http://www.taramcgowan.com/Thematic.htm

This image comes from the Tara McGowan storyteller website.

Music is being added to our stories, and we are getting an idea of the richness of emotional intensity that is possible when the different dramatic arts are combined - narrative, music, sculpt and movement.  We were only able to work on short excerpts of Urashima, which we started last week.

Following the physical warm up, which was short and based on walking and running, the group got straight to work on their characters.  Each person in turn stated their characters name (if known), two things about it, and one of the things it does in the story.  Other members of the group were able to ask questions about the character, but not impose ideas.  This is due to my personal belief that each character should be developed by the person playing it, primarily.  Others may give suggestions in the form of questions, and this may help the development, but for an authentic portrayal of the character, the player creates the majority of it.

In pairs, the group worked to devise performances in which their characters ask questions of each other.  During the task they were instructed to develop the characters voice and physical attributes.  The performances were played out to each other, and we also looked briefly at ending scenes in different ways.

So much time is taken up with these important developmental excersises, that we tend to have little time to work on the actual stories, and today was no exception.  For the last 35 minutes we worked with Urashima, focusing on 3 or 4 sculpts, and experimenting with ways that the music can be added, so that all elements of the performance support and enhance each other.   A selection of music was bought by Chris, who played different exerpts with the different narrative sections, so that we could start to feel how this would happen on the night.

Last week we created a bowl for the elements,
 using group members as sides of the bowl

The last element was fire, and each member of the group imagined for themself a flame.

At the end of the excersise, the flames combined to sculpt a bonfire.

 

We have done lots of excersises over the months since we started in January - centering around elements of performance and group function as working together, sensitivity to the group, group cohesion, confidence of expression, creative sharing.  These are all very important. However, the time has now come to stop practicing and start doing.

We were a little late finishing, and the comment was raised that if we are going to perform in late September, then we really need to start speeding up our processes.

This is very true.  It has been a wonderful luxury to spend months working on 3 short stories, dreaming, devising, deliberating, developing, moderating our ideas, developing our dramatic skills.  However, we have set early September for performance time, and this brings in several questions.

1.  Have we got time?

2.  Would it be better to moderate our ideas so that we know what we are planning to do is actually possible in the time we have?

3.  If we did a 'no frills' production in September, would we be able to then do a more extravagant performance a few months later which would involve the masks, costumes, scenery etc that we would like to have?

Hopefully group members can get to me with their responses, and we can start planning a firm and doable structure.

Is this room getting smaller?

We had a group of 7 today - and I have to say the room is feeling rather small.  I can feel another move coming on!  Although this room is cheap - which is just as well as I pay for most of the room hire, we are going to have to get somewhere larger before too long.

We did more work on the Badger Kettle today - finally casting it, with as many parts as we can.  This enabled people to be able to work on the characters they will definately have, and further develop the roles, sculpts.




The work that we have done previously, on movement, voice, embodiment, role, rhythm and image, will be revisited periodically over the next few weeks, so that it will continue to feed the final pieces.

Gabi has kindly offered to do us another workshop around Commedia, as this is a major influence in the creation of the Badger Kettle.  Lauren has offered to do a workshop on Astrology, which I think will feed into Urashima, and I am going to contact a Tai Chi person (thanks for the contact Sara), to see if they will come and do us a workshop on Tai Chi, as this will influence the style of  The Thunder Good.  These elements will help the fact that each piece, when performed, will very much have it's own style, thus the evening should be lively and entertaining.


Next week we will do some more work on body and eye contact.  This is a very important part of all of the performances, as the actors must be working together as one unit - connected at all times in space, purpose and flow.

Each piece will have it's own narrator.  The narrators characters have to some extent been set already, and over the weeks these will be further defined.  Each narrator has a very individual style of delivery and interaction with the audience.  The fact that the narrators have their roles allocated means that they can start to learn their lines, and work without the script, which will free them up to work more on expressivity and movement.


The Badger Kettle, like the other stories, will be told by an animated narrator, and illustrated by a series of sculpts.  The narrator will pause their story telling for long enough for the actors to move between sculpts, so that either the narrator, or the actors are moving at the same time.  However there will be some exceptions to this, mainly around the Badger herself.  The Badger and narrator move together at some points - where there is a refrain, or chorus in the script.  Also, there are parts where the Badger moves - energetically, leaping and dancing - whilst the story is being told.  At these points, the narrator will leave the performance area and join the audience, still speaking, but remaining physically out of the picture.

As always, I would encourage the actors to look up Japanese theatre styles on You Tube and check out the images on Google images, these are very interesting and will feed very much into the spirit of the performances.  This is also important for the music.  We are very lucky to have Chris from Standing Tone working with us, who is beginning to form ideas around how to describe the characters with music.



(A plug for Chris - he has just bought out a new album, which I will be hearing for the first time later today, but I just know it is going to be fantastic - so here is the link to the website if anyone wants to check it out http://gurusoul.net/ )

6th June 2011 - Piecing together the characters

Write - up from today's session.  Please note if you are interested in the background of any of the pictures, I randomly copied them from Google Images to help to describe the sort of things we do, and they are not really an accurate depiction of what we did in the session.


Some very definite and strong characters are being bought to life by the actors, and this was demonstrated today as they worked further on their narrator characters.



Following a physical and vocal warm up, in pairs, half an hour was spent learning a section of "The Tea Kettle", with one narrating and one sculpting.  There were several different techniques being developed, and the two that we will mostly incorporate are the sculptactor and narrator moving at separate times, with the sculpt reflecting the story that the narrator is telling, and the narrator moving around and through the sculpt, so that the two are connected in the performance.

Each pair was instructed during rehearsal to think about voice - tone, pace and rhythm, and level of movement.  As the point of this week was to start to work without script, the purpose was partly to demonstrate how cues from the musicality of the speech and movement of the body can help with remembering lines.  In addition to this, it was intended to show how increased levels and freedom of expression are enabled when the script is put down.  In fact, initially, expressiveness is reduced, as panic sets in and the actor searches in vain for forgotten lines, however over time, confidence begins to grow as does the range and flow of creative expression.

During the performance certain aspects stood out as being very good 
 - Using character voices, or speaking in role as character
 - Narrator moving around especially in a carefully mapped out way    - that is matched with the telling of the story
 - Use of levels to keep audience attention
 - Use of expressive sounds that are not "in the script" (e.g., a laugh)
 - Narrator using the sculpt as a prop.
 - Use of facial expression - eyes very important.

At the end of the session Actors were requested to let the group know if they want to play any particular part, and who wants narrative roles.

Points to note 
 - each story can have one, two or more narrators.
 - different people can narrate each story
 - sculptactors can occasionally come out of the sculpt and narrate.


Movement
 - movement in the style of theatre that we are devising is extremely important.  I have seen over the weeks people become more confident with moving and physical expression.  As we start to map out the stories in the way that they will be finally performed, I will start to ask people to create, practice and learn different pieces of movement in their own time.





Voice
 - similarly, as the vocal style is extremely important, and in order to enhance the levels of improvement in vocal expression and clarity that we have been seeing, people will begin to be asked to practice some of the excersises that we have done during the Monday evening sessions, at home.