ex Machina, a multidisciplinary production company, for which he is artistic director. Lepage and Ex Machina have toured numerous productions internationally to critical and popular acclaim, most notably The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994) and Elsinore (1995).

Ex Machina

• Ex Machina is a company bringing together actors, writers, set designers, technicians, opera singers, puppeteers, computer graphic designers, video artists, contortionists and musicians. It believes that the performing arts should be mixed with the recorded arts. 
• Robert Lepage likes to allow everyone involved in the show to invent the shows together with him.
• His creative process uses all kinds of resources, not just themes and subjects. He draws from cross-cultural experiences and memories.
• He then finds poetic connections between seemingly unrelated elements.
• Sense of ritual

Review of the 2012 production of "Playing Cards"

ROBERT LEPAGE PLAYING CARDS 1: SPADES @ ROUNDHOUSE

February 13, 2013, Tim Macavoy, Londonist

CANADIAN AUTEUR ROBERT LEPAGE RETURNS TO THE ROUNDHOUSE WITH PANORAMIC SNAPSHOTS OF WHAT HE DID ON HIS HOLIDAYS WITH CIRQUE DU SOLEIL.

Spades is the first of a four-part exploration of in-the-round theatre, our modern liminal lives, and playing cards. Set in 2003 at the outbreak of the Iraq War, a host of multi-cultural wanderers find themselves entwined at a Las Vegas retreat. The suit of spades was originally swords, and in this production represents war, risk and chance.

Metaphors for the controversial war range from European soldiers training in the Nevada desert and frisking Hollywood actors in a fake Iraqi village, to a Mexican maid suffering from fainting fits. The references are sometimes oblique and the dialogue is more functional than profound, but it’s the execution that steals the show.

Lepage has never been comfortable in a box (theatre) and embraces every dimension he can. Many 360 degree performances stay safe with sparse set, relying on actor movement to give the audience clear sightlines. Lepage creates a puzzle box (a bit like Hellraiser, but not as Pinheady) where six actors, playing multiple multilingual characters, emerge through trapdoors and rising platforms, onto a revolving stage that changes set more often than a TV sketch show.

Perspex chairs descend from the ceiling as though lowered by helicopters, landing in a perfect circle in a meeting room. Steam rises through a pit creating an instant swimming pool. Hotel room doors rise and fall, while furniture seemingly rearranges itself. We even visit a casino, the desert, an airport, a bar, and an army base.

To watch a Robert Lepage show is really to accept the experience of a master at play. It’s best to sit back and enjoy the sensations than fight the urge to second guess him. That said, there’s plenty to hold on to: the suggestion that the Iraq war was as much a game of risk and greed as any game of roulette; the soldier who faces bigger battles within the army than in combat; and the idea that the devil can tempt a newly married couple with Celine Dion tickets.

Lepage is as thrilling as he’s ever been, and there are three more plays coming over the next eight years to follow suit.

http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/

Robert Wilson

• Born 4th October 1941
• American avant-garde stage director and playwright

4 elements to demonstrate his style:

1. Language: 

• "In theatre, no one has dramatized the crisis of language with as much ferocious genius as Robert Wilson."
• Tom Waits: Wilson "changes the values and shapes of words. In some sense they take on more meaning; in some cases, less."
• Language changes with time, person and culture.
• Wilson worked with mentally handicapped children and drafted Christopher Knowles, an autistic poet, so he could face language from many different perspectives and viewpoints. 
• Visually showing words - set designs, programs graffitied with words.
• The language itself, not the objects and meanings we automatically attach to it.
• Noise/Silence. Working on King Lear: “The way actors are trained here is wrong. All they think about is interpreting a text. They worry about how to speak words and know nothing about their bodies. You see that by the way they walk. They don’t understand the weight of a gesture in space. A good actor can command an audience by moving one finger”
• Deafman Glance: A play without words. "Despite the arrogance of words - they rule traditional theatre with an iron fist."
• 2 character play ("I was sitting on my patio this guy appeared I thought I was hallucinating"), both characters deliver same stream of consciousness monologue, however one is aloof and cold and the  other is warm, playful and quirky. The different deliveries show how words can mean different things to particular character.

