The Little Things

Last Friday marked my first night teaching the Friday Night Drama group at PTE School. This is a new project for me, working with a special group of adults with various abilities. This was the first time in ages that I have been nervous to teach a class; not because I was unsure of my preparation, but mainly because i was anxious with anticipation of the group, their dynamic, and whether I would fit into their circle.

We did a range of work on drama exercises, focussing on imagination. We began with a circle, talking about imagination and creating an imaginary place together. We then got up to walk around, creating our own imaginary beach, eventually finding an object, and sharing it with the group. The imagination game was very successful, every member of the group participating. We moved into other imagination-based exercises. As the group got more excited, I sensed myself getting excited too, veering from my plan into exercises with varying levels of success.

Several times through the class I found myself simply grinning with joy at the enthusiasm of these individuals, and how happy the simple theatre games made them for those 2 hours. I recently read an interview with Robert Lepage in which he stated that these days there is too much acting and not enough playing; this class reminded me of exactly this, the joy that comes from playing.

Overall, my fears were for nought, as the group really took to my style of physical imagination  and games. I'm really excited about my continued development with this group over the coming weeks, and may share more of my trials and tribulations.

Photo: Autel @ Gas Station Arts Centre - photo by Leif Norman

My Winnipeg: There's No Place Like Home @ PlugIn Gallery

This was my first visit to PlugIn since their move to downtown, part of the University of Winnipeg buildings. Exhibition aside, the space itself is very exciting. Comprised of a cluster of oddly shaped rooms in part of the triangle shaped building, you get to weave from one room to the next as if exploring, each nook and cranny filled with installations, quotes, and light.

The first part of the My Winnipeg Project, There's No Place Like Home, focussed on the myths relating to this city. Those funny things about Winnipeg that to an outsider seem absurd; toboggan races turned awry, maps highlighting childhood homes, greasy spoons, and mythical beasts of the prairie. Some of the pieces (for me) failed to engage, however this may be due to the overwhelming enjoyment I got from the toboggan video, and the mythical map. Unfortunately, due to the layout in the furthermost room, I wasn't able to see who the artist was for each individual piece, which is unfortunate.

I look forward to checking out further installments of the My Winnipeg Project through the winter months.

Winnipeg Now @ WAG - to 30 December 2012

An exciting exhibition which showcases local artists of the younger generation who have been stirring things up not only in the Canadian Art scene, but internationally, Winnipeg Now at the WAG reminded me of all the reasons I am proud to say I am from this frigid and isolated island in the prairie. The imagination, curiosity and daring exhibited in these pieces is outstanding. Each piece I encountered while moving through the exhibition struck me differently, however the resounding commonality among them was the ability I feel each would have to find itself included in a major gallery of modern art, such as the Tate Modern or Hayward Gallery.

Some individual pieces stood out for me specifically.

Sarah Anne Johnson's (title unknown) made me want to sit underneath its stratosphere for hours. My eye danced around the sculpture as it loomed over my head, colours bursting.

Michael Dudeck's pieces from his Baculum Cosmology call into play ideas of liveness, nature, and human relationship to this; the body mummified but with pipes and cables emerging from its form was haunting, and called to mind similar ideas in Damien Hirst's work, challenging our perceived supremacy over nature and science, and ultimately our mortality. I am saddened that I missed his live performance with the pieces, and only hope I can catch this in the future.

Finally, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millian's Bedtime Stories for the End of the World intrigued, due to the idea of a comfortable, relaxing space in which pre-recorded stories are heard. Similar to my own work (Autel) this pushes us to see storytelling as art, and to truly audit what we are taking in, even in seemingly everyday scenarios.

I strongly recommend taking this exhibition in, for a sense of the intelligent and sophisticated work being created by fellow Winnipeg artists.

Photo: Michael Dudeck Religion project

Review - Duet for a Schizophrenic - Little Theatre of the Gray Goose & Adhere and Deny @ Ace Art

An interesting and strange little play, Duet for a Schizophrenic is Chris Johnson's foray into double and triple worlds. A place where people pretend to be people pretending to be other people, and popuulate the dream you dream i dream you dream i dream. How's that for a mouthful?

