Young People - The Summer School

For many years now I have worked as a director and assistant director on several theatre summer schools. And while there is a lot to reflect on around this subject, the key point of this post is to provoke thought about the "artistic output" of such work. Allow me to give you some context:

This year [2012] I was employed by a venue to help deliver a summer school project. At the culmination of the two weeks training and rehearsal period a group of trustees and board members were invited to watch the performance. They gave the feedback that they though the project was slightly overambitious and that the quality of the work was not as expected. It is important to note at this point that this particular venue were concerned with ticket sales and were a commercial venue.

For such venues, performance displaces process and one must understand that projects such as this are not commercial ventures. The focus of the work should be centred around the artistic development of the young people involved as well as enriching their lives as a whole.

Projects such as this are a way of developing the self; building confidence, self-esteem and an expanded world-view.

What I am saying is that in projects such as this, if the artistic outcome is your primary concern you have missed the fundamental point of offering such projects. Of course, the final performance of the work should be of a high quality, but only within the ability of the ensemble - I was always taught that you can get only what you can get: this is not a sacrifice of quality nor is it only accepting what the group offers you initially as being the limit but it moves the emphasis to the process.

WIP

German Expressionism - Reflection [In need of proof reading]

German Expressionism: Experimental Performance (South Hill Park 2010)

I would like to briefly reflect upon an experimental piece of theatre that was performed in the style of German Expressionism called Death/Commodity. I both wrote and directed the piece and was interested to see how audiences from varied backgrounds reacted to the piece, however in all cases the audience was an average theatre audience, with some members of the audience part of an arts centre, with significant theatre experience; none of them had studied theatre at University level.

South Hill Park provides a safe environment in which to experiment creatively and without boundaries allowing one to push theatre to the extremes. This consequently allows one to assess and obtain the validity, the quality, and the reception of any given piece of theatre.

I felt that it was important to try and contextualise and realise some of the lessons that I have learnt at University, to see how radical, unusual and avant-garde performances are received by the average theatre audience.

The audience South Hill Park attracts varies but comprises (usually) of middle-class males and females, working in the local area, married and with children. While the education of said audience varies the theatre going audience is well educated and it can be assumed the majority have received further education at a University or college. There is also a strong youth theatregoing audience, cultivated by various out-reach programmes and by the well established and powerful Missed Out youth board that work from within South Hill Park to attract a younger theatre going audience.

I will begin by outlining what I thought worked well with the performance and what I felt was well received and understood by the audience before then identifying the shortfalls of the performance and finally ending with he lessons that were learnt through the experiment.

With regards to what worked with the performance, it is safe to say that the performance unequivocally challenged preconceptions of what the theatre should be. It without doubt redefined the normal operating boundaries within which the normal theatre going audience feel familiar and safe with viewing. This is simultaneously both a success and shortfall of the piece.

The audience were at points so engaged that they didn’t move from their seats, the were frozen to the spot or else gasping for air while observing the seemingly boundless dimensions of German Expressionism. One is not used to observing one human dribble medicine into the mouth of another. But this is where the theatre begins to speak, semiotics come alive and a world of possibilities is opened up. The audience are engaged in that moment. If we use theatre as a means of defining what it is to be human, then the audience are forced to try to understand what is being said through this action, the meaning is not explicit and so it is up to the audience to determine how and why this is a part of human life. How does it fit within the context of the piece and how is that extendable to the context of the world.

Death/Commodity included a shorter performance called Pills/Of/Life. The language adopted in this piece was more accessible and explicit in contrast to the poetic and implicit language used in Death/Commodity. And I learnt perhaps one of the most important lessons yet. After being exposed to poetic language for several years I have come to be able to understand it and use it effectively, however it is indeed a language in its own right. The lesson learnt is that if you present this kind of language to an audience you must be sure that they have also had similar exposure to the language, otherwise it becomes incidental to the action. The sounds become more important, but if the audience cannot accept the language as a series of sounds in a montage of action and performance and if they also fail to successfully deconstruct the semiotics and do not develop an assumed meaning for the text, then they are removed and distance from the piece and are unable to engage with the piece. Pills/Of/Life used less poetic language and the audience reported they were much more engaged with that piece as it was more conventional, traditional almost. It was familiar.

