Final Evaluation

The final performance of a Taste of Madness happened today. We performed once at 4:30 and again at 6:30, with both the performances having their strengths and weaknesses.

The promenade performance of the first piece had a stronger reaction due to the age of the audience. I believe the effect of the masks was prominent because they were younger, hence the fear factor influenced them more. I think the promenade was able to create a fluid transition from circus to nirvana. I was able to play with the fear factor as soon I started realising this reaction was present in the audience, but aimed to play even more with the masks in the next performance. They are a very strong choice of prop, so strong objectives are needed to push their intentions out to the audience.

The 4:30 show was always going too fuelled with energy and nerves as it was the first time we were performing to a public audience. I think the best part of this performance was the dedication to our characters within the bar. We got into character 15 minutes before we started performing. This gave us so much stimulus that carried the energy throughout the bar from when we started getting into character right up until the audience left. Character development was something we struggled with throughout the whole process as we got caught up in the improvisation and didn't believe we had to form solid characters. However in this performance the strong choices we made for our characters was what made this performance so effective. Being in the atmosphere of such contrasting energies created a sense of organised chaos; we had finally found the balance between the freedom of our piece within the improvised sections and the need to keep the piece clean so as it maintained its strong message at its core. I stuck with the choice of my American accent and pushed my emotion forward, aiming to fill the space, but the confidence to do this didn't come until the second performance. I believe our characters in this bar created a rich atmosphere of vibrant energies that I hope touched the audience in the same way it did the actors.

I think the worst time part of the first performance was the audience involvement. I believe this was both due to our confidence when approaching the audience and their apprehension in letting go and giving over to our concept. I think our piece works best when the audience can take away specific ideas and feel they have gone on this huge promenade journey and come to stop at our bar. Giving them that experience is very important and will push our message out to our audience.

The ensemble piece went well in the first performance and we were all able to create a beautiful portrait using only sellotape and torches. I think such a minimalistic artistic choice both looked good and created a strong reaction from the audience. One of the challenges of the whole piece was being able to immerse the audience inside a brain to express our message on mental health. It is such a broad topic that is was easy to overcomplicate our concepts, but deciding on this simple idea proved the opinion that less is more. My speech worked well alongside the piece in front of me, but for the second performance I wanted to work more with the way I used the words to enhance the piece instead of just feeding the audience lines. The second show was a chance for me to go bigger and better with my vocal choices.

The second show was intensified in energy, nerves and determination to create a performance that lived up to both ours and the audience’s expectations. The promenade performance was intensified by the timing of the second show. The sun had gone down and the moon was out and lighting was bright and intense provided from the wall lights and lampposts. It gave the whole scene an eerie feeling and highlighted the masks very well. Combined with my choice to push the effect the masks can have on the audience and the new lighting, the audience reacted very well even with the different age of the audience and their boundaries within the theatrical experience. After performing the promenade piece for the last time I am glad the audience got to get a glimpse into the strange world that we had created. They were able to dip into the weird and wonderful minds of 16/17 year old, experiencing a whole new dimension of a theatrical piece.

Our second performance of ‘A Taste of Tom Waites’, created a sense of all or nothing. We all knew the one element that our piece lacked was a sense of complete freedom and spontaneity; we had to take the last step and give ourselves over to the piece, so as the audience could too. I think the last performance inspired us to do that and we put in all the energy from our nerves and anticipation into the performance. The audience involvement in the piece made the atmosphere amplify tenfold and our bar officially came to life. The audience seemed to create characters of their own and completely immerse themselves in our world which allowed us to do the same. It was an amazing world to be a part of and the only complaint I had was that it ended too soon.

The only improvement I would have if I were to continue our world would be the way I told my stories. I wish that I could adopt the style of Tom Waites to tell my stories. Instead of telling more naturalistic tales, I would like to tell fantastic, wondrous stories of people and events that could only exist in a bar set in the brain of Tom Waites.

The ensemble piece adapted the same energy as our bar piece, with everyone adopting an ensemble sense of pride and determination for our piece, willing it to be successful so as to propel us to the very last second, pushed all the way by energy and precision. My speech adopted a new purpose, with me using my voice skill set to make the words come to life and add to the intensity and wonder of the whole piece. However the intensity made me stumble over my words at the end, which annoyed me, as it finished the piece on a mistake. However I corrected the mistake and do not believe that it ruined the rest of the piece.