The quick and clever word play as He (Graham Ashmore) and She (Erin McGrath) weave between various characters was very enjoyable, and began the piece at a nice pace. There were times, particularly in the second act, where the pace needed some variation - I was urging with my mind for things to delve a bit deeper at this point. The piece really hit its stride, however, in a scene with the actors, preparing for a play within a play (within a play....and more). The beautiful timing of this bit made me wish the whole play was like this.

Each act was interspersed with musical interludes of He and She singing their feelings to one another. This I had some trouble with, as the lyrics weren't always comprehensible over the loud (but excellent) band. These bits also made use of large marionettes of the two actors, which were very fun.

Some clever references to Pirandello, for those who are very familiar with his work were great, however I worry that some of the truly clever humour would have been lost without this background. In a way, I wonder whether the piece would have been enjoyable to an audience not steeped in theatrical history and information.

Girls! Girls! Girls! - A fundraiser for the Gas Station Arts Centre

I learned this week that Autel, a performance installation I created while at RADA has been selected for an exhibition in Winnipeg! The Exhibition will open at the Gas Station Arts Centre on  21 October, coinciding with the Gala event Girls! Girls! Girls! - a cabaret evening showcasing female performers. The exhibition will run for a further 3 weeks in the lobby gallery of the Arts Centre. 

Autel is an exciting piece for me - it is among my first explorations into the relationship between live experience and recorded audio, aiming to merge the two making the audience aware of the way they are experiencing art as they are experiencing it. It uses recorded audio to guide the viewer to relate to the text, and also to the other works of art and individuals around them. The piece was inspired by and created from play texts written by Jean Genet, and theoretical texts by Antonin Artaud. 

I am extremely grateful to the organizers for selecting my piece for this year's exhibition, and look forward to seeing the other pieces, as well as the cabaret performance on the 21st. I will post information on tickets for the Gala as it becomes available. The Exhibition is free to view during opening hours at the Gas Station Arts Centre. 

Review - Sonofabitch Stew @ FemFest 2012

This one-woman show tells the story of a Womens' Studies' tutor forced into retirement after her wild-west antics inspired by the life of Calamity Jane embarass the department for one last time. Jane regales the audience with her tales, and after a few minutes we learn that the audience have been given the role of her students at her penultimate lecture. Jane goes on to talk of her career, flashing into moments of Calamity herself. The show progresses back and forth, paralleling the professor's life with that of the Western Female archetype as we hear of her rise to infamy and her ultimiate demise resulting from the very acts which made her famous.

The script itself is intriguing as it twists these two lives together, playing on ideas about what femininity and ultimately feminism are made up of. I did find that the stylistic traits of the language between the two characters was not as distinct as it could have been; this, muddied the ability to distinguish which character was being inhabited at each moment. Ultimately I would have appreciated a clearer distinction between the two, as it would have defined the parallel more clearly. Without this, the two characters spun together a bit too much and made the piece difficult to follow at times.
 
Overall this was a nice, enjoyable script and one I would love to see further work on.

FemFest 2012 Begins!

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Opening Cabaret for the 10th Annual FemFest. I've had a fairly lengthy history with FemFest - I first worked with the festival as Assistant to Director Hope McIntyre (AD of the Festival) for Ordinary Times in 2005. Since then, I've directed workshop productions of new plays (The Dance of Sara Weins, 2006), shared my own work-in-progress piece Lavinia in the 2009 Cabaret, directed scenes for the launch of their book of scenes for female actresses (Generation NeXXt, 2010) and now directing readings of short plays in the 2012 festival. As I sat in the audience, hearing host and festival supporter Susan Tymofychuk speak of the history of the festival, and the opportunity it has provided for emerging artists (particularly female ones) I reflected on these experiences. FemFest has provided me the opportunity to hone my skills as a director and creator of work, providing a safe environment for me to learn and help those around me explore new works of theatre. I don't know of many festivals anywhere in the world that provide this kind of environment, and I must say that my career has been enriched immeasurably due to my involvement with FemFest.

There are shows throughout this week at the Centre for Theatre & Film at the University of Winnipeg; ticket prices are very affordable, including many free readings and talks about creating theatre. I encourage you to try to spend at least an hour taking in a piece of the festival. The work presented touches on all aspects of human experience; from Food Bank usage to Immigrant families, re-imagined fairy tales to readings from esteemed playwrights. Judith Thompson is this year's guest artist. She is one of the most well-known Canadian playwrights, and certainly the most known female playwright from Canada, and her support and participation in the festival says a lot about the amazing work Sarasvati do.

