This semester we presented the play Grief by playwright and script-writer David Kantounas.
He was born in London and studied at the University of West England. Kantounas trained at the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme and in 2010 he was selected by the Old Vic New Voices as one of the best young writers in the UK (David Kantounas, 2022).
The play Grief is about a twenty-seven-year-old man living in London who one day has a breakdown after seeing the picture of a young beautiful actress, who committed suicide, splashed on the main page of a newspaper. Suddenly his life takes a turn and those around him are also affected by it. In this play the writer touches on different topics: From suicide to social media, life in big cities, relationship in between partners and co-workers, grief, death, mental wellness and families.
Our teacher, Ed Hughes, decided that all of us should play the main character Pete along with a second character. It was a challenge for us as actors to play two characters in the same play.
It was both exciting and interesting to see how all of us were playing Pete. We all portrayed the diverse faces of Pete to the public. During the first few weeks of our readings we analysed the script and found the stage directions as well as the different sets and props required in each scene. We also analysed the relationships between the characters, the facts, determined the objectives of the characters in each scene, asked questions about the characters, found the beats in the script and analysed the text (the repetition of certain words, the pace, the language used).
Grief is a modern play and it was fascinating to come across one written in a language you could relate to, as the language used in the play is very similar to the one I use in my everyday life. The pace of the play was quick, with short sentences and lines, very similar to how Mr Kantounas speaks. The obstacle I found, because the pace was quick, was to play my characters and to not to leave spaces of silence in between my partner’s lines and mine.
Despite being a modern script, the quick pace of the play reminded me of the ‘shared lines’ often found in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Understanding ‘shared lines’ as when two or more characters share a line of iambic verse between them (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2022).
The script was mostly written in short sentences and/or lines, answering one character to another. In some parts of the script there were long pieces of text, like monologues for some of the characters.
The rapid lines would represent the pace of the heartbeat, the nervousness of the characters and the longer chunks of text or monologues would represent when the characters were opening themselves up to the others and exposing their soul and true thoughts.
The conversations in the play were fast. Had I known my partners’ lines it would have helped me to achieve the speed required by the script-writer to answer back to my scene partner. I found it hard playing at that pace because despite trying not to leave any beats in between the end of the line of my scene partner and the beginning of my line, rarely did I succeed in continuing their lines with mine.
I played Pete in the second scene and I played the mother of Helen in the sixth scene.
In my scene, Pete is being scolded by his boss after the presentation he made for the new campaign he had been working on for this new client.
His boss is furious as Pete has done a 'suicide campaign' and his boss believes this campaign is inappropriate for the product they are selling and for the reputation of their advertising agency.
Kantounas based his play in real facts: A 'suicide campaign' was made by Hyundai in 2013. The company had to apologise publicly about it.
Our director gave me some notes about how my character Pete was in my scene, suggesting I watch Stan and Ollie (2022). The Pete of my scene was naïf, not really understanding why his boss was so angry at him because Pete believed he did an exceptional job.
My challenges with this character were:
1. Not letting my personality take over.
2. Playing naïf without overplaying it.
3. Finding out what was the situation he had with his father, the previous circumstances (Stanislavsky, 2013).
4. Finding his walk.
5. Creating a backup story for Pete.
6. A specific challenge because performing in a non theatre space: Making sure the audience could see you so showing your face at least once to every side of the room where the audience was seated.
After playing Pete my feedback was to work on:
My second character was the mother of Helen, the actress who committed suicide. She appeared in a scene after the funeral. In that scene there are three characters: Pete, her husband and my character.
Full journal here.
INTERACTIVE JOURNAL FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Let’s talk today about semiotics.
Semiotics is the study of the signs, symbols, colors, camera angles....
On one side we have the DENOTATION, which is the literal meaning of the sign, and from another side we have the CONNOTATION, which is the associated meaning of the sign.
For instance, we have the APPLE logo of APPLE. The Denotation of that sign will be an apple. The connotation of that sign will be technology, quality, iPhone, expensive....
The meaning we give to the signs depends on other factors like the cultural background, the religious background, the language...
Signs are polysemic, meaning, they have more than one meaning.
In films there are four categories of signs:
Signs are selected for media producers to represent a particular meaning. That creates a huge influence on the audience.
A sign can become a myth. An example could be a bulldog which is an accepted sign for Churchill, at least in the British audience. We call this association: Naturalization
Today’s podcast is based in the video ‘Semiotics analysis for beginners! How to read signs in film. From Roland Barthes Media. Find this video in his channel THE MEDIA INSIDER on YouTube
Today we will talk a bit about Wes Anderson and the Planimetric Composition. This episode is based on the ‘Why do Wes Anderson Movies look like that?’ video of the YouTube channel THOMAS FLIGHT.
Wes Anderson liked the look of the 1930 film King Kong. You can notice a rippling effect on the fur. In his stop motion film, Fantastic Mister Fox, we find the same look. Wes Anderson used real fur to get that same look.
What makes something characteristically Wes Anderson? What is a Wes Anderson’s style?
It has been studied in several essays. According to those essays, those characteristics are:
-Symmetry
-Long lateral tracking shoots
-Slow motion
...
Let’s focus today on one of those elements (which composes many of other elements of his style): Planimetric Composition. What is Planimetric Composition? Planimetric Composition is the orientation of elements of the scene (especially the background) as flat planes relative to the camera.
Wes Anderson has not invented the Planimetric Composition, but he uses it more than anyone else in film.
In films like THE DARJEELING LIMITED, and HOTEL BUDAPEST we find always the Planimetric Composition (which he has been using since the beginning of his career). The background of the shot is kept as a relatively flat plane.
In his films, characters usually occupy and move through flat planes within the scene that round parallel to the background.
Wes Anderson also uses something called Compass Points Editing. He uses it to maintain the planimetric composition as he moves the camera around and through scenes and when he edits in between different shots within a scene.
In Compass Point Editing, the camera only faces in four directions: North, South, West, and East. When the camera pans do it in 90 degrees increments and when the camera cuts it does it either in 90- or 180-degrees angle. The camera reminds perpendicular to the background.
Flat compositions look and feel constructed, that’s why is not used very much by other filmmakers. A flat composition feels subconscious.
In this episode we will talk about diverse ways of seeing, how men see women and how women see men.
This episode is based on the video “Ways of seeing” Episode 2 (1972). Find it in Vimeo from THE CURATORS.
In European oil paintings it is quite common to find nudes. In this context the woman, is not naked (for instance, as how you would be when you would look at yourself in the mirror after having a shower). Nude is artistic. We do not see a naked woman in those paintings but an artistic drawing of the beauty of the woman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY*
Auburn, David. Proof. FSG Adult, 2001
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Freeman, John. Approaches to Actor Training: International Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Kelly, Dennis. Girls and Boys. Oberon Books, 2018
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too. Harper Business. 2018
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
*The Bibliography is from Acting for Stage and Acting for Screen.
I am here reflecting on the process of working on an autobiographical narrative. Let me take you on a summary journey of what I did and realised.
This project has emerged and applied everything I have learnt in my studies this year; therefore, it will look at my final project and different parts of other projects.
The objectives of this final project were:
As Terry O'Leary suggests, 'by seeing their own situations reflected on stage, there is the potential for audience members to recognise that it is possible to effect change in situations and to escape from cycles of behaviour in which they felt trapped' (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008).
I started writing the play 'Gift: and now what?', an autobiographical play about a single-parent family during the lockdown (please see more about this topic in this link); it devised the consequences of the pandemic and lockdown on the family's relationship and how those events influenced and changed the family's behaviour. In the play, I aimed to make the audience muse about what happens on stage, following one of the Epic theatre's characteristics of Brecht -inciting the audience to think (please see more about this topic in this link). Set on a precise time frame shared by many. As Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw state, 'biographical sourcing is not just a personal truth, (but) a creative truth: one in which the real, the fantasy, the fictional get mixed up together'. (Aston and Harris, 2008).
Though the play had many fictional elements, many truthful details were present. The objective was not to share my life with an audience but to narrate a story many audience members could relate to. The lockdown and the pandemic were both events everyone experienced and lived. I aimed to share some elements of my life during that period that could help others to ponder their experience, overcome trauma and improve their family dynamics. Soshana Felman, a trauma studies scholar, argues, 'large-scale traumas such as the Holocaust can prove to be overwhelming and incomprehensible, yet, through the narration of a personal story, an individual may make sense of it within their own psyche'. (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008).
Since I started writing this project, I wanted the audience to reflect on their lives after seeing it (please see more about this topic in this link). One of the reasons I chose to talk about the changes in the family relationships during the lockdown in the pandemic was because I wanted to make the audience contemplate their family interactions, those more vulnerable in their houses and how those events affected them. The pandemic and the lockdown increased screen time within the family: I aimed the audience to contemplate how it influenced a change in the interactions within their families (please see more about the topic 'striving to create a piece that touches the audience's heart' in this link). I hoped the public would cogitate about their own family, looking to make a difference in those families affected and increasing their time together instead of spending their free time in front of a screen.
Working on this project, my family grew closer and did things together: My son participated in the project by making the child's mask, and my parents collaborated in the film as actors. (Please see more about this topic in this link).
'The worst and the best days of my life' was the film adaptation of the play 'Gift: and now what?' (Please see my previous experience/research adapting a screenplay to a film in this link). I encountered significant challenges in adapting the theatrical play to a movie while keeping fidelity to the source material. The first thing was changing it from English to Spanish and adapting the story from happening in the UK to happening in an unknown part of the world. When filming, I had to adjust the libretto to the actors who participated in the project: the child's character changed into a dependent grandfather, and, consequently, the mother became the daughter.
This change allowed me to explore Maria's character, the mother and now a daughter (please see more on the creation of a character in this link). How the same personage representing the caregiver (a parent, in this case, the mother) fluctuated between being the natural caregiver (in the relationship between child-mother) and the designated caregiver (in the relationship between grandfather/father-daughter), and how portraying different characters affected the role.
The play's characters were classified as follows according to the classification of Carl Jun and his 12 archetypes: the child represented the innocent, the mother the hero and caregiver and the narrator the sage. On the other side, in the movie, the father/grandfather was the innocent, the mother the caregiver, and the mother/grandmother the sage.
