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.