Nostalgia

An expert example of music, text and image coming together and moving apart in the service of nostalgia and loss.

Lost Buildings from Kobey Teef on Vimeo.

New trailer for 6.0

A new trailer for Heap and Pebble now online. This one actually has a bit of the show.

Devoted and Disgruntled, Theatre Teachers History Lesson

Here are the notes from our session today at Devoted and Disgruntled 6.

The purpose of this session was to try to learn who the names on the D and D map were and why they were significant. Phelim revealed that the connection between all of them was that they were teachers (of theatre practice) and, as we went through (almost) all of them we tried to trace a heritage or lineage that might reveal something about where we are now or where we’re going.

We all learned a lot.

It was suggested, and I would love to try (but it might be better suited to one of the ‘teachers’, that the Tate modern’s ‘map’ of 20^th century artists both in time but also in space is a very useful conceptual way of figuring this lineage and wouldn’t it be good to have one of the people below.

The purpose was also to be brief so, in that interest, I have tried to keep the biogs / definitions short. I have also tried to write them in the order we discussed them as this was often informed by links/similarities.

The descriptions are key words, places, book titles and things they said / stood for.

Book titles are underlined. ® symbols used to be arrows in Word, but blogger doesn't like it.

Jaques Lecoq.

1960s ® / Paris. / Work that concerns the body in space / a practice based on the purity of movement from his background as a sports teacher / The Poetic Body / “Everything moves” / Complicite, Mummenschantz, Clod Ensemble.

Philippe Gaulier

1970s® / Paris, London / Pleasure, playfulness, games / “You are not funny” / Clown, bouffon, melodrama / catholic / Spymonkey, Sasha Baron Cohen, Peepolykus.

Prattki

1990s ® / London / LISPA / Lecoq disciple but adds elements of psychology, zen, meditative, mindfulness / A negotiation between Grotowski and Lecoq.

John Wright

1980s / UK, Paris / Clown, bouffon / Moved to England because ‘he got cash’ / Like Gaulier but ‘more english’ / Improvisation / Codifying comedy, the science of laughter / Games as opposed to play / Pushed clown towards the pathetic, the tragic / Told by an Idiot, Trestle.

Keith Johnstone

1970s, 80s / UK / Impro / Impro towards narrative, storytelling (as opposed to Gaulier who was towards the relationship w an audience ® often people who don’t connect w Gaulier are more comfortable/successful w Johnstone) / Ran the writer’s room at the royal court in the 70s ® Barker, Brenton, Bond / Gaulier and Lecoq say ‘No’, Johnstone says ‘yes’ / Failure is an active part of the process / Lifegame (anecdote from Phelim about a woman recounting a story in Lifegame about her mother’s heart attack and it being the first time Phelim realised impro could create wonderful, memorable scenes, and not just comedy, moments).

Viola Spolin

1950s / USA / Pioneer of early ‘impro’ in the US. / Worked w street kids and developed, through this work, improvisation techniques / if Johnstone’s impro is about narrative, Spolin’s is about space / ‘Single focus’ allowing for instinct and intuition (eg. Coming onstage focusing on your feet allows you to instinctively use the rest of your body) / Improvisation for the Theatre / Games, play / ‘anyone can be an actor’ /

Anne Bogart

1990s onwards / NYC / Serious badass with a sensitive, vulnerable side (!) / Founder of Siti company / Works with ‘Viewpoints’, a system of codifying patterns in space and time to describe things and thus to be used in training or as a starting point for creation / not dissimilar from Laban / The performer of this has a 180 degree field of vision (unlike, say, a Gaulier performer who focuses on the audience) / an awareness tool / The director prepares

Tadashi Suzuki

Japan / Comes from a Japanese tradition of Noh and Kabuki / voice centering (in the diaphragm, not the chest or head) / THIGHS.

Yoshi Oida

Japan, Paris / Part of Peter Brook’s company / Noh training / the Japanese tradition of clear pictures, clean, clear language / Jo-Ha-Kyu / The Invisible Actor.

Konstantin Stanislavski

1890s-1920s / Russia / Came out of a period where declamation was king, his practice was a reaction to this, a search for authenticity, truth to life and a rejection of self-consciousness / He evolved from a place where actors worked as individuals to ensemble work / His system(s) has been misappropriated by Stella Adler and The Method in the US and is unfairly maligned as a result ® in need of reconsideration!

Michael Chekhov

1940s / Russia, USA / Stanislavski’s student / ‘the psychological gesture’ ® the idea of creating a whole body physicalistation of a character or a play / ‘Atmospheres’ as tangible, physical things, ‘there’s an atmosphere of love in the room, what does it feel like to move my hand through it?’ / He himself was a star performer (an amazing clown) and ended up in Hollywood teaching Marilyn Monrow, Yul Brynner etc. (you can see him as the Russian in Spellbound) / Phelim’s hero / To the Actor / the Charles Morovitz Biography / Spiritual / Jungian

Jeremy Whelan

Instant Acting / working w. text: the actors record the text then, while listening to it, move in the space. This is repeated but with completely different movement. After the fourth repetition, the actors try to speak it without the sound (and almost always manage with amazing success) / alternative to ‘dubbing’ exercise / the effect is almost like improvising a text / On the first day you should do the whole play(!) / Bypasses the intellectualising of the parts, lines / Dictionary of Emotions.

