Bring it on!!

Eventful week so far! We had our auditions and recalls, moving to choosing our cast and our first rehearsals! I have only been the recipient of auditions and never been the person casting so it was quite a surreal experience! The cast for Pornography is integral to its reception by our audience. Ideally, we would have liked to have a multicultural cast, representing a microcosm of London. However, due to a number of factors from the lack of auditionees to the type of auditionees, this has not been possible to the extent we would have liked. However, I do not that this has been to our detriment as we have been extremely lucky to have found an exceptional cast who are suitable for the parts they will play. The read through was so exciting, hearing the performers read their lines already touching upon some of the tone in the scenes we had not noticed before. We cannot wait to get down to it.

We had our first two rehearsals last night and this morning as a full ensemble. In last night's session we also had our lovely designers Sue and Adrian present for the first read through so they could hear the voices come to life off the page. They have reworked the previous set they had envisaged playing further on the 'yellow line' of the underground which is mentioned at the start of the text. Its very exciting hearing their ideas and how our piece will fit into the design and vice-versa.

One of my main tasks for the next few weeks or so is to find exercises which will enable to cast to take on the character work that Hannah specialises in whilst also cleanly fusing the contemporary performance elements and their understanding of these two techniques. George will be the key in fusing the elements together as she has worked in both modes before and will be able to see ways to meld the techniques. I have been looking at Frantic Assembly this week and the way they view text and how to use it in the devising process. Although we want to be 'true' to the language and words of Simon Shepherd, he has left the text open to interpretation and presentation for a reason and we want to play with it as much as we can.

We have to be careful to ensure that we are clear when our performers and acting and when they are performing, playing with the modes so that the play is not presented in a straight forward manner. It would be disappointing to take such an open text to treat it as a straight play. However, we also do nto want it to become so far removed from the text that it is unrecognisable as Shepherd's work. The first performance of Pornography was in Germany and Shepherd actually did this on purpose knowing that the director would completely rip teh text apart and edit as he wanted. They even changed the brother and sister to brother and brother! see link below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m3r16uRChU


This week we are mainly working with the performers on an individual basis to get to grips with their characters and the monologues or duologues. The faster we can get lines learnt and text understood the faster we can start playing with the presentation. We are also going to be attending a physical theatre workshop held by Elina one of the MA students to try and get the cast on a par in their physical ability as quickly as possible so that they feel comfortable begin creative together with their bodies.

The two key physical exercises that we used today worked well; follow the leader and moving tableaux. However, although we have to start simply to encourage those who have not necessarily had physical theatre experience before, these exercises, whilst being beautiful and insightful, may have been too simple for our cast. We plan to move further quickly employing some of the exercises of Jaques Le Coq; colours and elements.

All in all very happy and bring on the fun and exciting work ahead!

over and out.

Ellie.

Other People's Shoes and Memories

A couple of years ago for my acting module i read a fantastic book; Other People's Shoes by Harriet Walters, a biography of her work in the theatre. It was incredibly interesting as a text to see her journey from young hopeful student to someone successful in their craft. However, i have been thinking recently more and more about the title of the book. I have bgun to wonder if this is what i like about performance.

Although when i chose to come to university rather than drama school i had unconsciously made the decision i wanted to do more than act (although i have drive to be involved in the theatre somehow, i am not convinced that my place was ever really on the stage) i do love the idea of telling peoples stories, whether those stories be fictional whilst playing fictional characters or whether those stories are real through verbatim or auto/biographical performance. Perhaps this is why i have wanted to experiement with these performance modes, no longer interested in the acting that many plays still utilise. It is not that I dislike acting. I still think that more traditional performance such as acting and naturalism does still have a place in Theatre. My problem is learning how to perform these stories in the contemporary performance modes that i prefer to watch and use myself.

When i saw DV8's To Be Straight With You i was mesmorised by the stylistic movement which was not necesserily clearly linked to the words being said live or those used in recordings. However, somehow the action onstage conceptually represented those stories, these real stories that had been collected regarding views on homosexuality, race, equality and so on. At times in the performance you would be listening to a story and become acutly aware that what was being said was not fictional but a real experience being recalled or a real opinion being expressed. Although there are obviously holes in this; what is real on stage when everything is really a lie because truth does not exist onstage anymore, i cannot help but find something far more rewarding in creating material from the everyday person than creating something completely and utterly false through fiction.

In Pornography, one of the problems we may potentially face is how to perform the final scene. Scene 1 is a list, 1 to 52, short descriptions or anecdotes about each victim of the 7/7 bombings. At first we were extremely worries about this section as we were unsure how much truth they were based on. Scene 4 is a monologue of one of the bombers and we have found through research that at the least the first part of the journey described is fabricated by Stephens and is not the actual journey the bomber took. However, the list of voctims in the final scene are all based in truth of the real vicims. Our dramaturg Ursula has researched each victim and each description can be found on the BBC website. The way that this section is performed will ultimately make or break the piece.

Having worked on Verbatim projects previously, hopefully the lessons I learnt from performing verbatim text will aid in methods concerning performance of this scene. Furthermore, my key research project at the moment is a professional study regarding the place of performance and site specific theatre, exploring community and identity in the audience of these pieces. The memory aspect of this particular scene, and the way Stephens has written the other scenes as if they are memories of the characters has also got me thinking about the memory of places of performance and the imprint that humans can leave on buildings.

This, for me is what makes site specific decisions and the reasoning behind these decisions so integral to the aim for the piece but also its reception by the audience. Although we are not employing site specific in our performance the creation of a symbolic space is key for us. Adrian and Sue the designers are currently designing how the space we will perform in will look. I'll keep posted about their ideas!

End scene.

Blogging on performance take 2

I have to admit that i have never particularly been into diary writing so this is feeling just a little bit weird for me! I tried to blog recently for a performance i was working on but it was thrown on the backburner when the process of creation became more difficult and time consuming. Basically this blog will be used for me to collect my thoughts regarding the process of work I am creating, discussing rehearsals, commenting upon research and fieldwork but also make general comments upon things that inspire me or evoke a reaction from me.

Currently I am involved in a project collaborating with two directors and two designers; Pornography by Simon Stephens. This is a huge text concerning the week in which G8, Live 8, acceptance of the 2012 Olympic Bid and 7/7 happend. The minute i read the text i knew it was a play for me to really get my teeth into. Its also the perfect text for me, a contemporary performance maker and two directors to work collaborate on together due to its openess in interpretting how it can be performed.

We are hoping to use a mixture of naturalistic performance, physical theatre and contemporary performance modes. the play is divided into seven scenes, and the performance mode used will depend upon the scene. Although at first this sounds like it might not mesh and in some cases it may not, having seen DV8's to be straight with you where physical theatre and text are used together fluidly, we know it is possible. We don't know what it will be like but we want to do the writer justice, do the subject content justice and do ourselves justice.

Over and out.

Ellie