While keeping many of the events that happened to the child in the script, I adapted it with autobiographical elements my father and mother could relate to. From that adaptation, I created the character of a dependent father without deliberating, specifying 'the father' to give my father more freedom to play it. I helped my father with his character by writing a specific script for each scene, allowing him freedom within the lines but marking the main elements of the story he should cover in our dialogues. Before shooting, I explained the story and the film's aim, so he had a general idea of what we were doing. Keeping him aside from the entire script helped to make his performance more realistic and spontaneous. Every scene between the daughter and the father/grandfather is improvised lightly, following a few directions.
As Petonell Archer writes, '(Stanislavski) used improvisation as a key tool to enable the actors to explore their inner emotions, and encouraged them to train their bodies and voices in readiness for the physical and emotional demands of a role' (Archer, 2017). In this case, we used improvisation not only to enable us to explore our inner emotions but to allow us to give a truthful performance by using elements of acting techniques actors use when training.
Since I am the creator and the actor, memory was crucial when adapting the play to the film. 'Memory is a key aspect in the creation of autobiographical performance. The human memory acts as a filter and, as a consequence, what is remembered may not be the truth but an embroidered version of the real' (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008). I counted on the collaboration of my father as the father/grandfather and my mother as the mother. Both are amateur actors, and we worked closely with memory and improvisation to build their characters. The father's character depicted childish behaviour, letting my father use memories from seeing my child playing video games. The scenes with my mother over the phone had many autobiographical elements, allowing us to use our memory to give an honest performance.
The play's staging rotated entirely from the original idea to what it turned out to be. Initially, the set was white, with a projection of the narrator over the back wall and having the child seated, giving his back to the audience as in the art piece 'Charlie don't surf' by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (please see more about this topic in this link). I wanted to shock the audience with the child's character (please see more about this topic in this link). Acknowledging the dependent member of the family (the child in the play and the father/grandfather in the movie) was crucial for me. I wanted the audience to think about how they experienced the lockdown during the pandemic and how they interacted with them at those times.
I moved into an open set with white walls and doors from that initial idea of a closed white set; The performance could be seen by those connected online and by everyone passing by (the stage was in a back corridor of the mews where my parents live in Spain). An open set granted me to discuss the play and its intention with those who saw me setting everything up before the play. It permitted me to connect with others who could relate to the project but wouldn't come and see the performance, still meeting the objective of making people think about the topic of the performance.
The scenery also allowed me to create a contrast between the story and how I staged it: Characters appeared outside, sitting by a door. This image brought memories from my childhood of grandparents in villages sitting outside their houses in summer talking to their neighbours, a traditional way to socialise in Spain. By doing that, I linked it with my previous idea of implementing parts belonging to my culture in the project (please see more about this topic here). That image was also something I witnessed in London during the lockdown; people would get out to their front gardens and talk to their neighbours, as it has always been in the villages of the south of Spain. The contrast between the story, the staging, and the similarities of memories of rural Spain and cosmopolitan London was vital to me. By giving elements that could look antagonistic at the beginning, I wanted to reach the goal of making the audience think about what happened on stage because the audience had to focus on following the story. By bringing similarities in such opposite worlds, I wanted to get together the idea of the event of pandemic and lockdown being a shared event by everyone, an event without precedence in the history of humanity.
Placing a computer screening the movie on the side, I explored how the effect of increasing the time using screens affected our lives. I searched for the audience to acknowledge looking at the screen instead of following the action happening live and considering if their attention, in their daily lives, also shifted and how they interacted with others (particularly their family members).
I included the element of multi-rolling in the play: I had to play three characters: the child, the narrator and the mother. To resolve the difficulty of multi-rolling, I decided to represent the child's character with a real-life puppet influenced by the tradition of puppetry in theatre (please see more about this topic here). I included an element of multimedia (a phone with an image of eyes looking in different directions), moved by an exercise we did last term related to the concept of the digital double of Antonin Artaud (please see more about this topic here). The narrator appeared on a screen, again influenced by the idea of the digital double of Artaud and applying one of the characteristics of the Brechtian theatre, the use of projections in his theatrical performances (please see more about this topic here).
I decided the child and the narrator would wear masks after reading the book 'Impro: Improvisation and the theatre' (2007) by Keith Johnstone and the suggestion of the masks having their personality (please see more about this topic here). The mask gave the narrator the characteristics of a narrator from the classic theatre as in the ancient Greek theatre (please see more about this topic here).
On a more technical part of a project, new technologies played a massive role in the creation of my project. I used a smartphone as a camera to film the short movie (please see more about this topic in this
link) and a phone as a medium to showcase the play to the audience on new social media platforms.
Using a phone as a camera allowed me to shoot the scenes quickly. The frame and photography were those on the phone, and I could instantly review what I shot and decide if I had to retake the shoot, enabling me to work fast and efficiently (please see my previous project filmed with a phone in this link). I used the phone as the door to connect with the audience on new social media platforms, connecting in my profile on Tiktok and b roadcasting the play (please see more about this topic in this link).
Working on this project has allowed me: to combine the learnings I had from the first semester (Stanislavski, Meisner, viewpoints, Method acting, acting for screen and the creation of a short), applying what I learned in the second semester (adapting a play to a movie and creating a story) and deepening that knowledge in my last semester with my research in autobiographical performances, Brecht and the Epic theatre and the digital double, combined with the continued study I started in the second semester about the relationship between social media and performance.
Let me finish this reflection on my project with a loving anecdote: there is a scene in the film where the father and the daughter eat pasta. I was playing along with my father, and that scene was the first scene we shot. As I have mentioned previously, my father is an amateur actor, and this was, in fact, his first ever acting experience. Our scenes were lightly scripted and heavily improvised. At one point, while filming the scene, my father said, 'this pasta is cold!', and I broke out laughing. He was right; the pasta was cold! We had so many laughs after it, he, my mother, and all my family (my mother told everyone, of course!), because we had to repeat the scene several times and we reached the point that we ran out of pasta and I had to make more for the scene. The take ended being the one with the just-cooked pasta served. I learnt my lesson: Get as realistic as possible on set; even if the audience cannot notice the difference, the actors should always be happy with what they eat. (Here, a little funny resume of our bloopers is in this link).
*Please find the play 'Gift: and now what?' in this link.
*Please find the movie 'The worst and the best days of my life' in this link.I am here reflecting on the process of working on an autobiographical narrative. Let me take you on a summary journey of what I did and realised.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archer, P., 2017. British Library. [online] Bl.uk. Available at: <https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-stanislavski> [Accessed 2 September 2022].
BBC Bitesize. 2022. Brechtian staging - Epic theatre and Brecht - GCSE Drama Revision - BBC Bitesize. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwmvd2p/revision/5> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Bell, J., n.d. Puppets, masks, and performing objects.
Brecht, B., Ryland, C., Willett, J., Silberman, M., Fursland, R., Giles, S. and Kuhn, T., n.d. Brecht on performance.
Brecht, B. and Willett, J., 1965. On theatre; the development of an Aesthetic. London: Mehtuen
Chekhov, M., 1991. On the technique of acting. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Cooper, A., Cooper, N., Cooper, S., Cooper, A., Cooper, D., Cooper, F., Cooper, L., Cooper, C., Cooper, R., Cooper, S. and Cooper, L., 2022. A. Cooper. [online] SoundCloud. Available at: <https://soundcloud.com/anthony-cooper-777378961> [Accessed 8 July 2022].
Espeland, T., 2022. The Eight Efforts: Laban Movement. [online] The Theatrefolk Blog. Available at: <https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/the-eight-efforts-laban-movement/> [Accessed 5 July 2022].
Freemusicarchive.org. 2022. Free Music Archive - Artist: Ketsa. [online] Available at: <https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/#contact-artist> [Accessed 8 July 2022].
Govan, E., Nicholson, H. and Normington, K., 2008. Making a performance. London: Routledge, p.59, 62-63
Grotowski, J. and Barba, E., 2002. Towards a poor theatre. New York: Routledge.
Incredibox.com. 2022. Incredibox - Pump it up and chill!. [online] Available at: <https://www.incredibox.com/> [Accessed 8 September 2022].
Jones, E., 2009. Innervate: Leading Undergraduate work in English studies, Volume 2 (2009-2010), pp 247-253. [online] Nottingham.ac.uk. Available at: <https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/09-10/0910jonesebrecht.pdf> [Accessed 2 September 2022].
Jung, C. and Hull, R., n.d. The archetypes and the collective unconscious.
Laban, R. and Ullmann, L., 1971. The mastery of movement. Boston: Plays.
Lecoq, J., McBurney, S. and Bradby, D., 2020. The Moving Body (le Corps Poétique). London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. (Lecoq, McBurney and Bradby, 2020)
Lowe, V., 2022. Adapting Performance Between Stage and Screen. [online] Intellect Books. Available at: <https://www.intellectbooks.com/adapting-performance-between-stage-and-screen> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
McGibbon, G., 2014. Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation between Theatre and Film. [online] Core.ac.uk. Available at: <https://core.ac.uk/display/41338559?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=pdf-decoration-v1> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
MIT Global Shakespeares. 2022. Distancing effect (Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt). [online] Available at: <https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/glossary/distancing-effect/> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
MIT Global Shakespeares. 2022. Hamlet Unplugged. [online] Available at: <https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/hamlet-unplugged-lu-po-shen-2005/?video=ramparts> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Santora, R., 2004. narrator. [online] Csus.edu. Available at: <https://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/santorar/engl190v/narrator.htm> [Accessed 8 August 2022].
Theatre-rites.co.uk. 2022. Theatre-Rites - Puppetry. [online] Available at: <https://theatre-rites.co.uk/puppetry.php> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
The Drama Teacher. 2022. 25 Intriguing Theatre Techniques for Realism and Naturalism | The Drama Teacher. [online] Available at: <https://thedramateacher.com/realism-and-naturalism-theatre-conventions/> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
The Drama Teacher. 2022. 63 Frightening Theatre of Cruelty Techniques | The Drama Teacher. [online] Available at: <https://thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
Tnp.no. 2017. The Abstractness and Beauty of Lament | The Nordic Page. [online] Available at: <https://www.tnp.no/norway/culture/5115-the-abstractness-and-beauty-of-lament-oslo-norway-theatre/> [Accessed 7 July 2022].