If the language of the theatre is too far removed from normality then there is nothing for the audience to hold onto and so truth and intentionally fail to be communicated to the audience. It does not matter how important one considers semiotics to be, one must not forget that semiotics is not just that which can be seen, it is everything right down to the single phonemes and units of language that we also deconstruct in the attempt and in the search of creating meaning.

Postmodern theatre does not require empathy for the characters, as there is no ultimate answer to be obtained from the piece. The characters are not at the forefront of the acting. Postmodernism has encouraged non-matrixed and task based acting styles to emerge. This was due to the dismissal of overarching so called truths’, which consequently makes redundant the method actor. Postmodernism gave birth to theatrical forms such as post-dramatic theatre where the focus is (unlike theatre pre dating postmodernism) not on the understanding of the text, but on the experience of the individual. However problems became prevalent in the post-show discussions where it seems that the average theatregoer is not willing to participate in the deconstruction of a readerly-text. They like the meaning to be shaped for them, the average audience feels compelled to find a structured story line and they almost become worried and anxious if they don’t immediately understand what they have witnessed or if what they understood from the piece differs from their neighbours perspective. Time and again II was asked if their interpretation was correct. Of course, they were all correct. Intentionality is lost the moment the script goes into the hands of the director and the actors, the moment the actors give the piece to the audience and invite them to watch and make of it what they will. One could offer supporting evidence relating to Bathes the death of the author or arguments relating to the fallacy of intent. But that is for another post. As previously mentioned the performance was unambiguously post-modern in style. One of the aims of postmodernism is to challenge assumptions. When performance groups challenge this through a postmodern lens, they present controversial material. By doing this it arguably compromises the possibility of representing anything truthfully.

‘Postmodernism’s radical contingency can seem to place it (the theatrical work) outside of history, beyond the possibility of commenting on the past, the present or the future’ (Allain and Harvie, 2005: 192). I believe that this was also a problem

What the audience were most impressed with and at times mesmerised by was the precision and competency in the actor’s execution of the director’s instructions. The style requires precision and in a very short rehearsal period, the actors found the true meaning of ensemble and I had the pleasure of witnessing some of the finest ensemble work I have ever seen, and this was echoed in post-show discussion.

There was also an appreciation for the inclusion of so-called informel art. The piece broke free from form; matter was freed from the laws of construction, everything from wooden sticks to bodies. Objects were thrown, torn, spat on, eaten, spat out. What failed, and I am conscience of the fact I now talk using lexis coined by Kantor was the notion of Zero Theatre. Our theatre included things, which in normal theatre gets lost. Our theatre was a theatre of negative emotions, a theatre in which the audience were challenged as to the role they were to play in the process. Unlike Kantor we did give pointers, indexes, which allowed the audience to create some form of meaning, though we did try to create disharmony between text and action.

I would like to finish by saying not only was this experiment interesting in obtaining information about what the theatre audience want or at least think they want, it was interesting to see how far an audience can be pushed and where I would like to gradually move the boundaries for the average audience, but this must be executed slowly with a gradual development of style to audiences that have had gradual exposure.

From this report one might be inclined to see the negatives, however the piece was well received, especially by the more open-minded younger members of the audience, who are not bound by the rules of the world and have an intact creative mind. Though it may just be superficial; the show looked cool and was good as a consequence, aesthetics are obviously not the most important pursuit of any member of the creative team, one hopes for a more intellectual engagement.

And this intellectual engagement was present, and it generated much talk and controversy about the theatre and opened people’s eyes as what theatre can be used for. The shortfalls are firstly correctable and in most cases identified by myself as the director and as the person who conceived the idea in the first place.

I learnt that the average audience are not ready for such an intense experience of performance, but many of the stylistic elements of the performance can be taken forwards and used, the grotesque, the unexpected, the degraded reality, the characters, the precision. But in almost all cases for the average theatregoer, it must be in much smaller doses.