Take some time and check it out this week!

It is voyeurism, plain and simple

John Doyle, writer for the esteemed Globe and Mail, and often someone I can agree with, has truly missed the mark on this one. His recent article for the Globe which argues that the purpose of such shows as "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" is to "kick open the shutters of closed societies and closed minds" could not be further from accurate. Certainly, I can agree that popular culture at its best will do just this; it will push the edges of what society deem acceptable from a perspective of fashion, music, pop art. The very best pop culture is where the lines of art and pop merge and blur - the Sex Pistols, rave culture, David Bowie, etc. The difference, however, is that these have something to say, a commentary on the state of the world as it is now compared with how it ought to be.

To state that a show like "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" is doing something like this is, for me, a stretch. What it is, simply, is voyeurism. There are people who live differently from our own experience, and there has always been an interest in how "the other half" live. Jean Genet made a career of this instinct for voyeurism, writing plays which exposed our own human base desire to see and be seen, to control our image. This interest, however, does not appeal to our intellect (or heck, even an anthropological interest). Rather, it appeals to our most base desire to see people at their worst. Watching a family who so clearly will say and do anything if the TV cameras are watching is not condemned by critics for touching close to home, a harbinger of the death of the middle class, as Doyle argues. It is condemned for the same reason most reality television is condemned by thinking people; it encourages the lowest common denominator, pushing humanity not toward our best, but our worst.

The example Doyle gives of Roseanne Barr is a misguided one; Barr did challenge bourgeois ideas about the working class, but did so in a way that demonstrated the humanity, intelligence, and integrity of the working class. She pushed her audiences to look past stereotypes. The family in Honey Boo Boo take her cause back 20 years, portraying the working class exactly as bourgeois stereotypes would want them to be; rednecked yokels, overweight, feeding their child cheetos at every turn, swimming in mud holes.

I have been giving a lot of thought to these reality shows, in particular ones which focus on children, making them "stars" - this is a singularly distressing development in popular culture, and one we must be wary of encouraging. Think of the hundreds of children featured on these shows, or exposed to watching them. . . what will happen to their ability to value integrity and hard work? We already see a generation of entitlement graduating from our high schools, kids who have never been failed despite poor attendance and effort. Now these kids are going to universities or into the workforce, without any preparation for the challenges of life, and into one of the most challenging job markets in recent history. A recipe for the downfall of our ability to continue as a society, if you ask me . . .

One Director's Perspective...

Between the dissertation, the move, resuming the day job and new projects here at home, I have been rather neglectful of the blog. That said, I have done a little guest-blogging for Sarasvati in the lead-up to Fem Fest (for which I am directing).

Check out my piece, "One Director's Perspective" on their blog here:
http://sarasvatitransforms.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/one-directors-perspective-on-directing-new-writing/#more-1188

Upcoming Project: Shorts! at FemFest 2012, Winnipeg

My first project upon returning to the fair 'Peg is to direct 4 excerpts from plays at the annual FemFest, presented by Sarasvati Productions. These 4 plays will each be presented once between 19 September and 22 September, as an offering in the studio theatre between the two full productions each evening. Tickets for the festival are available through the site; I strongly recommend checking out as much as you can at this excellent event!

I am extremely excited to be working on these 4 unique plays from female playwrights, and will be doing a guest blog about the process and the plays for Sarasvati's blog - which I'll share here :)

I recently did a Q&A for the festival's blog, which you can read here. Have a look to learn my favourite word, and my advice to actors.

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

Matilda @ The Cambridge Theatre (West End)

It isn't often that you can sit through a full length musical and not have even a second where you feel that you are in the moment of superfluousness, with the the song added to make the second act long enough, or to ensure each character had enough to do to justify paycheques.  Matilda was a solid 2.5 hours of well written music and scenes, performed with gusto by this brilliant cast. The directing and choreography was fabulous, most notably the work with the children. There was not a second of doubt or uncertainty, each piece of choreography executed with impeccable precision and commitment, and crafted to tell us something about the story as the song went on.