Youtube.com. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LnZkFBd-cM> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Youtube.com. 2022. The Odessa Steps Scene. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sEPFd-1Dm8> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
*This is a project for my MA Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2022)"
My project for next term is called GIFT: AND NOW WHAT?
Gift: And Now What is a performance which will explore how the pandemic has affected children and
adolescents. Developed as part of a Master Degree at the University of East London, it will tell the story of a mother (Maria) and a child (the Innocent).
The most pertinent areas of theoretical contextualisation within this project are: actor methodology and multi-rolling, Epic Theatre, autobiographical theatre, audience participation.
Following my own experience with my child during the pandemic, exploring the autobiographical theatre, I have created this project whose ultimate goal is to make the audience think about their reality as families and about life in its broadest sense. To date, several studies have investigated the negative effects of the pandemic (quarantine and post-pandemic trauma) in children and teenagers. With my performance I would like to expose that reality and make the audience question vital/philosophical questions like ‘Who are we for each other?’, ‘What is the value of my life?’
Bertolt Brecht (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.) operates a big influence on this project for several reasons: Firstly, I am exploring the idea of multi-rolling (playing different characters like the narrator, the mother and the child) and to help represent those characters I am considering the use of masks. Secondly, my aim is to make the audience think. Thirdly, The Epic Theatre plays a very important role in this performance not only because I would like the audience to think, but because I play with the idea of the digital double- developed first by Antonin Artaud and Steven Dixon.
At this stage I am contemplating audience participation in the performance, influenced by the idea of The Immersive Theatre: the audience, for instance, could choose the soundtrack/music played, or videos projected simply using some electronic devices that would be placed outside the stage for the audience to interact with, if they wish. I would possibly add some signs to inform the audience they are allowed to use those devices.
My performance at this given moment is thought of as a multimedia performance. I am considering using videos where my son will appear and using games and play. I will apply different actor’s methodologies in those videos: Like The Repetition Exercise of Meisner, or playing scenes with given circumstances to explore Chekhov's Technique and the Stanislavski Method.
This project has much autobiographical content. However, this project is not about my child and me, but about those millions of children and parents that have had to deal with the pandemic in their journey as a family, how the pandemic has affected them, ensuing post-pandemic trauma and what further future consequences might lie ahead. Data from several studies have highlighted the negative effects of quarantine or natural disasters on the mental and physical well-being of children and adolescents. In particular, reduced physical activity, weight gain, a decrease in cardiorespiratory fitness, prolonged screen times, irregular sleep patterns, and less appropriate diets have been described (Gilsbach, Herpertz-Dahlmann and Konrad, 2021).
Bethany, 15: ‘I think people are starting to see the importance of school and having a structured day. Doing the same thing every day, although it may seem boring, gives us a sense of security, as we know what will happen each day’ (Why young people will need more mental health support after lockdown, 2020).
I would like this project to make a change in those who will watch it, to make them think about the role of the family and the importance of the family as well as helping them reflect on their own lives and perhaps acknowledge points that they were not aware of about their own lives and their children’s lives.
Aesthetically I am influenced by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and his idea of ‘borrowing’. Cattelan reworks images and situations belonging to society and they then become reflections or commentaries on social and cultural dynamics that relate to the context in which the piece is presented. His works are open to numerous interpretations, sometimes contradictory. His works extend doubts, mirroring the contemporary consciousness (Maurizio Cattelan - Castello di Rivoli, 2022).
*This is a project for my MA Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2022)
*BECAUSE SOME LIMITATIONS OF MY WEB I CANNOT PUBLISH HERE THE FULL CONTENT OF MY INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERSECTIONS: CREATIVE INTERACTIVE JOURNAL. PLEASE FIND IT HERE
INTERACTIVE JOURNAL FOR SCREEN
You have several options for this Reflexive Production Journal:
‘You may not have connections, or an education, or wealth, but with enough passion and sweat, you can make anything happen.’1
-Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too.
I wanted to learn everything about performing in front of the camera: where to look, how high your volume should be, how small your movements…
During this term I have learnt what is needed for an actor to perform in front of the camera: ‘Don’t do nothing, just be.’ And it is not a simple ‘just be.’ It implies feeling relaxed in front of the camera, confident with what you are doing, believing your lines, and delivering them as if they were your own.
‘Our work will be… how to fill your work with emotional truth.’2
-Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski.
We have practiced several exercises/games during this term: One game was about passing the ball around us in a circle and at the same time saying our names. We did another exercise in which we had to walk and change the direction of the walk at any punctuation mark (with the different thoughts of the lines), and we did the tongue twister game ‘The Throne of the King' (actors sit in a circle. One of them is sitting in the Throne. There is a repetition of questions and answers which are challenging to articulate. Each actor is designated a number. We add movements with the arms and the head that indicate the turn of the speaker. The goal of the game is to sit in the Throne. To achieve that, the actor must answer and do the movements correctly). These exercises/games have different goals like helping actors to relax, to connect with other fellow actors, to improve their listening, to get out of their own self-consciousness, to improve their articulation or to act guided by their impulses.
www.azaharadoradolaguna.com
To read the completed screen interactive journal here
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Astbury, Brian. Trusting the Actor. Brian Astbury. 2011
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Lumet, Sidney. Making Movie. First Vintage Books. New York, 1996
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Rodenburg, Patsy. The Actor Speaks. Random House. London 1997
Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too. Harper Business. 2018
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
* This is a project for my MA in Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2021)
‘If today you are in good form and are blessed with inspiration, forget about technique and abandon yourself to your feelings.’
-Stanislavski
During this first semester I have learned different techniques used in acting training to help the actor to get into the INNER CREATIVE STATE OF MIND2, as Stanislavski defines it.
One of those techniques is the “No, there is you, there is me and there is the space” exercise created by Declan Donnellan3. During this exercise, actors look each other in the eyes and repeat those lines in turns, allowing themselves to express different emotions, and taking complete control of the space. They will then move into the script. A modification of this exercise is to move into the script, back to the repetition exercise and then go into improvisation and back again.
To read the full stage interactive journal HERE
A more detailed journal with acting techniques and links to the exercises we have done during this first semester can be found here.
A journal about my work in the play ‘Girls and Boys’ can be found here.
A journal about my work in the play ‘Proof’ can be found here.
My web: www.azaharadoradolaguna.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Auburn, David. Proof. FSG Adult, 2001
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Freeman, John. Approaches to Actor Training: International Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2019
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Kelly, Dennis. Girls and Boys. Oberon Books, 2018
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
This semester we presented the play Grief by playwright and script-writer David Kantounas.
He was born in London and studied at the University of West England. Kantounas trained at the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme and in 2010 he was selected by the Old Vic New Voices as one of the best young writers in the UK (David Kantounas, 2022).
The play Grief is about a twenty-seven-year-old man living in London who one day has a breakdown after seeing the picture of a young beautiful actress, who committed suicide, splashed on the main page of a newspaper. Suddenly his life takes a turn and those around him are also affected by it. In this play the writer touches on different topics: From suicide to social media, life in big cities, relationship in between partners and co-workers, grief, death, mental wellness and families.
Our teacher, Ed Hughes, decided that all of us should play the main character Pete along with a second character. It was a challenge for us as actors to play two characters in the same play.
It was both exciting and interesting to see how all of us were playing Pete. We all portrayed the diverse faces of Pete to the public. During the first few weeks of our readings we analysed the script and found the stage directions as well as the different sets and props required in each scene. We also analysed the relationships between the characters, the facts, determined the objectives of the characters in each scene, asked questions about the characters, found the beats in the script and analysed the text (the repetition of certain words, the pace, the language used).
Grief is a modern play and it was fascinating to come across one written in a language you could relate to, as the language used in the play is very similar to the one I use in my everyday life. The pace of the play was quick, with short sentences and lines, very similar to how Mr Kantounas speaks. The obstacle I found, because the pace was quick, was to play my characters and to not to leave spaces of silence in between my partner’s lines and mine.
Despite being a modern script, the quick pace of the play reminded me of the ‘shared lines’ often found in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Understanding ‘shared lines’ as when two or more characters share a line of iambic verse between them (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2022).
The script was mostly written in short sentences and/or lines, answering one character to another. In some parts of the script there were long pieces of text, like monologues for some of the characters.
The rapid lines would represent the pace of the heartbeat, the nervousness of the characters and the longer chunks of text or monologues would represent when the characters were opening themselves up to the others and exposing their soul and true thoughts.
The conversations in the play were fast. Had I known my partners’ lines it would have helped me to achieve the speed required by the script-writer to answer back to my scene partner. I found it hard playing at that pace because despite trying not to leave any beats in between the end of the line of my scene partner and the beginning of my line, rarely did I succeed in continuing their lines with mine.
I played Pete in the second scene and I played the mother of Helen in the sixth scene.
In my scene, Pete is being scolded by his boss after the presentation he made for the new campaign he had been working on for this new client.
His boss is furious as Pete has done a 'suicide campaign' and his boss believes this campaign is inappropriate for the product they are selling and for the reputation of their advertising agency.
Kantounas based his play in real facts: A 'suicide campaign' was made by Hyundai in 2013. The company had to apologise publicly about it.
Our director gave me some notes about how my character Pete was in my scene, suggesting I watch Stan and Ollie (2022). The Pete of my scene was naïf, not really understanding why his boss was so angry at him because Pete believed he did an exceptional job.
My challenges with this character were:
1. Not letting my personality take over.
2. Playing naïf without overplaying it.
3. Finding out what was the situation he had with his father, the previous circumstances (Stanislavsky, 2013).
4. Finding his walk.
5. Creating a backup story for Pete.
6. A specific challenge because performing in a non theatre space: Making sure the audience could see you so showing your face at least once to every side of the room where the audience was seated.
After playing Pete my feedback was to work on:
My second character was the mother of Helen, the actress who committed suicide. She appeared in a scene after the funeral. In that scene there are three characters: Pete, her husband and my character.
Full journal here.
INTERACTIVE JOURNAL FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Let’s talk today about semiotics.
