Session 4

Tuesday 27^th January

Small Group Devising

Develop pieces and start to rehearse them.

Scratch Performance

Every group shares their work with the rest of the group who give feedback and suggestions.

What will you do next?

What useful advice/suggestions were made?

What costume, props do you need to gather/find?

What are you trying to communicate?

WHOLE GROUP PIECE

Creation inspired by Rene Magritte’s – The Lovers

Using ideas and philosophies of the Surrealists

“Automatism - The process of writing or creating art without conscious thought. The term was borrowed from physiology, which uses the term to denote involuntary processes that are not under conscious control, such as breathing. The Surrealists later applied to techniques of spontaneous writing, drawing, and painting.”

http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/surrealism/tapping-the-subconscious-automatism-and-dreams

“Assemblage - a three-dimensional composition made from a variety of traditionally non-artistic materials and objects.”

http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/surrealism/surrealist-objects-and-assemblage

The Lovers René Magritte

(Belgian, 1898–1967)

“My painting is visible images which conceal nothing,” he wrote, “they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does it mean?’ It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.”

http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/rene-magritte-the-lovers-le-perreux-sur-marne-1928

CREATIVE EXERCISES

Finding "elemental movement"

Embody as ice, water, molten lava, wood, metal

Move/travel as these - ice, water, molten lava, wood, metal transitioning from one to the other.

Responding to objects that can move

Watching a plastic bag screwed up and unravelling 

In small groups respond and recreate the movement physically without talking discussing.

Ensemble

Flocking/shoaling - moving as an ensemble

Build the ensemble - "Yes Lets"

Develop the ensemble moving, speaking, travelling as a group

Playing with the head covers...

Session 3

Tuesday 20^th January

Small group devising

In groups review and discuss each group members artwork choices.

Select the work of art that will be your stimulus, that you believe has the most potential to inspire your own piece of live art.

Get all of your creative ideas on paper mind-mapping, brainstorming.

Ensure you record the development of ideas and the creative process.

Session 2

Tuesday 13^th January

Slow Motion Images

Whole group forms the shapes within a 5 or 10 second time limit (slow motion focuses their movement and their eventual freeze). This is a non-verbal exercise.

Warm up – A mountain

Images evolve from one to the other as guided by the teacher with music playing. The changes are given a specified context

Image 1 Cathedral - bombed

Image 2 Bridge – flooded/washed away

Image 3 Merry go round – fire/burns

Image 4 Ice Skating – ice cracks/drowns

Image 5 Children in playground…

Following the final image ‘Children in playground’ – students are asked what happens next?  Think do not speak-commit that image in as much detail as possible to your memory.

Discuss the images, what people imagined and why.

We can be reluctant to admit negative ideas for fear of what others will think of us.  If we are capable of thinking such things then it follows that hypothetically we are capable of doing them and in extreme circumstances we may commit extreme acts that break society’s rules.  Artaud explored these ideas in his book The Theatre and its Double – he draws our attention to the behaviour of people during times of plague.  In extreme situations, human beings are forced into sometimes brutally honest responses in order to survive.

“Life has in it a lot of ugliness and evil, which are both natural and man-made. Instead of shielding spectators from their impact, he would expose them, put them through the experience of a danger, then free them from it.”

Albert Bermel, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty (London: Bloomsbury),1997

TATE MODERN VISIT

Session 1

Tuesday 6th January

Warm Up
A focussed physical warm up in silence
Big Small Twisted
Minimal Surface contact
Individually in/in groups

ALPHABET BOX - Making meaning from the abstract

• Mark out an imaginary box around yourself. 
• An imaginary box around each person, this is described along with the positioning of letters which mark various points of the box. 
• Each letter has a particular position inside the box. 
• Students then familiarise themselves with the positioning of the letters of their name. 
• Students create an ultimate spelling using different body parts to touch each letter, at different speeds, qualities, and scale of movement. 
• Then split the whole group into three so that each group performs while the others become the audience. 
• Set their movement to music.

DISCUSS: What are we reading from the performances? What is being invoked in us as spectators and as performers and how? Is it narrative, memories, emotions etc? Is it anything at all? OR Simply people making abstract meaning?

Creation of physical/bodily language

In 1931, Artaud visited the Exposition Coloniale in Paris where he saw a performance of a group of Balinese dancers.  Though he did not understand the intricacies of the language of the dance, Artaud was deeply impressed by the spiritual beauty of the performance and this inspired his fascination with the potential of the body to unlock powerful emotions in both performers and audience.  As a direct reaction to the Balinese dancers, Artaud began to explore ideas of a new language of the body.

“I am well aware that a language of gestures and postures dance and music is less able to narrate a mans thoughts to explain conscious states clearly and exactly than spoken language. But whoever said that theatre was made to define a character, to resolve conflicts of a human emotional order, of a present day psychological nature such as those which monopolise current theatre.” Artaud