A very useful rehearsal

Yesterday was a very useful rehearsal in many ways.

At last we got to work out the ending to Good Thunder, which has been changed in order to make more of the relationship between Rai Taro, the Son of the Thunder, and the peasant husband and wife who foster him while he is on earth.  The words are no different, but we have added some movement and changed some of the sculpts, and we are very pleased with the result. 

In doing this, we also finally managed to recreate some of the beautiful, powerful energy of the story.  The Thunder Dance, with it's roaring drum beating music, is powerful in itself, yet this is not the only place of power in the story.  The way the moves are played out - slowly, controlled, purposeful and careful, gives a feeling of intense inner power.  The actors got this tension level very well when we first performed this piece, but a lot of time, and two other very different performances, diluted the effect that we had achieved.
We also got to see the beautiful dress that Becky has made for the narrator.  It is absolutely gorgeous.

We aim to produce excellent drama that carries itself as an art form, but if a talented person is able and willing to create some pieces of costume or scenery to add to our production, we are of course extremely happy and grateful.  In my own mind, this is when drama becomes theatre.


We also managed to have a run through of the Badger Tea Kettle - and made some more good progress.  Sara, who plays the narrator in this one, has adapted her characters movements because of the fact that we are performing in the round.  This brings her closer to the audience, and thus the narrator will more effectively bring the audience into the place of the story.

I've told everyone that they must be responsible for their own costumes and props, as I will forget things and lose things if it is all down to me to gather and remember things.  I still managed to get back to Konnektiv hq with about 4 sets of random costumes.  Never mind.

More Backdrops and Masks

Met up with Sam and Suzanned at the fire station and once again Sam had loads of colours - cloth and paints, and some fab ideas about how we can create the picture we are looking for.  She has decided to take on a more directive approach than she has previously, with the performance now looming so close.  There is still much to be done and seems little time to do it.  

We have cut out and painted so many leaves that It seems impossible to count them.  I spent most of the time wrapping red cloth around a wire bridge structure.  I find repetitive tasks therapeutic, and got quite relaxed sitting, cutting cloth and wrapping and tyeing for about 

two hours.  Saying that, it was quite a relief when it was done and I could draw leaf shapes onto green sparkly material and cut them out instead.  Sam and Suzanne painted some green squares in jazzy streaks of green and pink.  

These were hung around the place to dry and will make up the walls of the temple, and some may also hang separately to the main backdrop, as there is far more of this cloth than will be needed for the temple.  Then Suzanne spent the rest of the time sewing the leaves individually onto the gauze material overlaying the backdrop, whilst Sam worked on the panels for the bridge section.

Time goes really fast when you are doing this sort of thing.  We got quite a lot done, but looks like there is still a long way to go.

Masks

On a separate issue from the backdrops, whilst we are very pleased with how the masks have come out, I have had a realisation tonight, speaking with Mervyn, that we really don't know what we are doing re: working with the masks, and the whole doing Urashima masked is very experimental, as we have no idea how it will turn out.  We haven't practiced with masks, and we have barely touched on the theory of mask work.  We have made these masks as novices, not quite knowing how they will turn out.  

One of the main things I think may be problematic is the fact that our masks are barely larger than our own faces.  When I think of masks in performance, they are usually larger than life, so the audience can see all the odd features and get the feeling of the mask.  

I'm not sure ours do this, and from the audience seats, the masks may lose their effect on the audience.  Also, we will be physically moving not much different from if we were performing without masks.  Ideally, the masks should change the way that we move.  I will be doing a group enrolment, and as much as possible, and enrolment with each individual.  

However how much this will translate into the mask and actor becoming one in performance, remains to be seen.

We will, of course let the audience know some of this, and they are very much participants in this experiment.  we don't know what will happen, we hope it will be effective and enjoyable theatre.  We don't know precicely how the masks will come across, we do know that we are learning constantly and this ongoing process is one of our trademarks.

 God I'm so knackered!  When will it all end?  There is so much to do and no time to do it!  People are there one minute and gone the next.  We are half way through everything and it's all chaos!


And then something beautiful happens - a detail on a backdrop, 
a child loves the mask you thought they would hate, a moment of complicite, a silence that sings.


Going slightly mad?  I think so...


Who's idea was it to do 3 performances on one night?  The fool! Ok each one is only 20 minutes, but is so much to think of, and I have trouble keeping thoughts in my head at the best of times.  And I've lost my diary.  


And to anyone who thinks that as director I should be holding it together with a calm and confident demeanour - I say "bugger off!"