The piece as a whole, I do not see as over or finished, more as an ongoing process. The world I created, the characters that came to life and the words I spoke existed in a moment and so they can go forward and develop into in new ideas that branch from the initial thought we had in week one. I have thoroughly enjoyed this process, investigating themes and ideas, that even in theatre, can get left in the shadows of silence. I created and more importantly, met people in that bar that are unforgettable. I got to access parts of the theatrical process that I have always wanted to; improvised stories, performed to an audience on a simple whim of inspiration. I pushed my boundaries and I hope the audience were pushed to. Our performance may have been rough around the edges, but I think it expressed perfectly the subject matter we set out to challenge. 

Lesson 6

Today, in the penultimate lesson, we had to work out what our piece needs to push it to be the best it can be. The first response to this question was to create the bar so we feel like the space is transporting both actor and audience. So we began to put cardboard over the walls and windows to create a space that felt like being in a cardboard box. It added that final dimension to the piece, allowing the space to become a blank canvas that we can paint on as artists. 

We all decided that character development was what was needed to add the finishing touches to our piece. So we did an exercise in which we walked up to the bar in character, took a drink, walked to the central platform, spoke a quote, walked to the microphone and spoke some lyrics. This helped us set up our characters in the bar we now have created and we can now understand and visualise the purpose and meaning our characters have in the world we have created. From this exercise we learnt that we have to let go. In week six we should have the confidence to do so, but it is now about the leap of faith, knowing in ourselves that we can do it. We now have no where to go except more, forward and deeper with our characters. 

In an experimental piece it is often easy to forget why our piece fits in this category and just do whatever we want without paying attention to key details. We discussed how our piece fell in the experimental category and we decided it was because:

• It is a piece based on Tom Waites a figure of unconformity, bold and strange characteristics. 
• It doesn't have a solid structure- both for the audience who will be moving and the actors as we do not know what will happen at certain points in our performance.  

From the run through we learnt that we need to:

• Live in the whole space- don't stay in one place. 
• Butoh dancers need to move in accordance with the emotion not the story. 
• Break out of our patterns within our peaks of energy.

Lesson 5

Today we looked at something that I have never heard of but I believe it will help us tap into our freedom and improvisation as a performer- Butoh dance. Butoh dance is a concept in which you move in which ever way your body deems natural; you are completely free, there is no right or wrong, your body is in control. We used music as a stimulus to start our movement and we all interpreted it in a different way. My body wanted to move using weight, falling, rolling and crawling relying completely on my body weight to move me. I felt supported and comfortable, but in the same way I was still energised and aware of myself and others. It was completely fluid. The idea of Butoh fits perfectly with our concept- mental health combined with experimental creates a free for all in which personal experiences can be expressed however we want. Being free to express yourself in whichever way you deem appropriate is essential if we want people to access layers of their person as both a actor and human. It can be a very empowering experience for all involved.

We then did an exercise in which we wrapped our hand in cling film. We then had to burst our hand out of our restraints. I noted a sense of frustration and desperation when one of the bodies natural movements is blocked by something. However this makes the sense of freedom and relief intensify when you are finally free from the cling film. Tapping again into our instincts, this allowed me to compare what it is too move completely free within Butoh dance and then stopping the bodies natural flow. These two opposites would be interesting to experiment with when creating a sense of chaos within our bar setting. Then we repeated the action without the restraint which was strange because in the same way I was stopping my bodies flow, it didn't have to be stopped. These feelings can be played with within the rehearsal room to portray the frustration of having no restraint to the naked eye, but your mind creates one- something that links closely to our work on mental health.

We then did another set of exercises that contrasted each other. We walked in a circle following someone, concentrating on keeping the same distant between me and them. Then we skipped around the room like a four year old. This contrast again plays with the balance between control and freedom; a balance strongly needed in experimental work- working out how to be free in our work whilst being precise and accurate in our aim as a piece.

Today we learnt a song called Blue Skies by Tom Waites which we will all sing at the end. I think that this song is such a nice way to end the piece. It sums up everything that has happened in our bar, in a simple, artistic way that involves the cast as an ensemble. Finishing a piece on mental health with a song is quite effective- sometimes spoken word fails you, so find another way to express yourself, song being one them.

Artaud, Grotowski and Brook

Each term we have studied practitioners but this term we studied three: Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook. Throughout this term we have done workshops and lessons on all three. Below are all the notes I recorded:

Antonin Artaud
Artaud was a French actor turn theatre practitioner who suffered from severe depression throughout his lifetime. He believed that man was a savage and expressed this belief through physical theatre as he believed that words were not an expressive enough medium to portray human emotion; it was all channelled through the body. To accomplish this physicality, he aimed to batter the mind into submission. He thought the only time man was true to themselves was in extreme situations so aimed to push his actors and his theatre over the boundaries of the norm.

