The time to hesitate is through

We are here. After months of angst, tears, sweat, more reading than you can imagine, and rehearsals upon rehearsals, we are in our final week at RADA. I can't actually believe that I am here. It honestly feels like mere weeks ago that we were all crammed into the tiny basement studio on the first day, receiving our RADA booklets and cautiously selecting whether we would do scene study with Tom or Andrew.

I have learned so much about myself in this year. I have learned that I can make some pretty interesting theatrical pieces. I have learned that I can maybe, sort of, write a little. I have learned that the times when I feel most comfortable about a piece of work, those are the times when I haven't done enought. I have learned that I really like to scare myself into action. I have also learned from (and with) some of the most brilliant and talented people I have ever had the opportunity to be in the same room as. Tutors, obviously, but more importantly my fellow students, whose intellect, bravery, and talent have pushed me to become a better artist every minute of every day. I only wish that we could stay together and create work, rather than scatter the globe as we are bound to do. I will do everything possible to work with each of them again in the future.

So. . . as the title states, the time to hesitate is through. Dissertation performances are underway. I am assisting by performing in two presentations; Dena Rysdam Miller's adaptation of The Little Prince, and Holly Sharp's devised piece Nil by Mouth, about mental illness. I will also be reading a new play in development for Nika Obdizinski.

Largest looming in my future is my own piece - No More Prayers - an interrogation of Antigone through dramatic and philosophical history. Creating this piece has been a rollercoaster, and it has morphed to something completely different from what I first imagined, although simultaneously it continues to be an embodiment of that first seed of an idea. The piece I have ended up with is (I hope) the start of something bigger, that will continue and develop into a full production down the road. Thursday will be a "first viewing" for the work-in-progress, and I hope to share some photos and video of the presentation as well as the subsequent Q&A.

For all intents and purposes, the blog will be dark until mid next week, at which time I will try to make sense of this all. And wrap my head around the final written aspect of the dissertation, not to mention my impending move back to Canada and everything that entails.

In other news, I can happily announce that I will be directing a handful of readings for new plays at Sarasvati FemFest in September (Winnipeg) and will also be developing a piece titled Dear Mama, inspired by Sondheim's Gypsy for the RMTC SondheimFest in early 2013 (Winnipeg). More on those later, once I regain sanity.

Image: Cindy Sherman, Untitled 175

Image/Reflection

I have a terrible habit of selling myself short - either by not stepping forward when I know I am best for a task, or by letting myself settle for something less that my best work. Usually this happens when I worry I am being overwhelmed, or that I am being overwhelming....most commonly a twisted combination of the two. I did just that at the end of last term, and am now feeling the effects of it. At the time, I told myself it was good enough. But is good enough okay? Not for me it isn't. I am more than a little disasppointed in myself for this, as I feel I poured a lot of energy and thought into something without really thinking through the focus and the goal of it. I have, however, learned from it. It will not be happening again.

Anyway...enough self-musing. My scene from The Balcony went up today, with decent success. My 3 actors did a great job of bringing to life the layers I was hoping to see, with the short rehearsal time. The feedback was positive, that my choices made sense, and I was able to bring out something interesting about the parallels and rivalry between Carmen and Irma. So that is good. I didn't really get a chance to talk about what inspired me, all of the research I had done in Prisoner of Love, and the Gene Plunka "Rites of Passage of Jean Genet", not to mention the DeFrancia painting that inspired a lot of the connections in the movement. I did get to bring up the ideas I latched to from Genet's "Pour Jouer Le Balcon" which was good.

I have a mountain of films to watch, and a novel to read, and a book...and 2 scenes to write. Goodness me. Blogging might be slow for a couple days.

focus

While last term the focus with Tom was on really clearly presenting the text (as in the words), our focus with Andrew this term is more on the ideas, the themes, the sense that comes out of the play, and how to get that on its feet. Working with Genet, particularly in an English rational theatre tradition, there are certain problems when presented with a text that is so clearly visceral. The words are important, but just as important are the physical acts, the representation.

Today our scene presentations were interesting; with selected scenes from The Blacks and The Balcony, what emerged was a very clear sense of the difficulty of this work. One thing that stood out regardless of directorial choices was the ability to clearly understand the spoken words. There were scenes in which I felt that the director had paid too much attention to staging and emotions, and not enough to simply understanding the text, and understanding the modulations genet provides in his script. This is something that I want to try to balance when I approach directing a scene.

I am really interested in how to do this now; the idea of presenting an aboriginal "the blacks" in Canada really fascinates me. There would obviously need to be some adjustments to appropriate the text, but the ideas, the fear and violence the blacks feel in the play seems a strong parallel to what I have seen in Canada. Something to continue to consider.