Semiotics is the study of the signs, symbols, colors, camera angles....
On one side we have the DENOTATION, which is the literal meaning of the sign, and from another side we have the CONNOTATION, which is the associated meaning of the sign.
For instance, we have the APPLE logo of APPLE. The Denotation of that sign will be an apple. The connotation of that sign will be technology, quality, iPhone, expensive....
The meaning we give to the signs depends on other factors like the cultural background, the religious background, the language...
Signs are polysemic, meaning, they have more than one meaning.
In films there are four categories of signs:
Signs are selected for media producers to represent a particular meaning. That creates a huge influence on the audience.
A sign can become a myth. An example could be a bulldog which is an accepted sign for Churchill, at least in the British audience. We call this association: Naturalization
Today’s podcast is based in the video ‘Semiotics analysis for beginners! How to read signs in film. From Roland Barthes Media. Find this video in his channel THE MEDIA INSIDER on YouTube
Today we will talk a bit about Wes Anderson and the Planimetric Composition. This episode is based on the ‘Why do Wes Anderson Movies look like that?’ video of the YouTube channel THOMAS FLIGHT.
Wes Anderson liked the look of the 1930 film King Kong. You can notice a rippling effect on the fur. In his stop motion film, Fantastic Mister Fox, we find the same look. Wes Anderson used real fur to get that same look.
What makes something characteristically Wes Anderson? What is a Wes Anderson’s style?
It has been studied in several essays. According to those essays, those characteristics are:
-Symmetry
-Long lateral tracking shoots
-Slow motion
...
Let’s focus today on one of those elements (which composes many of other elements of his style): Planimetric Composition. What is Planimetric Composition? Planimetric Composition is the orientation of elements of the scene (especially the background) as flat planes relative to the camera.
Wes Anderson has not invented the Planimetric Composition, but he uses it more than anyone else in film.
In films like THE DARJEELING LIMITED, and HOTEL BUDAPEST we find always the Planimetric Composition (which he has been using since the beginning of his career). The background of the shot is kept as a relatively flat plane.
In his films, characters usually occupy and move through flat planes within the scene that round parallel to the background.
Wes Anderson also uses something called Compass Points Editing. He uses it to maintain the planimetric composition as he moves the camera around and through scenes and when he edits in between different shots within a scene.
In Compass Point Editing, the camera only faces in four directions: North, South, West, and East. When the camera pans do it in 90 degrees increments and when the camera cuts it does it either in 90- or 180-degrees angle. The camera reminds perpendicular to the background.
Flat compositions look and feel constructed, that’s why is not used very much by other filmmakers. A flat composition feels subconscious.
In this episode we will talk about diverse ways of seeing, how men see women and how women see men.
This episode is based on the video “Ways of seeing” Episode 2 (1972). Find it in Vimeo from THE CURATORS.
In European oil paintings it is quite common to find nudes. In this context the woman, is not naked (for instance, as how you would be when you would look at yourself in the mirror after having a shower). Nude is artistic. We do not see a naked woman in those paintings but an artistic drawing of the beauty of the woman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY*
Auburn, David. Proof. FSG Adult, 2001
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Freeman, John. Approaches to Actor Training: International Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Kelly, Dennis. Girls and Boys. Oberon Books, 2018
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too. Harper Business. 2018
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
*The Bibliography is from Acting for Stage and Acting for Screen.
I am here reflecting on the process of working on an autobiographical narrative. Let me take you on a summary journey of what I did and realised.
This project has emerged and applied everything I have learnt in my studies this year; therefore, it will look at my final project and different parts of other projects.
The objectives of this final project were:
As Terry O'Leary suggests, 'by seeing their own situations reflected on stage, there is the potential for audience members to recognise that it is possible to effect change in situations and to escape from cycles of behaviour in which they felt trapped' (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008).
I started writing the play 'Gift: and now what?', an autobiographical play about a single-parent family during the lockdown (please see more about this topic in this link); it devised the consequences of the pandemic and lockdown on the family's relationship and how those events influenced and changed the family's behaviour. In the play, I aimed to make the audience muse about what happens on stage, following one of the Epic theatre's characteristics of Brecht -inciting the audience to think (please see more about this topic in this link). Set on a precise time frame shared by many. As Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw state, 'biographical sourcing is not just a personal truth, (but) a creative truth: one in which the real, the fantasy, the fictional get mixed up together'. (Aston and Harris, 2008).
Though the play had many fictional elements, many truthful details were present. The objective was not to share my life with an audience but to narrate a story many audience members could relate to. The lockdown and the pandemic were both events everyone experienced and lived. I aimed to share some elements of my life during that period that could help others to ponder their experience, overcome trauma and improve their family dynamics. Soshana Felman, a trauma studies scholar, argues, 'large-scale traumas such as the Holocaust can prove to be overwhelming and incomprehensible, yet, through the narration of a personal story, an individual may make sense of it within their own psyche'. (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008).
Since I started writing this project, I wanted the audience to reflect on their lives after seeing it (please see more about this topic in this link). One of the reasons I chose to talk about the changes in the family relationships during the lockdown in the pandemic was because I wanted to make the audience contemplate their family interactions, those more vulnerable in their houses and how those events affected them. The pandemic and the lockdown increased screen time within the family: I aimed the audience to contemplate how it influenced a change in the interactions within their families (please see more about the topic 'striving to create a piece that touches the audience's heart' in this link). I hoped the public would cogitate about their own family, looking to make a difference in those families affected and increasing their time together instead of spending their free time in front of a screen.
Working on this project, my family grew closer and did things together: My son participated in the project by making the child's mask, and my parents collaborated in the film as actors. (Please see more about this topic in this link).
'The worst and the best days of my life' was the film adaptation of the play 'Gift: and now what?' (Please see my previous experience/research adapting a screenplay to a film in this link). I encountered significant challenges in adapting the theatrical play to a movie while keeping fidelity to the source material. The first thing was changing it from English to Spanish and adapting the story from happening in the UK to happening in an unknown part of the world. When filming, I had to adjust the libretto to the actors who participated in the project: the child's character changed into a dependent grandfather, and, consequently, the mother became the daughter.
This change allowed me to explore Maria's character, the mother and now a daughter (please see more on the creation of a character in this link). How the same personage representing the caregiver (a parent, in this case, the mother) fluctuated between being the natural caregiver (in the relationship between child-mother) and the designated caregiver (in the relationship between grandfather/father-daughter), and how portraying different characters affected the role.
The play's characters were classified as follows according to the classification of Carl Jun and his 12 archetypes: the child represented the innocent, the mother the hero and caregiver and the narrator the sage. On the other side, in the movie, the father/grandfather was the innocent, the mother the caregiver, and the mother/grandmother the sage.
While keeping many of the events that happened to the child in the script, I adapted it with autobiographical elements my father and mother could relate to. From that adaptation, I created the character of a dependent father without deliberating, specifying 'the father' to give my father more freedom to play it. I helped my father with his character by writing a specific script for each scene, allowing him freedom within the lines but marking the main elements of the story he should cover in our dialogues. Before shooting, I explained the story and the film's aim, so he had a general idea of what we were doing. Keeping him aside from the entire script helped to make his performance more realistic and spontaneous. Every scene between the daughter and the father/grandfather is improvised lightly, following a few directions.
As Petonell Archer writes, '(Stanislavski) used improvisation as a key tool to enable the actors to explore their inner emotions, and encouraged them to train their bodies and voices in readiness for the physical and emotional demands of a role' (Archer, 2017). In this case, we used improvisation not only to enable us to explore our inner emotions but to allow us to give a truthful performance by using elements of acting techniques actors use when training.
Since I am the creator and the actor, memory was crucial when adapting the play to the film. 'Memory is a key aspect in the creation of autobiographical performance. The human memory acts as a filter and, as a consequence, what is remembered may not be the truth but an embroidered version of the real' (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008). I counted on the collaboration of my father as the father/grandfather and my mother as the mother. Both are amateur actors, and we worked closely with memory and improvisation to build their characters. The father's character depicted childish behaviour, letting my father use memories from seeing my child playing video games. The scenes with my mother over the phone had many autobiographical elements, allowing us to use our memory to give an honest performance.
The play's staging rotated entirely from the original idea to what it turned out to be. Initially, the set was white, with a projection of the narrator over the back wall and having the child seated, giving his back to the audience as in the art piece 'Charlie don't surf' by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (please see more about this topic in this link). I wanted to shock the audience with the child's character (please see more about this topic in this link). Acknowledging the dependent member of the family (the child in the play and the father/grandfather in the movie) was crucial for me. I wanted the audience to think about how they experienced the lockdown during the pandemic and how they interacted with them at those times.
I moved into an open set with white walls and doors from that initial idea of a closed white set; The performance could be seen by those connected online and by everyone passing by (the stage was in a back corridor of the mews where my parents live in Spain). An open set granted me to discuss the play and its intention with those who saw me setting everything up before the play. It permitted me to connect with others who could relate to the project but wouldn't come and see the performance, still meeting the objective of making people think about the topic of the performance.
The scenery also allowed me to create a contrast between the story and how I staged it: Characters appeared outside, sitting by a door. This image brought memories from my childhood of grandparents in villages sitting outside their houses in summer talking to their neighbours, a traditional way to socialise in Spain. By doing that, I linked it with my previous idea of implementing parts belonging to my culture in the project (please see more about this topic here). That image was also something I witnessed in London during the lockdown; people would get out to their front gardens and talk to their neighbours, as it has always been in the villages of the south of Spain. The contrast between the story, the staging, and the similarities of memories of rural Spain and cosmopolitan London was vital to me. By giving elements that could look antagonistic at the beginning, I wanted to reach the goal of making the audience think about what happened on stage because the audience had to focus on following the story. By bringing similarities in such opposite worlds, I wanted to get together the idea of the event of pandemic and lockdown being a shared event by everyone, an event without precedence in the history of humanity.
Placing a computer screening the movie on the side, I explored how the effect of increasing the time using screens affected our lives. I searched for the audience to acknowledge looking at the screen instead of following the action happening live and considering if their attention, in their daily lives, also shifted and how they interacted with others (particularly their family members).