Theatre of Cruelty- perhaps due to his depression, Artaud had a rather negative outlook on life. He looked beyond the façade of society and delved into human nature and instinct. He believed if you stripped humans back, you would find a savage animal that has no regard for anyone; like any other animal, it is survival of the fittest. He used theatre to express these extreme beliefs, using it as a way to express all these opinions in an artistic environment. He wanted his audience to feel as close and involved in the action as possible, so as to expose humans and humanity to them.

Total Theatre- this concept completely defies that of Grotowski's poor theatre as Artaud believed in making use of all elements of theatre to create a complete theatrical experience for his audience: sound, lighting, props, costume, anything available to increase the performances dramtic intensity, he would use.

Is man a savage?
I think man is a complete savage. When born, a baby has three things on its mind: food, sleep and care. This is the same as any other animal; only thinking about the necessities to keep them alive. We are then warped by society into polite people with etiquette and manners. However underneath the expensive clothes, flash car, big house and seemingly perfect life, you find humans who will disregard human emotion for their own specific gain. Capitalism is a system the western world has lived by for centuries and is built by man's greed, power complex and hierarchy- a system you will see in the wild. It is a question of who is at the top of the food chain and who can stay there.


Jerzy Grotowski
Grotowski was born in South Poland, an artist who defied the normal set of rules within the theatre, veering away from naturalistic styles and introducing a new experimental genre. He was influenced by a lot religious writings like the Quran and the Bible plus the writings of Dostoevsky. He set up his theatre company the Polish Theatre Lab. Grotowski's style of theatre wasn't just a hobby, it was a way of life- his actors had to rely and trust each other from day one; working, eating and sleeping together. His training was intense. He was more interested in form than story and in the process over the performance. It was all about the growth and development of his actors both as performers and people. He was very passionate about the actor audience relationship and stripped anything else back until you were left with a cast of actors, an audience and a stage.

Poor Theatre- unlike Artaud, Grotowski believed that props, costume, lighting and sound were all unnecessary and superfluous. He believed this raw style of theatre encouraged the all important actor audience relationship. He thought that a live communion between the actors and audience and a space to perform in, was all that was needed to make a piece of theatre.

Via Negativa- this was an elimination technique that allowed his actors to rid themselves of anything not allowing them to commit to a role. They were meant to be completely and utterly in the moment. He wanted his actors to be so connected that they came to a moment of lucidity or as he called it self penetration.

His rigorous style of training made his actors run through the woods naked. He believed exhaustion was the key to unlocking true creativity as it accessed raw emotion.


Peter Brook

Peter Brook is an English Film and Theatre Director who was highly influenced by Artaud, especially his Theatre of Cruelty concept. He thought personal involvement in the work you do was very important and drawing on the life you have lived can be the catalyst for your artistic inspiration.

Deadly Theatre- this is the theatre that is produced for the production of money. Commercialised theatre that is put on with the only aim being generating ticket sales. Deadly theatre is not dead, it is very much alive and breathing, but it is alive in the wrong way; alive not present. Deadly theatre will conform to the rules of ‘normal theatre’ and will fail to push boundaries and make the audience of the work question the work they are watching.

Holy Theatre- this is theatre that is born from abstract ideas, inspired by improvisation and natural instinct, which can then be developed into something solid that can be moulded and eventually form a complete performance. This theatre goes above and beyond ordinary life.

Rough Theatre- it defies society’s rules and challenges them by investigating themes that aren't supposed to be discussed in polite society. By looking at such themes, it was meant to spark change socially and politically. It doesn't have to happen in traditional forms, both in the text and staging. 

Immediate Theatre- this style of theatre mixes all the different types of theatre- selecting elements of contemporary and traditional theatre and creating a new style. Actors are completely alive in the moment when performing and the audience should travel with them on an emotional, almost spiritual journey. 

Lesson 4- Nirvana

Inspired by the words of Charles Bukowski the poem 'Nirvana' that Tom Waites used as an inspiration for one of his pieces, we created a physical piece that in cooperated the poem too. The piece surrounded the idea of our Nirvana. Mine was being in a swimming pool on my back under the water watching rain hit the surface. To portray this, 3 people when on all fours, I lied on top of their back and they moved me up and down as if I was in water. The piece was successful and was able to access physical and vocal elements, whilst in cooperating work from Tom Waites. Therefore we have decided to use this concept as part of our promenade piece at the beginning. The concept- finding our Nirvana. With experimental, taking on something so broad and personal as someone's Nirvana, means we can experiment with form and structure when presenting it to our audience. As the audience will be walking through the promenade piece, they will be walking through our Nirvana's which flings open hundreds of door regarding the atmosphere and meaning we can create.

