Diaries, Complicite and Bouffon design

What an extraordinarily busy session we had tonight.  If I stopped and thought about it I may be feeling a bit daunted by what we have taken on, but I've decided not to think about it, so it's fine.  


We have lots of workshops to book - the workshops that we will be doing with the grant money we have recieved are:
mask making, backdrop making, voice development and expression, yoga, electronic music and sound production and developmental transformations.

Anna Atkins, Woodhorsetail Cyanotype, this is
 an example of the style of the backdrops
that  will be made in the set making workshops

The start of the session was a mammoth task of confirming/cancelling/postponing workshops sessions, as everyone wrestled with diaries and dates.  I had hoped this might take about 15 minutes - it was closer to half an hour.

That's just workshops and rehearsals for the Japanese Fairy Tale performance at the Gatehouse.  


At the same time we have started designing our bouffons.  We are using themes such as size - adding bulk or length to particular body parts, making them overlarge or misshapen, restriction - using tape to fix limbs into one position or by taping on cushions/padding, to restrict movement and make it unnatural, Asymmetry - making the different sides of the body different from each other, looking distorted and generally unattractive.

The session started with a physical warm up that also doubled as a mime exercise - passing round the circle an invisible 'naughty ball', that had a mind of it's own.  This became quite lively as I added more 


naughty balls into the game and eventually everyone was busy either trying to pass one, or get one from someone else The movements became faster, bigger and more exaggerated, with people falling over, rolling on the floor, being pulled around the room in all directions as they struggled to control their invisible ball.


I ended this with a small focussing exercise, everyone ended up with their own ball, which transformed into an energy ball that was calm and friendly, and spoke wise words to them.  Eventually the group absorbed their energy ball, some quite reluctantly as they wanted to keep it!


We did lots more work on complicite - stop start games were the order of the day.  the group quickly got the hang of these and when they work they look really effective, and they will add to the way that the group work together once they don their bouffon body masks.


It was great to see how different all of the designs were, and I love these pictures, that we all drew at the end of todays session, as we begin to work on how we want our bouffon to look, and also the very practical consideration of how we are going to construct the costumes/masks.


The stop start games gave an opportunity for a bit of silliness as people added funny walks and postures.  This is great as it adds to the enjoyment of the session and shows how people have got really comfortable with each other, being bold enough to experiment and let themselves be really creative.


We did a little creative work on the Japanese Fairy Tales.  I am very aware that with three stories being told on one night, we need to ensure that each one has a very different dynamic, otherwise the audience may get bored.  
We went through each Fairy tale in turn, each coming up spontaneously with 3 movements and positions to 10 beats, and a group bow at the end.  As with the complicite games, the starting and stopping of the movements and positions was down to the group collectively.  I instructed the group to really think about the dynamic of each piece and how it will contrast with the other pieces.


So, I look back on the session and it's a blurr of different activities. I think the group are very patient with me sometimes as they indulge my schemes and ideas.  I am very grateful to them for this.  It is a great benefit to my own development as I experiment with different ways of doing things, sometimes making things up as I go along, sometimes doing something broadly based on something someone else has done, and just occasionally, doing a straight copy of something I did in my training or have read in a book - but it all has a purpose, and even though occasionally the methods need refining, the group do come up with some great drama.

Funding, Plans and Bouffons...

News:
Gatehouse Performance of Japanese Fairy Tales
We have had 2 lots of good news this week - in the form of accepted funding bids.  This is great because we can do the workshops, build the backdrops and masks, get some extra training in voice and body work.  I have lots of co-ordination to do organising dates and group facilitators.  It will be great being facilitated occasionally!  The date for the Gatehouse performance of Japanese Fairy Tales, culminating and celebrating 15 months of work and dedication by the Konnektiv posse, is 30th June.


Bouffons
Tonight, we started work on Bouffons.  Merv and me have been looking up the theory behind these and the possibilites for these unruly grotesque slightly dangerous clowns seem endless.  We've looked at Lecoq, who first used Bouffons in the way that we are doing, as a group of entertaining but a bit scary characters, who work as one, improvising, playing to the stimuli that come from the spectator, teasing, taunting, always humble, just getting away with it.  We've also looked at Phillipe Gaulier, who has the darkest view of Bouffons of all.  However we are focussing on the work of John Wright, because he has a very down to earth, practical way of describing bouffons (or buffoons as he calls them) and gives lots of good advice about how to get into the characters.


Role and Archetype - and a bit of armchair psychology
Konnektiv are going to look at Bouffons slightly differently to the way that the authors mentioned did.  Mainly in the way that we take ownership of the character.  The Bouffon is an archetype, and as such, probably resides in all of us.  When we take on the ill-fitting ridiculously shaped body of the Bouffon, we do not take on the Bouffon, we allow our inner Bouffon a voice.  The outcast, the unlucky, the misshapen, the resentful and angry, the jealous, bitter, malevolent, we all recognise these qualities only because they reside in ourselves.  We laugh at them nervously because we see a mirror image of something we scarcely dare glimpse, in a hidden recess of our consciousness.