2. Movement

• Wilson: "I do movement first to make sure it's strong enough to stand on its own two feet without words. The movement must have a rhythm and structure of its own. It must not follow the text (...) What you hear and what you see are two different layers. When you put them together, you create another texture."
• Audition process - Actors must repeat a sequence of movements. Actor: “When I went in, he asked me to walk across the room on a count of 31, sit down on a count of 7, put my hand to my forehead on a count of 59. I was mystified by the whole process”
• Timing, counting
• There must be enough "space around the text" for the audience to soak it up. 
• Wilson: “I know it’s hell to separate text and movement and maintain two different rhythms. It takes time to train yourself to keep tongue and body working against each other. But things happen with the body that have nothing to do with what we say. It’s more interesting if the mind and the body are in two different places, occupying different zones of reality”
• Medea - lack of movement. Lead singer complained that if he didn't give her any movements no one would notice her, Wilson said if she knew how to stand everyone would watch her. "Stand like a marble statue of a goddess who has been standing in the same spot for a thousand years." 

3. Lighting

• Wilson: "the most important part of theatre is light"
• "a set for Wilson is a canvas for the light to hit like paint"
• Wilson is recognized by some as "the greatest light artist of our time"
• His lighting flows like a musical score, not on and off pattern
• Dense, palpable textures
• Quartett - 400 light cues in the span of 90 minutes - perfectionist, a single hand gesture took 3 hours to light

4. Props

• Wilson designs and constructs each prop as if it were a work of art
• Full-scale model of each prop must be made before the real thing is made - "to check proportion, balance and visual relationships"
• Attention to detail means props are very beautiful and valuable - it is clear Wilson makes each show a thing of great value.

"Fables de la Fontaine" - Wilson's play

Light and perfectly shaped shadow, and the colour relationship show that just from one still shot Wilson's plays are works of art. 

Royal de luxe

"This is a company of inventors, stuntmen, poets and scrap-dealers all at once, led by Jean-Luc Courcoult. Royal de Luxe are currently considered to be an iconic, almost mythical, street theater company - equal to the Theatre du Soleil for conventional indoor theatre."

They started in 1979 in France and have since expanded and toured internationally. They came to Lisbon in 1988 with "Cars in Trees", in which they would rendezvous with the audience every day in the same place at the same time around an unusual event. Also in 1988, they visited Morocco for 10 weeks to conduct research into the souks and markets. They wanted to find new inspiration and develop new forms of theatre that would challenge Western pre-established ideas. They use a lot of town-square theatre, reminiscent of Shakespearean times.

Some of their work:

• Dream situations: In autumn 2007, Royal de Luxe develops a new form of street theatre, the window show, and proposes a new production "The Revolt Of The Mannequins". In the form of urban comics in shop windows, mannequins rebelled for nine days in Charleville for the twentieth anniversary of the National College of puppetry.
• Giants spectacular: "There once was a Giant who lived in the clouds. One day he fell from the sky and onto a boulevard. When he awoke, the humans had tied him up. The following day, they walked him through the city in a large cage for the entertainment of all. But every night the Giant dreamt, and the humans were afraid of his dreams. So they built a big wall of light to prevent him from sleeping. That night the Giant dreamt so hard he broke his cage and disappeared into the light ... ". Although the story is presented in this way, the audience does not know how each day will unfold and they must search for the Giant to find out what happens next. The Giant is manipulated in full view by a team of actors all dressed in red. With tousled hair, a black look in their eyes and bare legs up to the knee.
• Parades: "The Hamburg Cage", 1985, the audience are forced to follow this man being taken through the streets in a cage. 
• Shows without notice: For example, the "The Traffic-Jams", in which twenty vehicles with unusual scenes played on their roofs criss-cross the city from six to nine in the morning or evening during rush hour traffic. With this production, the company hoped to engage the audience with accidental theatrical scenes during their daily journeys. Chance and surprise are essential ingredients ; the public should be surprised and unprepared.

Amazing photo slideshows: 

• http://www.royal-de-luxe.com/en/creative-work/square-performances/
• http://www.royal-de-luxe.com/en/creative-work/dream-situations/
• http://www.royal-de-luxe.com/en/creative-work/giant-spectacular/

http://www.royal-de-luxe.com/en/company/