Today we dedicated most of our lesson time to finding the place we want to set up our promenade piece. We decided the garden area in the courtyard would be good to create a paradise scene. As a lot of people's heaven involve the outdoors and nature based features, being able to tap into the natural beauty and materials that are already available to us is an opportunity we would be stupid to pass up. We can create a heavenly garden, that the audience can walk through, picking up elements they want to, in the same way you would pick the prettiest flower.

We have also decided that we want to include Trestle masks in our piece. We think this can represent the front people put on to find their happiness, but the true emotion we feel is hidden behind a mask. We want to experiment with the idea of unmasking and masking people, in the same way you mask and unmask your fears and desires. Experimental is the perfect term to add this extra layer and be able to try out different ways of working with the masks to find how they are most effective for both actor and audience.

Lesson 4

As usual we started with an ensemble circle exercise. It experimented with mirroring another person. Everyone had one person they had to look at and copy. So if one person moved slightly or made a noise it would eventually ripple round the circle. It created a wave of movement and sound that was slightly altered as it moved around different people. It was like a live ball of energy being thrown around from each person that if dropped, sparked back up as soon as someone moved. Eventually we all went into the middle of the circle and used the movements and sounds we used most in the exercise to create a sequence that everyone copied. Transferring this idea of mirroring into the piece will help connect us as a whole cast. Being able to observe someone in detail is a skill that means the energy of a piece lives on constantly due to a constant sense of concentration and observation. In terms of how mirroring looks atheistically, there is something interesting and stimulating seeing everyone doing the same thing and yet they all interpret the offers of material in a new exciting way.

At the end of our lesson we did a rough run through of our piece and the loose structure lends itself to the experimental style of the piece. It is wonderful to be a part of as you never know what is coming and have no choice but to live in the moment.  However people become stressed and don't allow themselves to let go and be supported by the rest of the cast.

Lesson 3

We started today with another ensemble exercise, standing in a circle, we did the synchronised clapping exercise in which we all closed our eyes and had to read the room so as to clap at the same time. After we found each others beat, the tempo increased rapidly until it reached its peak, at which point it would fall back down to the slow tempo it started with. Being able to transfer this energy into our piece will help us read a room and its lows and highs in energy. We will have to read and react to each others energies, creating the highs and lows in the performance, with emotion being the catalyst for those peaks. This will created a layered performance that can range from scenes of calm to scenes of complete chaos.

This week we had to bring in an object, picture or random material to use as stimulus to create a character. Mine was a crown ring. The character I created was Delilah, a queen who had traded all the love in her life and her own ability to love, for power over all the land she wanted and all the subjects she desired. However the lack of love in her love and her inability to love caused her to become cold and bitter. She mistreated her subjects and ruled from a throne of silver and gold skulls, a reminder of the sacrifice she has made for her power. We then went into the middle of the circle and created this character, bringing them to life. I really love doing exercises like this because it activates my imagination in an improvised way. Creating characters is something I really enjoy and they often stimulate some of the characters that take bold, vivid forms.

We then did some more improvised storytelling. Again in a circle we started with one line and then each said a line to continue the story. I feel exercises such as these turn into trust exercises that relies on everyone in the circle to take your contributions and make them into something of value and worth, moulding them, not necessarily in the way you expect, but in a way that adds to the creative process. In terms of creating interesting, inspired stories that fit in a experimental form, this exercise allowed us all to take stimulus and throw it, stretch it, colour it in and mould it in whatever way we saw fit, which saw the storytellers becoming just surprised at the outcome as the audience. Having this sense of improvisation in the piece would be a risk but something I would personally enjoy experimenting with. Performing something with no set rules or form- theatre at its most free. We would put thrill back on stage.

In the afternoon many people had gone to Bethlem so we decided to do another storytelling exercise. One person took centre stage and told a story taking inspiration from a picture. The others stood around and acted out their words physically and created a sound scape on top. I was able to tell a story; inspired by a picture of hot air balloons, I did a story about one in the middle of a cornfield that a little girl went on an adventure in. Being completely spontaneous with the work was exciting for me and the people around me and felt wondrous as a performer. I love storytelling and writing stories so standing on that block was me feeling very at home. Having this sense of sharing between a whole group of people is definitely effective- you need only ask those who were in the class. Involving everyone in something that can only exist once is a sharing experience that everyone can connect with.