Meditations on Identity

Last night's scene study class was a further extension of our discussion of tragedy as an identity-creation machine, this time focused on the creation of a National identity. Using Yeats' work at the turn of the 20th century as a starting point, we looked at the ways in which theatre and theatrical events (national ceremony, ritual, sport) can help to shape the identity of a nation and provide the values on which that nation define itself. This reciprocal, circular relationship is a confusing one, for arguably if done well, the image in the art reflects the image of the nation while simultaneiously propagating it.

I often find these discussions particularly engaging in their focus on post-colonial nations and their struggle to create an identity after the absence of the oppressor. This is fascinating to me, coming from Canada, as a result of our unique situation. Canada has only been a nation since 1867, and has primarily been a nation of immigrants. The very fact that our first peoples were shipped off, forced into assimilation, is only in recent years with the residential schools inquiries and commissions beginning to come into light as an issue for artistic contention. But for the rest of us, for the immigrant Canadians, the sense of identity has always had a necessary duality. We are at once Canadian, and our family's country of origin - Irish, Ukrainian, Polish, German, what have you. Even myself, a third and fourth generation Canadian, identify as a Ukrainian-Canadian. We identify strongly with the histories of our families, while also engaging with the future of our nation; that nation which was shaped by luminaries such as Pearson and Trudeau. My generation, the young thinkers and artists of today, are the first to have grown up in a Canada which had this view of our nation for the entirety of our lives, and this bodes well for the creation of an increasing amount of theatre that truly has a Canadian voice.

I found it interesting that in a brief discussion of the "global" citizen, versus the Nationalist citizen, our tutor raised Robert Lepage's theatre as an example of Global theatrical values - of duality. In fact, this is a distinctly Canadian identity, in the case of Lepage a French-Canadian identity, but one that echoes for all Canadians' sense of duality. Fascinating that the identity of a nation formed by thinkers like Pearson et al would be picked up as a global identity; I suspect he would be proud. I know I am. I just hope we can live up to it.

Review - Juno and the Paycock - Royal National Theatre

I have two perspectives of this production. The first, from my seat in the front row was extremely engaged; this is how I viewed act 1. From the first row, the set towered in all of its deconstructed beauty. The ceiling, a good 8 feet higher than would be necessary, gave the impression that this was a formerly grand room, in which this family had squatted and built shanty-rooms in which to live. The actors inner-lives radiated, and I was acutely aware of their struggle despite the comic overtones the director emphasized. For the second act, we opted to move to some empty rows in the back of the main floor of the theatre. . . and I believe lost something in the move. The second act, which contains the downfall of the family, appeared framed, distant, held back in the proscenium. Where in the first act, I was very aware of the director's hand in pulling out comedy before we turned to the tragedy, in the second act my awareness of the director's hand was as puppetmaster, moving the actors about the space for seemingly no reason at all.

Now to consider this as a tragedy. I believe that Juno is set up to be our tragic hero; she works to keep her family afloat, is offered what seems like an opportunity and rather than act cautiously, she spends, allows niceties, and ultimately is responsible for her family's further fall; her daughter's demise, the loss of their home and any respect they maintained. Certainly, if we are to measure tragedy in Aristotelian terms, I felt pity for this woman and her family...but I cannot say that I felt fear at the same time. Is this a way to present tragedy now? I am not so sure; this appeared to work within the already agreed upon tragic "rules", and in presenting a moment in history, did not necessarily speak to me about an act which is tragic. There needs to be an element of avoidability for katharsis to emerge, and for the characters to be likable. While I liked the actors, I can't say I liked the characters, so while I pitied their fall, I did not fear it for myself.

This said...the daughter Mary was a character whom was recognizable for the audience, and for whom the closest thing to pity and fear may have been acknowledged. This was a young woman who showed ambition and desire to better herself, and through poor (and avoidable) judgement, set herself back in a position worse than where she began life.

I want to go to France

I have been reading quite heavily about French politics and art, particularly in the time between the wars, and after world war 2. This is solidifying my desire to visit France. I have wanted to go since I was a small child, but the desire waned slightly in my older years, after visiting amazing German cities such as Berlin, and falling in love with London. Maybe it is time for another new love.