Favourite moments for me included the song and choreography for Alphabet Song, which cleverly manipulates the set piece from school gate, to play climber, to shelf of alphabet blocks, weaving bodies in and around the structure beautifully to move the story forward and capture the terror young kids feel in approaching school the first time. Also beautiful was When I Grow Up, choreographed on swings with large sweeping gestures. Finally, in a moment of comic genius (and too bad for those hanging out in the bar at the interval!) was Telly, performed by the father and son of the Wormwood family. Had me reeling with joy.

Most importantly, though, is the magic this show brings for kids. My own little Matilda, obsessed with this book, was on the edge of her seat, grinning ear to ear for the duration of the piece. She was thrilled by the scariness of Trunchbull, the caricatured ridiculousness of the Wormwoods, and the moment Matilda accomplishes her first miracle.

I strongly recommend this show. Keep in mind that the original Dahl book is dark, and the adults in general (Miss Honey aside) are not nice to the kids, so preparing young audience members is essential.

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye @ Tate Modern

It is funny how we become attached to the work of certain artists. I was in my 3rd year of undergrad, doing a 'painting project' for our honours acting class, in which we were to write a monologue as a character from a painting to 'come alive'. Most others selected paintings that were fairly naturalist and impressionist. Feeling edgy, I selected one of Munch's wood cuts; how edgy expressionism feels in an undergrad degree in the middle of Canada.

Anyway, I have spent more and more time over the years looking at various phases of his work. Obviously his famous work such as The Scream, Sick Child and Starry Night are beautiful and captivating in their own way, but it is Munch's fascination with photography that I find truly intriguing. I was extremely grateful to this exhibition for showcasing the photography alongside the painting, as it adds an opportunity to see how his experimentation with photographs, moving and unreliable images captured on film fed into the paintings. The movement in Galloping Horse was evident in a manner much more clear than it might have been otherwise.

His later photographs push this further, with images doubling, blurring, looking phantasmagoric. Curious that this led into his period dealing with fights, loss of the ability to see, and ultimately death; each of these is a mirror of our mortality, seen crisply in the photographs. The images that move, but are caught still, seem to capture that essence which is lost in death.

This is a beautiful exhibition, curated with extensive care, and one I strongly recommend.

Damien Hirst @ The Tate Modern

This is an exhibition which from its very start, pushes the viewer's boundaries, and slowly delves further and further into the mind of Hirst and his views on life and death. What is most remarkable is seeing the counterpoint between his early work and that which comes later, still focusing on the same themes almost to a point of obsession, but with a change in tone or material.

Some pieces, I found, don't evoke as much; the spot paintings, for example, with their order and perfection, I found unappealing. That said, when Hirst imposes order on the objects of every day life as he does in Still and Doubt - precisely displaying medicines and medical tools - that his work truly comes alive. He talks of wanting the shark in The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living to scare people. I find the frightening order and precision of the medicine cabinets, pills, and instruments for surgery far more frightening. That which occurs in nature may frighten us, but as Hirst highlights, is simply a part of life and death. These man-made implements are outside that cycle, an attempt to tamper with the cycle of life and death, to prolong the experience and cheat the inevitable.

The most profound of Hirst's works in this exhibition was The Acquired Inability to Escape, which features a human presence of desk, chair, cigarettes, in a case similar to those displaying the formaldehyde-preserved animals. It was a stark reminder that despite the medicines and advancements of science, we too are mortal.

This exhibition is on at the Tate Modern, Southbank London to 9 September 2012.

Photo: Damien Hirst - The Acquired Inability to Escape

The Performer Experience

The two performances I have been involved with this week have gotten me thinking about the performer experience in various forms of theatre. In the traditional, commercial theatre, the performer is a vessel; they experience physical work, speak words, move around the stage (in musicals, jump and dance about) but little consideration of the experience is given to their perspective. Everything is facing outward through the proscenium, targeted at the bums in seats who have paid their £30.

The two pieces I took part in seriously challenged this.

How We Met (still running at the RADA Festival - www.rada.ac.uk - until Saturday 7 July) is a piece of promenade theatre. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that the audience go through the experience one at a time, with headphones on and a host to follow, guiding them through a way of seeing while walking through the streets. As a performer in this kind of piece, with your small but important pattern to perform repeatedly, feelings of loneliness and solitude are evoked. Much like the people enjoying the performance, the performers are simultaneously together (as a unit) but alone (doing their specific sequence). Not unlike people every day in life, who are together in this experience of London in July of 2012, but alone in our own path and perspective. The performer experience thus reflects the audience experience, taking the performer on a journey as well.

