The second workshop exploring the Brothers Grimm Tale "The Fir Tree".
Present: Me, Merv, Bonnie, Chris
The Konnektiv plan is to create a shadow puppet theatre in which to show an artistic representation of the story, in a performance that will include the story read off a 45rpm record, that had been read by Boris Karloff. The performance will also include dark soundscape by The Flesh Eating Foundation.
We are using drama to explore the story, because through our inprovisations, using scenes and characters mentioned within the text, we discover elements of personality and moments of dramatic tension, that we would not necessariy appreciate if we merely made up a storyboard based upon the text alone.The process is everything in Konnektiv. That includes long and thorough warm ups, that may take up a good half hour or more of the session. Warm ups are very important. You can do more in a shorter time following a good warm up than in a longer time following a rushed warm up. Warm ups are for many reasons:
1. To warm the body, energise the muscles, and soften the joints
2. To raise body awareness, heightening the sensations experienced when moving about the room, or contacting with self and other.
3. To introduce different dynamics of movement - some light, some heavy, some fast, some slowly.
4. to introduce different characteristics of movement - emotionally charged movement.
5. To introduce the idea of different characters in context or relationship with each other.
5. To release the creativity and expressivity of the actors.
Today's warm up was quite typical. Highly energetic, experimental. I aim to bring about a session that is as uninhibited as possible. I join in the warm up, especially in the intial stages of a new group or project, for two reasons. Firstly to reduce the self consciousness the new group feels if there is someone watching. Secondly to model an approach to experimental physical drama that includes being able to take dramatic risks and produce a variety of interesting dynamics.
Ultimately the group will do these things quite well without me joining in, and I will get to observe the warm ups, and the group will get to practice dramatic movement with an audience.
The warm up itself has several levels of tension:
1. An energetic "Follow the Leader", which goes on for some time, and with a gradually increasing energy - exhausting and enlivening in one.
2. Each person makes their body into a big star shape, reaching for the corners of the room. The stretch out and feel the heat of their flesh and their heart beat, which has been raised by the lively excersise previously engaged in. The star shape in big and bold, it imbues on a feeling of confidence through being held. The actor becomes more at one with their vital organs through acknowledgement of the activity of the heart.
3.
Gradually relax arms, feeling release as they
drop and hands hang. Tension is released.
4. Finally, to aid balance and flexibility, we do some slowly moving stretches.
4. Finally, to aid balance and flexibility, we do some slowly moving stretches.
by now the group is well warmed up physically, and it is time to unleash the collective creative juices. A game based on cauldron is used, but starting with sculpts. Two people in statue pose, one is touched by a third. The touched person leaves and the third assumes a sculpt that is in some way complementary to the one remaining. After a while, The words "Action" and "Freeze" are used to bring the sculpt to life and return it to its statue pose. Different positions, and different relationships assumed within the sculpt result in very different dynamics of movement, often vocal sound is used to emphasise the dynamic. This occured naturally in this highly expressive group, but in a less confident group it would take a while for sound to be incorporated to the same level. The photographs in this weeks blog are all of the sculpts produced in this part of the warm up.
Finally we get to working with the story, the theme of the moment. It might seem a long winded way to get started, but by now the group is ready, warm, excited and primed for action.
We share memories of the last session, the different elements of the stories that were explores:
a.
Characteristics of tree (dissatisfied,
searching, vain)
b.
Children (spoiled, competitive)
c.
Story (sad, moral tale)
d.
Situations (Christmas – different responses of
tree, incredulous disbelief, some fear and vulnerability
e.
One painful situation to another
f.
The lack of appreciation of the tree for it’s
original surroundings
We then listen, again, to part 1 of the story. I want the group to listen actively, so I ask them to take on the role of saplings, being read to by a rather scary old granddad.
At the end there was silence for a while. The saplings subdued and unnerved by the first half of the tale. It is indeed a disturbing one. The performance, we agree, will not be promoted to a child audience.
We only had time to create one scene, but this was an extremely powerful one, and incredibly painful to watch.
We then listen, again, to part 1 of the story. I want the group to listen actively, so I ask them to take on the role of saplings, being read to by a rather scary old granddad.
At the end there was silence for a while. The saplings subdued and unnerved by the first half of the tale. It is indeed a disturbing one. The performance, we agree, will not be promoted to a child audience.