Some 20th century French poems that are speaking to me in reference to Genet's work:

French surrealist Robert Desnos (1900-1945) - I've dreamed such dreams of you

I've dreamed such dreams of you that you're losing
your reality.
Do I still have time to reach your vital body, to kiss
into life that voice I love so much?
I've dreamed such dreams of you that my arms,
across my chest, might not yield to your body's shape.
Faced with the real presence of what's haunted and
guided me all these days and years, doubtless I'd become
a shadow.
Fine balance of feelings!
I've dreamed such dreams of you that the time for
waking must have come and gone. I'm asleep on my feet,
exposed to every image of life and love, and you, the only
thing which counts forme now, any lips, any forehead
will be easier for me to touch than your forehead, your
lips.
I've dreamed such dreams of you, I've walked so
much, talked so much, lain so much with your shadow,
that perhaps now all I can be is a ghost among ghosts, a
hundred times more shadow than the moving shadow
cast and lightly cast again across your life measured by
the sun.

Swiss-born French poet Philippe Jaccottet (1925-) - Serenity

The shadow within the light
like light blue smoke

Belgian-born poet Jean Daive (1941-) I rise from the depths

I rise from the depths of my resemblance
at the very edge of enigma

evening after evening
I have vanished I vanish

blinded resemblance
falls back into cold's fabric

____________________
All taken from:
Sorrell, Martin. Modern French Poetry. London: Forest Books, 1992. P. 63, 105, 227.

Review - The Maids by Jean Genet @ RADA

It almost feels unfair for me to review this, given my intense investigation of Genet these days, but alas, here it is.

We begin with a very traditional setup of Genet's world; a closet with dresses suggesting a time, but of no specific time. Tasteful furniture that would not be out of place today but suggests a certain antiquity. Maids in traditional uniform. And the game begins. The problem, for me, was that the game at once gave the impression that the players did not know where it was at, and at the same time were acutely aware that the game was on. The magic of Genet's play comes in its ability to trick the audience (and the players!) into conviction about the way the world must be, so that when the balloon pops and the game is interrupted there is a moment of utter confusion as to what has just taken place.

The production, as a whole, came across as safe. The Maids should have a seedy underbelly which slowly creeps out from beneath the text as a dangerous and risky game; this came across as a safe role play, for which everyone knew the end, and no real danger was present. I believe that some of this safety was the result of the translation. This was a version by Martin Crimp, which is undeniably English in its translation. With this came a minimalization of the dirt that Genet gives us in the language; we lost the beautifully grotesque image of "drowning in the depths of your stink, in the mists of your swamps" - the visceral quality of the langauge was lost, a factor I hypothesize contributed to the sense of safety in the production. Hearing phrases such as "arouse" in place of "seduce" dialed back the overt and dangerous sexuality in the text.

The performances were adequate, but I would argue unmatched. The sense of similarity between the three characters was lost, replaced by an individuality which detracts from Genet's power.

New Perspectives

Spent a long and meandering day today, moving from one project to the next. Began with a voice tutorial with Adrienne Smook, an MA Voice student at Central who is offering small group and private tutorials for voice work with us. We first did a 45 minute group warmup, focused primarily on breathing - connecting breath with thought and the impulse to speak. One exercise I quite liked was a visualization of a specific place, where noises were used to identify things. This really served to help connect intention with breath and therefore voice. Another exercise I think I will use in workshops and classes is throwing a ball around the space, connecting breath, then a specific vocalization with the movement of the ball....aiming to curb the impulse to stop the breath and movement, allowing for smooth and continuous flow.

We also had a smaller private session with Adrienne, working on some more specific deep breathing and breath connection exercises. These really resonated with what I have been doing individually, connecting movement to voice - in this case, relaxation to voice relaxation, but using gravity in fetal or child's pose.