Crisis of Faith

It is crunch time. So naturally, it is also the time when any other part of the universe (mainly transport) that can mess around with me does its best to make things difficult. Today, it was the return of the kid's flu, meaning that I was stranded at home when I should have been rehearsing and attending Scene Study for our impending Malfi presentation (one week today!!!!!! aaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!).

AND screw this. i wrote the whole blog post, and then blogger ATE IT. example of the above happening.

What you missed: me musing about the presentation, positive feedback that makes me uneasy and think I'm not pushing far enough, details about portfolio and essay status.

Process

After a couple late nights and a lot of collaboration, our group have created our base script for our final Scene Study presentations this term. We are looking at Gender and Power in The Duchess of Malfi, specifically at the triangular relationship between the Duchess, Antonio, and Ferdinand, and pulling in other texts which comment on the nature of this relationship. First, we came up with our list of influencing texts:

The Dog In The Manger - Lope deVega
Boston Marriage - David Mamet
Something Unspoken - Tennessee Williams
Venus and Adonis - William Shakespeare
Top Girls - Caryl Churchill

From here, we sat together and compiled bits of the text from each that we felt might be useful to create a script from. Then, rather than try to battle things out, we each went away and created a script or mock up that used what we felt was useful, splicing the texts together, and thinking about shape. What occurred was remarkable; we came back with 5 scripts that were really 5 versions of the same play. We had used almost the same bits of text, often in the same ways or same places, just varying on the situation or setup.

From this, we sat together and hacked together the proper script, drawing from what each of us had done individually and creating the shape of the piece. We aimed to focus simply on the text, using the language, etc, rather than on things like stage directions or business. Our intention is to workshop what things will look like; who is on stage when, who says what, etc.

We were successful! We presented our concept and script to Tom, and he noted that the script was clear and the use of language was good. He gave us some tips on things that were awkward or not as strong, and also gave us some thoughts about what some of the pieces might mean, encouraging us to look outside the text to other ways of manifesting actions such as "cover her eyes"..which means something very specific, but also very vague.

First workshop is today, we're going to get this thing on its feet.

Do I even know that many words?

Just feel the need to actually put this in writing. In the next 3 weeks, we have:
- 8000 word portfolio of my work in Scene Study
- Create and prepare a performance of/in response to The Duchess of Malfi.
- 4000 word essay and 1000 or so word questionnaire in Theorizing The Contemporary

Sometimes it is important to say it. HOLY CRAP THAT IS A LOT!!!

Now that that's over.

We spent several hours working through a reading party in preparation for our Malfi presentation. We have opted to focus on The Duchess and Antonio's relationship, and the various ways it may exist, both in what we specifically see in the text, and in what we don't necessarily see. We are pulling from other scenes in Malfi, but specifically focussing on the Marriage scene in act 1. In addition, we're pulling from other similar relationships in texts like Top Girls, Venus and Adonis, The Dog In The Manger, Boston Marriage, and Something Unspoken. We are also looking at the stage as a "dirty" space, in response to an article we found in The Guardian about a photographer who went to Rwanda and photographed the sites of horrible atrocities during the genocide, but 10 years later...looking at what remains after. This all sounds great...but is a lot. We need to have a script draft to Tom by Tuesday. Woo!

Brief rehearsal for our acting space class, working on the scene from Three Sisters. I had an "aha" moment while working on it, realizing some shifts on when Andrij is or isn't paying attention or speaking to Ferapont. We present these scenes in class tomorrow, and then we'll see where Brian takes them from there.

Scene Study at Birkbeck today focused on Violence again, a fitting theme for the seeming violence going on in my brain right now over all this workload. Looking at Oedipus, we discussed the act of rendering himself blind, the level of violence in this...and also at ideas like Justice. I had some great points in the class about the function of the violence and the blinding...and also on the subject of the concept of justice as the Greeks saw it; not as individual justice as we see it now (justice as fairness). Rather, justice for the Greeks was justice for the collective. Oedipus' punishment isn't to match his actions or responsibility, but to mete out the impact his actions have had on the larger society.

Finally we looked at some performances of Greek Tragedy or responses to it (Oedipus directed by Tyrone Guthrie, and Mouth Full of Birds) and discussed whether it is possible and/or effective to stage Greek Tragedy in an "authentic" way...and if we do if it is still tragedy. I really strongly feel that the plays and ideas themselves are tragic, however if we try to present them realistically, they lose their impact and become a museum piece, or a piece of comedy. The way we can engage now with the violence to make it truly meaningful is to distance our audience (and possibly even the characters) from it. Expressionism first comes to mind as a means to this, however things like media can also be a way to stage the violence and make it still shock and inform us.

