You gotta IP before you can IPP

This week (15th - 19th October) was another one of those shorter wired weeks, getting used it it now really!

What we want to kind of achive with the set

Well, in a sense it was shorter. This week we devoted a large majority of the time to working on our Artaud piece. Monday however we began to talk about the upcoming aspect of the Independent Project Portfolio which we were introduced to. So this hour was all about the wonders of the IPP, I instantly thought about wanting to be able to a performance rather than an exploration hence why at the moment I am very swayed towards Option A. Also after going back through my notes I came across something I did at ISTA which seemed to have respraked my interest in it: The theatre in question is Verbatim Theatre. I thought it would be really interesting (due to its nature) to actually write a script for this but also I had the idea of a monologue which I'm current torn between. I mean monologues are great and all but it seems like something everyone does. But whatever I'll decide later

Tuesday (16th) the first hour and a half was pretty much splitting all the lines up within the script for each character and then we began a preliminary blocking of the script with a mock up stage set which I'm sure will change. For the final half hour Mr. F came into the lesson and give us some tips to how to make the script more hard hitting and giving it meaning which is pretty much summed up by the picture in my last post. What was useful about this lesson is that due to the fact that it is 2 hours it gives us a large stab at what we want to get done, and by starting to block the script really set the ball rolling with this project.

Friday (19th) was another one of those lessons where we were missing one of the two girls which rendered the lesson to a pretty much to a halt. What me and Georgia managed to get done was get many ideas down about make-up, projection and costume so we have a starting point for all the technical stuff when we begin to properly think about it, also since Mr. F had to leave the lesson early we began to look at each others RI's instead and giving feed back on them as it seems a useful tool for other peers to look and critique your work.

Pretty much it for this week, I hope that next week I have more to talk about!!

Richard #1

A word of advice from Alfred Hitchcock

Not the usual thing but after doing Artaud today here is a lesson for all Theatre Students -

Boiler Suits anyone?

This week (8th - 12th October) was a very short week due to us losing our double-lesson on tuesday.

As we are starting our Artaud piece, on Monday (8th) we all got up and started to block out the script however this was interrupted as we felt that we needed to build on some areas. Primarily for half of the lesson we discussed make-up and how it could be used for each character as we are all portraying a separate emotions (Fear, Anger and Depression). For instance Anger would maybe have scratches and some red make-up whereas Depression would maybe have some blue tint to it as blue is often associated with sadness  The hardest was for fear as it is hard to be able to portray this with make-up however there are some ideas at the moment. Costume and projection were discussed slightly, as we decided that we should all wear the same costume so it shows that we are all part of the same person rather than looking like 3 separate actors on stage. We want a sort of symbiosis between the emotions within the piece which hopefully we shall achieve.

Throughout the week we have all been working on our First Draft Research Investigations which was rendering our progression of the piece to a halt so not much has been done in terms of research over this week as we have all been making sure everything is as good as it can be for our First Draft Research Investigations which we handed in on Thursday!!!!!! Only redrafting left to do...O_O

Thursday was definitely a strange lesson. Primarily because I had no group for a good 45 minutes which rendering me completely useless. Georgia was off doing her oral and Maria was busy. Taking initiative I asked Mr. Fearnehough for the key to the "costume" cupboard and started to disassemble it to find anything that could be use for our Artaud piece. I found lab coats  a dead body representation, a large torch, wires and rope, elastic, bandages and some bad ass Boiler Suits which all could be extremely useful for our piece. After a while Maria turned up and add a great idea to what we could do with the wires. The idea was that we could hang the "dead body" by them from the ceiling so it looked as if this "person" had hanged themselves . As with Bloody mIST we are beginning to record our rehearsals so we can go back and look over what we have achieved. With around 15 minutes to go Maria had to go but luckily Georgia was back and so we began to spilt lines up between the characters and blocking some movements which seemed promising.

That's it for this very short week! Peace out!

Richard #1

So this post is going to cover like costume, makeup, set, script etc. ideas and I'll do another one to chat about and review last week... I think this way will be clearer.

So.

Makeup

 

Artaud

 

 

So Artaud did not really write much about makeup. However, he was very interested in masks so I had the idea of making the makeup into a mask. You know, like very thick makeup. My vision is that each of the three actors will have a base of thick white face paint, showing a sallowness of the skin, almost blanched with fear, a unity of the three characters, it will also match the predominately white set (this conveys a sense of clinical and sterile surroundings, sort of uniform and proper, clean, hospital like..). On top of this white base (which does not just have to be kept to the face, like Butoh it could cover the body, and even hair, white hairspray?) each character will have their own simple but bold makeup to show their character. Anger will have red to show danger and fury. Depression will have smudged black (crying) and maybe blue. Fear is a difficult one, when you think of fear you think of wide eyes and an open mouth, I will figure it out.