After this, went over to the Old Vic Tunnels for a dance dramaturgy workshop with Maryann Hushlak, dramaturg on Without Words. In some ways, this simply echoed our classes from last term with Paul Sirett about the role of the dramaturg. What I did find useful was the exercises and discussion on finding a language of creation. Maryann emphasized the importance of listening to how the creator talks about the projet, the kinds of words or phrases they use - this helps create a shared terminology of description for the process, and also enables creation of more practical materials like grant proposals. She also talked a lot about her process, particularly in the performance phase - analyzing the performance as well as the audience's reception. This is something I want to work into my workshop presentation in the dissertation - I am wondering if a Q&A would be useful to help understand the impact of the versions we see....and then help me draw some conclusions about identity and ghosts.

Finally, off to Birkbeck for Scene Study. A lot of talk of Hegel and Antigone today, so very apropo for my thoughts (not just now...always, really). I'm formulating my approach to the manifesto assignment, and think that I want to flesh out an anarchist tragedy of sorts...why do we need to define tragedy? Why do we spend so much time worrying about this? Now just to figure out how the form can merge...

merge

I am starting to find such wonderful overlap in the themes we are discussing across all classes, and in what I'm looking at for my dissertation. It might just be Genet seeping into my very existence, but I am acutely aware of layers and what people want you to see versus what you do see, both in themselves, in their work, what they present to the world. Where is that core of truth? Do we want to know?

I have also been reading Violence and the Sacred by Rene Girard, an examination of the roots of tragedy in sacrifice, in violence and ritual, and how sexuality is linked to all of these. This is linking with Genet in many many places, and leading me to exciting thoughts for my installation project for the end of term. What is our ritual that is shared, since we as a people no longer share religion? How do we practice this ritual?

Beginning to think about our end of term presentations in response to Genet as well, and what themes we would like to look at. I'm reading up on Paris and politics in Genet's time for inspiration, and also some poetry from his contemporaries. Visually I am inspired by Picasso, Cocteau, and De Francia. Still searching, watching, apsorbing everything I can.

Encountered a ballet, Poppy, by Graeme Murphy with Sydney Dance Company, premiered in 1978. This is inspired by the work and lives of Cocteau and Genet. Warning - beautiful. But also, contains some nudity (I need to be a responsible adult sometimes at least).

Go

Read an amazing article by Anne Bogart today, which was very timely for some of my recent hurdles. We are struggling through mountains of written and devised work in our RADA classes right now; devising a LABAN based piece from The Lady In the Moon, an Elizabethan court play, and more recently devising a response to Genet's Our Lady Of The Flowers for Scene Study.

As we work through these tasks, all in differing groups, the same things seem to recur. We end up spending a lot of time sitting, talking about what something can look like, and this can go on for hours if we were to let it. But if we just get up and DO something, even if we don't know what that is, the results are far more fruitful. We need to get out of our heads, because as we do our bodies take over, and the results are breathtaking.

One hurdle

My dissertation proposal has been approved!! Sparing you the boring academic bibliography bit, here it is in a nutshell. You can look forward to many obsessive posts on this subject in the future.

Introduction
The aim of this dissertation is to use a performance-based approach to understand questions of identity for the performer when approaching historical texts. Marvin Carlson argues in The Haunted Stage that audiences bring with them the history of a performance, so are never simply watching the performance in front of them; instead, they are seeing the current performer, all previous performers, and their ideal version of the character. This supposition is problematic artistically, as it creates a barrier of communication; added filters through which the artistic message of a piece needs to permeate. Using Sartre's ideas of Being and Perception in Being and Nothingness as a starting point (to be is to be perceived), I will examine perception of a performer and perception of a character as they are mediated through re-writes of the same story in different contexts. The filters of audience context and re-imagined characters interplay to impact engagement with the work; I endeavor to explore how these filters function in performance, and what can be done from a creative perspective to counteract them or make use of them. I have selected Antigone as my base text as she is a familiar character in Western mythology, and through history, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, has been re-written numerous times, each instance changing the character of Antigone to serve the time. My goal is to develop, through workshopped performance, key findings on approaches that will aid the director in using these filters in a positive creative manner when creating work.

