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!!