I have this theory that if I hide my panic by acting calm and confident, then I will transfer, by Freudian psychological processes, my panic and chaos, to the actors, then they will have to try to deal with it, but it will be unspoken, out of sight but squeaking incessantly like an injured mouse under the claws of a silent, but very hungry cat.
Anyway, I am confident.  I have great confidence that we have done our very utmost best, and that 
on the day, we will pull together some excellent 
performances.  In all of our previous shows, there was something extra in the performance, something that I didn't imagine or plan for.  Something chrystalised, all the last minute stuff, the final inspiration, the moment of clarity.


It's the final countdown.  We are in the middle of the jungle.  We are surrounded by the sounds of strange animals, exotic creatures, beautiful and deadly, with teeth and venom and huge rainbow coloured feathers, translucent wings, and eyes that dart about toungues that flicker.


We cut our way through the thorny, tangled undergrowth, finding treasures on the way, hands held tightly, then let go suddenly.


All this, all of this, and at the end of the day - it's just a performance.  Just another performance.  And it isn't event set in a jungle.

Backdrops and Badger Kettles

We had a wonderfully busy afternoon at the fire station today, with the artists painting up the backdrops and the rehearsal of the Badger Kettle going on simultaneously. 

Sam took advantage of breaks in the dismal rain to get some touching up done on the Good Thunder Backdrops, and Suzanne and Becky got to work adding colour and texture to the white base picture that Sam had painted onto the pink Badger Kettle Backdrop. 

Meanwhile, in the main room, we finally got a chance to rehearse the chase scene, which turned out to be much easier with just two novices.  Three had been very challenging for us, but with two it was easier to remember who does what, and also the falls, trips and important moments of reaction to the mishaps that occur during the chase were so much easier to co-ordinate. 

 It was great having the whole cast there, as Wednesday's rehearsal had been very difficult, with no narrator, and Mervyn away at the SDAC meeting. 

Chris was there with the sound and music, helping to create the comedic feel that the story offers.  Between us all we managed to recall the timing and placings of the original performance, as well as embellishing it by adding details to the movement that will make this upcoming performance even better. 

This is not a time for complacency.  I've asked the cast to go through the script, and remind themselves regularly of their individual contributions to the performance, and practicing the moves to eliminate any wobbles or uncomfortable moments when they have not prepared a move as well as they could.  By going through the moves at home at least once a day, everyone will be able to give a really good performance by the time we finally show our stories at the Gatehouse Theatre on the 30th. 

Nonny came for the first time, and we discussed as a group what she will say in the speech that I will write for her, to give as much information as we want the audience to have, including telling about the AGM on 13th July, where it would be great to have as many people as possible, and hopefully some new faces to join us for our next years projects, whatever shape they will take. 

It is fantastic to see so many people working so hard on these stories, all contributing their time and talents very generously and in good spirits.  This is an essential part of the way Konnektiv works.  We need people to have generous spirits, but for this to happen, they need to be enjoying the processes that they are engaging with, and today I think that is exactly what happened.

Navigating Stormy Seas

Nowadays I hardly get time to blog, as things have all gone crazy, rehearsing at least twice a week, creating masks, backdrops, making phone calls, organising, forgetting things, remembering and then forgetting them again.  It's impossible to know where to start really.   I am only writing this blog to let people know that things are happening, at such a rate that I don't have time to write.  Which is a shame because this is where the main learning is happening.

Masks

The masks are coming on great.  All of the masks in these pictures are complete now or nearly complete, and add colour and mystery to the performance.  Lots of people have been involved in making the masks, and at time I've felt that I may as well open up a factory at home as I've had rows of the paper mache faces lined up for me and my ever helpful daughters to paint, cut and stick elastic to.  I'm glad we've taken our time over the masks. 

 It is easy to do something in a rush, especially when resources are low, however I am a bit of a perfectionist and wanted these masks to look as professional as possible.  This also entailed getting some new brushes as I realised the ones we had, which were cheap, where unusable, making horrible wobbly scratchy lines of the paint.  Why would anyone sell such terrible brushes?  The term 'paint brush' should indicate that you can use something for painting, but not these.  Anyway, enough moaning, the new brushes are much better.  Plus I have got some fine sand paper for sanding the bits and lines off the masks, which are left by the paper mache process.  This also makes for a much better, smoother finish.  Last thing, our plan is to give them a coat of satin varnish to finish them off.

Backdrops

Sam has prepared the last backdrop - the one for the Badger kettle, which is going to be bright and lively.  We are hopeing that as many people as possible can come along and contribute towards the finished product, which will be the final piece in the show.  The backdrops that we have done are looking really great and will be great additions to the show.  But there is a lot more work to be done.