Joan Littlewood

1960s / UK / Radical / Socialist / Impro / ‘Oh what a lovely war’ / Devising / Working class / that theatre should be like boxing, should be a struggle / wanted to form the “Pleasure Palace’, a home for art and theatre, on the Southbank but was denied and ended up moving to Paris.

Uta Hagen

1960s-90s / Respect for Acting / sense memory / 6 questions / things like ‘who am I?’, ‘where am I?’, ‘How do I get what I want’.

Augusto Boal

1960s – 90s / Brazil / Forum theatre / Theatre of the Oppressed / Political / The audience became actively involved in the experience, performance / later became a politician / ‘rainbow of desire’ added a psychological aspect.

Joan Skinner

Dance / Dance improvisation pioneer / Similar to Chekhov’s ideas about externalising internal images physically / ‘Slinner Release / Feldenkreis / How internal images effect movement.

Wesley Balk

1970s-2003 / USA / Director of the Minnesota Opera / Created a system for actor singers / wrote a famous article called the ‘Disappearing Diva’, which argued that singing compromised acting (and vice versa) and, in the effort to do both, things became tangled and the result was unsatisfactory. He developed techniques to separate the two processes than bring them back together (eg. holding up emotion cards while they were singing) / The Complete Singer actor / Radiant Performer.

Dell Close

Improv teacher and comedy writer / ‘the truth in comedy’

MISSING:

Brook

Humphries

Craig

Fo

Duncan

Barker

Graham

Meisner

Rughe by Paco Roca

Following our inspiring conversation with Prof Sergio della Sala this morning, we found this:

Arrugas from vixel on Vimeo.

...Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice is in development.

ALICE snippet

Better late than never: a new year's snippet of ALICE filmed last summer at BAC, featuring some of Caroline's amazing music. Can't wait to start working with her again on Ko...

We're Jammin'....

We are thrilled to be performing next week at the Jam, an evening of work-in-progress performances at the Junction, in Cambridge.

Nest Wednesday, 17th of November, we'll be scratching some ideas of our latest work Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice. We are very excited about the piece, and have been doing some brainstorming about what the difference between memory (a remembered thing) and fiction is. We also found some exceptional old footage of our family's life, taken a very long time ago. In black and white and brilliant technicolor. All beautifully silent still, of course.

Set in Space, in an imagined future, on a planet of rice, the play follows two astronauts as they are attacked by a mysterious force. The piece is inspired by 1960s Science Fiction, using the genre and breaking out of it, to talk about memory and our fear of forgetting, it reflects our anxiety towards aging and a nostalgic longing for a generation that is currently disappearing.

For more information about the Jam event, please visit: http://junction.co.uk/artist/257

We hope you can make it and give us lots of useful feedback!!

'...Ko' concerns

Today we had a meeting about the development process of our most recent project "Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice". Originally conceived during a SITE Residency at Tobacco Factory and Theatre Bristol this summer, the piece wants to tackle the themes of ageing, memory (and in particular memory loss) and identity. The piece is set in outer space, in a distant future, on an austere planet of rice, and we follow two characters, as they discover what the mysterious planet beholds.

In the last month, however, we've found many other companies and projects dealing with these themes,(in very, very similar ways!) and are struggling to work out how to reconcile our belief in our authenticity with the inevitable likeness to these other works. After all, we all know the fear of the artist, the utter frustration at, and ultimate need of, Comparison (to quote Taylor Mac!).

How to know what to do with an original idea, after you've seen it perfectly executed by someone else? Remarkably Fevered Sleep's On Ageing (http://www.feveredsleep.co.uk/current-projects/on-ageing/) at the Young Vic, which we thought was an extraordinary, and beautifully formed, contemplative piece on the subject. The use of mics, the simplicity in design, the delicate treatment of transcript and/ as text, the gaps between speaker, text and memory, the use of objects (accumulation on stage), object in a jar, are all elements present in the material we've already created for Ko.

Similarly Unlimited Theatre's latest piece "Mission to Mars" a co-production with Polka Theatre (http://www.unlimited.org.uk/shows/mars.php) is set - obviously - in space, and seems to be inspired, even indirectly by classic Science Fiction stories. Not to mention Stan's Cafe's touching and evocative use of rice by the tonne, in their durational piece http://www.stanscafe.co.uk/ofallthepeople/.

Can we, in all seriousness, present our story of two spacemen (surrounded by bucket-fulls of rice, uncovering the objects of memory-past, whilst speaking transcripts of interviews through microphones around the stage), to a knowing audience without them reading 'pastiche' - or indeed plagiarism ! - in our every move?

Where can we take our material now? How can we move forward knowing that what we've got has just been tried and tested, successfully, by others? How can we re-invent it, so that when people see the finished product they're struck by its originality?

...

for more thoughts on this see Richard Dedomenici's clever and witty piece titled 'Plagiarismo' (http://dedomenicitemporarywebsite.blogspot.com/)