Directing Expressionism - Part One

I find that when directing expressionism the best way to tackle the task is to give the actors a breif synopsis of the scene and what you want from the, what are they conveying and how you think they should move. And then allow them to translate that into a tangible reality. Let them experiment within the context of the scene.

The actors must have time to experiment and a 'free-rehearsal' allows for this, it is a chance for the actors to show you possibilities, where they can work. It is the directors job to then push the actors and shape it into something the resembles what you had in your imagination.

For the actor they need to turn conscious intent, into physical action and finally into subconscious action. Which is why (like n any performance) being off book is of vital importance, ideally before the rehearsal time even begins.

For the director it is important to allow the actors to experiment.

Directors owe a lot to the actors, who will time and again find ways of translating the directors instructions and vision into something real, even beyond that which the director had envisioned. It is always the case that the final result, the product that is put on stage is always richer and more interesting, deeper than what the director had originally imagined.

It is hard for a director to tell the actor exactly what he wants while enabling the actor to experiment on his own, with rehearsal time almost always too little for a production it can be difficult to strike a balance.

A good director will tell the actor what he wants him to do not what he wants to see.

I like to keep director vague, offer possibilities, suggestions of what the scene should look like, but a situation in which actors are allowed to become consciously aware of what it is they must do, as has been demanded by the director, causes them to get stuck, to hit conscious obstacles when they are unable to execute the directors intentions. If they are allowed to experiment then they are able to find a point within themselves that feels right and can be executed subconsciously. A performance where the actors just perform a series of highly choreographed movements becomes stale and dead - ultimately it is boring to watch because there is no substance, no play, no richness in the performance many minds are after all better than just one.

The rehearsal room should be a place of mtal exploration and discovery for actor and director a like.

By allowing the actors to experiment them selves and offer their own possibilities and suggestions, they begin to feel some form of ownership over they work, it becomes a collaborative effort as all good theatre should be. I would like to give you another passage from Clive Barker's Theatre Games:

'The director who brings his finished concept of a production to the first rehearsal leaves the creative work by which he has arrived at it behind in his study. The production becomes eighteen people illustrating the result of one man's imagination. An ensemble production utilises the imaginative work of nineteen people functioning co-operatively. The actors understand their contribution to the whole, and their work is that much richer and more alive.' (Barker, 1997: pp. 47-48).

'The director's job could be defined, like the teacher's, as creating situations in which the actor is free to make discoveries, which can then be objectivised and worked upon.' (Ibid.).

Giving an actor a definitive description of what you want him to do limits him and prevents him from exploration and does not allow him to make his own discoveries and he is limited by his conscious which causes him to reflect which leads to definition, which leads to stereotypes and cliche. Not allowing him to work subconsciously and intuitively to create an organic performance that comes naturally rather than being forced out of him.

Acting Expressionism - Part One

The best place to start when talking about expressionism is with the suggestions that Clive Barker pus forward with regards to the problems that actor encounters and the job that the actor is required to do, of course this differs from one performance to the next, not to mention it is vastly different when acting expressionism, but there are still a number of fundamental points tha are transferable and applicable to any performance.

The Work of the Actor:

1. He exhibits real physical skills (including vocal skills). That is, he makes demands upon his body apparatus that go beyond the general level of use and ability which apply in everyday life.

2. He exhibits mimetic skill. That is, he simulates physical states and activities which are not real for him.

3. He imaginatively explores situations of time, space and character which are not real for him.

4. He exhibits patterns of human behavior which are not natural to him.

5. While engaging in all these activities, he interacts with other human beings, namely, the other actors/characters and the audience.

(Barker, 1997: 11)

This clearly demonstrates the demand on the actor is great in any acting situation; removing the actor from the real world and placing him in a completely synthetic one in which he must live. Point by point then how does each demand affect the expressionist actor?