Key Research Questions
What being is perceived when audiences see a performance?
What impact do changes in text and context have on audience perception?
How can the practitioner utilize these in production?

Method
Working with 1 male performer and 1 female performer, I will workshop:
Original Antigone - Masked Male performer
Transitional Antigone - Becoming Female
Dionysian Antigone - Music & Opera
Politicized Antigone - 20th Century in Germany (Brecht)
Feminized Antigone - 20th Century in France (Anouilh)
Rebellious Antigone - 20th Century Ireland (Paulin)
Post-Colonial Antigone* - 20th Century Africa & South America (Osofisan, Gambaro, Sanchez)
Who do you see? Antigone's Identity

* Session 7 is subject to change: currently I am struggling to locate a copy of these plays. If I am unable to locate these texts, an alternate will be proposed for this session.

The 8 workshop subjects will serve to create material from which a work in progress performance will be devised. Each workshop will focus on exploring the questions of identity for the performer, using the source texts as a guide, and a physical theatre aesthetic. Within each session we will investigate the layers of performer identity; actor-self, character-self, character-perceived.

Inspiration

A video of Lindsay Kemp's Flowers, inspired by Jean Genet's Notre Dame Des Fleurs, which I am reading right now.

Words can't even begin to describe what this does. Kemp manages to embody the extreme beauty and grotesqueness of Genet's words, the perfect balance of the two.

She dies beautifully.

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.

Layers

I went by the National Portrait Gallery yesterday, while out for Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square; we thought we'd have a warm up and take in some paintings. One of my favourite periods of English history is the Tudor (and thereabouts) largely because I have studied it in some detail. Meandering through the second floor, we encountered busts of Queen Victoria, large paintings of period families, etc, and then came upon the room of Tudors. It was really startling to be confronted with the actual paintings that make up the images that have become so familiar in books and other media. One that really stood out was the painting of King Henry VIII - it is toward the end of his life. We see the layers of identity; the clothing and jewels of kingship, the regal, lush fabrics and gold necklaces. This is what he wants us to see, what he presents to the world. Next, we see his skin; only the face, fleshy from rich diet, another symbol of his wealth and power, and by extension that of his nation. But when we look at the eyes, we see something else. This unknown painter has succeeded in capturing a clarity, a vulnerability in his eyes, which seems to imply a falsity of the preceeding layers. Having read my history, I know of the paranoia from which Henry suffered - worries about contracting The Plague, not having an heir, losing his kingdom. . . each of these seem to glimmer behind the facade of the exterior.

Of course, looking back, knowing what happened (or at least what has been recorded) we can see this. But I wonder what was perceived at the time? Could his subjects see the vulnerability? Clearly the painter was able to pierce through the exterior and see this, so that we can have it today.

shapeshifting

I am directing for our Scene Study class on Tuesday, and have worked with 3 actors to prepare a scene from the balcony. I really wanted to bring out the changeable nature of each character's "self" in the scene, and selected a scene that gave some very juicy opportunities for this. Genet's plays always centre around a game of some kind, of taking on roles of dominance or submission in varying manifestations, and The Balcony is no different; the premise of the play is a house of illusions, where men can go have their fantasies played out. The scene I selected was not one showing us the fantasies, but instead one that might on the surface appear normal; Irma, Carmen, and Arthur, all of whom work at The Grand Balcony, are in a room discussing the workings of the business. But this scene too has its games and roles played; it is a power game, a struggle to assert leadership, ownership. We worked on the layers of roles going on - where is the character "real", where do they want others to think they are being "real", where are they taking on a role for someone else's benefit.

The other aspect I wanted to highlight came from Genet's notes to directors of the balcony - that there should be a rivalry between Irma and Carmen, that it should be questionable who really runs the brothel. Using some physical theatre techniques, I have the two actresses taking on one another's gestures and positioning, giving the implication that either of them could really be in charge. The illusion, the reflection, going back and forth as if they are mirrors facing one another; no matter how deep you get, it always seems to go deeper.

