Questions of the cabinet

Today we worked as a large ensemble, as their is large number of us i feel that we all learnt how key it is to be focused and tuned into the energy of the room, doing this allowed everyone to be responsive to one another. For example when we first started working as a group answering questions things began to get heck tick, people were not looking out for each other and people's focus began to run off, this made it near impossible for everyone to work together and create a piece which was responsive but also visually looked good, so when we picked one person to respond to the questions and everyone else responded to that it became a lot clearer and more instinctual as that person was put on the spot.

However although at first it was sometimes chaotic and uncomfortable i actually really enjoyed the danger, the fact that you didn't know what was going to happen next, how far people were going to take it or how aggressive someone may be with you. The fear made me work harder to find the question and for me made it more exiting. I personally feel like we need to keep a dose of this in the real piece, the idea that you are slightly on edge because someones respond may be unexpected all we need to do is make sure we are ready as an ensemble to react to the energy in a calmer way.

It was important to make yourself open to exploring and discovering partially when answering the questions, being able to view everyone as a blank canvas instead of the people you know helped me to reveal a truthful answer to the questions. What i found most interesting and amazing to see was that everyone had their own interpretation of the question so you weren't copying the answers movements but responding to the energy they were giving out, this helped me answer my own questions and made me think about what the question meant to me. Breathing was also key as it aloud us to work with our instincts and continue working at manageable pace.

What really makes the whole piece work is when everyone is entirely focused on the person who is answering the question. As an ensemble you cant be selfish you have to accept that instead of one person taking the light you are all equal and working together to create something beautiful. I think when everyone realised this, stopped being selfish and allowed everyone to work communally thats when the piece worked. I can say this for myself because at the beginning i was answering the question in the way i thought would look good or make me look interesting but then i learnt that it wasn't about that, it was about sharing the moment with everyone and just being truthful, not answering with your head or caring about what anyone else thought.

The lovers

We have been creating work based around the piece of art by Rene Magritte's called The lovers.

In a group discussion we talked about what this piece meant to us and the reasoning behind Magritte's choice to cover the faces of "the lovers." I believed that the muslin could be a metaphor for the suffocation of their relationship. Others thought it could be a visual barrier showing that their is something in the way or hindering their relationship.


It was interesting to see how everyone interpreted the piece in a different way and took what the believed they were seeing. I was intrigued to know that the artist had no reasoning for the covered faces and stated that the painting meant nothing. I have learnt that you can use non meaningful stimulus to create meaning. Not always do we need to set out a purpose and a message to our audience but instead let the audience take away individual meanings. However one thing i would ask is, is it really possible to create art that is non meaningful. I ask this question because personally i feel as actors and story tellers we are accustom to finding characters that we can latch onto and giving the audience a journey they can follow. So although we may say it means nothing i believe that overtime the more you work the piece the more you will begin to discover and the art you are creating will become more meaningful.  

Something that has exited me during this process is the concept of automatism (Automatism - The process of writing or creating art without conscious thought.) I have found a vast amount of creative freedom from allowing myself to create work from a natural, instinctual place and not letting the constrictions of my head get in the way. For example sometimes when we can be self concious or afraid of making mistakes and this stops us from creating work that is challenging and different, so using automatism is defiantly a skill i have learnt that will continue to use in he future.

"The Surrealists borrowed many of the same techniques to stimulate their writing and art, with the belief that the creativity that came from deep within a person’s subconscious could be more powerful and authentic than any product of conscious thought."

I would agree with this statement that using automatism allows a persons creativity to come from within the subconscious mind as supposed to the concious mind which comes with restrictions, the work i have created through the subconscious has been better and more powerful in my opinion then concious work therefore i definitely understand why the surrealists were empowered by this method of devising.

I like how the muslin takes away our identities and makes us blank canvas's. It also creates other meanings for the audience like control, being a number, ,hiding yourself etc. 

Costume Ideas

I drew out the costume ideas to help me visually plan and see how the costume are going to look. Drawing helps me to mind map ideas in a creative and more interesting way.

I have insured that all the real colours of the costumes will be colours that match the piece of artwork we are using as stimulus. We are doing this because as a group we wanted to do the artwork justice by using as many key features as we could, like the melting and colliding of objects, the colours and the autumnal theme.