1. The expressionist actor make huge demands of his body while engaged in performance. The expressionist actor must achieve a state of the ecstatic, like the soul is about to break from the clutches of the body. It is not enough in expressionism to be suggestive of, to imply, to be an index pointing towards something. The expressionist actor must become that which he is portraying, if he is greedy he not just greedy but greed itself. If he is sick, then he is not just sick, but sickness itself.

I was the director and writer for an expressionist piece called Death/Commodity. In this piece there was a scene where 'The Man' visits industry owners. For the actors this demanded huge amounts of energy and engagement for the scene to work. The demands on the body were both beyond the daily and even the extra-daily demands on the body, require the actor to achieve almost a beyond-human level of movement. I will momentarily discuss the problems encounter with making such demands.

2. Mimetic skills and simulation have little place in expressionism as there are no real reference points to use, nothing in real-life is, in isolation, a starting point. Instead the actor must use abstract ideas and references, concepts rather than singularities. Again using the example of the industry owners, ideas discussed included the feel of the horror film Hostel, the horror film Creep, the wheelies from Return To Oz. The actor then had to covert these influences into something tangible and real for us to mould, shape and inevitably perform.

3. The exploration of time, space and character is once again a challenge for the expressionist actor. Expressionism generally (but not be definition) adheres to the three unities. Time while arguably immeasurable in expressionism does not change, there is no day/night. Due to the dream-like reality time is unimportant as it would be in a dream, things just happen and are not defined by time. Space is usually a single place usually a factory or a street, sometimes multiple but the actor does not have to think about re-creating different spaces. Character is of utmost priority for the actor, the character is beyond human, it is removed from the world, while encapsulating it's very essence. Characters act more as concepts or groups of people, rather than individuals or actual people.

4. Patterns of human behavior are shown, but not through naturalism, they are shown through the most extreme abstraction, exaggerated patterns of human behavior that exist and thrive in the darker part of human nature.

5. The actors in expressionism only interact with each other on a performance level. In regards to character, the characters ignore each other, rarely acknowledging their existence. The Man works slightly different in as much that he does have to interact with all aspects of his dream-like reality.

As is seen here the job of the actor surpasses the demands an Ibsen or a Beckett would demand of the actor. It goes beyond the real of just acting to the point where it becomes a vigorous exercise in itself, actors are left out of breath, tired and at the point of almost passing out. Of course this would become boring after a while to watch and so not all characters need this much energy. Workers from Death/Commodity for example moved with sharp, machine like precision. All at once and all in unison.

In any case the actor of expressionism must find and present the highest level of energy, it is the work of the director to try and help the actors to find this level, though I have to say an actor either can or achieve this level of energy or they cannot, just like a person can or cannot roll their tongue.

Inhibitions

Inhibitions as mentioned before are the downfall of any actor. As I have already discussed these tend to become present when the actor starts to fear being wrong or not staying true to the character. Inhibitions arise because of that small demon appearing on our shoulder telling us we are doing it wrong or that we aren't feeling it.

No doubt these inhibitions lead to all kinds of subsequent problems, frustration on the part of the director, or missed opportunities by actors who let these worries consume them and take control.

The problem for the actor is how to overcome these inhibitions, how do we get rid of the little monster that tells us that we cannot do something?

As I will later discuss, Clive Barker, who made me think about the question, how do we act, also made me consider why actors have inhibitions and how best to tackle them, I would like to briefly talk about my experience of artistic inhibitions.

I primarily have two inhibitions while acting

1. The fear of giving a superficial or shallow performance

2. Forgetting lines

Stage fright is not something I suffer from as such, however like all actors, there is a certain element of nervousness before a performance caused by the aforementioned issues.

All actors are nervous before performance, and if they say that they are not, then they are lying. The most important thing to remember is that nerves are not always bad, and in fact can some times work to your advantage, the second thing is that your ability as an actor is in no way in correlation with how nervous you get, take Lee Evans for example, he claims to be a nervous reck and yet it is not noticeable and does not hinder the performance given.

From my experience nerves often dissipate a few minutes into the performance, there is always an element of anxiety before ones first entrance but once on stage the nerves are lost.

