Ouroboros - Impressions, Thoughts.

Here are some considerations (in no particular order, posed as questions). What was that very first moment in your life when you felt the desire/need/excitement to modify or change your looks, your body? Example, young girl putting on lipstick. What is it about the seemingly spontaneous blossoming of a flower that is so magical? What are the attributes and features of creativity? When do you purposely make a mess of something only to end up with a work of art? What factor might creativity play in our relationships with one another throughout our lives, or our relationship with the natural world, the world we live in? If you look closely at a caterpillar what do you actually see or imagine? Why do we admire butterflies and hate cockroaches? These were some of the depictions in Ouroboros, presented at Live Theatre Workshop's Etcetera. I saw the performance on Sunday eve past. But before I talk further about that I have to have my brief say about three things which I don't like, a couple of recent trends and activities in theatre and a relic of the past. Ouroboros, this is not at your expense, just on your time so to speak. I haaaattttteeee pre-curtain announcements. But if you have to say something, say it in the foyer. All the ticket selling, turn off your phones, exits, etc, it is too much for an "old-timer" like myself and as an artist I think it goes wholly against the grain of having spectators step inside of a performance space. I hhhaaaattteee notes in the program. Not as much as pre-curtain announcements because I usually don't read them anyway. But what is the point? I say let the work on the stage just be. I'm anti-cleverness, anti-intellectualism, anti-everyone was great to work with, anti-all program notes. I haattteee blackness in the theatre. Black curtains, black costumes, black scenery, etc. If there is one thing that I regret about Stanislavsky/Meyerhold it is their invention of the black box theatre and all it's trappings of blackness. There, all done. That said and those aside, I may yet need to make mention of the development of Ouroboros - the what, when, where, how and why of it. But not yet. The first craft element that I noticed as a spectator in this performance was the music, which played throughout, as a recorded track. It was dominant and prevalent in setting the mood and tempo for what happened on stage. In this regard, the performance seemed much like a traditional dance performance, but at times it had "un-traditional" (as opposed to non-traditional) movements and activities happening. There was a theme that unfolded throughout, although there was an inconsistency to the logic of the events - or maybe I should say I could not discern any logic in the events. And by this I am referring to stage logic - not everyday ordinary logic. And yet there was a certain charm overall to the performance which I found to be refreshing and exciting. Youth abounded. And given that there were moments of genuinely enthusiastic and optimistic creation as well as moments of the worst kind of generalized energy and excitement that happens on stage. But! We suffer growing pains gladly to get eventually to the beauty of our art. And to get to the heart of the matter now. This was a production that was daring in its origin - even if that "dare" ness didn't always make it into the work itself. And it is commendable in many respects and I would be at fault not to mention some of them. Ouroboros was crafted and devised by five students from the University of Arizona, working together as a creative unit. They were "assisted" perhaps by Matt Walley as Director and Angela Horchem is listed as a "creative collaborator." But no doubt the bulk of the content and the actual activities we saw on stage were a result of the five students and their collaborative process. From nothing, using almost nothing, came Ouroboros, this series of interesting actions and human behaviors, depictions of the mind, feelings, and sensations of these five young people and their collective perspective on life. Where does the sidewalk end? Where does childhood stop and adulthood emerge? When do we change from having that fascination with nature to fighting against nature itself? What is funny, what is important, what is crap, what is sex, what is simplicity and what has any meaning at all? When do we learn who we are and what are bodies do and what happens to them over time? Consciously or unconsciously the students provoked these questions in the moment. Or at least gave them some kind of depiction set to music. Look into the final performances this week and go!

Physical Theatre part 3 - Losing Essence

We don’t have directors who work creatively with actors and we don’t have actors who work creatively with playwrights and we don’t have playwrights who work creatively with designers and we don’t have designers who work creatively with directors….and so it goes, around and around. Now we do all know how to behave and get along (most of the time) and figure out together things that “work.” And we put those things that “work” onstage for the spectators to see. But out of this “working” environment periodically comes the actor or director who does not feel creative. And so they go on a quest for more creative means. Many go off and devise their own work, write their own plays, their own performances, make their own props, create their own particular space in which to perform. Some go so far as to make attempts to classify and organize a system or way of learning and creating stage art. Some see the stage as the empire and domain of the playwright (Playwright as God). Some see the stage as the empire and domain of the director (must have a grand vision and concept). Some see the stage as the empire and domain of the Storyteller (Actor who speaks words). And these ways of thinking shape how and what they organize as their way of working, as their method of creativity. All totally self-serving of course. The director/choreographer who envisions the stage as their domain invents ideas that make it so - such as “Viewpoints.” Here is technique that has little or nothing to do with the creative process of acting but some (or a lot) to do with generally making and keeping order on the stage. Similar self-serving approaches have been or are being invented (as we speak) for each of the ways that the world of the stage is imagined. Actors who understand that the stage is their domain but who don’t understand the creative process of the actor (or who don’t want to accept it for what it is) also invent a myriad of things to substantiate their view or belief. Let’s take Michael Chekhov as an example here. And so the possibilities and combinations of people feeling less than creative and their point of view about the stage gives us all manner of “techniques” and makes a muck out of what is creative and how creativity unfolds on stage. What is most often lost in these “techniques” is the human factor - the biological apparatus, the body that thinks and feels and desires and moves and senses and is - the one that has knowledge and awareness of past, present and future. To be fair, some techniques take up parts or a part of this notion. Movement but not feeling. Thought but not Sensation. And when it comes to the most burning of all questions for the actor and creativity, the fusion of the fiction and make believe of the stage with the very real and immediate in this very moment living and breathing person of the actor, what do we get? Most often the answer is a game of some sort, or the notion to simply “play like a child.” While those concepts may have their time and place and reason on occasion, they do not get at the core of the actors work. No, they just don’t. Nope, nope, nope. I’m shaking my head a hundred times. And so it comes down to the fact that if the essence of our art is not addressed in our training or in our application via our techniques, then its not even like we are leaving it to chance come eight o’clock performance time, its more like we are discouraging it and manipulating ourselves further away from its creative possibilities.