Our LABAN work fed into this as well; my group are working on physicalizing the qualities of the planets Mercury and Mars. Mars is a bit more straightforward - war, power, strength, etc. Mercury on the other hand seems to have a changeability about it; the idea of quicksilver has really struck us as an integral part of understanding Mercury. We've developed a staging of a piece of The Lady In The Moon that I think helps communicate this changeability and the impact it has on those around us.

Review - The Sea Plays by Eugene O'Neill @ Old Vic Tunnels

Saw this in previews earlier this week, but have been slow to blog about it. Part of the reason, I think, is that O'Neill is one of those playwrights who just sits funny with me. No matter the quality of a production, I often just can't get past him. With the exception of Long Day's Journey and Moon for the Misbegotten, his texts always feel one-dimensional, and that they really have not aged well.

This production, in the AMAZING Old Vic Tunnels (a series of arches underneath Waterloo Station, converted into a snappy little theatrical venue) didn't add to or detract from my O'Neill apathy. It started out really well, with an image as we came in of the men working in the bowels of the ship (not too shabby to look at, either!). The design in the theatre space really used the arches well, the industrial feel of the space lent itself to an association with the at-sea locale; the use of the raw brick walls with work lights, cement floor, and little overhead light contributed to the overall feel of the production.

But the production lacked (and I don't necessarily criticise anyone but O'Neill for this) a certain relevance. The period dramas of the first two pieces, set on a transport ship during the WW1, verges on the absurd, when we have characters dying for the better part of 25 minutes. The second of the on-ship plays fared a little better, building anticipation over the contents of a box one sailor is hiding, but fizzles in its resolution. And the third of the plays, with location now moved to a dodgy east London pub, was a cacaphony of stereotypes, played out to their extreme. The performances were varied, with some very strong interpretations, and some weaker, including some bobbling accent work to be expected in a preview. As well, some scenes (particularly in the first play) could use tightening, again to be expected at preview.

But on the whole, I found myself questioning the choice of material most. Why does this matter to us now? What does it tell us about humanity and experience? I am still trying to find an answer.

Frank

So I have written a bit about this scary playwriting adventure. Under the tutelage of the fabulous Lin Coglin we are learning a character-based approach to writing, and various exercises to help ellicit good (read: Interesting) writing. I have found this process to be rather challenging, but quite rewarding in its evolution. Challenging, because it turns out that I am writing a play that I never would have guessed would come out of me; I'm not much of a one for realism, contemporary family drama, etc. I tend to attach to plays of ideas, of movement. . . not those in which the central character is an 80 year old man. But, then there was Frank. Our starting point for the process was to select an image that interested us, and get to know the character in this image. I selected a rather silly photo of a man and woman, in bed with sunglasses on, and met Frank. And I became rather attached.

I'm really wrestling with my inner-critic monkey, which keeps jumping up and down reminding me I am not a playwright. That little monkey did a number this week when I tried to write a scene outside those Lin had assigned us. But this week I'll be having a word with the monkey, and making some progress. Because although I might not be a playwright, Frank is there, and wants his story to be discovered. I guess I'll have to help!

Where is the Truth?

Spent more time on Genet this weekend and early this week, performing in another scene from The Blacks for classmates, and analyzing scenes put together from The Blacks and The Balcony. The layers present in Genet's work are fascinating - every time you think you have gotten through to a new plateau, it cracks to reveal something further underneath, begging to be uncovered. In his plays, it seems there is a constant layering of lies; the characters are bottomless pits of identities, each new one to serve the purpose of their current situation. For directors this poses the challenge of helping your actors understanding what each identity is, where the shifts are, so that from the audience these cracks can be seen. The nuance between each must be subtle yet noticeable. Andrew suggested that perhaps some of Genet's "Truth" lies not in his plays, but perhaps in his novels. Or maybe it doesn't - in Prisoner of Love, which seems to sit in a middle-ground between fiction and documentary, just as the reader begins to feel they know his position on a subject, he'll pull that mat out from underneath you. No comfort, nothing is reliable, constantly undermining expectation. I wonder if this is his truth...the truth of the unreliability of the world, of expectation, of categorization.