What happens if we give voice to our Bouffon?  If we give our inner Buffoon permission to exist as a sentient character - if we listen to him or her?  Well, we will find out.  


Maybe, by using the protection and safety offered by the ridiculous costumes, the humour, the gross exaggeration, we might find that part of ourselves, and accept it a bit more, even find some way to like it...   maybe not.  Time will tell.

Complicite

Just a note before you start reading this bit - there is no connecting meaning between the words I have written and the individual pictures, the matching up of words and pictures is purely co-incidental.  They tell something of the flow of the entire session, rather than illustrating specific points that I have made.
Our journey started today with some games taken from John Wrights book that help the group develop complicite - that almost magical experience when the group becomes so tuned in to itself, that it is no longer a set of individuals, but it is almost one animal, feeling it's way through themes, shapes, levels, stories. 
It responds to itself and 'gropes', finding meaning almost by accident, through giving and accepting offers, through mutual awareness of group members, and through trust and openness.


The games were 'grouping' and 'revealing'.  In one the group walk around, together, and suddenly, almost as one, form a picture, which is directed towards the audience.  In the other, the group wordlessly choose a singer, all walk as one, then find ways to 'reveal' the singer (who doesn't actually sing). 

  We repeated each game many times, and over time.  At first the group floundered, hardly knowing the meaning of the word.  Then it's meaning became apparent, it transpired from the mutual fumblings around the space.  The feeling of complicite became more apparent, occasionally wonderful moments happened, that looked like they had been rehearsed. 

 When these moments happened it felt really special.  Often one person would end up outside the group.  A leader, a lone rebel - this can be part of the game but needs to happen in moderation, the group is the thing.

 Sometimes a person lost concentration, found themselves alone in the scene, off guard, this occasionally resulted in a feeling of insecurity.  People needed to learn to accept offers, to play, to observe and 'feel' the group, become an organic part of it.

Ideally, individuals only existed when the group chose them, and the group would just as quickly swallow them back up.  Self appointed leaders occasionally emerged, sometimes too strongly, as if they didn't trust the group to follow. 




 Rebel behaviour occurred - where one person refused to 'go along' with the group.  


This could make good drama - or kill the drama, but this isn't complicite.  

Clear roles started to emerge - some characters a bit lost, some cheeky, some more malevolent than others, people were occasionally drawn to each other in ways that they wouldn't necessarily be in 'real life'.


After these complicite games, we chatted about how people felt - they had been quite taken with the process, and had all experienced moments of 'magic' when something seemed to just happen, that felt exactly right, something unplanned yet perfect in execution.  

The whole group felt when this happened.

 We talked about the dark side of the bouffons after the games, along with a story of Punchinello, an archetypal bouffon from the Commedia tradition, who's history of tragedy and nasty character give him license to hate without prejudice, and yet on some level he is always forgiven, even for murder, of children, of women, of priests.  


So, with the idea of the bouffon firmly planted in the group, along with a growing understanding of complicite, we are now going to spend the next couple of months juggling - new projects and old, celebrations and innovations.  It is going to be very busy!!

Another new venue and another performance

It has been such a long time since I last blogged, and loads of things have happened.  As I have just at last replaced my rubbish old no good computer with a nice new one I will be back blogging regularly, so will gradually get back up to date with everything, including some pics, and if I can work out how to load it, a video.

Here is the news:
We got another new venue!  Now we are at Staffordshire Performing Arts, thanks to a lovely lady called Amanda who saw our article in the Newsletter saying we are homeless.  SPA is I think the best workshop space we have had so far, and we can also do performances there.
We finally got to perform Urashima - after the London Expo thing was cancelled by its so-called organisers very rudely at the last minute, we were allowed to do a candlelit performance of this tragic tale at St Chad's Church, which is small, lovely and gothic.
I haven't got pics vids to hand, but here is Chris's writeup from his blog... (thanks Chris!)...

http://www.d-list.co.uk/2012/04/urashima-at-earth-hour-you-had-to-be.html?spref=fb

We also nearly have a performance date for the Gatehouse - end of June - where we will perform all three fairy tales.
And the final bit of news - we are starting a new project - after 15 months of working on the Japanese Fairy Tales, we are now doing bouffons.  More on these funny monster type things as soon as I've read up on them, but in the meantime, here is what I wrote on the Facebook group...

"This week we are meeting on Wednesday as usual, but we are starting a brand new project ... bouffons "the art of mockery".  This clowning technique is very physical and as crazy as we like...

Also, because of my own interest in the health and wellbeing side of all this, I'd like to use the project to look at some deeper and more meaningful stuff like "why do we laugh?", "who are we laughing at?", "can laughter be used as part of a therapeutic process?"  (Maybe by enablingus to think the unthinkable, or taste the unpalatable).  What can we do with this ghastly material once we have made it visible and diminished it by ridiculing it?  Is laughter enough?  Are there other therapeutic processes that can carry themes forward to enable, for instance, empathy? understanding? acceptance?  Also, what happens when we realise that however we distance ourselves from a role by giving it more and more unreal, unhuman characteristics, we always play elements of ourselves..."