I included the element of multi-rolling in the play: I had to play three characters: the child, the narrator and the mother. To resolve the difficulty of multi-rolling, I decided to represent the child's character with a real-life puppet influenced by the tradition of puppetry in theatre (please see more about this topic here). I included an element of multimedia (a phone with an image of eyes looking in different directions), moved by an exercise we did last term related to the concept of the digital double of Antonin Artaud (please see more about this topic here). The narrator appeared on a screen, again influenced by the idea of the digital double of Artaud and applying one of the characteristics of the Brechtian theatre, the use of projections in his theatrical performances (please see more about this topic here).
I decided the child and the narrator would wear masks after reading the book 'Impro: Improvisation and the theatre' (2007) by Keith Johnstone and the suggestion of the masks having their personality (please see more about this topic here). The mask gave the narrator the characteristics of a narrator from the classic theatre as in the ancient Greek theatre (please see more about this topic here).
On a more technical part of a project, new technologies played a massive role in the creation of my project. I used a smartphone as a camera to film the short movie (please see more about this topic in this
link) and a phone as a medium to showcase the play to the audience on new social media platforms.
Using a phone as a camera allowed me to shoot the scenes quickly. The frame and photography were those on the phone, and I could instantly review what I shot and decide if I had to retake the shoot, enabling me to work fast and efficiently (please see my previous project filmed with a phone in this link). I used the phone as the door to connect with the audience on new social media platforms, connecting in my profile on Tiktok and b roadcasting the play (please see more about this topic in this link).
Working on this project has allowed me: to combine the learnings I had from the first semester (Stanislavski, Meisner, viewpoints, Method acting, acting for screen and the creation of a short), applying what I learned in the second semester (adapting a play to a movie and creating a story) and deepening that knowledge in my last semester with my research in autobiographical performances, Brecht and the Epic theatre and the digital double, combined with the continued study I started in the second semester about the relationship between social media and performance.
Let me finish this reflection on my project with a loving anecdote: there is a scene in the film where the father and the daughter eat pasta. I was playing along with my father, and that scene was the first scene we shot. As I have mentioned previously, my father is an amateur actor, and this was, in fact, his first ever acting experience. Our scenes were lightly scripted and heavily improvised. At one point, while filming the scene, my father said, 'this pasta is cold!', and I broke out laughing. He was right; the pasta was cold! We had so many laughs after it, he, my mother, and all my family (my mother told everyone, of course!), because we had to repeat the scene several times and we reached the point that we ran out of pasta and I had to make more for the scene. The take ended being the one with the just-cooked pasta served. I learnt my lesson: Get as realistic as possible on set; even if the audience cannot notice the difference, the actors should always be happy with what they eat. (Here, a little funny resume of our bloopers is in this link).
*Please find the play 'Gift: and now what?' in this link.
*Please find the movie 'The worst and the best days of my life' in this link.I am here reflecting on the process of working on an autobiographical narrative. Let me take you on a summary journey of what I did and realised.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archer, P., 2017. British Library. [online] Bl.uk. Available at: <https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-stanislavski> [Accessed 2 September 2022].
BBC Bitesize. 2022. Brechtian staging - Epic theatre and Brecht - GCSE Drama Revision - BBC Bitesize. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwmvd2p/revision/5> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Bell, J., n.d. Puppets, masks, and performing objects.
Brecht, B., Ryland, C., Willett, J., Silberman, M., Fursland, R., Giles, S. and Kuhn, T., n.d. Brecht on performance.
Brecht, B. and Willett, J., 1965. On theatre; the development of an Aesthetic. London: Mehtuen
Chekhov, M., 1991. On the technique of acting. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Cooper, A., Cooper, N., Cooper, S., Cooper, A., Cooper, D., Cooper, F., Cooper, L., Cooper, C., Cooper, R., Cooper, S. and Cooper, L., 2022. A. Cooper. [online] SoundCloud. Available at: <https://soundcloud.com/anthony-cooper-777378961> [Accessed 8 July 2022].
Espeland, T., 2022. The Eight Efforts: Laban Movement. [online] The Theatrefolk Blog. Available at: <https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/the-eight-efforts-laban-movement/> [Accessed 5 July 2022].
Freemusicarchive.org. 2022. Free Music Archive - Artist: Ketsa. [online] Available at: <https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/#contact-artist> [Accessed 8 July 2022].
Govan, E., Nicholson, H. and Normington, K., 2008. Making a performance. London: Routledge, p.59, 62-63
Grotowski, J. and Barba, E., 2002. Towards a poor theatre. New York: Routledge.
Incredibox.com. 2022. Incredibox - Pump it up and chill!. [online] Available at: <https://www.incredibox.com/> [Accessed 8 September 2022].
Jones, E., 2009. Innervate: Leading Undergraduate work in English studies, Volume 2 (2009-2010), pp 247-253. [online] Nottingham.ac.uk. Available at: <https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/09-10/0910jonesebrecht.pdf> [Accessed 2 September 2022].
Jung, C. and Hull, R., n.d. The archetypes and the collective unconscious.
Laban, R. and Ullmann, L., 1971. The mastery of movement. Boston: Plays.
Lecoq, J., McBurney, S. and Bradby, D., 2020. The Moving Body (le Corps Poétique). London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. (Lecoq, McBurney and Bradby, 2020)
Lowe, V., 2022. Adapting Performance Between Stage and Screen. [online] Intellect Books. Available at: <https://www.intellectbooks.com/adapting-performance-between-stage-and-screen> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
McGibbon, G., 2014. Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation between Theatre and Film. [online] Core.ac.uk. Available at: <https://core.ac.uk/display/41338559?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=pdf-decoration-v1> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
MIT Global Shakespeares. 2022. Distancing effect (Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt). [online] Available at: <https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/glossary/distancing-effect/> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
MIT Global Shakespeares. 2022. Hamlet Unplugged. [online] Available at: <https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/hamlet-unplugged-lu-po-shen-2005/?video=ramparts> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Santora, R., 2004. narrator. [online] Csus.edu. Available at: <https://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/santorar/engl190v/narrator.htm> [Accessed 8 August 2022].
Theatre-rites.co.uk. 2022. Theatre-Rites - Puppetry. [online] Available at: <https://theatre-rites.co.uk/puppetry.php> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
The Drama Teacher. 2022. 25 Intriguing Theatre Techniques for Realism and Naturalism | The Drama Teacher. [online] Available at: <https://thedramateacher.com/realism-and-naturalism-theatre-conventions/> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
The Drama Teacher. 2022. 63 Frightening Theatre of Cruelty Techniques | The Drama Teacher. [online] Available at: <https://thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
Tnp.no. 2017. The Abstractness and Beauty of Lament | The Nordic Page. [online] Available at: <https://www.tnp.no/norway/culture/5115-the-abstractness-and-beauty-of-lament-oslo-norway-theatre/> [Accessed 7 July 2022].
Youtube.com. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LnZkFBd-cM> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Youtube.com. 2022. The Odessa Steps Scene. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sEPFd-1Dm8> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
*This is a project for my MA Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2022)"
My project for next term is called GIFT: AND NOW WHAT?
Gift: And Now What is a performance which will explore how the pandemic has affected children and
adolescents. Developed as part of a Master Degree at the University of East London, it will tell the story of a mother (Maria) and a child (the Innocent).
The most pertinent areas of theoretical contextualisation within this project are: actor methodology and multi-rolling, Epic Theatre, autobiographical theatre, audience participation.
Following my own experience with my child during the pandemic, exploring the autobiographical theatre, I have created this project whose ultimate goal is to make the audience think about their reality as families and about life in its broadest sense. To date, several studies have investigated the negative effects of the pandemic (quarantine and post-pandemic trauma) in children and teenagers. With my performance I would like to expose that reality and make the audience question vital/philosophical questions like ‘Who are we for each other?’, ‘What is the value of my life?’
Bertolt Brecht (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.) operates a big influence on this project for several reasons: Firstly, I am exploring the idea of multi-rolling (playing different characters like the narrator, the mother and the child) and to help represent those characters I am considering the use of masks. Secondly, my aim is to make the audience think. Thirdly, The Epic Theatre plays a very important role in this performance not only because I would like the audience to think, but because I play with the idea of the digital double- developed first by Antonin Artaud and Steven Dixon.
At this stage I am contemplating audience participation in the performance, influenced by the idea of The Immersive Theatre: the audience, for instance, could choose the soundtrack/music played, or videos projected simply using some electronic devices that would be placed outside the stage for the audience to interact with, if they wish. I would possibly add some signs to inform the audience they are allowed to use those devices.
My performance at this given moment is thought of as a multimedia performance. I am considering using videos where my son will appear and using games and play. I will apply different actor’s methodologies in those videos: Like The Repetition Exercise of Meisner, or playing scenes with given circumstances to explore Chekhov's Technique and the Stanislavski Method.
This project has much autobiographical content. However, this project is not about my child and me, but about those millions of children and parents that have had to deal with the pandemic in their journey as a family, how the pandemic has affected them, ensuing post-pandemic trauma and what further future consequences might lie ahead. Data from several studies have highlighted the negative effects of quarantine or natural disasters on the mental and physical well-being of children and adolescents. In particular, reduced physical activity, weight gain, a decrease in cardiorespiratory fitness, prolonged screen times, irregular sleep patterns, and less appropriate diets have been described (Gilsbach, Herpertz-Dahlmann and Konrad, 2021).
Bethany, 15: ‘I think people are starting to see the importance of school and having a structured day. Doing the same thing every day, although it may seem boring, gives us a sense of security, as we know what will happen each day’ (Why young people will need more mental health support after lockdown, 2020).
I would like this project to make a change in those who will watch it, to make them think about the role of the family and the importance of the family as well as helping them reflect on their own lives and perhaps acknowledge points that they were not aware of about their own lives and their children’s lives.
Aesthetically I am influenced by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and his idea of ‘borrowing’. Cattelan reworks images and situations belonging to society and they then become reflections or commentaries on social and cultural dynamics that relate to the context in which the piece is presented. His works are open to numerous interpretations, sometimes contradictory. His works extend doubts, mirroring the contemporary consciousness (Maurizio Cattelan - Castello di Rivoli, 2022).
