Monday 23 March 2015

Tuesday 17th February 2015

Theatre of cruelty (what it is )

Theatre of cruelty was created by Aratud. theatre should represent reality and that it should have an effect over the audience. Artaud created Theatre of cruelty because he was very interested in having
Describe your piece and how it links to Artaud theatre of cruelty in Eastern theatre. He really admired the Balinese dance and performance which is partly why Artaud created theatre of cruelty. He wanted to passion and a convulsive conception of life restored back to theatre.

He included violence and rigour and also extreme conducted because he wanted the audience to be aware of what they were watching. Artaud included things such exaggerating the lighting , making the audience feel uncomfortable and also exaggerating sound which created disturbance. Aratud had his own interpretation of cruelty.

He thought of it as a way to shatter false reality. He believed that text had been an oppressive ruler advocated. Artaud referred theatre as being a vortex. This because he wanted the audience to feel like they were in a different world as soon as they step into the theatre making them feel trapped and powerless.

We began the lesson by getting into groups of four. We had to come up with our own type of theatre of cruelty using Artaud's techniques. My group included Nadine Matthew and Eleanor. Last week in the these groups we discussed different types of nightmares that we've had. We noticed that in each one of our nightmares the similarities were that we all had the colour black present in each of our nightmares. We realised that the colour black can bring all types of feelings and moods towards a person. For example making them feel confused and also making them feel like nothing is there and everything is empty and that they are all alone.

We decided to use this by closing the windows and rolling the blinds making the room dark as possible. Adding on to this we decide to have background music. We realised that creating a very deep suspense can also make someone feel scared and confused because they are left not knowing what's going to happen next. We didn't have any costume but we all had black bomber jackets and we used white po-stick notes to cover our mouths .

 We did this because we wanted hide our identity as possible and we wanted  the people in our class to think that we were totally different people.
Before we could begin this we started off by sending everyone outside. This is was also linked to my group and I building a very deep suspense because my classmates were very confused because they didn't know what was going on. We tried to hide ourselves as much as we could.

 Eleanor crouched behind the door so that nobody could see her when she opened it. As my classmates came in the door creaked open and the background music was playing. They came in very slowly which was great for my group and because it showed that we really had an effect over them.


After they all came in Eleanor slammed the door which signified that they were all trapped and there was no way out. We jumped, grabbed,pushed,pulled,and even and made different types of sounds that made them feel uncomfortable. I'd my weakness was trying to make sounds whilst having the po-stick note stuck on my mouth because it was really hard to get the sound out.

As we continued our piece we then pushed everyone one to the middle making sure they were in a tight circle. We ran around them twice and as we did this I could hear the reactions from my classmates and I could tell that they were really scared by mumbling to themselves that they did not want to be there any-more. After running around a couple of times we then stopped and stared directly into their eyes and did this for thirty seconds.

At this point in time there was nothing but silence. This linked to the fact that silence can also be apart of a nightmare and also make someone feel scared by them being confused of what will happen next. We then ripped off the po-stick notes from our mouths and then screamed loudly in unison. This really effected our classmates because the scream was used as a shock making them aware of what was happening around them Also made them scared and some of them felt really out of their comfort zone.
     

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Tuesday 3rd February 2015


We were introduced to a theatre director called Artaud. Antonine Artaud was a French theatre director play write poet and essayist. He was born in Marselie France. Both his parents were natives of Smyrna  modern Izmir and he was affected by his Greek ancestry. 

His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and one sister survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis , which gave him a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. Artaud was in the French army in 1916 . 

But unfortunately he was dis-chard illegally due to excessive sleep walking. Artaud then move back to Paris to become a writer. He worked and performed with other theatre directors and continued writing poems and essays. As the years passed on Artaud began to run theatre's and directing as well as writing. 

Artaud formed his theatre techniques and link them with his own interpretation of theatre. Artaud believe in the universal language which is language that everyone understood. he also believed in making the audience uncomfortable because he wanted them to be aware of what is happening.

Artaud believed in having the audience exhausted and also the actors and actresses. Artaud has various techniques that shocks the audience and also having very harsh and dramatic effect is apart of Artaud techniques. He also had repairing gestures and aggressive behaviour which also linked with how he interprets theatre. 

So for the first task we were asked stand spread out in the space. We were given instructions by our teacher to follow exactly what she was saying. At first she asked to reach for sky for the sky. After this we were then asked to use levels and speed. After this exercise I was extremely exhausted and really tired. I realised that this exercise is linked to one of Artaud techniques which was that he wanted to make both the actors and the audience feel exhausted.

We then advanced to the next task. We had to move around the space and what ever instruction we were given we had to follow it. For example when the teacher said the number one we had to jump up and touch the sky and if she said number two we had to roll on the floor. This again made me feel the same way as I did in the first task the only difference was is that the second task was more energetic than the first one.

Task 3 After the second task we proceeded onto the next task which we had to include the use of universal language. My classmates and I discovered that universal language is used so that everyone in the audience can understand it. For example you do not have to use words but instead you could use techniques such as hand gestures, facial expressions , breathing, and many more other techniques.

 For this task we had to use breathing to create and emotion. We were divided into two groups. My group and did anger. We conveyed anger by breathing heavily as if we've just been in a massive fight. At first we did this in unison and then half way through we did it at different times. 

My classmates and I also learnt that Artaud liked the audience to feel uncomfortable. For the next task we were asked to walk around the space. An emotion would be said and we had to interact with other people to convey this emotion. For example when Emma said the word lust Pakize jump onto me and had her legs wrapped around me and I had one of my hands on her leg and one on her bottom. Our facial expressions were quite lustrous as we stared directly into each others eyes which I believed really exaggerated the word lust.

As we continued to learn about Artaud and his techniques we realised that in order for Artaud to be successful having both the audience and the actors exhausted , things really needed to be exaggerated. For the next task we had to get into a line . Emma gave us an emotion and the person who was at the start of the line had to start off this emotion and the emotion that was given has to be exaggerated as we went along. One strengths for this exercise would have when we did anger.

This is because different types of facial expressions were and levels and also hand gestures were used to express anger. I conveyed anger by keeping still and having my face in a very straight way. One of my weaknesses was when we did happy or exciting. This is because people in my class used obvious facial expressions and movement and it was very hard to try and find something different to do but what I was thinking of had already been used  go along .

We then had to separate into two groups and do the same exercise. I found that this was quite easier as there were less people and it was easier to come up with and idea of how you could exaggerate and emotion