Experimentation

Act 4 of The Duchess of Malfi presents all sorts of difficulties for directors/actors, and for the audience. Webster has been plodding along in a heightened, but relatively "normal" place of lies and deceit. Then we get to act 4 and all hell breaks loose. It has been said that Strindberg takes a moment that in a naturalistic play would be a minute and makes the whole play of it. Webster has done this in act 4...for all intents and purposes, really, we could just see the duchess be strangled, having heard of the torture. Instead, Webster gives us these gloriously juicy scenes with Ferdinand offering her a severed hand, madmen in her chamber singing and dancing, a disguised Bosola, executioners, coffins, and two deaths. Not to mention the marathon speeches of Bosola and Ferdinand at the end of the act. So given all this...how on EARTH do you put this on stage?

For yesterday's class, my group was charged with preparing act 4 scene 2. We were all agreed that there is a need to step outside of a naturalistic approach; first, because there are a ton of characters and we only had 5 people, and second because we needed to make the violence real, shocking, and not silly for a modern audience. We played around quite a lot, trying out ideas, working collaboratively on what might work. We ended with the idea to be influenced a bit by plays like Marat/Sade and have this scene located in a common room of an insane asylum. All chairs were placed around the full playing space, mostly single chairs, but the odd pairing...each facing different directions toward the front of the room, where the duchess sat alone, facing out to the crowd. All other performers were placed amongst the crowd as their neutral madmen, and popped in and out of the scene as various characters, contributing to the Duchess' terror. Our goal was to really help the audience feel her resignation, feel uneasy about what was coming at them, and ensure that everyone had a different perspective of what occurred in the scene, some seeing things that others missed and so on. The action moved around the space so sometimes audience members from certain places could only hear the text, not see the actor. This worked quite well in presentation, most comments indicated that this had really worked for them, the cacaphony of sound and position of the text distanced over the large space helped with the sense of the time and place.

Our second issue was all of the violence in this scene. Two strangulations, some dead babies. We opted to make the strangulations highly expressionistic; the executioner for the Duchess and later for Cariola faced away from the audience, never touching the victim, but doing a gesture of strangulation which was mirrored by the person dying. From here, Bosola's directions would snap us back to the madhouse and the "executioner" would return to their chair. Again with the children, we made use of the madmen; the scarf that one madman had worn was left at a chair, and became a baby to indicate the dead children.

Overall this premise worked quite well, and would be good to investigate further. Might it be possible to stage the play in this way in its entirety?

So...much...information...

Wow. What a day. Began with a meeting about Ludus Danielis at King's College to learn some details about the production, budget, expectations, etc.

Then to rehearsal, and quickly after to scene study where we did our presentations. I was feeling anxious heading into today, as although I felt our group had a good idea and concept, I was nervous that we were under-rehearsed. We managed to pull it off though, with some nice comedy and a great pulling in of the facts. Our Current Affairs in 1613 discussion was framed as Question Time, including the epic long intro music, and fiery debate. This was well received by the class and by Tom which was great. I was also really rather impressed by the quality of research and creativity in presentation from my classmates. It was amazing to see creative individuals engage with historical research in a theatrical way to produce a product that would be informative and entertaining. I did leave the class feeling overwhelmed with information. Because of the performance based nature of the presentations, I almost felt like I had sat through 6 fringe plays in 3 hours, my mind agreeing to one reality after the next, which is mentally exhausting!

We've now divided Malfi Act 3, and begin rehearsals Thursday. As we continue to progress, I am increasingly interested in the techniques to dig into the text and find the best way to crystallize the message and images of the play in the performance.

Then on to Theorizing. This was an interesting class, focused on discussing the impact of architecture and structures in the theatrical performance. We discussed a lot of immersive theatre techniques, and site specific techniques, in many cases specifically related to Decade. What I really continue to come back on with this production is a feeling that they set me up, but then failed to deliver. The security entrance mirroring US Customs set the stage for post 9/11, then the restaurant positioned the audience in the building pre 9/11....and then the majority of the show was reflective, from a position once again post 9/11. Rather than having the impact that immersive theatre should, it just made me more aware of the artifice of the thing.

Have our first assignment in Theorizing due Nov 4 that I can get started on too; we are to write a questionnaire to engage with one of the plays we have seen for the course, to tease out specific questions on a theme. I find this assignment rather interesting, as it is preparing us for the practicality of essay preparation, but also in a way preparing us for the potentiality of teaching, and eliciting intellectual scholarship from others.I am rather excited to begin this.