*This is a project for my MA Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2022)
*BECAUSE SOME LIMITATIONS OF MY WEB I CANNOT PUBLISH HERE THE FULL CONTENT OF MY INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERSECTIONS: CREATIVE INTERACTIVE JOURNAL. PLEASE FIND IT HERE
INTERACTIVE JOURNAL FOR SCREEN
You have several options for this Reflexive Production Journal:
‘You may not have connections, or an education, or wealth, but with enough passion and sweat, you can make anything happen.’1
-Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too.
I wanted to learn everything about performing in front of the camera: where to look, how high your volume should be, how small your movements…
During this term I have learnt what is needed for an actor to perform in front of the camera: ‘Don’t do nothing, just be.’ And it is not a simple ‘just be.’ It implies feeling relaxed in front of the camera, confident with what you are doing, believing your lines, and delivering them as if they were your own.
‘Our work will be… how to fill your work with emotional truth.’2
-Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski.
We have practiced several exercises/games during this term: One game was about passing the ball around us in a circle and at the same time saying our names. We did another exercise in which we had to walk and change the direction of the walk at any punctuation mark (with the different thoughts of the lines), and we did the tongue twister game ‘The Throne of the King' (actors sit in a circle. One of them is sitting in the Throne. There is a repetition of questions and answers which are challenging to articulate. Each actor is designated a number. We add movements with the arms and the head that indicate the turn of the speaker. The goal of the game is to sit in the Throne. To achieve that, the actor must answer and do the movements correctly). These exercises/games have different goals like helping actors to relax, to connect with other fellow actors, to improve their listening, to get out of their own self-consciousness, to improve their articulation or to act guided by their impulses.
www.azaharadoradolaguna.com
To read the completed screen interactive journal here
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Astbury, Brian. Trusting the Actor. Brian Astbury. 2011
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Lumet, Sidney. Making Movie. First Vintage Books. New York, 1996
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Rodenburg, Patsy. The Actor Speaks. Random House. London 1997
Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too. Harper Business. 2018
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
* This is a project for my MA in Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2021)
‘If today you are in good form and are blessed with inspiration, forget about technique and abandon yourself to your feelings.’
-Stanislavski
During this first semester I have learned different techniques used in acting training to help the actor to get into the INNER CREATIVE STATE OF MIND2, as Stanislavski defines it.
One of those techniques is the “No, there is you, there is me and there is the space” exercise created by Declan Donnellan3. During this exercise, actors look each other in the eyes and repeat those lines in turns, allowing themselves to express different emotions, and taking complete control of the space. They will then move into the script. A modification of this exercise is to move into the script, back to the repetition exercise and then go into improvisation and back again.
To read the full stage interactive journal HERE
A more detailed journal with acting techniques and links to the exercises we have done during this first semester can be found here.
A journal about my work in the play ‘Girls and Boys’ can be found here.
A journal about my work in the play ‘Proof’ can be found here.
My web: www.azaharadoradolaguna.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Auburn, David. Proof. FSG Adult, 2001
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Freeman, John. Approaches to Actor Training: International Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2019
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Kelly, Dennis. Girls and Boys. Oberon Books, 2018
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
This semester we presented the play Grief by playwright and script-writer David Kantounas.
He was born in London and studied at the University of West England. Kantounas trained at the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme and in 2010 he was selected by the Old Vic New Voices as one of the best young writers in the UK (David Kantounas, 2022).
The play Grief is about a twenty-seven-year-old man living in London who one day has a breakdown after seeing the picture of a young beautiful actress, who committed suicide, splashed on the main page of a newspaper. Suddenly his life takes a turn and those around him are also affected by it. In this play the writer touches on different topics: From suicide to social media, life in big cities, relationship in between partners and co-workers, grief, death, mental wellness and families.
Our teacher, Ed Hughes, decided that all of us should play the main character Pete along with a second character. It was a challenge for us as actors to play two characters in the same play.
It was both exciting and interesting to see how all of us were playing Pete. We all portrayed the diverse faces of Pete to the public. During the first few weeks of our readings we analysed the script and found the stage directions as well as the different sets and props required in each scene. We also analysed the relationships between the characters, the facts, determined the objectives of the characters in each scene, asked questions about the characters, found the beats in the script and analysed the text (the repetition of certain words, the pace, the language used).
Grief is a modern play and it was fascinating to come across one written in a language you could relate to, as the language used in the play is very similar to the one I use in my everyday life. The pace of the play was quick, with short sentences and lines, very similar to how Mr Kantounas speaks. The obstacle I found, because the pace was quick, was to play my characters and to not to leave spaces of silence in between my partner’s lines and mine.
Despite being a modern script, the quick pace of the play reminded me of the ‘shared lines’ often found in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Understanding ‘shared lines’ as when two or more characters share a line of iambic verse between them (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2022).
The script was mostly written in short sentences and/or lines, answering one character to another. In some parts of the script there were long pieces of text, like monologues for some of the characters.
The rapid lines would represent the pace of the heartbeat, the nervousness of the characters and the longer chunks of text or monologues would represent when the characters were opening themselves up to the others and exposing their soul and true thoughts.
The conversations in the play were fast. Had I known my partners’ lines it would have helped me to achieve the speed required by the script-writer to answer back to my scene partner. I found it hard playing at that pace because despite trying not to leave any beats in between the end of the line of my scene partner and the beginning of my line, rarely did I succeed in continuing their lines with mine.
I played Pete in the second scene and I played the mother of Helen in the sixth scene.
In my scene, Pete is being scolded by his boss after the presentation he made for the new campaign he had been working on for this new client.
His boss is furious as Pete has done a 'suicide campaign' and his boss believes this campaign is inappropriate for the product they are selling and for the reputation of their advertising agency.
Kantounas based his play in real facts: A 'suicide campaign' was made by Hyundai in 2013. The company had to apologise publicly about it.
Our director gave me some notes about how my character Pete was in my scene, suggesting I watch Stan and Ollie (2022). The Pete of my scene was naïf, not really understanding why his boss was so angry at him because Pete believed he did an exceptional job.
My challenges with this character were:
1. Not letting my personality take over.
2. Playing naïf without overplaying it.
3. Finding out what was the situation he had with his father, the previous circumstances (Stanislavsky, 2013).
4. Finding his walk.
5. Creating a backup story for Pete.
6. A specific challenge because performing in a non theatre space: Making sure the audience could see you so showing your face at least once to every side of the room where the audience was seated.
After playing Pete my feedback was to work on:
My second character was the mother of Helen, the actress who committed suicide. She appeared in a scene after the funeral. In that scene there are three characters: Pete, her husband and my character.
Full journal here.
INTERACTIVE JOURNAL FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Let’s talk today about semiotics.
Semiotics is the study of the signs, symbols, colors, camera angles....
On one side we have the DENOTATION, which is the literal meaning of the sign, and from another side we have the CONNOTATION, which is the associated meaning of the sign.
For instance, we have the APPLE logo of APPLE. The Denotation of that sign will be an apple. The connotation of that sign will be technology, quality, iPhone, expensive....
The meaning we give to the signs depends on other factors like the cultural background, the religious background, the language...
Signs are polysemic, meaning, they have more than one meaning.
In films there are four categories of signs:
Signs are selected for media producers to represent a particular meaning. That creates a huge influence on the audience.
A sign can become a myth. An example could be a bulldog which is an accepted sign for Churchill, at least in the British audience. We call this association: Naturalization
Today’s podcast is based in the video ‘Semiotics analysis for beginners! How to read signs in film. From Roland Barthes Media. Find this video in his channel THE MEDIA INSIDER on YouTube
Today we will talk a bit about Wes Anderson and the Planimetric Composition. This episode is based on the ‘Why do Wes Anderson Movies look like that?’ video of the YouTube channel THOMAS FLIGHT.
Wes Anderson liked the look of the 1930 film King Kong. You can notice a rippling effect on the fur. In his stop motion film, Fantastic Mister Fox, we find the same look. Wes Anderson used real fur to get that same look.
What makes something characteristically Wes Anderson? What is a Wes Anderson’s style?
It has been studied in several essays. According to those essays, those characteristics are:
-Symmetry
-Long lateral tracking shoots
-Slow motion
...
Let’s focus today on one of those elements (which composes many of other elements of his style): Planimetric Composition. What is Planimetric Composition? Planimetric Composition is the orientation of elements of the scene (especially the background) as flat planes relative to the camera.
Wes Anderson has not invented the Planimetric Composition, but he uses it more than anyone else in film.
In films like THE DARJEELING LIMITED, and HOTEL BUDAPEST we find always the Planimetric Composition (which he has been using since the beginning of his career). The background of the shot is kept as a relatively flat plane.
In his films, characters usually occupy and move through flat planes within the scene that round parallel to the background.
Wes Anderson also uses something called Compass Points Editing. He uses it to maintain the planimetric composition as he moves the camera around and through scenes and when he edits in between different shots within a scene.
In Compass Point Editing, the camera only faces in four directions: North, South, West, and East. When the camera pans do it in 90 degrees increments and when the camera cuts it does it either in 90- or 180-degrees angle. The camera reminds perpendicular to the background.
Flat compositions look and feel constructed, that’s why is not used very much by other filmmakers. A flat composition feels subconscious.
In this episode we will talk about diverse ways of seeing, how men see women and how women see men.
This episode is based on the video “Ways of seeing” Episode 2 (1972). Find it in Vimeo from THE CURATORS.
In European oil paintings it is quite common to find nudes. In this context the woman, is not naked (for instance, as how you would be when you would look at yourself in the mirror after having a shower). Nude is artistic. We do not see a naked woman in those paintings but an artistic drawing of the beauty of the woman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY*
Auburn, David. Proof. FSG Adult, 2001
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Freeman, John. Approaches to Actor Training: International Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Kelly, Dennis. Girls and Boys. Oberon Books, 2018
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too. Harper Business. 2018
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
*The Bibliography is from Acting for Stage and Acting for Screen.
I am here reflecting on the process of working on an autobiographical narrative. Let me take you on a summary journey of what I did and realised.
This project has emerged and applied everything I have learnt in my studies this year; therefore, it will look at my final project and different parts of other projects.
