Tuesday, January 3, 2012

3RD JANUARY: IN BRUTAL SPANDAU

Today we had our first day after our three day break around New Years. We ended on the 30th December with a showing opening up lots of potential (see the audience account of Anna Harcourt). What was exciting for me was that we tested a whole 'crockpot' of performance styles, challenged ourselves to make the performer more visible rahter than the character and the dramatic context of the various Chekhov plays. How the audience became actively involved in the creation of the action on stage and became a responsible player in the room. How fiction and reality were seperated and started to blur without noticing it. Done with elegance and ease.

A great example of this was the work of Ben Crawford who invited verbatim stories from the audience and made this part of his portrayal and text of Astrov, the doctor in Uncle Vanya. A riveting moment was where he seamlessly incorporated audience responses as part of his Astrov monologue. The community in the room witnessed the sourcing of his material and the attentive audience member could see how he as a performer included this in his performance. Chekhov in Berlin happened in front of us. A strong sense of audience involvement and ownership.
Another element of the showing that 'screamed' for more was the exciting task of Jaci Gwaliasi and Andrew Paterson to find the most authentic voices/players for Konstantin and Nina in the Seagull, and asking the support from the audience in doing so. Without the 'barrier' of knowledge of the text, character and the play, two audience members were armed with head phones and asked to simply repeat the lines they heard through Ipods. Through this language of filtering audience members succeeded to bring authenticity and purity on the floor. There was 'no acting'. They dropped into the meaning of the the words, rather than creating meaning first. Jaci and Andrew were facilitators rather than actors, and their job as performers concentrated on how to let the audience 'win', how to make them look incredibly good. A beautiful act of generosity and gifting.

We have two more weeks of our investigation in how to find Chekhov in Berlin. We are working now for four days in a found space in Spandau, after we go to the black box theatres of the Brotfabrik and Ernst Busch (the Berlin drama school).  

We need to kill some babies.

What excites us the most at this moment:

How can we work the reality of the present community into the fiction of Chekhov by the means that were highlighted in the pieces of Andrew & Jaci and Ben? How to gather verbatim material (linked to the themes of Chekhov) as part of the theatre event, let the audience step in as performers of our work and how can this all be translated into the staging of scenes done by us as a collective? There is an exciting element of risk and precision required from all of us if we truely commit to this. The actor as the facilitator and the performer needing to focus foremost on the communication and relationship to the audience in order to learn from them and collaborate with them. What we have learned from companies of Dood Paard and Gob Squad is the importance of an active task in this meeting of audience and company. How can we make the audience shareholder in this task and make them responsible?

Three plays is too much, so we are going for the Seagull.

In Spandau we want to use our work to prepare us for the above questions, which we can then execute in the black box theatre spaces. The space in Spandau is a challenge, however it gives us opportunities for using three seperate dimensions (the outside/the street, the green room, and the illiusion of a grand theatre). Framing those spaces and referring to the actual act of creating new forms with our group of young theatre artists. Thomas Press as our multimedia director will have a great time with connecting and linking the dimensions.

Till next time blog,
Willem

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