Materials and colour scheme ideas

Rehearsal work feedback

Fellow peers

1.)  Puppet doll piece

The first group showed us a peice worked from a sculpture they had seen at the TATE of a women. They were showing how the male actor was ruling over them by manipulating the women using strings. This to me seemed like a modern interpretation of the piece of art- male dominance. The sculpture was made in the 1900's so they have decided to play on the idea of women being objectified and having a lack of freedom in society at the time.

The artists rational was to show a women entrapment with subtle sinister undertones. 

I would suggest that from this information that they create a piece that is subtle with the discrimination as this is what the artist wanted to do. Or another thing which i believe would enhance their performance would be to play with levels, for example having the male actor raised above the females with the females kneeled or sat down would further magnify the power of the male and powerlessness of the female. In addition i would suggest looking at the sculpture itself and its texture, materials etc to add into the piece.

2.) Support Physical piece

This group used a raised square like shape sculpture made from rocks and thread. This group physically interpreted their sculpture by pressing weight, lifting and climbing on one another, this was effective because in the sculpture you didn't quite understand how the piece was staying up or which rock was holding the other but it fitted together perfectly. Because the sculpture fundamentally relied on the specific placement of the rocks in order for it stay standing, i think Sky and George could be really specific, light and gentle with their movements, almost like if they are to heavy footed then the rocks will fall.

In addition to this i also made the suggestion of audibly representing the sculpture, so using the rocks as a symbol of purity and nature that could then be used as nature sounds.

Our piece

We mainly had positive feedback from the class which indicate that we were successful in our devising process. Some of the feedback consisted of:

• The use of a very blank and distant expression was successful and powerful as it showed a detached and un human like state, just like how we as a group view canabalism and the idea that another person could be willing to eat another human being.
• The three main focus point for the three of us made a good un-natrualist eery atmosphere which set the tone of the piece from the outset.
• The three different levels we used allowed us to make full use of the table and the space and showed a journey, starting from a raised level and being sat down to being on the ground.

From this feedback we have discussed pushing these three main strong points of our piece even further, so always referring back to the focal points, using a clear range in levels and further create a blank and vacant face. 

Staging Ideas

Making movement from living material

In today's lesson I learnt how their is so much more potential in objects and materials then i thought, today's lesson has opened my eyes to what can ignite a piece of theatre and how we can use unexpected stimulus in a new way.

For example the plastic bag exercise. We dropped then observed the plastic bag's movements we then responded physically to what they were seeing and instead of in just bodying and "becoming" a plastic bag we as actors simply interrupted the living movement of the item or the texture and look in an honest way, i like how almost were not dehumanising the object but making it come to life. As well as this i found it interesting to think about how the observer would view our movement, what they believe the meaning is as we didn't have any set oblgation to convoy a message, we were just showing a movement piece therefor i have also learnt how to devise from a stimulus without meaning and create something powerful and effective. I have learnt that i prefer devising in this way and therefor i can carry on using this technique when creating work.

Harry made a nice comment today saying that he has learnt how to have a "careful eye" and my personal response is that i agree. I think when you look at the un- noticed parts of you're surroundings you begin to learn and discover new things, i think its so important that young people stay perceptive and in tune with whats going on around them, their relationships and their relationship with world. Not only do young people need this but I think being perceptive is something every actor needs to have and so practising this today was nice way to engage everyone into thinking and creating work with a careful eye. 

Salvador Dalí Research

Dali was a prominent spanish surrealist artist born in spain 1904. He was best known for his bizarre and often confusing dreamlike paintings. Dalí's expansive artistic portfolio included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and extravagant behaviour. His manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention to him rather than his artwork, to the dismay those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritate his critics.

When he was five, Dalí was taken to his brother's grave and told by his parents that he was his brother's reincarnation, a concept that he came to believe. Images of his long-dead brother would reappear embedded in his later works, including Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963)

Dali's father strongly disapproved of his son's romance with his inspiration and wife Gala. He saw his connection to the Surrealists as a bad influence on his morals. The final straw was when Salvador Dali exhibited his work Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ in paris with a provocative inscription: "Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait."

