Additional research on Antonin Artaud

"Antonin Artaud was a French actor, costume designer and writer who revolutionized drama with his "Theater of Cruelty" idea.
Born in Marseille, France, on September 4, 1896, Antonin Artaud worked as an actor onstage and in film with works like La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc. He was involved in the surrealist movement as a writer and came up with the idea known as "The Theater of Cruelty," which argued that drama must abandon its emphasis on text and rely on more mysterious, primal expressions of sound, movement and light. Artaud died on March 4, 1948, in Ivry-sur-Seine, France." - http://www.biography.com/people/antonin-artaud-9189906

"Considered among the most influential figures in the evolution of modern drama theory, Antonin Artaud associated himself with Surrealist writers, artists, and experimental theater groups in Paris during the 1920s. When political differences resulted in his break from the Surrealists, he founded the Theatre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron. Together they hoped to create a forum for works that would radically change French theater.
Artaud, especially, expressed disdain for Western theater of the day, panning the ordered plot and scripted language his contemporaries typically employed to convey ideas, and he recorded his ideas in such works as Le Theatre de la cruaute and The Theater and Its Double."
- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/antonin-Artaud

Cabinet of Curiosities Evaluation

Cabinet of Curiosities Evaluation

For our end of term performance we performed 'Cabinet of Curiosities'. This performance consisted of a collaboration of our class group piece, our trio's and pieces we'd devised between all the classes.
I think the show went extremely well and everyone's standard of performance was very high.

One thing I would like to change if I had the chance would be just to clean up some parts that might of been a bit messy because of under preparation. I think my trio section with Molly and Beau went very well, in the end w didn't stick tot he original order of movement we had put together but I think it worked well because it looked like it wasn't a rehearsed piece which made it more real and brought to light that what we were doing to Molly was more brutal and spiteful.
One part during the group piece that I feel could have been improved was the Guantanamo section, this piece relied very heavily on the participation of the audience so we couldn't tell wether they were going to go along with it or not. Because the audience were sometimes shocked it made it difficult to get them to listen and get their full attention which made it harder to talk to them.

My favourite part of the group piece was definitely the soup piece, partially because I was completely immersed in what I was doing with my partner and also because you could feel everyone's energy in the room, everyone had completely gotten into being devoted to exploring themselves and their partner during that section, I really enjoyed being in that environment at that moment.

Overall I think this performance was successful because everyone gave all they could into the performance and worked amazingly as a ensamble to create this living piece of art.

Class performance rehearsals

Class performance rehearsals  

We have started to devise our performance in our class, we include most of the exercises we've been using over the past few weeks such as emotional riffing, soup,breath and Butoh. 

We've added a few new sections like the push, hold, 180 degrees exercise. I really enjoyed this section because it showed how humans can be very cruel to each other and will hurt others just to benefit themselves. We had to ignore any feeling we had towards eachother and just have one objective, to push or pull theses other people down. We had to focus purely on that objective. We had to be very careful not to hurt each other too much and be aware of our surroundings.

This became the section that would transition into the bodies in Auschwitz part. From the push, pull, 180 exercise we started to pull each other down onto the floor and if we got pulled down we had to stay there and be a dead body. We watched a clip from a really good documentary about Auschwitz after the war had ended and the soldiers were being called in to inspect the concerntration camps. What they were met with was not pleasant, people had just died where they were standing and the remaining prisoners were forced to live among these dead bodies. The soldiers had to clear out all the bodies and dump the all into a hole in the ground with hundreds of others to be buried, we showed this during our piece by dragging the people who had fallen across the room and putting them into a pile then moving them into another space and duping them there.
I really liked this section because I felt it gave a really powerful message to the audience, it was showing how as humans we are selfish and we will look out for ourselves by any means nessecary, even if that means hurting people who trust us. It was quite challenging trying to remain limp and look dead because not everyone who was lifting us was very aware of our safety. When we were in the pile it was quite uncomfortable but we had to stay completely focused and still.

Everyone got given a piece of text to learn for the Guantanamo section. The girls were the wives of men who had been kept there and they have to tell their stories to the audience as they're guiding them  round the room. The boy are the prisoners who are crouched on the floor with their hands behind their back as if being restrained. We had to make the audience sit on the boys backs after we tell them the wives story so they can hear the prisoners point of view.

Rehearsal process

Rehearsal process

We have started to put the movement in our piece together and have come up with an order:

• Bring on molly 
• take care of her, being gentle
• inject molly
• mix paint/wash hands 
• show glasses to audience 
• spray brain, her side and her eye 
• flick the paint over molly 
• take off the rope, lower her onto the floor 
• suppress her restraining 
• pick up molly and repeat fro beginning.

We don't know if this will be the definite order of our piece. We might develop some more contact movement or dialogue. 

Group Piece

Rehearsal process of our group piece

We based our group piece off of a piece of art we saw on our trip to the TATE Modern. We saw a piece that we all really liked, it was an old record player which had been covered in graffiti and vinyl records had been smashed around it. We decided to take a metaphorical meaning from it. We interpreted the reason for all the graffiti over a beautiful piece of vintage furniture was because it was ruining something old and classic and defacing it with modern forms of art.
We want to use this idea in our piece but replace the record player with a human body and dehumanizing it by painting and spraying it different colours.

Butoh

Butoh

"Butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement."

I think a performance of Butoh Is very powerful a really fascinating way of performing in a non-conventional way. It uses a voice technique called 'ululating' to create a really individual sound to listen to during the performance. even though it is made by the human body it sometimes doesn't sound human, like it could be music. We started to practice ululating which was quite challenging because it requires to make two different types of pitch with your voice. We then started to put movement with sound. We watched a video of a man doing Butoh to see what kind of movement we were hoping to do, the moves were very simple, like a lift of the arm or curvature of the spine  but it looked amazing because the Man was completely immersed in what he was doing and it was all instinctual.
When we put it into practice we had to be completely focused on our bodies and the energy we were using. We had to explore our bodies and feel how different body parts moved. The sound we were making was very reliant on my breath and it was very difficult to concentrate on feeling connected to how my body was moving and my breath at the same time.    

Soup

Soup

We started working on a exercise today called 'soup'. It's called soup because it's about you and your body flowing instinctually whilst not having to think about what you're doing.
We started off by doing movement we usually do in physical theatre which is laying in semi supine and focusing on breath. Then we bring that breath into slow movements, just simply rolling onto our side then bringing our arm and legs into those small movements. Whilst doing this still allowing your breath to evoke the moment you're making. A big challenge for me in this exercise is trying not to think about what I am doing and letting it be instinctual.
We then had to get up to sitting on our knees and exploring how different body parts could move, still making breath our main reason for moving.
We then had to find a partner and start to do contact improvisation and exploring breath and movement with them. This was quite difficult to grasp at first because I'd only just got the hang of learning how to keep focused on my breath. With our partner we needed to keep eye contact at some points to keep the exercise personal and honest.
Then we started adding in strange sounds that just came to mind in the moment instead of breath , almost like we were having a conversation with our partner using this strange language.
It was a really captivating exercise because you had to give absolutely 100% into the movement and breath. It was like It was just me and my partner just being completely honest beings with each other and it was quite animalistic, especially when we started using the strange voices to communicate.