Moving Forest (500 Slogans) was an entirely different style of piece. Part of a 12 hour performance art installation, we read the poem amidst all sorts of other noisy installation pieces, crowds out on their lunch, workmen going by. Even our interpretation of the poem, as a cacaphony of noise and sound, rendering us unable to pick out the actual value from the unending stream of information flowing at us in every day society reflected this. While reading, though, focused, moving in my pattern and reading the text as rehearsed, I found myself almost in a trance-like state, unaware of all the other noise around me, having blocked it out. I cannot speak for the audience experience too directly, but writer Matthew Fuller (of 500 Slogans) noted that coming outside to our cacaphonous reading was an audible break from the volume and noise of the other installations, despite its overwhelming sense on its own.

I propose that the most exciting pieces of theatre are those which help the performer experience something while they are helping the audience experience something; the performer is not simply a vessel, but a conspirator, experiencing and changing in the world at the same time as their auditor...each having an affect on the other.

On Failure

Last week, our "Theatre in London Today" class was visited by performance artist Bruno Roubicek, who has worked a fair bit with Forced Entertainment. For those unfamiliar with Forced Entertainment work, I definitely suggest looking them up..will include a few video links below for you as well. Anyway, Forced's work and Bruno's work focus on the aesthetics of failure, something he suggests "reflects the failings of authority. . . questioning the legitimacy of the establishment" and which reflects "the postmodernist concern with failure of society and economics". Rather than aiming for a performance which would be successful by the regular standards - realistic set, believable performances, clear narrative, etc - Forced Entertainment seem to perform the anxiety of the modern (Western) experience. In one show, Bloody Mess, the characters express how they want the audience to see them in an honest confessional style format looking almost like an AA Meeting. The play then continues on to portray them in a way that undermines these desires, hence performing their failure to achieve a desired effect.

While sometimes trying to the audience, this work most certainly affects the audience (even if the result is frustration, boredom, or anger). I respect this fully, because so much "enjoyable" and "successful" theatre has no effect whatsoever on its audience, who happily leave after their evening of entertainment, unmoved by that which passed before them.

Now, in Bruno's discussions, he took us back through a history of failure in performance, demonstrating the skills of people like Jack Benny, Monty Python, other comedians (unfortunately my limited familiarity with Brit comics pre-2000 limited my ability to grab all the names...). One commonality I noticed was the relationship with the permission to laugh and the performance of failure; every performance, even the ones that took themselves most seriously, seemed to set themselves up to give permission to the audience to laugh. A free pass to identify failings and laugh at their performance in public.

This, of course, got me thinking; what happens if this free pass is not provided? If we do not give the audience permission to laugh at the characters, their situations, and their failed attempts to perform a task, but rather demand the audience's serious attention. Is it possible to perform failure in a situation which does not first give the laughter permission to escape? Or is this our only way to watch failure without turning to despair? Further yet, is performing the despair of failure functional? Does it, too teach us something?

I performed in a show in 2011 which, now that I examine it from this perspective, did perform failure; in that case, it was the failure of the characters to act in a way that would get what they wanted. The piece allowed them to re-visit those situations from their original plays, role-playing to re-enact situations where they could be dominant. One reviewer picked up on the heavy thread of despair running through it. Perhaps despair is the dramatic equivalent to laughter. For many people seeing this show, the despair was overwhelming, to the point that some reviewers criticized it for doing so, not allowing a reprieve so to speak. But do we not have something to experience from this as well? If you consider the ancient Greeks, plays like Medea and Oedipus are one long-running moment of despair and hopelessness after the next, but this adds together for a final result of hope; the ability to act or choose differently. Despair can be a useful tool.

If this is so, it is certainly difficult to ask audiences to come experience despair for an hour or two, and pay to do so. But perhaps this is necessary; for too long we have seen a comic approach to performing failure, and in fact, it has become mainstream with programs like John Stewart in the US, Mock the Week in the UK, and This Hour Has 22 minutes in Canada (among others reaching further back). I suggest that while these comic approaches to failure have worked to incite action in the past, they are becoming common, and therefore not causing the impact they might once have had. Forced Entertainment's work does seem to straddle this gray area between comedy and despair, having their audiences feel slightly aware of the impropriety of their laughter. I think this can go further.