(information sourced and then edited by me from Wikipedia)

The quote written in his painting stating that he spits on his mothers portrait for fun and the fact he was brash and bold in personality shocked me and made me think about how Dali didn't have many reservations when it came to art. He liked to challenge and push boundaries, in a un-sensitive way. Understanding that Dali was like this in real life has made me want to make our piece of theatre vulgar and more disturbing as if he was their watching or intact creating a piece of theatre himself I'm sure he would want it to be challenging and weird.I believe that we have a responsibility to Dali as an artist NOT to play it safe. 

Galatea of the spheres 1952

Piece ideas

In this weeks lesson our group looked at our 5 chosen pieces of art and narrowed it down to three. We choose to focus mainly on 1.) 'The autobiography of an embryo by Eileen Agar, 2.) Autumnal cannibalism by Salvador Dali and 3.) Otaiti by Francis Picabia. We picked these three because as a group we felt most drawn to the journey and layering of the pieces. For example in each of the artworks we noticed that images and objects were layered on top of each other, in particularly art numbered 1 and 2. We liked how in each image the more you looked the more began to reveal its self. 

We partially like how in Dali's Autumnal Cannibalism you couldn't work out what was happening in the picture. I had to stare at the image for at least 5 minutes to work out what i was seeing, i suggested that the picture was almost like a ball of contorted confusion and that we could use this same feeling in our piece- the feeling that you don't quite understand whats going or why were dressed in a certain way but then the longer you watch the more reveals. We then decided to use Autumnal Cannibalism as our stimulus as we all agreed we could get the most out of it. 

In addition to this we also chose one of Dali's artworks because we knew Dali was known for his surrealist art and eccentric personality and we thought it would be interesting for us to look it his background and bring one of his pieces to life.

1.)

2.)                                                                                                          3.)

We then  went on to discuss how we can use the colours in the piece and the title "autumnal" to visually create the look of the art. The mains colours were brown, dark green, musty yellow and black so we thought about using paint and costume to create these colours because we feel we want the piece to look like its coming alive.

In addition to this we discussed how the most poignant part of this piece of art is that the characters, the items and the objects are all melting and colliding together therefor we want to create this sense of melting and colliding within our body's. This lead us to talk about creating a physical section to our piece winding and weaving in and around each other.

We then starting mind mapping thoughts and ideas and issued job roles. I was in charge of soundscape and prop sourcing, Daniel was in charge of pre planning piece ideas and physical movements and Ursula was in charge of costume and makeup design. We were then all in charge of co directing the whole piece with ideas, staging etc.

Using pictures as stimulus

In this weeks lesson I have learnt how to use a number of different images of peices of art to create a peice of theatre. 

This week it was really Interesting to see when creating stories from 5 different images people would often latch onto creating a character and their story in which people had to follow. Most people also created a character that existed outside the pictures themselves. I have learnt that this in a conventual way of story telling to in experimental theatre we can challenge the conventional and create theatre with no characters or perhaps a peice which Is based on an object or place instead. 

In addition I have discovered that using art as a form of stimulus can create really interesting, dynamic theatre as you have multiple layers of meaning and opinions.

For example when you use a peice of art as stimulus you have:

The artists view: What they wanted the peice to say, their interpretation of the topic/event they are painting and what they wanted the observer to see.

The observers view: What the observer takes from the piece, what they see and what they believe is the meaning. 

This in itself creates an interesting dynamic because you can merge a multitude of ideas together to create a peice of theatre.

Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud was a french theatre director, playwright and actor. Born in 1898. Artaud was an authentic revolutionary voice in post war theatre and europian theatre. His theatre work and art was a manifesto for how he believed theatre should be and was different to the conventional theatre at the time. His work was extremely abstract and this challenge people , he began to change peoples perception of theatre could be. 
As a child he was very sick a lot of the time for example at the age of 4 he had a bad spell of meningitis, this lead on to a long history of disorders and mental illness. He spent a lot of time in mental asylums.

“I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.”      
Antonin Artaud 

From this quote you can see that Artaud was quite a disturbed and dark person and this was almost always implemented in his work. However he often described the madmen to be the hidden genius's and i would agree with his comment. Although some would perceive him as mad, i would perceive him as highly intelligent and creative - a genus in his own right.