18.3.2014

Starter Ritual

   Today's class started very similar as one about a week ago. We came into the room with the curtains drawn and were asked to put our stuff down quietly, then join the circle of instruments. Yet, this time was different. Instead of our tutor leading us with the ritual, this time it our job to start and lead the ritual. The exercise started off somewhat uncomfortable, since it obvious no one knew exactly what to do, or who should start. Eventually, Yunusa took motion and started the ritual. It was obvious that at the beginning not many people were brave enough to lead, but rather only couple of people kept swapping being the place of the leader, trying on different beats and rhythms. I personally didn't lead at any point, which now I feel like I should have collect all my courage and just do it. This is something I need to work on, stepping out and just taking the lead. Still, as we went on with the exercise, more people felt comfortable to lead, which created interesting ways of doing the ritual. I preferred the starter ritual this time, since I felt a certain unity in our group, and I felt that it wasn't just us following someone, but rather all of us trying to work together to create a coherent ritual. 

Breathing circle

   Since Artaud is all about non-verbal communication, all of our exercises were centered within this theme. The breathing circle was our second exercise for today. As the name of it implies, we were all sitting in a circle, very close to each other. The idea of this exercise was to portray different emotions trough only using our breath. One would be given an emotions, and as they started breathing, others would join in as they felt the emotion was portrayed in a believable way. Some of the emotions were anger, sadness, fright, and lust. It was interesting to see how differently you could show these different stages of mind by only using breath, and even if I couldn't relate to all of the breathing ways, they were all clear and very believable. One of the things that I noticed, and was also pointed out, was how anger and lust seemed to be very similar, as both of them put focus on the out breath being very strong. I think breath is such a simple but strong way to show what is going on in your mind, and this exercise definitely proved that. 

Argument Scene

   Let's start this off by saying, that I did not enjoy this exercise, at all. The idea was to create an argument scene with a partner, without using any words, but showing the situation by breathing, grunts, screams and other sounds. Many of the scenes got extremely intense, which was the idea of the exercise, and it got very scary at times. Especially when Sav and Harry presented their scene, I felt unbelievably uncomfortable watching Harry seeming to abuse Sav. Even if the emotions in these different scenes were extreme, this will help us even in our naturalistic acting, since it enables us to get in touch with our emotions and cross our limits. I was paired with Max and we decided to make scene between a child and a mother. We could have definitely pushed ourselves with our scene, being more out there and forget about trying to show a realistic scene, which I think we ended up trying to do, but also ended up being quite comedic. It was hard for us to just do the scene, without starting to think trough what we were doing and why were exactly doing it, which came on the way of trying to portray raw animalistic emotions that most of the other groups were really good at showing. I thought that Greta and Yunusa especially stood out with their scene, because it showed the raw emotions so strongly, that it made most of us supremely uneasy, making some of us even laugh. The laughter wasn't because the scene was in any way funny, but rather, at least for me, there was no other way to react or we just didn't know how to react to it. 

Symbol

    The last exercise was about symbols and in a way a continuum to rituals. The class was divided into two group and each was given an emotion, anger(my group) and love, and the idea was to create a continuous moving symbol, basing it on a simile. We based our feeling, anger, on "anger is like the desert sun" which was said by Liam. We quickly thought of creating  a sort of a never ending circle, with each of the group member going trough the different faces of anger. From determined and powerful, to desperate and powerless. I really liked this, because I find anger quite self-destructive and desperate in a way - anger doesn't create good things, but rather whither's each participate and surrounding people around it, if not used in the right way.

Notes & Casting thoughts

    Artaud heavily believed that our social constructions restrict us, and so language also is very problematic. We discussed this in class, thinking the different ways language can be problematic. The main point was, that language isn't enough on its own, since it is the defined intellectual meaning, when actually the meaning is and should be much bigger. As someone who speaks fluently two languages, I do agree that language can have problems. In the modern world, it is highly unpractical to only be familiar with one language, since right now there is over 6,000 languages in the world, each one having their own cultural backgrounds. There is no universal language, and even within some of the biggest language groups in the world, there is generational differences in speaking and slang words created every day. We simply cannot keep up with language with the pace that it is growing. So, language is easily misunderstood and it cannot always portray the feelings you would want it to, since everyone has their own concept of certain words. For example, during class we briefly looked into the word 'cold'. When people started to describe it, they used words like chilly and winter, but I was thinking of someone being cold, as in distant and closed of. This is the sort of differences language creates, and it is a problem, which is why developing our non-verbal communication is important.
   After having to workshops of Artaud and studying a bit of his methods, I would like to make a post about my feelings towards it and how we can use it in creating the play. For this though, I need to do a bit more research on Artaud and preferably read 'Theatre and its Double', since now my feelings are incredibly mixed. At the same time, I am not enjoying the process as much as I did with Stanislavski, since most of his ideas and style of naturalism fit with my acting, but it doesn't necessarily mean, that I couldn't benefit from Artaud and Theatre of Cruelty. Actually, I think I kind of needed, since noticing how uncomfortable and restricted I have been feeling these past weeks shows, how much I still have to work on and push myself to be able to get in touch with my inner insecurities and doubts. 

    Today, we were also given the casting for the play. I have been terribly anxious about this, since I can't wait to start to dig into a character. I was cast as Jonathan. This came as an surprise to me, since I had never considered to be someone in line for this character, but I am content with this choice. I have been lucky to have been able to play a range of different kind of characters during my time in college, and Jonathan is certainly different from all of my other characters. He is very much the image of a traditional ideal Victorian man, poised, educated and charming, but the part I am excited to start working on is when he is around Dracula and I will be able to start and play with his fear and desperation to get out of Dracula's castle.