Drama

The dramas are coming on well to different degrees.  We have had a lot of people come and join and leave for different reasons; we've had people come and join but not fully understand the way we work; (luckily others have come and are just able to join in and get on with it).  We've had to almost completely recast the Badger Kettle, with its important and difficult chase scene.  We are now at the point where we have reduced the number of novices from three to two - myself and my daughter Sophie.  This has simplified things somewhat, and we have found that it is much easier to choreograph a chase scene with two people that it is for three. 

We are also just getting our heads round the fact that some of the performances will be masked - a new technique for us, and the fact that we will be performing in the round.  I couldn't resist choosing in the round as the style, because it was available and goes so well with narratives due to the intimacy lent by the seating. 

 however, the performers are having to modify everything that they have learned in order to accomodate the need to be aesthetic and visible throughout the performances to audiences on three sides rather than one.

We have had so many changes - usually sudden and often with profound effects on the group and the performance - to accomodate that the word "catastrophe" had taken on a new meaning.  Now it just means "yet another change that needs to be accomodated as well as possible by whatever means we have to hand"  This is great for me, an old school catastrophic thinker who sees the end of the world in the bottom of an empty sugar bowl.

Promotion

We have had 200 flyers and 200 posters made.  All but about 80 of the posters have been put out in various place, however it would be good to get the others out.  A press release has been put together by Damon and will be sent out over the weekend.  The audience may be largely friends and family and may not be very large, but we will try to get as many as possible, and quite a bit of interest is being generated.

Drama for Health or Artistic endeavour - the way forward?

Finally, an important word about our initial reason to be, and the way I am working.

I've had some conflict over the last year or so, to varying degrees, over my personal reasons for doing Konnektiv.

First of all I wanted a group in a workshop format that I could introduce drama techniques to in a way that might facilitate a greater sense of wellbeing.  this is the Drama for Health side.

However, I soon began to want to put on performances, and as soon as we started to do this, the most important thing to me was to do good theatre, entertain audiences and have an artistic outcome that the group members can all be proud of.

I have stopped being an easy going arts for health facilitator to becoming a highly focussed director.  Are these two roles incompatible?  Maybe.

Is it incomprehensible to think of a drama for health group that creates good drama? I don't think so.  But maybe others do.

In July Konnektiv will be having our first AGM, and these are the thoughts that I will be taking to the committee when we are deciding which is the way forward for Konnektiv for the following 12 months.

2nd/3rd June - Masks Workshops

We've been wanting to work with masks for ages, and the funding that we got for this Gatehouse production gave us just the opportunity that we needed.  Because of the style of the performances, they will work very well with masks.  In fact, the way that we have painted our faces thus far in the shows are masks, albeit in paint form.  The masks that we made, however, which we will be able to put on and off at will, will change the mood of the performance considerably.  For a start, the painted makeup was quite beautiful and smooth, whereas the masks will be a bit more grotesque, which I think will be especially effective in Urashima, to add a bit of horror.  The only problem with this is that two members of the Urashima cast don't have masks for this yet, but we can discuss this tonight.  The gods in Good Thunder have masks in progress and these are looking very good.  As for the badger kettle, I don't think that any of the characters will be masked.  The story is very lively and active, and painted faces will not slip, also the jolly nature of the story may not go with the awful grotesque element added by the masks.


The workshops were over two days, and were originally timed at 3 hours each.  This was to include making, painting and enrolling into character.  As it was, we took 4 hours on each day, and didn't even get around to finishing the making of the masks, with the exception of Sophies fairy narrator, which she made and painted.  This means that at this evenings workshop, we will be working with partially completed masks.  however this will enable us to get the feel of the mask and to be aware of keeping it visible to the audience, so that the power of the mask is not lost.  An interesting challenge as we are performing in the round (well, it's a sort of enlarged semicircle really).

Making the Masks
The technique we used to make the masks was mainly with rolls of brown paper sticky tape, and padding made of kitchen roll soaked in pva glue and water (we took a while to learn the importance of squeezing this out as much as possible so that it isn't dripping wet - this makes the mask soggy, lose it's shape and difficult to stick the features on.).

First of all, we got into pairs, and took it in turns building the base of the mask.  That is sticking the tape back down onto the persons face.  When I say back down, the sticky side does NOT touch the face, it is sticky side up.  The base of this is a frame and more sticky tape is used to cover the entire face, diagonally across, and then 3 or 4 more layers on top until it was quite thick. 

