First of 3 blogs this week is by Sam Sherratt - I would be very surprised if you didn't know who she was but just in case she's long standing member of The Black Company and generally has some sort of input in most of the groups...
Here it goes…my first blog. I have a habit of rambling so I’m not sure if this will work…
“Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time." Pinter
Thursday evening was my first 17+ group in what felt like ages (and weirdly I feel there should be a Saturday morning because there was a Thursday night – it’s weird how my mind works) and it was a session on Physical Theatre in preparation for the York festival.
I love physical theatre, I don’t know what the first piece I saw was, but I think it partly comes from a love of dance because physical theatre incorporates the both dance and drama so magically.
Physical theatre to me is really powerful. Understanding what someone is communicating to you is always highly interpreted through body language, your posture, and eye contact and all the other subtle movements we make without even realising it. The actual words someone says to you aren’t the main focus of what you take in. Physical Theatre draws on that fact and exploits it.
Using a devising method I believe is from Frantic Assembly (http://www.franticassembly.co.uk ) they are amazing and I have been lucky enough to do workshops with them-worth seeing if you ever can. We were set in pairs the task of “Round. Through. By.” To go round through and by your partner in any which way you wanted to construe that statement. I’m going to stop saying “the thing I love” because I love so much of physical theatre, just know that it is implicit within this entire blog.
With physical theatre you have the chance to play and create theatre so very easily, words are a complicated matter, and to try and devise something entirely with words in a short space of time can be a complicated task and I personally don’t have much self confidence in that, but with physical theatre, you can try an idea, see that it might look really amazing and then your next idea might be utterly rubbish but you can find ways of changing it and adapting it to make it work or dismiss it altogether and try something else. Our bodies are capable of so many things, and pushing yourself and finding out what you can say with even just your eyes is astonishing.
When rehearsing a piece normally, an actor moves as she or he feels fit at that moment in time, and the movement is mainly secondary to the use of words. One of the reasons I enjoy devising physical theatre so much is that the words become less important, or don’t exist in the first place, and your movement inspires stories and characters and feelings and emotions you didn’t think possible at the start of the exercise because you begin so focused upon, “Well, if I put my hand there, and then move my foot like that and then you can do this and turn your head that way” which then turns into the silence in your head and just listening to your body and responding without thinking about it.
I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this. And I feel I should stop before I ramble even more like I’m doing now. I shall end on the note that physical theatre isn’t to be dismissed.
You’ll be amazed at what can be perceived in the movement of a toe.
(for some amazing dance pieces see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk5_hwHIxEk and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZhsjgBIQNA )
Here it goes…my first blog. I have a habit of rambling so I’m not sure if this will work…
“Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time." Pinter
Thursday evening was my first 17+ group in what felt like ages (and weirdly I feel there should be a Saturday morning because there was a Thursday night – it’s weird how my mind works) and it was a session on Physical Theatre in preparation for the York festival.
I love physical theatre, I don’t know what the first piece I saw was, but I think it partly comes from a love of dance because physical theatre incorporates the both dance and drama so magically.
Physical theatre to me is really powerful. Understanding what someone is communicating to you is always highly interpreted through body language, your posture, and eye contact and all the other subtle movements we make without even realising it. The actual words someone says to you aren’t the main focus of what you take in. Physical Theatre draws on that fact and exploits it.
Using a devising method I believe is from Frantic Assembly (http://www.franticassembly.co.uk ) they are amazing and I have been lucky enough to do workshops with them-worth seeing if you ever can. We were set in pairs the task of “Round. Through. By.” To go round through and by your partner in any which way you wanted to construe that statement. I’m going to stop saying “the thing I love” because I love so much of physical theatre, just know that it is implicit within this entire blog.
With physical theatre you have the chance to play and create theatre so very easily, words are a complicated matter, and to try and devise something entirely with words in a short space of time can be a complicated task and I personally don’t have much self confidence in that, but with physical theatre, you can try an idea, see that it might look really amazing and then your next idea might be utterly rubbish but you can find ways of changing it and adapting it to make it work or dismiss it altogether and try something else. Our bodies are capable of so many things, and pushing yourself and finding out what you can say with even just your eyes is astonishing.
When rehearsing a piece normally, an actor moves as she or he feels fit at that moment in time, and the movement is mainly secondary to the use of words. One of the reasons I enjoy devising physical theatre so much is that the words become less important, or don’t exist in the first place, and your movement inspires stories and characters and feelings and emotions you didn’t think possible at the start of the exercise because you begin so focused upon, “Well, if I put my hand there, and then move my foot like that and then you can do this and turn your head that way” which then turns into the silence in your head and just listening to your body and responding without thinking about it.
I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this. And I feel I should stop before I ramble even more like I’m doing now. I shall end on the note that physical theatre isn’t to be dismissed.
You’ll be amazed at what can be perceived in the movement of a toe.
(for some amazing dance pieces see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk5_hwHIxEk and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZhsjgBIQNA )
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