Elsewhere, reading Edward Braun's "The Director And the Stage" as supplemental, given that I'm not in Sue's directing group for approaches. What I found really interesting was the sense of overlap this book gave; it is really easy to think that Stanislavsky did his thing, then Meyerhold, then Brecht, etc...but in fact there were little pockets of development happening everywhere, simultaneously, with achievements cropping up all over the place. What is also interesting is the afterword, the reminder that although they appear monumental now, at the time the events, the riots, the scandals, were relatively uneventful for the community as a whole, and it wasn't until viewed from the distance of the future that we can see the sigificance and assign value.

Some passages I found particularly useful....

On Jarry and the Surrealists (P58) - "Perceiving the universe and society as irrational and contradictory, they felt impelled to create works that were correspondingly irrational and contradictory in their forms, that stood the accepted conventions of theatre on their heads - and to achieve this they sought to exercise the closest possible control over the play in production, lest the theatre be tempted to impose its habitual symmetry on their calcuated disorder."

On Stanislavsky (P76) - "He seldon considers the peroduction as a total synthesis with a unified objective. What is more, he takes little account of the psychology of the audience, assuming that if the individual performancecs are truthful the spectator will necessarily respond to their truthfulness through a process of empathy"

On Meyerhold (P126) - "It was precisely because the spectator was shown so little that he saw so much, superimposing his own imagined or remembered experiences on the events enacted before him. In this way the dialogue and characters assumed a significance and a profundity which overcame their intrinsic banality."

On Artaud (P188) - "Artaud based his entire approach to the production [of The Cenci] on the principle of engulfing the audience with a massive accumulation of effects, so that its response would be sensual and involuntary rather than detached and intellectual."

On Grotowski and the production of Apocalypsis (P197) - "But when the lights came on and the room was discovered empty, it did not necessarily mean that he had gone - or even that he had been. The room had simply been returned to the state it was in when the first pectator entered. So what had been witnessed? A group of ordinary people, in everyday clothes. Roles were assigned, amidst mirth, and assumed, rejected, fought against. But each role, once assumed, posessed that person who was trapped within it, drained by the excesses with which he fulfilled or denied it."

Whoops

Apparently didn't blog at all for the latter half of last week. It included continuations in Playwriting and Laban approaches classes, which have been great.

Also did some initial rehearsals and voiceover recordings for this week's scene study, another scene from Genet's The Blacks. In this, we learned that apparently I can do a Nigerian accent. Still can't do German, though!

Outside all this, I've been reading Genet's book 'Prisoner of Love' which was (I believe) his last publication. It reflects on his encounters with Palestinian rebels and the oh-so-confusing politics of Northern Africa in the 1970s (Heck, even now). What I am really finding fascinating is his ability to draw historical parralels to the French Revolution, The Black Panthers, The Nazi regime, and yet nothing seems put on. The beautifully poetic lens he applies to the people and space of the conflict is wonderful; at once it makes you feel completely aligned with the individuals, and yet completely separated from them. Some enjoyable moments for me...

"The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them. . . all the images of wars have been created after the battles themselves thanks to looting or the energy of artists, and left standing thanks to oversight on the part of rain or rebellion. But what survives is the evidence, rarely accurate but always stirring, vouchsafed to the future by the victors." - (p7-8)

"Everything happens in the dark. At the point of death, however insubstantial those words and however unimportant the event itself, the condemned man still wants to determine for himself the meaning of his life, lived in a darkness he tried not to lighten but to make more black." (p54)

"What was to become of you after the storms of fire and steel? What were you to do? Burn, shriek, turn into a brand, blacken, turn to ashes, let yourself be slowly covered first with dust and then with earth, seeds, moss, leaving behind nothing but your jawbone and teeth, and finally becoming a little funeral mound with flowers growing on it and nothing inside." (p102)

