Today we played at the community room at Rising Brook Fire Station in Stafford. The Fire Officers were lovely and welcoming and the room nice and light, and though not very big, we managed to do some lively and intense dramas.
Warm up - the game we started with was 'On your Marks', and used the starting position in a race as the initial movement. The point is that the starting position was the neutral position, and from this, any movement at any level, is possible. The group members take it in turns saying 'On your Marks, Get Set...', and another member gives the instruction - 'roll on the floor', 'jump up and down', 'hop' etc. This was an energetic and light hearted way to begin to think of using our bodies in terms of strength, stamina, subtlety, poise and balance.
We began then to link in the movements with each other (linking in with themes of complicite),. and got into a position that made us think of sky diving. This was followed by us going through half of a sequence where we became a team of skydivers jumping out of an aeroplane, free falling, pulling the chute cords, and ending up landing. However, as we discussed how we would do this, we touched on themes of states of tension, which seemed really relevant, and so we put the jumping out of the plane excersise to one side for a while to work more directly with 'states of tension. We never did finish the jumping out of the aeroplane sequence, it would be nice to return to it one day.
The relevant theorists when looking at states of tension are Peter Wright and Jaques Leqoc. Looking back on it, I have several areas of confusion, which I'm sure that more experimentations will help to clarify.
Saying that, the theory was very useful, and as a group we made many associations with ways in which it could be applied in different contexts.
Two examples of tension that Lecoq describes are fear (the bomb excersise) and anxiety (cocktail party excersise). We added different scenarios to these, as a group improvising around the theme of horror (locked in a room with a monster in), pride and joy (tying shoe laces up for the first time), fear (going into a cellar full of spiders with only a torch) and love (finding and embracing a baby monkey).
Some of the questions occuring to me following the practice are:
1) To what extent does the actor actually experience the feeling when portraying it (Stanislavski and Brecht).
2) how successful can the actor be in moving from one state of tension to another, without getting 'stuck' in one state. This is very relevant to therapy, where one doesn't want ones clients to be going home in fear, imagining there are monsters in the roof or joy, believing there to be monkeys in the trees, and actors, who may be portraying a state of very high tension in one scene, and a completely different level, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in the next. Dramatherapeutically, there are many ways to enrol and derol, which ensure that overattachment to a role or state does not occur, but in drama practice, it is time consuming and not really seen as necessary. But actors do need to be able to switch between states, and is this a skill that can be learned?
3) there was some assumption among the group (myself included) that the level of tension related to the quantity of the type of tension being portrayed, thus we put an emotional interpretation (joy, love, fear etc) to the tension. I don't know if this is what the model actually is saying.
4) the model is cycular. It starts and ends at the same point. How then does one state lead to another? Discussions around this question may help to build up discussions around the questions in number 2.
This will be the subject of more investigation on the theory group.
For the members of Konnektiv who turned up, the experience was intense, as we played with various states of emotion (which is how we interpreted the word 'tension'). For me, there was the feelings of responsibility brought about by some of the questions I have posed above. It is certainly possible to switch between apparent states of tension, if a more Brechtian approach is taken, where the actor is aware of the quality of tension being conveyed, and is able to convey it convincingly, yet within a very short time, have no trace of the tension left in them. However in 'acting out' the tension, it is unavoidable that the actual feeling is experienced, to some degree. Are there traces of these left after we apparently leave the state? After some of the scenarios, some of the actors carried the tension for quite a while, it did not leave easily. Was there a 'holding on' to the state? If so, what might bring about this desire to 'hold on'? Perhaps being in that space where it is safe to explore emotions usually tucked safely into boxes, there is a seductive quality, a sense of luxury, permission - we can immerse ourselves into this experience together, and share what we find.
Sometimes a surprising reluctance makes us question each other. One member of the group protested that they could not show the quality of tension that was being asked of them. I reminded her that we weren't there to actually 'have' the experience, but to 'show' it (an actor has to have a rich and varied repertoire of states that they can perform, they are tools of the trade). In showing the experence, as well as we are able, we might feel like experimenting with what it might actually feel like, and there are therapeutic opportunities there for us. In being able to fully experience the feeling, we might become better, more convincing, energetic actors. these are not statements, they are possibilities, open to discussion.
As we moved away from the Japanese Fairy Tales temporarily, I had intended that we work very physically, hence the use of Leqoc's model. However, we seemed to work more on an emotional level than a physical level. Whilst initially we were paying attention to physical states, and commented on these during the 'bomb' exercise, in later exercises, we tended to focus on the experience of the emotion. It will be valuable in future sessions to be able to return to this and spend more time focussing on the physicality of the experience.
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