The objectives of this final project were:
As Terry O'Leary suggests, 'by seeing their own situations reflected on stage, there is the potential for audience members to recognise that it is possible to effect change in situations and to escape from cycles of behaviour in which they felt trapped' (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008).
I started writing the play 'Gift: and now what?', an autobiographical play about a single-parent family during the lockdown (please see more about this topic in this link); it devised the consequences of the pandemic and lockdown on the family's relationship and how those events influenced and changed the family's behaviour. In the play, I aimed to make the audience muse about what happens on stage, following one of the Epic theatre's characteristics of Brecht -inciting the audience to think (please see more about this topic in this link). Set on a precise time frame shared by many. As Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw state, 'biographical sourcing is not just a personal truth, (but) a creative truth: one in which the real, the fantasy, the fictional get mixed up together'. (Aston and Harris, 2008).
Though the play had many fictional elements, many truthful details were present. The objective was not to share my life with an audience but to narrate a story many audience members could relate to. The lockdown and the pandemic were both events everyone experienced and lived. I aimed to share some elements of my life during that period that could help others to ponder their experience, overcome trauma and improve their family dynamics. Soshana Felman, a trauma studies scholar, argues, 'large-scale traumas such as the Holocaust can prove to be overwhelming and incomprehensible, yet, through the narration of a personal story, an individual may make sense of it within their own psyche'. (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008).
Since I started writing this project, I wanted the audience to reflect on their lives after seeing it (please see more about this topic in this link). One of the reasons I chose to talk about the changes in the family relationships during the lockdown in the pandemic was because I wanted to make the audience contemplate their family interactions, those more vulnerable in their houses and how those events affected them. The pandemic and the lockdown increased screen time within the family: I aimed the audience to contemplate how it influenced a change in the interactions within their families (please see more about the topic 'striving to create a piece that touches the audience's heart' in this link). I hoped the public would cogitate about their own family, looking to make a difference in those families affected and increasing their time together instead of spending their free time in front of a screen.
Working on this project, my family grew closer and did things together: My son participated in the project by making the child's mask, and my parents collaborated in the film as actors. (Please see more about this topic in this link).
'The worst and the best days of my life' was the film adaptation of the play 'Gift: and now what?' (Please see my previous experience/research adapting a screenplay to a film in this link). I encountered significant challenges in adapting the theatrical play to a movie while keeping fidelity to the source material. The first thing was changing it from English to Spanish and adapting the story from happening in the UK to happening in an unknown part of the world. When filming, I had to adjust the libretto to the actors who participated in the project: the child's character changed into a dependent grandfather, and, consequently, the mother became the daughter.
This change allowed me to explore Maria's character, the mother and now a daughter (please see more on the creation of a character in this link). How the same personage representing the caregiver (a parent, in this case, the mother) fluctuated between being the natural caregiver (in the relationship between child-mother) and the designated caregiver (in the relationship between grandfather/father-daughter), and how portraying different characters affected the role.
The play's characters were classified as follows according to the classification of Carl Jun and his 12 archetypes: the child represented the innocent, the mother the hero and caregiver and the narrator the sage. On the other side, in the movie, the father/grandfather was the innocent, the mother the caregiver, and the mother/grandmother the sage.
While keeping many of the events that happened to the child in the script, I adapted it with autobiographical elements my father and mother could relate to. From that adaptation, I created the character of a dependent father without deliberating, specifying 'the father' to give my father more freedom to play it. I helped my father with his character by writing a specific script for each scene, allowing him freedom within the lines but marking the main elements of the story he should cover in our dialogues. Before shooting, I explained the story and the film's aim, so he had a general idea of what we were doing. Keeping him aside from the entire script helped to make his performance more realistic and spontaneous. Every scene between the daughter and the father/grandfather is improvised lightly, following a few directions.
As Petonell Archer writes, '(Stanislavski) used improvisation as a key tool to enable the actors to explore their inner emotions, and encouraged them to train their bodies and voices in readiness for the physical and emotional demands of a role' (Archer, 2017). In this case, we used improvisation not only to enable us to explore our inner emotions but to allow us to give a truthful performance by using elements of acting techniques actors use when training.
Since I am the creator and the actor, memory was crucial when adapting the play to the film. 'Memory is a key aspect in the creation of autobiographical performance. The human memory acts as a filter and, as a consequence, what is remembered may not be the truth but an embroidered version of the real' (Govan, Nicholson and Normington, 2008). I counted on the collaboration of my father as the father/grandfather and my mother as the mother. Both are amateur actors, and we worked closely with memory and improvisation to build their characters. The father's character depicted childish behaviour, letting my father use memories from seeing my child playing video games. The scenes with my mother over the phone had many autobiographical elements, allowing us to use our memory to give an honest performance.
The play's staging rotated entirely from the original idea to what it turned out to be. Initially, the set was white, with a projection of the narrator over the back wall and having the child seated, giving his back to the audience as in the art piece 'Charlie don't surf' by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (please see more about this topic in this link). I wanted to shock the audience with the child's character (please see more about this topic in this link). Acknowledging the dependent member of the family (the child in the play and the father/grandfather in the movie) was crucial for me. I wanted the audience to think about how they experienced the lockdown during the pandemic and how they interacted with them at those times.
I moved into an open set with white walls and doors from that initial idea of a closed white set; The performance could be seen by those connected online and by everyone passing by (the stage was in a back corridor of the mews where my parents live in Spain). An open set granted me to discuss the play and its intention with those who saw me setting everything up before the play. It permitted me to connect with others who could relate to the project but wouldn't come and see the performance, still meeting the objective of making people think about the topic of the performance.
The scenery also allowed me to create a contrast between the story and how I staged it: Characters appeared outside, sitting by a door. This image brought memories from my childhood of grandparents in villages sitting outside their houses in summer talking to their neighbours, a traditional way to socialise in Spain. By doing that, I linked it with my previous idea of implementing parts belonging to my culture in the project (please see more about this topic here). That image was also something I witnessed in London during the lockdown; people would get out to their front gardens and talk to their neighbours, as it has always been in the villages of the south of Spain. The contrast between the story, the staging, and the similarities of memories of rural Spain and cosmopolitan London was vital to me. By giving elements that could look antagonistic at the beginning, I wanted to reach the goal of making the audience think about what happened on stage because the audience had to focus on following the story. By bringing similarities in such opposite worlds, I wanted to get together the idea of the event of pandemic and lockdown being a shared event by everyone, an event without precedence in the history of humanity.
Placing a computer screening the movie on the side, I explored how the effect of increasing the time using screens affected our lives. I searched for the audience to acknowledge looking at the screen instead of following the action happening live and considering if their attention, in their daily lives, also shifted and how they interacted with others (particularly their family members).
I included the element of multi-rolling in the play: I had to play three characters: the child, the narrator and the mother. To resolve the difficulty of multi-rolling, I decided to represent the child's character with a real-life puppet influenced by the tradition of puppetry in theatre (please see more about this topic here). I included an element of multimedia (a phone with an image of eyes looking in different directions), moved by an exercise we did last term related to the concept of the digital double of Antonin Artaud (please see more about this topic here). The narrator appeared on a screen, again influenced by the idea of the digital double of Artaud and applying one of the characteristics of the Brechtian theatre, the use of projections in his theatrical performances (please see more about this topic here).
I decided the child and the narrator would wear masks after reading the book 'Impro: Improvisation and the theatre' (2007) by Keith Johnstone and the suggestion of the masks having their personality (please see more about this topic here). The mask gave the narrator the characteristics of a narrator from the classic theatre as in the ancient Greek theatre (please see more about this topic here).
On a more technical part of a project, new technologies played a massive role in the creation of my project. I used a smartphone as a camera to film the short movie (please see more about this topic in this
link) and a phone as a medium to showcase the play to the audience on new social media platforms.
Using a phone as a camera allowed me to shoot the scenes quickly. The frame and photography were those on the phone, and I could instantly review what I shot and decide if I had to retake the shoot, enabling me to work fast and efficiently (please see my previous project filmed with a phone in this link). I used the phone as the door to connect with the audience on new social media platforms, connecting in my profile on Tiktok and b roadcasting the play (please see more about this topic in this link).
Working on this project has allowed me: to combine the learnings I had from the first semester (Stanislavski, Meisner, viewpoints, Method acting, acting for screen and the creation of a short), applying what I learned in the second semester (adapting a play to a movie and creating a story) and deepening that knowledge in my last semester with my research in autobiographical performances, Brecht and the Epic theatre and the digital double, combined with the continued study I started in the second semester about the relationship between social media and performance.
Let me finish this reflection on my project with a loving anecdote: there is a scene in the film where the father and the daughter eat pasta. I was playing along with my father, and that scene was the first scene we shot. As I have mentioned previously, my father is an amateur actor, and this was, in fact, his first ever acting experience. Our scenes were lightly scripted and heavily improvised. At one point, while filming the scene, my father said, 'this pasta is cold!', and I broke out laughing. He was right; the pasta was cold! We had so many laughs after it, he, my mother, and all my family (my mother told everyone, of course!), because we had to repeat the scene several times and we reached the point that we ran out of pasta and I had to make more for the scene. The take ended being the one with the just-cooked pasta served. I learnt my lesson: Get as realistic as possible on set; even if the audience cannot notice the difference, the actors should always be happy with what they eat. (Here, a little funny resume of our bloopers is in this link).
*Please find the play 'Gift: and now what?' in this link.
*Please find the movie 'The worst and the best days of my life' in this link.I am here reflecting on the process of working on an autobiographical narrative. Let me take you on a summary journey of what I did and realised.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archer, P., 2017. British Library. [online] Bl.uk. Available at: <https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-stanislavski> [Accessed 2 September 2022].
BBC Bitesize. 2022. Brechtian staging - Epic theatre and Brecht - GCSE Drama Revision - BBC Bitesize. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwmvd2p/revision/5> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Bell, J., n.d. Puppets, masks, and performing objects.
Brecht, B., Ryland, C., Willett, J., Silberman, M., Fursland, R., Giles, S. and Kuhn, T., n.d. Brecht on performance.