The tape is stuck down by being wetted on the non-sticky side and then stuck to the sticky side exposed underneath.  On the last layer the tape is reversed, so it is sticky side down, which means that there is no sticky showing on the mask. 
Then the mask shell is carefully removed, and we waited for it to dry - which ended up being over night.

the next session was the building of the features of the mask.  Looking at pictures of Noh masks for inspiration, we built up cheeks, chins and eyebrows with kitchen towel dipped in pva glue and covered over with more wet sticky paper tape, this time it being stuck sticky side down. 

the Narrator masks (mine is the widow narrator from Urashima, Sophies the fairy narrator from Good Thunder) will be half masks to enable us to speak, all of the others will be full masks.  Sophie has made her mask rather cleverly cut across the diagonal, which makes it interesting visually, stylish and quirky.

As with the backdrops, there is much work still to be done, however having this much done is very encouraging, and I look forward to us being able to work on our enrolment rituals, in order to be able to get the most out of the masks in performance.

31st May - Olympic Procession

David getting into Role before the parade.

31st May 2012, the olympic came through Stafford.  Traffic came to a standstill, the high street lined with people, some of whom waved Union Jacks, many just came for a glimpse of the famous flame.

The idea was for a parade with the theme of "circus", to start the event, and set the stage for the later procession, which would include the olympic flame.

In the rush sophie spilled several thousand sequins

Konnektiv were very excited (well those of us who didn't want to boycott the olympics were very excited), and planned to meet in Castletown at Mervs, to make up as circus or Japanese Fairy Tale characters, and go and join in the parade.

Anthony made a very splendid priest

We had a really good day - but not without it's hiccups!  For a start we arranged to meet far too early.  The sign up time for the parade was 3.30 - 4pm, we met at 1pm.  This gave us a great opportunity to relax and get to know the new members better, however, we got too relaxed, and suddenly it was 3.35 and we hadn't done our makeup!  circus and Japanese Fairy Tale makeup takes some time, and some people hadn't made up their faces before so this was the first time for them!  We rushed as quickly as we could, everyone looked rather splendid, and ran to the bandstand in Victoria Park, missing the beginning of the parade by 2 minutes.

The parade really wasn't very long, and in that 2 minutes, they had completely disappeared round the corner and up by the town centre.  We sped walked, me at the helm, painted in Kabuki style makeup and weilding a bodhran (Irish drum), accompanied by Anthony, a rotund priest character, with stern face paints, flowing black robes and a straw hat.  Race as we did, we never caught up with the procession, and when it sunk in that we had completely missed out some of us were very upset.  Some friends of mine are in a Samba band from Birmingham, and they made the parade, but we didn't.  Pah.

We made our way, rather dejectedly, to the market square, like a gang of Japanese Cinderellas, all dressed up with no ball to go to.  Luckily, David had bought some flyers, and we managed to put some onto a stall, and this is where the events of the occasion took a turn.  David, Kurtis and Meryn got out their juggling balls and diablo, and began to juggle, I joined in, playing the bodhran, and the rest of the group began to give out flyers of the upcoming Gatehouse performance. 

Soon we had attracted quite a crowd.  Later David took center stage with his diablo, and I interacted with the crowd, wondering how high he would be able to toss the diablo and still catch it.  Finally, we all started doing some improvisation - I told everyone to move into a tableau, following the pattern of our performances, but with different images, the tableau changed to the time of 10 drum beats. 

Sometimes I told the group to be led by one member, sometimes by another.  Then I told the group that on the 10th beat they should all look at the sky, then the audience. 

Finally, I told the group to start to interact more directly with the audience, becoming very interested in one persons shirt, and spotting Damon with his camera phone, they became very interested in this.



By the end of this impromptu performance, the spirits of the group had raised considerably, as we did not feel that we had wasted our time coming to town.  In retrospect, this would possibly not have happened if we had made the procession, so it may be a case of good luck that we did miss it!


There were other acts going on in the market square - some fire juggling, hoop spinning and other circus acts.  We watched for a while.  As time went by, our enthusiasm to wait and see the olympic flame (which was more evident in some than others) began to wane, and we felt that we deserved a pint of beer.  We hung around for a bit, but then when we joined in a great cheer, and found that we were cheering for a huge Samsung coach, which was followed by a Lloyds TSB coach and various other multinational super rich corporation advertising, the community spirit diminished completely, and we all trooped off to Joxter Brady's for a well earned drink and bonding session.  All except the very determined Anthony, who waited paitiently for the flame and even got a picture.

All in all it was a good day, juggling skills were shared, we did some guerrilla drama, we looked fabulous and we had a nice pint at the end of it all.