from word to action

Wednesday Class. Director's Role.

Register. And then we collect email addresses.

As promised, we do Duck Pond. Debra and Eva are daughter and mother. Sam comes in later as Eva's brother. At first there's a little confusion about how old Sam (20 not 7) is but it gets clearer once he understands this. We also have to point out to Sam that his objective is to pacify both Eva and Debra - and not to discipline Debra.

We already have someone doing that job in the scene: Eva. And this is a golden rule: you can't have two people in the same scene doing the same job.One of them inevitably becomes surplus to requirements. It would be like Shakespeare giving Hamlet a sensitive but rather indecisive twin brother who loved his father and had ambivalent feelings towards his mother; a certain Brian, Prince of Denmark.

No. Unnecessary.

We later add Margory as a very officious Park Keeper and I'm delighted to see her point out to Debra's mum that the DUCK POND is a fully permitted area... We love to have PROBLEMS sprung on us and the protagonists on stage. AND WE LOVE TO SEE HOW PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET OUT OF THEM.

At another point Eva takes Debra home. This is not only
a. not fulfilling Eva's objective (to sit in the far corner and enjoy a peaceful sunbathing session as far from the Duck Pond as possible)
b. but also breaks the cardinal rule of acting: STAY ON STAGE.

We rectify this by asking them to come back on, after some words at the park gate.

We then do THE DUMB SHOW. Three groups. Four/five in each group. As usual we have 90, 30 and 15 seconds and all teams fulfil their objective of performing the Dumb Show in the allotted time WITHOUT RUSHING OR MISSING OUT ANY OF THE IMPORTANT ACTIONS.

A little chat about Signifier and Signified. About what was necessary to tell the story.

We have a break for tea and tobacco - and taking the text of 'Home' with us for fifteen minutes to refresh the work we did for our domestic assignment this week.

On our return we split into four groups of three or four, our task being to come to a group consensus about how we would talk about the Home to some actors coming to their first rehearsal later in the day.

Steve eavesdrops - but at a distance. And then comes up with a masterstroke (not employed on the Monday). He notices that there are four groups - so why not one group present themselves to the others (who can now be the actors).

Instructions are issued to this effect and both teams set to. Once again Steve eavesdrops.

It goes very well. A much better solution than on Monday where Steve has to do most of the prodding. And too much of the talking. This way the students do the work. Do all of the talking - and still seem to cover the ground without the inhibition of 'saying the wrong thing' in front of Steve or the whole group.

Steve's first question is this: what are the two most important props. Nearly everyone agrees that it is the book. And a majority think the tea is second. There are also some supporters of the gun.

We then spend some time going into what the book is like. What does it look like? Where did it come from? Who gave it to Muhammad's family? What language is it written in? Who's the better reader, Muhammad or Amila? Someone suggests that it's quite a simple book. A reader maybe. Maybe with not a lot of writing. But with pictures in.

Steve talks a bit about the book. About how actors love props and can sometimes misuse them or overuse them. But in this case, as most of us have already instinctively realised, the book is at the centre of the story. It's around the book that the whole thing circulates. And Steve takes a book, puts it on the floor and shows some of the actions that might surround the book.

Where the second soldier might ask M. to pick it up. Steve tries to demonstrate the reluctance of M. to do so. The fact that he might betray himself. Is he going to appear too familiar with books? The way he might open it when instructed. Or turn the pages. How he might read the words: A Modern Man. Or lie about the Words: A Modern Woman and in fact read: A woman in her own home. Should he have admitted to being able to read at all.

Steve confesses he had a book at home that he considered using as a prop. An old Soviet schoolbook (although we agreed that the book would really be in Farsi or Pashtu or one of the languages of the Afghan region, we thought). Certainly not in English. It is a book produced by the occupiers - however well-meaning - in the language of the local population.

We talk about the tea too. About what the container is like they drink from. Whether there is any significance in the offering of tea apart from that of social custom. Nadia lends some first hand knowledge of tea drinking from her own experiences in Algeria.

This section of the workshop is very focused and engaged. Very pleasing. Because it's about clarity. Getting it clear in your own head as far as is possible. This is the director's job. To have a sense of these things enough to provide some kind of support for the actors.

We talked about the objectives of each of the protagonists. But not too much because the ground already seems to have been covered through the group work. People can already see that Amila's objective is much more proactive than Muhammad's. Someone gave it as: She wants to better herself. That Muhammad's is: to keep things as they are; to maintain the status quo. Steve makes a little speech about this pointing out that he tries to refrain from talking about M's or Amila's 'characters'. That might be to limit them in some way. If we say: 'Amila's character is passionate', we're in danger of burdening the actor we the necessity of being passionate all the time. Whereas we want to give her the freedom to sit and do nothing. To charm. To humour. To obey. To lie. To flirt. To pretend. As well as to humiliate, to scold, to disobey and to crush....

Much today has fallen into place naturally. A very pleasing and productive afternoon's work.

To finish off we do the reading exercise and 'The Whisperers'. Once again, as with the Monday Group, very good work once we've got the hang of things.

Finally, Steve mentions the Brecht video he will be showing in a fortnight. Made by the Open University quite a while back, it still makes some very telling points, including that from an interview with a collaborator and friend of Brecht's where Brecht talked of wanting the staging of his plays to help to tell the story. Almost as if a glass wall could be put between the actors and the audience so that the sound track was lost, but the audience would still be able to understand the story from the pictures.

Which kind of neatly brought us back to the beginning and the Dumb Show. A sequence of Signifiers. Or what Brecht might have called the Gestus...

A deserved round of applause for all participants.

Assignment: Prepare Newsflash in written form for next Wednesday. Also to 'cast' the two characters in the piece from Google Images on the internet. To be handed in first thing next Wednesday.

NB. The four images I've chosen for this post; do any of them carry the flavour of the book that Muhammad tries to throw in the fire?