I will cover this in further post on inhibitions in relation to Clive Barker and then again in a post on the act of performance.

University and Inhibitions

While university can provide a safe and nurturing environment for creative and artistic exploration, it can also be a very intimidating and scary place for the young performer. Any situation in which you have to stand before your peers and perform leads to a sense o anxiety.

From what I have discussed so far one should consider the following:

- There should not be judgment from your peers in the first instance

- Inhibitions are cause by the fear of not doing it right - so just do it and see what happens (see improvisation)

- Not measuring up against another performer is also a worry that is hard to overcome but needs to be, do what you can, prepare as best you can and all will be well.

Points to discuss

- Preparation as an actor

- Preparation in the context of University

- Avoiding superficial Performance

- The act of performance

- Inhibitions in relation to Clive Barker

Para theatre continued

I have included here a more detailed explanation of para-theatre. This was a presentation I gave in Year One of my study.

© Mark David Hooper 2008-Present. This presentation was written and given by Mark David Hooper at the University of Exeter. This material should NOT be reproduced under any circumstance and I accept no responsibility for people that try to pass this off as their own work.

•Erik Exe Christoffersen states that the term Para-Theatre was first coined by Grotowski and is used to describe a situation in which the ‘boundary between the actor and the spectator is no longer present’ (1993: 17).

•The events that occur within restaurant spaces are a series of very specific actions which bring the participants into a non-daily form of fellowship and rhythm; participants are all executing similar actions in the same place at the same time.

•Consider that our restaurant has windows that enable people to look into the restaurant.

•One is now observing a Para-Theatrical event, watching people eat, talk, serve etc; people are playing roles.

•The person “playing” the waiter for example waits on the customers; taking their orders etc. Whilst the customers fulfill their role by talking, eating and drinking.

•An order of “play” is established through an unspoken cultural understanding of the activity they are a part of.

•If one chooses to stop observing and to walk in the door then one becomes part of the para-theatrical event and is expected to conform to the ‘rules’ of play, adopting the role of a customer.

•A restaurant could be said to have a script that governs the interaction that takes place between the establishment (the waiter/cashier) and the customer.

•“Would you like fries with that” is a phrase that we have come to expect when we are being served at the till of a fast-food restaurant.

•The words do not necessarily have meaning for the cashier

•It becomes almost a habit whereby the establishment has told them that this phrase must be communicated to the customer to elicit a response and so they include it in the interaction.

•Perhaps to symbolise the caring nature the restaurant has for its customer.

•Much like a play or piece of theatre, a script is used to communicate effectively with the audience (customer)

•Essentially the building is just an empty space until we fill it with objects

•These objects transform the space into a pub, café or in this case a restaurant.

•The liminal space is transformed into a restaurant with places for people to sit, chefs to cook and waiters to move around and so a place for para-theatre to take place.

•The structure of the meal (like a program)

•The code of conduct. If the restaurant is considered ‘posh’ then one dresses up in formal wear and conversation is kept to polite or intellectual conversation instead of subjects that may cause offence to the other people in the restaurant that are engaged in the act. – Conversations acceptable in McDonalds are not necessarily acceptable in the Ritz for example, we perform to satisfy what we think is being asked of us culturally.

•One performs for the benefit of others

•How one uses the cutlery – The ‘Correct’ way of holding the utensils; it would be frowned upon if you used you hands to tear apart the delicious gourmet steak in front of you.

•A restaurant could be considered para-theatrical as:

•It has a clear playing order

•People play roles

•There are people observing whether it is one customer looking at the other or people walking by outside

•All the world is a stage and all the men and women are merely players

– (Shakespeare, As You Like It)

Para-Theatre and Theatre Theatre... What is theatre?

Para-Theatre is an interesting concept and I first encountered this during the summer of 2009. It is the idea that everything and anything can be considered theatre. There have of course been theatrical and artistic movements that try to demonstrate this, which by it's definition then become just a performance and not para-theatre... the fluxus movement has a lot to answer for!

