#theatricalexercises

2nd week, very busy week! My peers and I are on the same wavelength, so I’m very excited and am looking forward for our next rehearsals!

 Monday, January 23rd 2017

Nayantara led this session and shared 4 exercises.

Creating a set

First we were asked to create a set. We all thought it would look like a student’s flat, with a kitchen on the right, a bedroom in the centre and toilets/bathroom on the left. But time after time the bed changed place, finally became a sofa, then three chairs. The toilets are put in the foreground, as we think the audience should be closer to that very intimate space. We put a board at the back, it would allow us to write things on it. It can also be a screen, or a screen hiding another space behind. Finally we came up with this (not definitive) plan:

This exercise was important as it enabled us to show each other how the set looks like in our minds. Moreover. It is very interesting to cross our ideas, everyone can indeed bring a relevant aspect, so that everyone agrees on how the stage would finally look like.

Telling stories within this set

We were asked to share personal stories about love and relationship. For example, I told my colleagues about a German medicine student I met during a party in a club, as I was preparing drinks in the kitchen. This exercise is interesting because we are now aware of how we can move within this space we have just created and telling real stories while doing something else is not a very simple exercise.

Repeat and rewind

9 asked us to think about one situation in our lives that . One performer then gives directions to their colleagues, who have to recreate the memory.

Unfortunately, we lost a lot of time waiting for another space to work in because someone forgot to bring the keys back. It is a pity, but we tried to use this “free time” as much as we could to plan our deadlines and our next meetings.

 Tuesday, January 24th 2017

Time for 10 to share with us her thoughts and exercises!

Walk, take position, freeze, start a conversation

Two performers move within the space and can do whatever they want: jump, dance, imitate a situation, run… The third performer stands aside and watches the scene. If she says stop, the two performers freeze and she takes one’s place. The removed performer says “move” and the two others start walking again. At some point one can start a conversation. It can be a memory of a situation, a fictional story. It happened that at this moment we all discussed of love in a very philosophical way, trying to get different points of view about subjects such as “Is there one single great love?” or “I would never be able to experience a relationship without a phase of passion”, etc. The performers still switch with each other. 10 ended this exercise after one of my thoughts that she found moving: “I don’t want to be alone. I’ve been lonely for too long.”

Rap Challenge

10 put some instrumental rhythmic music in the background and asked everyone to write a rap song with a love theme of course. Then we would have to sing it out loud. This was a very fun time! Here’s my work:

Walking on the pavement, coming back from a party

Listening to your moves as you are walking next to me

British and romantic, it is hard to explain

The fact that I can never put you out of my brain

 Now we arrived, hugging goodbye

Your eyes are the colour of a deep blue sky

But then you smiled

As your girl arrived

 Love is big, love is cruel

A bright light from nowhere that is stealing your soul

Love is huge, love is all

I know what I’m saying I’ve never lived it at all

 But let me tell you something

Now I’m ready for good

I’m willing and I’m hoping

To live someday

 L’Amour.

 We ended up this lovely rehearsal answering questions 10 wrote on little papers. A next step to get to know each other a bit more.

 Wednesday, January 25th 2017

Once more, we missed one hour of rehearsal because of a problem of reservation: another group had booked the same place at the same time.

Because I really enjoyed one task that Daisy and Pablo gave to us last term, I decided to reuse it with our theme. So I asked 9 and 10 to write down two lists: the first one would contain sentences that always begin with “I want”, the second one follows the same outline but with the words “I’m afraid”. The results were very interesting and revealed our different aspirations of love. 10 said herself that she often used to tick boxes to find the one that would fit most to her and her family’s desires and convictions. But now she tends to get rid of this habit, even though the lists still showed a certain affinity to this method. 9 wants to have conversations with her boyfriend, she doesn’t want to get bored, she would like someone who fits with her intellectual side. As for myself, it turned out that I profoundly lack physical sensations and a presence by my side. Still it seems that I am not ready yet for those emotional attachments, which is quite paradoxical. (See my two lists above)

Then 9 asked us to write a monologue about everything we want. We just had time to read them out loud when the session ended. We would rework the text for tomorrow.

 Thursday, January 26th 2017

This time we made our monologues within our temporary set.

I was the one who started the task. We put some party music on. I tried to put some action into my reading and walked through the stage. However, my moves were quite awkward as I didn’t really know what to do. 9 then asked me to try once more without moving. I was in the centre of the room and was only allowed to take one or two steps during my speech, actions which would make sense within my story. 9 could feel my tension while I was trying not to move. It is indeed quite difficult not to move one’s legs. 9 and 10 thought that the style of my piece of writing (short sentences: “Huge space. Students dancing. Loud music.”) with this task have got a lot of potential. We could maybe use lights in order to create duplicated human shadows and a party atmosphere and add some music.

Topic of B’s monologue: “Why am I always attracted to the wrong people?”

