from word to action

Space II

Second Group. Second Session. Wednesday 19th Oct.

Urgh. Greater Love Hath No Man. On Wednesday night, after three hours of detailed recall, while attempting to upload some images on this post, I hit the wrong button - and lose the whole lot. A second attempt at writing this, then:

As before we do the Installation exercise. But in a different room. A different group of people. And it’s another day. Nothing is ever the same.

This time, students christcross the room looking at doors that are barred with yellow police tape stuck on with luminous gaffer. Students notice the five doors that the room possesses. Targets on Blackboards. The lighting. Everything fresh and surprising.

We then repair to the entrance end facing the barred double doors with the police tape and just look at it in silence for a minute or two.

Students see strange things. A human face. A dog’s face. An emergency lighting box with two red buttons which become a robot high up on the wall watching us.

In pairs now we have to a. think of a place to put the chair and b. think of the play that that might be the first image of. Streetcar Named Desire is one I remember.

The first student to be chaired is Mameyaa. Very close to the ‘audience’ but looking down. The second is Arlene in mid-distance reading a newspaper with her legs stretched out.

Steve’s first question is: ‘Do we see the space when the actor is near the audience or further back?’ We move Arlene around more and more. Central, back, side-on near the wall looking at us, and away from us….

Finally we get a very disturbing and interesting image by putting her with her back to us about mid-distance, looking at a spot on the back wall.



Once again, as with Monday’s Group we look at two bodies in the black box space. First off, Sam and Danai. Two men; David Bowers and Francisco. Two women, Eva and Jade. On each occasion, we’re trying to work out who looks the stronger. Who seems in control. Who’s moving first. What does any of this do to the space. And the story. What do we ‘read’? What does it ‘mean’?

Steve does a bit of a monologue at this point. About this ‘reading’ and about semiotics. A word he’s only mentioned semi-ironically with the Monday Group. (Memo: Do the monologue, first off, or something like, with the Monday Group next Monday!) He’d been talking to Anna Garafelaki just before the class and doing a bit of research the evening before - and after a bit of mispronunciation we agree that the Greek word for a ‘sign’ or a ‘signal’ is Sema (pronounced: seema). And the ‘-iotic’ bit refer to an observer, or even a person who is passionate about, signs.

Steve then suggests that we are already familiar with stage signs. He does the one for ‘listening’ by cupping his hands over his ear. With a slightly different physicality it can ‘mean’ “I’m deaf; can’t hear you”. With another it may be: ‘Your voice is weak; speak up’. There’s a similar one for ‘looking’ by putting the same hand over the eyes, like a sailor might do in a crow’s nest just before he calls ‘Land Ahoy’.

So. There is a sign. And there is what it means (and how we read it). And Steve suggests this is a starting paradigm or model for us. And that theatre is also a sequence or tapestry or series of signs and that in a scientific spirit people came along - not dissimilar to Stanislavsky, Marx, Freud and Darwin in their fields - who wanted try and describe in some way what was really ‘going on’ in theatrical performance.

Break.


After which we do the table work on ‘Count’, asking lots of questions and not arriving at too fixed answers, and come to a good understanding. But we advance a bit more than the Monday Group and actually venture as far as putting the scene on its feet. Twice.

On the first occasion, we choose a version in which the team has decided that the elder and the stranger are looking at photographs. This is indoors. Perhaps in a Government office or a police office. Fine. However, the first efforts don’t make use of the space to tell the story as much as they could. The director’s hand is needed!

Steve gives a few suggestions about use of space. Or of body language. Perhaps The Foreigner could start with his photos, standing almost in the audience, as far away from The Elder as possible. That even when he says: ‘Who is this, Elder?’ and shows the picture, he doesn’t move towards the Elder straight away. In other words this Foreigner controls the space. And controls the Elder.

The second team does an outdoor version. This time with bodies. And we have as many bodies as the script requires. Nadia as the Elder and David as the Foreigner. They are asked not so much to ‘act’ the lines as to say them clearly.

The first time they attempt it, the ‘bodies’ are scattered higgledy-piggledy
on the floor in the space, David comes on first leading Nadia and pointing to each body in turn they go round. We make some suggestions.

For example, that each ‘body’ is covered so that the faces are hidden. Also that the bodies are put out in a line. Also that when the play starts that Nadia is already in the space with the bodies and that David is not to come on for perhaps twenty seconds….

All these ‘choices’ have effects. Nadia being alone with the ‘bodies’ allows us to focus on her and them before anything happens. We see her. We wonder what she is thinking as she just stands there; what her relationship is to them before we have to think of the Elder’s relationship to the Foreigner.

Covering the bodies has the effect of slowing the whole process down. There are now further actions. In our case, Nadia bending down as she has to identify each one and looking underneath the ‘shroud’. She does it well and we see her ‘respect’ for each of the people that she’s having to look at. I believe we pay more attention to who she’s identifying.

There may also be a sense of her ‘controlling’ her own space more. Investing it with more dignity.

We even provide a ‘foot’ for her to try to identify.

The work is good and there will be a lot to take forward to next week when both groups are to looking at the way that Stanislavsky might fit into this tapestry.