"When someone leaned out of the window of a departing train it used to be the custom, apparently, for his friends to run alongside waving their handkerchiefs. But the custom has probably died out, just as the piece of cloth has been replaced by a neat square of paper. You used to know the train would take good care of the traveller, and you expected him to send you a postcard. If someone set out on a journey on foot, his friends would wait until he or even his shadow disappeared. But even in his absence he was still with them, and if they heard he'd died or was in danger or trouble, they felt for him." (p240)

"When a man invents an image that he wants to propagate, that he may even want to substitute for himself, he starts by experimenting, making mistakes, sketching out freaks and other non-viable monsters that he has to tear up unless they disintegrate of their own accord. But the operative image is the one that's left after the person dies or withdraws from the world, as in the case of Socrates, Christ, Saladin, Saint-Just and so on. They succeeded in projecting an image around themselves and into the future. It doesn't matter whether or not the image corresponds to what they were really like: they managed to wrest a powerful image from that reality." (p302)

Photo: Portrait of Jean Genet by Anthony Weir

context

Today's Scene Study class raised some interesting questions surrounding identity and art. . . specifically to do with what identities we (as artists) create, challenge or reinforce through presentation of plays. In particular, this was raised in relation to staging old plays, the baggage of literary and performance history that comes along with them. The main focus on the discussion was Othello, looking at a 1960s version with Laurence Olivier in black face, while another was with South African actors in Johannesberg in the 1980s. Looking at some critical texts on the idea of gender or race in performance, we discussed the implications of staging decisions, and the results these can have for informing stereotype.

This raised a few things for me. . .
- part of me wants to say that art is for art's sake, so what the hell are we worrying about this other stuff for.
- The rational part of me replies, knowing that there is always responsibility of the artist in representing anything, and particularly in representing something that has gained certain significance for a community or group.

So then how do we merge these? I think that the main focus needs to be artistic integrity, but that merged with this needs to be a conscious acknowledgement of what the stage images are doing to the audience, and how they will be received. Audiences at different times and places will bring context that must be acknowledged in the production. A failure to do this is a failure as an artist. Our main role is to interact with and respond to the world as we see it; this can take many forms, but must necessarily account for audience response.

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.

scattered

Friday's movement class was great. We spent time re-visiting some LABAN concepts, and then began to look at the play we will be using as inspiration for our end of term creation. It is an Elizabethan court play about Pandora...no, not the Pandora with the box, a different one who Nature creates and pisses off the 7 planets (of the time). The play is hilarious, and I can't wait to create something out of this.

On the subject of movement, I was sitting on the DLR Saturday afternoon, and caught myself watching a pop can rolling about, back and forth, completely aimlesslly, for around 10 mins. The train would stop, it would roll one direction, then it would begin again and roll another. Never in straight lines, always random, and changing direction if it hit the chairs or someone's foot.

Spent some time at the Tate Britain Saturday as well, and came across this fabulous paintin (pictured below) by Peter DeFrancia called "Bombing of Sakiet". It made me think of Genet's The Balcony almost immediately. It is sort of what I imagine the world outside the brothel to look like.

Anyway. . . happy sunday!

Dared to Try

I've mentioned in an earlier blog that despite my misgivings, I am doing one of my sections of this term in Playwriting. This is at once exhilirating and terrifying. Today was our first class, and I will admit feeling sheepish, as the only one in the course who doesn't even slightly see herself as a writer. I can devise (sort of), and I can offer insight, but outside the sphere of choreography, I don't think I can write. The class progressed nicely, easing me into the idea. Our tutor, playwright Lin Coglan, let us know that her goal is to give us the tools of creation; the backbone of technique to help when the creative forces are slow to come, fizzle out, or seem to disappear.

We began with an exercise to look at starting with a character; simple ways in that could help us with a starting point, from which we can get into large picture narratives. Overall I found the process really interesting. It is funny the odd and seemingly incoherent thoughts that come to mind, and then suddenly they pull together as you might never have expected. I am looking very forward to the next class!

I also failed to chat about Scene Study last night, which spent time looking at Artaud, then re-visiting ideas of violence and suffering on stage. I need to do a re-read of Artaud's Theatre and its Double, as our task for the term will be to create a manifesto for the theatre (you know...no big deal, right??). Oh goodness.