Can non-meaningful movement create meaning?

In this weeks lesson we began to question wether theatre needs a message and a strong meaning in order to evoke an emotional, meaningful response. We also began to look at the ways in which the audience can create their own individual interpretation of whats happening on stage and wether or not this is better way of creating meaning as suppose to the piece forcing its message upon it audience.

The name box exercise helped me to understand how a simple movement or action that my be blank in its meaning can still have an emotive effect on the audience, because as each group performed many peoples feedback was that they began to see a story or character emerging out of the simple exercise we were doing, even though those actors had no intention of creating that.

I believe this exercise was to challenge our perception of meaning and story telling and also to show us how movement can be just as telling and revealing as text.

This made me question whether perhaps we are shutting off a whole world of creative thinking for the audience when we as actors choose our message and objective. I began to question myself why not allow the audience to think, observe and interpret what they are seeing or who's job is it to create meaning is it the audience or the actors.

In addition to this i also learnt about layering movements and how adding different filters like moving through honey or water can visually make your movements interesting and create a meaning for the audience. For example through the sequence i didn't feel entirely connected to a story or any objective however the movement in which i was moving through honey made me feel like i was struggling and trying to get to something therefore i learnt that putting your movements under different circumstances automatically allows you to make connections and objectives without self constructing it. I believe this is more powerful then choosing an objective and working from that, i think your objective should come from a need or instinct that then justifies you movements rather than painting a meaning over a movement.

I think this devising technique is a exiting way to allow both the actors and audience to find their stories and meanings in their own time, so the actors may start with a blank canvas and as the movements progress and repeats they begin to find their story through the movement instead of the heads.

Music was also a factor in the pieces and it was interesting to see how the music changed the atmosphere and pace of peoples individual work. For example when the fast paced drum&bass music was playing i felt a heaviness and darkness to the pieces, like they were trapped and confined. However in the piece i performed in i saw a sensitivity and need or want for love. Music changed the audiences perception on the movement and stories were often related the music instead of the movements - if you changed the music you could find new stories without a problem. I think its interesting how when the music stopped it began to look like people just moving around in the space.