Brecht, B. and Willett, J., 1965. On theatre; the development of an Aesthetic. London: Mehtuen
Chekhov, M., 1991. On the technique of acting. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Cooper, A., Cooper, N., Cooper, S., Cooper, A., Cooper, D., Cooper, F., Cooper, L., Cooper, C., Cooper, R., Cooper, S. and Cooper, L., 2022. A. Cooper. [online] SoundCloud. Available at: <https://soundcloud.com/anthony-cooper-777378961> [Accessed 8 July 2022].
Espeland, T., 2022. The Eight Efforts: Laban Movement. [online] The Theatrefolk Blog. Available at: <https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/the-eight-efforts-laban-movement/> [Accessed 5 July 2022].
Freemusicarchive.org. 2022. Free Music Archive - Artist: Ketsa. [online] Available at: <https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/#contact-artist> [Accessed 8 July 2022].
Govan, E., Nicholson, H. and Normington, K., 2008. Making a performance. London: Routledge, p.59, 62-63
Grotowski, J. and Barba, E., 2002. Towards a poor theatre. New York: Routledge.
Incredibox.com. 2022. Incredibox - Pump it up and chill!. [online] Available at: <https://www.incredibox.com/> [Accessed 8 September 2022].
Jones, E., 2009. Innervate: Leading Undergraduate work in English studies, Volume 2 (2009-2010), pp 247-253. [online] Nottingham.ac.uk. Available at: <https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/09-10/0910jonesebrecht.pdf> [Accessed 2 September 2022].
Jung, C. and Hull, R., n.d. The archetypes and the collective unconscious.
Laban, R. and Ullmann, L., 1971. The mastery of movement. Boston: Plays.
Lecoq, J., McBurney, S. and Bradby, D., 2020. The Moving Body (le Corps Poétique). London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. (Lecoq, McBurney and Bradby, 2020)
Lowe, V., 2022. Adapting Performance Between Stage and Screen. [online] Intellect Books. Available at: <https://www.intellectbooks.com/adapting-performance-between-stage-and-screen> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
McGibbon, G., 2014. Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation between Theatre and Film. [online] Core.ac.uk. Available at: <https://core.ac.uk/display/41338559?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=pdf-decoration-v1> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
MIT Global Shakespeares. 2022. Distancing effect (Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt). [online] Available at: <https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/glossary/distancing-effect/> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
MIT Global Shakespeares. 2022. Hamlet Unplugged. [online] Available at: <https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/hamlet-unplugged-lu-po-shen-2005/?video=ramparts> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
Santora, R., 2004. narrator. [online] Csus.edu. Available at: <https://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/santorar/engl190v/narrator.htm> [Accessed 8 August 2022].
Theatre-rites.co.uk. 2022. Theatre-Rites - Puppetry. [online] Available at: <https://theatre-rites.co.uk/puppetry.php> [Accessed 6 July 2022].
The Drama Teacher. 2022. 25 Intriguing Theatre Techniques for Realism and Naturalism | The Drama Teacher. [online] Available at: <https://thedramateacher.com/realism-and-naturalism-theatre-conventions/> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
The Drama Teacher. 2022. 63 Frightening Theatre of Cruelty Techniques | The Drama Teacher. [online] Available at: <https://thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/> [Accessed 2 August 2022].
Tnp.no. 2017. The Abstractness and Beauty of Lament | The Nordic Page. [online] Available at: <https://www.tnp.no/norway/culture/5115-the-abstractness-and-beauty-of-lament-oslo-norway-theatre/> [Accessed 7 July 2022].
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*This is a project for my MA Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2022)"
My project for next term is called GIFT: AND NOW WHAT?
Gift: And Now What is a performance which will explore how the pandemic has affected children and
adolescents. Developed as part of a Master Degree at the University of East London, it will tell the story of a mother (Maria) and a child (the Innocent).
The most pertinent areas of theoretical contextualisation within this project are: actor methodology and multi-rolling, Epic Theatre, autobiographical theatre, audience participation.
Following my own experience with my child during the pandemic, exploring the autobiographical theatre, I have created this project whose ultimate goal is to make the audience think about their reality as families and about life in its broadest sense. To date, several studies have investigated the negative effects of the pandemic (quarantine and post-pandemic trauma) in children and teenagers. With my performance I would like to expose that reality and make the audience question vital/philosophical questions like ‘Who are we for each other?’, ‘What is the value of my life?’
Bertolt Brecht (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.) operates a big influence on this project for several reasons: Firstly, I am exploring the idea of multi-rolling (playing different characters like the narrator, the mother and the child) and to help represent those characters I am considering the use of masks. Secondly, my aim is to make the audience think. Thirdly, The Epic Theatre plays a very important role in this performance not only because I would like the audience to think, but because I play with the idea of the digital double- developed first by Antonin Artaud and Steven Dixon.
At this stage I am contemplating audience participation in the performance, influenced by the idea of The Immersive Theatre: the audience, for instance, could choose the soundtrack/music played, or videos projected simply using some electronic devices that would be placed outside the stage for the audience to interact with, if they wish. I would possibly add some signs to inform the audience they are allowed to use those devices.
My performance at this given moment is thought of as a multimedia performance. I am considering using videos where my son will appear and using games and play. I will apply different actor’s methodologies in those videos: Like The Repetition Exercise of Meisner, or playing scenes with given circumstances to explore Chekhov's Technique and the Stanislavski Method.
This project has much autobiographical content. However, this project is not about my child and me, but about those millions of children and parents that have had to deal with the pandemic in their journey as a family, how the pandemic has affected them, ensuing post-pandemic trauma and what further future consequences might lie ahead. Data from several studies have highlighted the negative effects of quarantine or natural disasters on the mental and physical well-being of children and adolescents. In particular, reduced physical activity, weight gain, a decrease in cardiorespiratory fitness, prolonged screen times, irregular sleep patterns, and less appropriate diets have been described (Gilsbach, Herpertz-Dahlmann and Konrad, 2021).
Bethany, 15: ‘I think people are starting to see the importance of school and having a structured day. Doing the same thing every day, although it may seem boring, gives us a sense of security, as we know what will happen each day’ (Why young people will need more mental health support after lockdown, 2020).
I would like this project to make a change in those who will watch it, to make them think about the role of the family and the importance of the family as well as helping them reflect on their own lives and perhaps acknowledge points that they were not aware of about their own lives and their children’s lives.
Aesthetically I am influenced by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and his idea of ‘borrowing’. Cattelan reworks images and situations belonging to society and they then become reflections or commentaries on social and cultural dynamics that relate to the context in which the piece is presented. His works are open to numerous interpretations, sometimes contradictory. His works extend doubts, mirroring the contemporary consciousness (Maurizio Cattelan - Castello di Rivoli, 2022).
*This is a project for my MA Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2022)
*BECAUSE SOME LIMITATIONS OF MY WEB I CANNOT PUBLISH HERE THE FULL CONTENT OF MY INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERSECTIONS: CREATIVE INTERACTIVE JOURNAL. PLEASE FIND IT HERE
INTERACTIVE JOURNAL FOR SCREEN
You have several options for this Reflexive Production Journal:
‘You may not have connections, or an education, or wealth, but with enough passion and sweat, you can make anything happen.’1
-Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too.
I wanted to learn everything about performing in front of the camera: where to look, how high your volume should be, how small your movements…
During this term I have learnt what is needed for an actor to perform in front of the camera: ‘Don’t do nothing, just be.’ And it is not a simple ‘just be.’ It implies feeling relaxed in front of the camera, confident with what you are doing, believing your lines, and delivering them as if they were your own.
‘Our work will be… how to fill your work with emotional truth.’2
-Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski.
We have practiced several exercises/games during this term: One game was about passing the ball around us in a circle and at the same time saying our names. We did another exercise in which we had to walk and change the direction of the walk at any punctuation mark (with the different thoughts of the lines), and we did the tongue twister game ‘The Throne of the King' (actors sit in a circle. One of them is sitting in the Throne. There is a repetition of questions and answers which are challenging to articulate. Each actor is designated a number. We add movements with the arms and the head that indicate the turn of the speaker. The goal of the game is to sit in the Throne. To achieve that, the actor must answer and do the movements correctly). These exercises/games have different goals like helping actors to relax, to connect with other fellow actors, to improve their listening, to get out of their own self-consciousness, to improve their articulation or to act guided by their impulses.
www.azaharadoradolaguna.com
To read the completed screen interactive journal here
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Astbury, Brian. Trusting the Actor. Brian Astbury. 2011
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Lumet, Sidney. Making Movie. First Vintage Books. New York, 1996
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Rodenburg, Patsy. The Actor Speaks. Random House. London 1997
Vaynerchuk, Gary. Crushing it! How Great Entrepreneurs build their business and influence – and how you can, too. Harper Business. 2018
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
* This is a project for my MA in Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2021)
‘If today you are in good form and are blessed with inspiration, forget about technique and abandon yourself to your feelings.’
-Stanislavski
During this first semester I have learned different techniques used in acting training to help the actor to get into the INNER CREATIVE STATE OF MIND2, as Stanislavski defines it.
One of those techniques is the “No, there is you, there is me and there is the space” exercise created by Declan Donnellan3. During this exercise, actors look each other in the eyes and repeat those lines in turns, allowing themselves to express different emotions, and taking complete control of the space. They will then move into the script. A modification of this exercise is to move into the script, back to the repetition exercise and then go into improvisation and back again.
To read the full stage interactive journal HERE
A more detailed journal with acting techniques and links to the exercises we have done during this first semester can be found here.
A journal about my work in the play ‘Girls and Boys’ can be found here.
A journal about my work in the play ‘Proof’ can be found here.
My web: www.azaharadoradolaguna.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Auburn, David. Proof. FSG Adult, 2001
Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 2005
Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002
Chubbuck, Ivana. The Power of the Actor. The Chubbuck Technique. Penguin Random House. New York, 2005
Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. Nic Hern Books, 2005
Freeman, John. Approaches to Actor Training: International Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2019
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968
Kelly, Dennis. Girls and Boys. Oberon Books, 2018
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987
Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007
Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020
LOVE ME
What is the feeling
Of pure joy and misery
Beating in my heart
- Azahara
* Haiku is a short three-line poem that usually follows a 5-7-5 syllable structure
Find the short movie LOVE ME here
* This is a project for my MA in Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2021)
An email will be sent to Azahara
Send us an email
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