Para-Theatre is life as theatre. First we must consider what exactly it is we consider to be theatre... we could use the following as a definition/explanation of theatre:

A person buys a ticket for an event, who then goes at a specific time, to a specific place, with other people who have also gathered for the same purpose. They wait in a foyer or bar and are offered programmes and information about the event for which they have a ticket. They may buy a drink and can talk with other members of the congregation which may be termed audience members. They then enter a performance space, with seating facing a stage. The audience watches passively, while the people on stage who we shall call actors execute actions while speaking rehearsed and pre-prepared text.

However this is just one subjective definition of theatre some may agree or disagree, but if we agree that theatre constitutes as one person watching another then theatre is all around us. Take for example having dinner at a restaurant. People meet at one place usually at a specified time.

The waiters execute pre prepared actions and text, taking the customers to the table, taking order, while the customers watch and (less passively perhaps) react. If this restaurant were to have a glass front and people could see inside the indeed customers and waiters all become part of another performance.

It can be seen as a mirror reflected infinitely in another mirror, the world as a series of performances with actors and audience members - people watching people going about daily life.

All the worlds a stage...

Why Perform?

Escapism, narcissism, to change the world, to entertain, to help others, to tell a story, to be someone other than oneself, to work with like-minded people, to make sense of the world, to deconstruct the world, to alter reality, to escape reality, the act of performance itself...

What do I think? How can you tell. I know that for me it is more than likely a mix of all of these things. Escapism, definitely, no matter how bad the world looks for the duration of a performance the world beyond the theatre doors does not exist... sometimes the theatre doesn't even exist. I think the thing that interests me most is the notion of narcissism - the ego. Anyone who tells me that this plays no part in their wanting to perform is, for me, a liar. The simple fact is that performance, by it's nature, requires an individual to stand before an audience and to do something, be it perform an action or deliver lines, they made the active choice to become an actor and thus want people to watch them. 

Don't Feel it... Just Do it.

The inspiration for this post comes from a workshop I experienced at University. The class made it clear that their preferred method of performance was internalising and justifying each emotion that they had to feel in performance. If the scene demanded anger they would think of a time they were angry, if the scene needed love then they would think of a time they experienced love, this of course derives from Ribot's notion of emotional memory (explored by Stanislavski but was later rejected in favour of the actors truthful response to the circumstances of the scene). Ribot also explored affective memory, he discovered that when patients remembered times when they were healthy they recovered from illness quicker than those who were less engaged in the process of their recovery. 

It is very dangerous to take something like the method and begin using it. I have seen tutors work with young teens using emotional memory recall to make them feel angry and upset and while this was achieved, it was far from being ethical the young people were left feeling tender and upset and had no point of reference or techniques for a quick recovery.

The following is an extract from my log book from a lesson that demonstrated the two styles of acting without creating the real emotion.


13th October 2009


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The kinesphere – This is the idea that surrounding the body is a field of energy, varying in size according to the individuals awareness of their personal space. Eric Hetzler initially asked us to reach out and feel where this energy is either through the use of the mind or to feel externally with limbs to feel the difference between being within or outside of ones own kinesphere.

We then advanced and were asked to fill our kinesphere with different kinds of energy. It is important at this point to say that when filling the kinesphere we did so just through the imagination of a colour not through psychological process.

1. Angry energy – I used the colour red as my visualisation of the angry energy filling up the sphere. It had a physiological effect on me – my breathing changed – became shorter and sharper – and I felt tension in the limbs and a sense of release when Eric ended the exercise.

2. Joy. In this case the colour I saw was baby blue and again the exercise effected my breathing – longer and relaxed and there was a lasting sense of joy as the exercise finished.

We then moved onto a similar exercise where breathing and a set facial expression was used to create an emotion within the actor. Grit teeth, draw up lower eyelids, tilited head slightly – anger has been created – in the next moment a small smile, wide eyes and a tilted head – the feeling and appearance of love is created. 