White face

 

 

 



Butoh



So this post is going to cover like costume, makeup, set, script etc. ideas and I'll do another one to chat about and review last week... I think this way will be clearer.

So.

Makeup

 

Artaud

 

 

So Artaud did not really write much about makeup. However, he was very interested in masks so I had the idea of making the makeup into a mask. You know, like very thick makeup. My vision is that each of the three actors will have a base of thick white face paint, showing a sallowness of the skin, almost blanched with fear, a unity of the three characters, it will also match the predominately white set (this conveys a sense of clinical and sterile surroundings, sort of uniform and proper, clean, hospital like..). On top of this white base (which does not just have to be kept to the face, like Butoh it could cover the body, and even hair, white hairspray?) each character will have their own simple but bold makeup to show their character. Anger will have red to show danger and fury. Depression will have smudged black (crying) and maybe blue. Fear is a difficult one, when you think of fear you think of wide eyes and an open mouth, I will figure it out.



White face

 

 

 



Butoh



   

 Fear

 Fear is the makeup I am most struggling with so I will probably have to revisit this one, these photos are some things I have found for inspiration so far.

                                           





Depression



                                                             This si not working, will come back to it or print off and put in my journal instead

What is the answer to life?....4.48

This week (1st - 5th October) we started work on looking at our upcoming Artaud Theatre Performance of 4.48 Psychosis

Monday (1st) was a simple and straight forward lesson as it stands. We were introduced to our script that we shall be using for our class Artaud piece which in this case is Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. First we were introduced to the person behind the script which is just as dark as the script itself. Sarah Kane suffered from severe depression and 4.48 Psychosis was her last script she wrote before hanging herself. For anyone reading this script don't get stuck on the fact that Sarah Kane hung herself as a way of stating that this script is autobiographical, I am sure some of her experiences with depression have fed into the script but not in it's totality. Personally I concluded that 4.48 Psychosis has a rawness as there are no "stated" characters  the script is jagged, it lacks punctuation in parts and that it has a brutalism about it which is to make the audience think rather than feel.

Tuesday (2nd) unfortunately Maria wasn't in which slowed down progress on the script however me and Georgia managed to brain storm a vast amount of ideas for what we could do for the actual performance and this really took up a very large amount of time of the lesson and we just kept getting more and more ideas. Here is a list of all the ideas we came up with as well as roles for each of us to take on during the course of this piece:

• Location - We struggled at first for finding the right location as we wanted the possibility of a complete black out during the performance but the only space which can do that is the tiny cupboard in the drama studio. Georgia flippantly suggested a tent which we all agreed after thinking about it could be an excellent idea due to the cramped nature of it and the possibility of compartments. I then had an epiphany of where would could do it, the sports changing rooms are big areas and due to there being no windows a complete back out can be achieved and we can huge a big audience too.
• Characters - We figured that we could represent the Psychosis of the "main speaker" as three different emotions which we shall all take on. Anger, Depression and Fear or I suggested also they could represent Artaud's Chaos, Creation and Destruction.
• Roles - This is the means of what role we shall take on for getting to the final product of the performance  I shall be taking on the role as sound director (if that is the correct term?) and I shall also be in charge of projections for the piece  Georgia decided to take up make-up and costume and possibly set design. Maria took charge of movements and choreographing. We will all be directors since this project lends itself to ensemble directing rather than solo directing,.
• Script - After finding an online full version of the 4.48 Psychosis script Georgia initially took it upon herself to create a refined script that would fit to the theme of our piece  and now we are all having input into the script.
• Theme - we decided we wanted a theme of cleanliness of the piece so we want to try and set it in a hospital scene with Mr. Fearnehough acting as the doctor reassuring the audience
• Audience - We decided from the beginning that we wanted them as part of the piece and due to the nature of the theme we suggested that would could dress the audience up in lab and science coats to make them feel as if they are in character watching in on a patient.

And here we...go!

Friday (5th) was first started by Mr. Fearnehough saying that the school has signed up for a free trail use of The Routledge Performance Archive which looks like a very useful tool as it is a new and always growing archive of everything theatre from Stanislavski to Artaud and everything in between. After that small intro to the lesson we then spent the remainder of it action planning our Artaud piece, whether we will keep to it is another question all together.

Other than that it has been a pretty successful week in the terms of actually starting to think about how we will go about performing this script.

Richard #1