Physical Theatre Continuing Discussion - short post

If you were lucky enough to see Odin Teatret’s production of Anderson’s Dream, especially one of the earlier more inspired performances, you saw rare genius - a once in a lifetime kind of production. It was the intersection of Meyerhold and Grotowski, made actual with the brilliance of Eugenio Barba and the actors of Odin Teatret. The production had a certain “unpleasantness” for the spectators, which is a trademark of much of Odin’s work. And of course I mean that in a good way! It grates on you as it goes. It surprises you, confuses you. It shakes your nerves, disturbs, in a very literal way. All the while being completely captivating. To sum it up - the production was alive physically in a way that shook the senses - a biological phenomenon unfolding in front of you. Everything Brecht wished he could be and more. So if there is a hallmark or benchmark of modern “Physical Theatre” then I would place it squarely at the point of Anderson’s Dream. And so we must ask, what were they working with and how, to craft this production? Without going into minute detail and description we could just say actions, logic, sensation, thought, etc. But the key is that they were rendered in a way that was pulsating, the senses were activated, highly, onstage and off. How else to distinguish? In lesser work, performers may believe that a physical gesture alone, done with a certain tact or precision will alone convey the immediacy of the moment and the full implication of the event. What they miss is the need or rather that full experience of a gesture or physical action which has immediate biological and sensual repercussions on both themselves and on the spectators, and this is only accomplished by including specific thought, sensation, awareness and intention. Only then do you get jumping off points for the spontaneity of the creative subconscious and the driving, living impulses that makes theatre distinct from other presentational arts. Without that specific kind of spontaneity the world of the stage becomes a kind of manipulative drudgery.

"Physical Theatre" - Part One

Physical Theatre. What is this? The term has become trendy in Academic circles and with people who are young or looking for alternatives to the status quo. To see it or hear it explained generally might be to hear it described as "movement based." But there is much, much, much, to unpack and to find if we are going to get at a more detailed and real answer. Let the fun begin. First of all, who do we have to thank (or curse) for this "concept?" Let's begin with Grotowski. When Grotowski returned to Poland after a year of study in Moscow, he held out the idea of a Studio Theatre with it's potential for power based squarely on the activities of the actors. In Grotowski's head also was Stanislavsky's ideas on Improvisation and Active Analysis. Now for Stanislavsky that work included the quest for the actor to return to actual and real biological function within or under the specific conditions of the stage. Mind you, that does not refer to or indicate a desire for a style of theatre, i.e. "realism" or "naturalism" but rather refers to what Stanislavsky knew was the central basis of theatrical art - the ability of the actor to literally process the fiction of the stage through his or her body and biological means, fully, expressively. Grotowski took Stanislavsky's notion of this, which in part was called the "Action" of the actor. And for Grotowski the work and the talk begin to be about "Physical Actions." His questions to himself and to his actors was what constitutes a "physical action," one that produces a real and true biological response in the actor (and in the spectator)? How could they produce them, how would they identify their authenticity? And then how could they arrange them logically in sequence? It came down to this - the actor must somehow experience or have a full-fledged biological event take place for them, feeling, sensing, aware, etc, and that in turn must alter or change the biological status of the spectator. The trick or danger for the actor was not to become completely manipulative to ones self - but rather allow that thing which Stanislavsky called Affective Memory and that thing called Creative Unconscious to come to fruition and to guide. If that happened, the action was lifted from the "mundane" and became "theatrical" or alive, with biological implications set in motion. Without human biological experience you have no event and no theatre. And so you now-a-days you might hear the phrase or saying "If it's not physical, it's not theatre." This is, or was originally, reference to this concept. -TO BE CONTINUED.