I personally believe that no successful or proficient actor uses just one method, otherwise we are left in a painting by numbers situation. I think 'painting by numbers' is a good metaphor for stifling creativity. My uncle once tried to recreate Monet's Garden picture with a painting by numbers set - safe to say the end result was nothing more than a poor imitation of the original.  

I am always weary to draw to much focus to ‘how I act’ as it is too close to becoming academically and consciously involved – am I doing it right – how do I do it – should I be more psychologically involved – inhibitions are the actors poison.

However, with that said, I think that I do two things. In the first instance I create a character with mannerisms; a walk and a way of speaking, I then use these and react accordingly to the text and other actors. If I am in a scene where love is required I do not think of a time where I experienced love and force that upon the character, I will just simulate the attributes of love, this is enough and highly effective. The problem when one uses their own memories is that there is a lot of residual emotion left over and this means if one needs to be performing an angry scene and you think of something that makes you truly angry when you need to go into the next scene which maybe a love seen there is likely to be residual emotion left.

The idea of a kinesphere may be abstract and will be addressed later, but look beyond that for now.

Improvisation

Improvisation is something some of the most talented and experienced actors I know find hard.

This is interesting because every human being is capable of improvisation; we do it every single day of our lives, with our friends, partners, family, shop assistants the list goes on. Every interaction we have is an improvised theatrical performance with an audience of at least 1.

I will never forget going to watch Paul Merton at the Comedy Store in London and being enchanted by his ability to be witty and coherent instantaneously while performing in a 'who's line is it anyway' style performance. Now it is true that I am sure years of experience no doubt helped in the development of this skill, however there are surely other factors that play a part.

At University this was a question I considered early on in my studies -

From a personal perspective I believe that the ability to improvise is absolutely key in the development of a performer or indeed any creative professional, acting however will be the focus in this post.

Improvisation is at the very core of how I go about creating a character. The ability to improvise gives way to limitless possibilities to help answer the question HOW. Improvisation also develops the ensemble and creates inter-performer relationships.

Where To Start? At The Beginning! - The Young Performer

Robin Williams once said 'You are only given a little spark of madness, you mustn't lose it' and I think this is interesting in a discussion of acting and performing. How do we hold onto that spark of madness?

Finding a sense of ease is something that Michael Chekhov so often referred to. As a child, one often looks back and remembers a feeling of ease - a distinct lack of fear, not worry about how others perceive you or their judgements about you. It is a quality that we slowly lose as we grow older and it would seem it is something that we have to gradually learn how to achieve again through warm-ups, concentration exercises and general performance preparation - actor training.

With this in mind, it is easy to see how children are more often than not able to cope with the task of performance, there are of course other factors which will be considered later but it is a lack a inhibitions that we will focus on now.

Right from when we start school we are arguably taught not to be creative, we forget how to improvise creatively - we must paint inside the lines, we must write a story with a beginning, middle and end and so on.

Intuition is slowly lost at school and mechanical machines are created with 'rules' inhibiting action, and while of course these are necessary, they later form 'obstacles' for creativity.

I believe this is why the young performer can appear so talented with very little experience on stage. They are the children who who paint 1 green when it should be blue, they are unafraid to try new things, they are not in fear of 'getting it wrong' or doing the right thing, their lives are still about discovery and exploration.

It is always an interesting experience directing a cast of young people. I find myself learning from them. It is fascinating the way that they approach characterisation - that is not to say that they are always appropriate and often characters manifest themselves as larger than life characatures, but there is a sense of freedom as they create - millions of possibilities and none too ridiculous or absurd; there is a beauty to that as it seems to be lost as we get older. My point here is that the young performer has the ability to produce a raw kind of creativity and as we fall into habit and lose child-like playfulness, the raw creativity is much harder to find later on.

Aside from fear of judgement, one can also get caught up in academia and so called "thought processes", allowing too much academic thought to pervade in the rehearsal room can cripple artistic exploration, it stifles instinct.

If we become to fixated upon justifying every action that we perform on stage then more and more obstacles are created for the actor. The conscious intention should be converted into subconscious action, but a constant inner monologue of justification is inhibiting.