Then it was Tendai’s turn. She recited her text with background music while mopping the floor, which created a funny scene. Adding a task gives another dimension to the text.

Topic of 10’s monologue: “I sometimes feel like a mess, but I’m definitely ready to fall in love.”

9 wanted to break the traditional Indian ideas about how girls should experience love (virginity, arranged marriage…). She therefore laid down a scarf on the floor of the toilet room. On the scarf, various jewels and bindis. She sat on the toilet pan and told her story while putting her traditional jewelleries on her. We concluded that her text was far too short; indeed, she was very interesting to listen to, and because of her task, we focused more on the acts than on her story, which is a pity. The traditional jewels are a strong image; even though it doesn’t fit in this scene, it is a striking concept that she can exploit later on. Alternative: 9 really uses the toilets and gets off her trousers. She could even flush at the end of her story! This deep intimacy provides a parallel for the intimacy of her subject: kissing and touching in her room.

Topic of 9’s monologue: “Defilement by feeling desire and loving in the Indian culture”

 Today we also had our second session with Pablo. We showed him our monologues, one after the other. Pablo then asked us to repeat our monologues, however this time we would all be on stage and share bits of our monologues one after the other. It gave a different pace and dimension to the scene.

During the creation of our set, we had this idea of a 4th female protagonist, a flatmate who is missing because she fell in love. Although Pablo agreed that setting the space together was a nice task, he worries that the idea of a fourth housemate is too restrictive, along with the scenery of the bathroom/livingroom/kitchen. He explained that the set is not very intimate, at least it is less intimate than when I stared into Pablo’s eyes during my monologue. He thus suggested us to forget the setting for the moment as it seems to be a cul-de-sac, so that we can particularly focus on our creative work. Maybe a solution would be to explore different spaces, to make a simpler set and to optimise the props.

9 underlined the fact that the space wouldn’t be linked to the housemates only; maybe it is more about domesticity. Pablo then suggested to allow the presence of everyday objects in a less obvious, representational space which would not be a set. 9 expanded on this idea by suggesting to create a representational set that would be broken down during the performance.

Furthermore, music isn’t needed for the moment. Instead of this, I personally have to raise the volume of my presence (and of my voice!), as my presence on stage is too bland and discreet at present. He asked me to develop a persona, for example the persona of the French girl being abroad. Moreover, he didn’t really get the aim of my story: three boys who like me but whom I don’t like. I shall rewrite it and make it shorter.

As for 10, instead of cleaning the floor, she could try to cleanse herself: wash her hands, or her hair, or her body? It would make the scene more poetic and symbolic: she washes to remove dirt and in the same way, to get rid of her thoughts.

9 should maybe cast the audience as the lover while telling her story. She should therefore use the second person instead of the third.

 That’s all for this week! Week 3 (or 15), here we come!

I took the lead for our first session of rehearsal. I presented four exercises:

 The drifting hug

2 performers are facing each other. They hug, close their eyes, move away and step back, still facing each other. Now there is a 33-feet distance between them and they shall try to find each other and hug again. (When there are several couples, sometimes it can happen that they reform a pair with the wrong partner).

This is a very simple, warm exercise to begin with. This led us to think about involving the audience in our show (we could ask them to hug for example).

The argument

2 performers are facing each other. Not a word is spoken. They look at each other without any particular expression. One pushes the other very gently. It can be a shoulder, an arm, the abdomen, a leg… They do this several times, but every time a bit harder and with more fierceness. The pauses in between get shorter. The other performer doesn’t react. When it becomes too violent, this one can shout in a natural way. The exercise comes to an end when the second protagonist pushes the first one back.

We all agreed that this exercise was a good warm up. It was very interesting as it was difficult for 9 and 10 to perpetrate violence to each other, even in a safe way and a professional framework. We had to repeat this exercise thrice and would like to retry it at another session.

Conscience

This exercise is about creating a scene. It can be anywhere. One character is a girl, another is a boy. One of them wants to seduce the other. The 3rd performer plays the seducer’s conscience, giving recommendation and reacting to the character’s doings.

This exercise is the first that really led us to a devising process. We all liked the presence of the conscience and would like to develop it during the next rehearsals.

The chairs

There are 3 chairs on stage. The first one refers to the state “I love you”, the second one to “I hate you” and the third one “I’m afraid”. 3 performers sit on these chairs. They should say their words according to the chair they sit on. They can say those words whenever they want and as many times as they want but they must change their tone continuously. When someone want to take another seat, they can stand up and go to this chair. The other performer should then make way for them and take the vacant seat.

The image of 3 chairs on stage is very powerful, moreover if they are put side by side: maybe this could be the beginning or the ending image of our performance. We would like to begin our show with us three on stage.

 The second part of this session was consecrated to the sharing our personal stories about love and relationships, telling about our first love, our first kiss, our beliefs, etc. This discussion allowed us to know each other a bit more, to establish a climate of confidence and to imagine what we would like to include in our performance.

See you next week!