In the first video, those shots are vodka, getting progressively stronger...
My second case study is Sound&fury’s ‘Going Dark’, recently performed at the
Science Museum, London. The play is a one man show, telling the story of an astronomer who, going blind, tries to retain control over his life and closeness to his son, a toddler. The play was staged in a room in the science museum which had been curtained off with blackout curtains, so that the only light provided for the play was lighting onstage. The area was very small as well, creating a very intimate space. Like ‘Curious Incident’, ‘Going Dark’ gripped me with its staging. It was not just the intimacy of the staging, but the focused intimacy created by having smaller but very specific lighting. For example, the play begins with the father shaving whilst talking to his young son, who we only hear and is never onstage. The father is shaving in front of a mirror, which is lit from below, and so our attention is drawn completely to the figure of father and mirror, with no distractions. It had the same effect of focus as a spotlight, but a calmer, more intimate feel. I am currently unsure as whether or not to use lighting from props onstage or not, but this focus of light is definitely something I want to use. Especially after seeing the way it can streamline a stage, making something very small and close feel like it fills up a whole new space of its own. The other aspect of ‘Going Dark’ which I found most effective was the scripting. The script was very well written, firstly in that it didn’t feel like a one man play, it felt as if we were watching a whole story unfold, rather than just the story of one man. Secondly is transitioned nicely between domestic scenes, to the father lecturing on astronomy, while his sight declined and the story slowly became more and more tragic, and it did all of this without feeling for a moment forced or clunky. And thirdly, the scripting created lines and discussions wherein the things left unsaid became the most prominent and moving. For example, the child tells the father that he is scared the father will forget him when he can’t see him anymore. The father replies that he will always know what the boy looks like. I discussed this with others from the audience afterwards, and we had all had the same thought occur to us at this moment- that this was a lie- because his father would not see him change as he grew. This was particularly powerful because it went unsaid, and I hope to create a piece of work that can leave an audience thinking about an issue, or idea, without having to be overly obvious about it. My first case study is the ‘Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time’, an
adaptation from the novel by Mark Haddon to the west end play by Simon Stevens. The story revolves around a young autistic boy trying to solve the mystery of his neighbour’s dog’s death, and unearthing a series of tall tales and family secrets along the way, all whilst trying to take his a levels a few years ahead of schedule. The staging of the play turned a typical proscenium arch stage, in a standard nineteenth century west end theatre, into a giant cube, missing only the top and the side facing the audience. The cast was small, only eight people, and the whole play was staged with a minimalist elegance. By this I mean that everything that was shown on stage was all that was essential to that moment, from props easily stored in draws and boxes in the walls, to boxes being taken from the walls to form pieces of set in scenes. This is something that really appeals to me for use in my own piece; I want to steal this minimalist approach to create a piece of theatre which is, if not minimalist, then essentialist in design and approach, and what frills are given to the piece (in terms of staging and props) are especially effective for this. This very ordered and structured stage (even the walls and floors were covered in a grid pattern, which helped hide doors and pieces of set) helped make the moments of chaos in the mind of Christopher (the autistic main character) more effective. One of the main techniques employed here was sound. For example, there is a moment when a police officer grabs Christopher, and Christopher panics and strikes out. While Christopher is panicking, a loud, high pitched shriek of white noise assaults the entire theatre. Sat in my seat in the front row I couldn’t help but wince. This technique worked really well as a tool to place the audience in Christopher’s mind set, expressing his discomfort through a different medium, but also making the audience feel equally uncomfortable. This audio manipulation not only fits well with the verbal themes I am working with, but is also a way in which I plan to express some of the more uncomfortable moments in my performance, in which the character is manipulated and oppressed by audio. I hope to find my own collection fo uncomfortable sounds, the sort that cause an almost physical reaction (for example, nails down a chalkboard) to allow both for a very human and impulsive reaction both onstage and in the audience. The movement in ‘Curious Incident’ also intrigued me. For the most part the characters onstage were played naturalistically, excepting the odd breakage in the fourth wall. However, in certain scenes, for example, when Christopher is overwhelmed in the train station, the characters of bustling people around him move in perfectly choreographed caricatures of business people between trains. The contrast created when Christopher is suddenly the most human seeming person onstage is striking, and more importantly, this transition into choreographed movement demonstrated performance of character, without ‘acting’ in the naturalistic sense of the word, which I want to steer away from. This movement has given me particular inspiration in the want to create a character and story through movement which is more representational of characteristics rather than pretending to be a person with those characteristics and responses. One of the things I'm interested in, both in personal and artistic life, has always been storytelling. Here is a piece trying to emulate a folk/fairy tale feel to it. this is the kind of writing/storytelling I could consider putting into my piece.
Our tale starts at the witching hour, as so many do. The witching hour in a shed of a house, creaking timbers and coal streaked walls surrounding the panting woman on the straw mattress, as she struggled to rid herself of the tiny squalling parasite in her belly. This was the third child she had birthed, two brothers before, each in their time, would grow up to be as plain and insignificant as the rest of the family. The midwife, the local herb grower and medicine knower, gripped the woman’s hand, this was far beyond the third child she had helped birth, and many many before the last. Screams rent the air, and the only thing, the woman tells later, the only thing on her mind, beyond the pain, was a wish that this child be exceptional, this child be her ticket out from her squalid boring little life. She doesn’t phrase it quite like that, of course. But close. And somebody, it seems, was listening to the prayers of a pregnant woman on a muddy night in march those many years ago, and that somebody answered. An exceptional wish granted to an unexceptional woman. And so the girl came into this world, a screaming writhing red ball, gasping for air in this new place. And she was washed, wrapped, held, and left to sleep in the midwife’s arms. The mother slept alone. The cold quiet of a calm village went on. what happens when we take a piece of text, say for example, the lyrics to a popular romantic ballad by the name of 'Grenade' by Bruno Mars, and read it dramatically, as one would a poem or piece of prose...
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