We only had time to create one scene, but this was an extremely powerful one, and incredibly painful to watch.
The scene was when the tree was felled by the
woodcutter. Introduction of characters through enrolment methods; the robin;
the woodcutter and the father of the household who buys the tree. (the last character was not introduced by Hans Christian Anderson, but rather inferred in the story, and this is the sort of thing that gives us licence to explore beneath the ripples of the text.
A imaginary scene is created, with chairs positioned to suggest a thick forest, and two placed together to suggest the woodcutters truck. We gave the woodcutter human depth, forming impressions of his character and motivation by first improvising him talking about the tree to the housefather. Woodcutter is a genial but wily businessman, making a decent living especially at Christmas. Playing the vanity of the housefather by use of flattery and persuasion. This appeals to the housefathers vanity, and the woodcutter is commissioned to cut this lovely tree down for the largest house in the area The point of this is to give a back story to the cutting down of the tree.
The robin's character is further explored; inquisitive, chatty, fickle. Loves to talk of the goings on in the big houses, decorated trees etc, the gossipy voice that feeds and nurtures the fir trees dissatisfaction with it’s life. Then another aspect to the robin is revealed, as during the improvisation it realises a sadness when it's friend the tree is cut down. This is typical of the kind of dramatic twist that makes good theatre. From fluttering gossip to faltering bereaved in but a moment, tragedy at it's finest
.At the start of the scene painfully related events concur, which build tension; the chattering of the robin, wittering on about the bright bauballs of Christmas, The full and lofy pride of the Fir Tree, and in the background, the sharpening of the axe by the woodcutter.
Build up of the tree as the finest young tree in the forest. A tragic twist, as we observed in improvisation, the Fir Tree, who had been enrolled as very beautiful, healthy, proud and vain, is felled by the woodcutters newly sharpened axe. In one blow the tree is transported to a place of incredible pain and greif. It was difficult for me to watch, even though I now know the story so well, and expected what was going to happen.
A imaginary scene is created, with chairs positioned to suggest a thick forest, and two placed together to suggest the woodcutters truck. We gave the woodcutter human depth, forming impressions of his character and motivation by first improvising him talking about the tree to the housefather. Woodcutter is a genial but wily businessman, making a decent living especially at Christmas. Playing the vanity of the housefather by use of flattery and persuasion. This appeals to the housefathers vanity, and the woodcutter is commissioned to cut this lovely tree down for the largest house in the area The point of this is to give a back story to the cutting down of the tree.
The robin's character is further explored; inquisitive, chatty, fickle. Loves to talk of the goings on in the big houses, decorated trees etc, the gossipy voice that feeds and nurtures the fir trees dissatisfaction with it’s life. Then another aspect to the robin is revealed, as during the improvisation it realises a sadness when it's friend the tree is cut down. This is typical of the kind of dramatic twist that makes good theatre. From fluttering gossip to faltering bereaved in but a moment, tragedy at it's finest
.At the start of the scene painfully related events concur, which build tension; the chattering of the robin, wittering on about the bright bauballs of Christmas, The full and lofy pride of the Fir Tree, and in the background, the sharpening of the axe by the woodcutter.
Build up of the tree as the finest young tree in the forest. A tragic twist, as we observed in improvisation, the Fir Tree, who had been enrolled as very beautiful, healthy, proud and vain, is felled by the woodcutters newly sharpened axe. In one blow the tree is transported to a place of incredible pain and greif. It was difficult for me to watch, even though I now know the story so well, and expected what was going to happen.
After all of this dramatic tension, a thorough derolling is necessary. As in this style of improvisational theatre, the actors give of themselves, and maybe give voice to elements of themselves that are usually silent. This can be very beneficial, hence the use of improvisation in dramatherapy, however it does need to be managed, and this is done by the leader facilitating techniques used by the actors to dispel the drama and reintroduce the 'real world' to the room.
The final part of the session, and running out of time as we were, we looked at some images that Merv had collected from the internet to demonstrate his vision for the set and puppets, and to inspire our creativity. There were images of Victorian children, trees, christmas decorations and fireplaces, which will inspire the setting, and of German black and white expressionist cinema, which will inspire the style of presentation,
finally, we decided that we can't take enough time out of the drama sessions to spend on the buildng of set and puppets, so we will have 2 workshops each week, one for drama (Wed eve) and the other for set/puppet design and building (Fri 4pm)
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