Some videos from Forced:

Upcoming Projects....

Because a dissertation just isn't enough, I've got some extra projects on the side coming up shortly.

First, I have workshopped and will be performing in a piece of new writing titled How We Met as part of the RADA Festival on July 2 and 3. This is a piece of one-on-one theatre performed on promenade through Bloomsbury in London. The piece runs throughout July 2 to 7 - for more information or tickets, check out the festival site here: http://www.rada.ac.uk/whats-on/rada-productions/sales-howwemet

Second, I am contributing to a performance art installation titled Moving Forest, to be performed July 4 (afternoon) at the Chelsea College of Art, described as "a twelve hour sound art opera of betrayal and rebellion". The section I am involved in is a reading of a long form poem, 500 slogans, in the Parade Ground outside the college. For more about this interesting adventure, look here: http://www.movingforest.net

Finally, I am participating in a reading for the Early Modern Reading group at Birkbeck College, on 4 July (evening) where we will be reading John Lyly's The Woman In The Moon, led by Darren Royston.

Have to keep busy! I hope you can try to make it out to one (or all!) of these adventures. And more posts related to work-in-progress dissertation presentations soon. . .

Review - Six Actors In Search of a Director by Steven Berkoff @ Charing Cross Theatre

Took this in on Saturday evening, with a surprisingly small house. The premise - built upon Pirandello's classic Six Characters in Search of an Author - places six 'bit' actors on a film set in the middle of nowhere winter-time, forced to wait. The characters spend the ensuing 90 minutes in close quarters, with little in common, but forced to get along so the work, when it returns, can be done.

Overall, the dialogue leaned toward cheese, but at the same time did stay away from cliche, walking that fine line of parodying actor habits and tendencies without jumping into the land of cliche. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the delivery of the text was rather shouty; rather than relax and allow the words to work, the actors seemed to work really hard to show us how they worked. With little success. There were certainly redeeming moments, and again, the script had a nice, almost campy, look at theatre and life, which was highly enjoyable. I simply can't handle people shouting text at me for 90 minutes.

Review - Cymbeline at RADA

Sometimes, directors make choices to situate a play in a specific place or time, and despite the many logical choices that may ensue, it simply doesn't work for the play. This production was almost completely opposite; picking up on various themes in the words of the text, the production was placed in a no-space, where all objects necessary appeared at the right time, rooms and spaces appeared, and seemingly insane costume or character choices just seemed to work, despite my inability to comprehend them from time to time. It is very rare that a director can make choices that appear so arbitrary, and yet the audience are completely willing to buy and go along with it.

The piece, running a solid 2.5 hrs with no interval, was a marathon for the performers, who each played multiple parts, sang scene changes, and had an epic danced battle between the Romans and Britons. The performances were not uniformly strong, however overall the ensemble shone and worked extremely well together as a cohesive unit.

A very enjoyable afternoon of theatre.

Musings on Creation

I really honestly feel that you need to write with live bodies. The piece I am creating now, under the working title of Approaching Antigone (who knows what the real title will be) is, in the end, a performance installation, that is most likely only going to have me on stage. I have spent a lot of time reading, researching, developing ideas, but somehow until I am in the studio, nothing really comes out.

Today, I spent a lovely two hour session with a like-minded creator, trying out things and bouncing ideas off her both intellectually and physically. The ability to ask her to try something, see it in another's body, enables my mind to start to piece together how this will look to an outsider, the images it is creating. Particularly working without mirrors, this makes it possible for me to have a sense of the stage pictures my work is creating.

I tend to be extremely image-based, or text-based, and have always troubled with merging the two into a single piece. I either create a dance-theatre piece, or a text-theatre piece. I am aiming with this to merge the two so that neither text nor movement could exist without the other; i want there to be a reliance, a relationship, between the two that is parasitic in nature. The movement feeds the words which feeds the movement.

Only one more workshop left with the actors before I spend 3 weeks on my own finishing the devising process. I am going to do the majority of devising work in my flat, likely recording myself and then watching playback. Then I will move to the studio for 3 sessions. This project is really big in my head, and I need to get it out into my body and on to paper/video so that I can begin to piece something together to share in July.

Might share some videos soon.