SHOWING EINS

LAST DAY OF REHEARSALS

WOHIN WILLST DU, ZSA ZSA GABOR?

(NB: to be read as Dame Maggie Smith)
We started out the day with a good old Toi Whakaari style discussion for two hours about our individual purpose for the showing, before delving straight into some explorations of the '10 Energies' adapted from John Wright's work by John Abbot.

Moving from 'Catatonic' (no energy, immovable) to 'Hysterical' (frenzied energy) and layering it against our text. We found that in order to keep a strong relationship to the storytelling, as actors we must maintain a certain 'maturity', focus or dedication to the story without becoming indulgent or hysterical.

Then after lunch we played some 'Animal Bang' to warm us up to a very serious afternoon of very serious work. I was a worm, confused as to which end was up, a frozen crocodile lost in the antarctic and a gay lion about to come out to his father at his coronation.

So then Andrew/Konstantin and Jaci/Nina showed their piece that they have been working using us as their props, pulling Runa and Florian up to perform scenes in a beautifully hap-hazzard rehearsal type style. And then Ben took all his clothes off and did some post-dramatic acting. Tom worked on the language of body isolations and poetry within the text.
And Runa and I played with some toy soldiers (and also learned how to speak German Wohin willst du?). Ooooh! How productive we all are!

And to wrap up, in the famous lines of Zsa Zsa Gabor

I'm a great housekeeper. I get divorced. I keep the house.

(Don't worry, its post-dramatic)

Love Piggy

Day Five cont.

Hi blog,

Sorry I've been so neglectful. To continue from where I left off...

So after a Dood Paard video we began to do some MORE awesome postdramatic creation. We split up and each created our own abstract solo piece drawing from our characters and everything else that we've been experiencing so far in Berlin. The results were juicy indeed.

We each used the basic structure of telling our characters journey as a story in simple enough terms that a child could understand it. Then each of us injected our own style of abstraction in to the work. These abstractions ranged from repetition of words and gesture to using lights to create shadow imagery on the walls and one little piggy even got a bit carried away and consumed a hotchocolate with her fingers, which was beautiful if I may say so myself.

After a very satisfying hard days work we all put some less sweaty clothes on and headed out to see the enchanting Runa Schaefer play Lena in the Ernst Busch performance of "Leonce and Lena". I think I can speak for everyone when I say that it tickled my pickle, blew my skirt up, and impressed the proverbial out of me. Granted I understood quite a bit more of the German text than the others but the piece was also very absurd and had a lot of colour and comedy in movement and voice. These guys have discipline, I'm telling you. The precision of their craft allowed them to do things with their voices and bodies that were more akin to what you might see on Bugs-bunny rather than in a theatre.

Here's a basic plot summary as I understood it: Leonce is a prince whose father wishes to marry him to the princess of another kingdom who he has never met (Lena). Leonce doesn't like this so he decides to run away into nature. Little does he know that Lena has also decided to run away to nature. They then meet by chance in nature and fall in love not knowing each others' true identities. Leonce decides he wants to marry this girl and takes her home to his kingdom. But he cannot allow his father to know that it is him marrying a "different girl than Lena" SOOOOO.......THEY DECIDE TO PRETEND TO BE ROBOTS!!!!!! His father is delighted to have robots marrying in his kingdom. He then removes their disguises and all is revealed to all and they have a dance party.....what an awesome plot line.

I hope all you bloggees had great festive times over the last few days- We certainly did.

xx Much love, Ben

OFF TO A BREAK

Ich Bloggy,

We are on break over Christmas for five days. We've been working together as a company for seven straight days. Phew. Yesterday was another solid day. The Mime Centrum classes were on holiday so we had the entire day in the studio to make. We began with a mash up of all the hardest Toi muscle based warmups we knew, plus some from the Dance School.

We are trying an exercise which I think is unexpectedly subtle and demanding. As we try it more and more I get the feeling it holds the work we are pursuing here in Berlin. The idea is to create tableaus in reaction to the audio recorded from the Berlin public. It is easy to do the task of image making, but I realise now we are not just chasing the completion of an image, we are trying to find a quality. It is so easy to become "epic". By this I mean we present the images like golden objects, like pretentious works of art-wank. We are researching Gob Squad and Dood Paard's medEia for this project and I think this is fantastic. These companies speak to the line between epic and casual. We will continue to chase this quality I hope.

 We moved on to the development of our storytelling exercises. We'd each been given the task to tell the story of the play from our character's perspective, involving five direct quotes from lines or stage directions. From there each actor has found their own set of languages and abstractions: Andrew and Jaci with turtle lights, Runa with toy-soldiers and human puppetry. Yesterday afternoon was spent developing the scenes, with focus on precision and purpose. What exactly are you doing with your body and voice in the space? Why are you doing it / what does it show about the story?

Now the job is to find three scenes that the company can drop into within these storytelling chapters. The scripts were due at five today.

Finishing the weeks work yesterday with Toi Whakaari E and Ngoi to mihi Runa's performance in Leonce and Lena. She is excited to learn the songs.

Tom.

STORYTELLING: DOOD PAARD STYLE

Day Five: Come all ye postdramatic

Day five began like any normal day in Berlin: Slightly hung over (from organic merlot), sore everywhere (from movement classes and Toi style hardcore warmups) and running to get to the mime centrum on time (and cursing the enigmatic Metrobus system as a double-decker speeds past you in the exact direction you want to go). But what is most consistent is the excitement on my face. I know that today will be beautiful, challenging, and massively productive. I know that when I arrive I will see the faces of my new young, talented, intelligent, postdramatic Berlin family. We will smile at each other and indicate particularly pained muscles. And then we'll jump on the "Ich Warte" rollercoaster.

Once again we began the day with a movement class. It hurt much less than the other classes, which was simultaneously a reprieve and a disappointment.

After our session we gathered around and listened to the fruits of yesterday's labour. The recordings were nothing short of perfection (the sound quality of a few was a bit too poor to understand but even so) it was like finding a fifty dollar bill in the gutter. More than one of us were nearly moved to tears listening to these people repeat these profound words which they have never heard before.

We then moved on to our creating! As everyday there is a rhythm of observing or listening followed by instant creation. We explored the space around us with the sounds we were hearing. We simply played and found some beautiful contrasts and counter rhythms. We moved from tableaus to carrying Tai and "painting" the wall with her body, always with Willem and Holly's clear and trustworthy guidance.

We then gathered around and watched an extract from Dood Paard(dead horse)'s version of Medea! The Dutch group had rewritten the entire script using very simple language and spoken lyrics from pop songs. Dood Paard works very well with chorus work, pace and rhythm of voice, and the charm of performing in English as a second language. The piece was very static and there was no distinction of which actor was playing which character. Apparently they never work on the floor before a performance, meaning that their rehearsal period revolves around the language, rhythm, and very clear body language and gestures which seem to come just a few seconds before the relevant words. This creates a very interesting effect which drew me in to their performance. I did find myself questioning the relevance of their work at a certain point however. "This is so interesting but where is it going?" It's like someone you meet showing you photos of their kids and you think to yourself "Unless i'm going to meet these little people in the near future, I just don't care, and you're so boring and arrogant to expect me to."

Oh no! Sorry bloggy I need to run off to todays work.....oooh postdramatic. I'm telling you that I need to go but im clearly taking time to write these very words and you don't even know if I do in fact need to go! oooooh so postdramatic..... but seriously yeah.

-Ben