Intensity and Energy
Monday, March 14
Our last day of 'Training'. The Casting has been posted. Work on the different 'States of Intensity' used by the LeCoq method, by Philipe Gaulier in London and most prominently by the Complicite theatre company in Britain. For Performers like Hayley Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter and Marcello Magni, teachers like John Wright and other companies like Told By an Idiot, it is their Bible and Mantra. Their 'Method'.
It's based on Commedia work, on the use of mask and the idea that you already 'know' all your emotions. That they are already there in what dancers would call your 'muscle memory'. That you find the emotion through your physicality.
According to this technique, if you 'collapse' your body on an outbreath, allowing your head to loll forward onto your chest and slump towards the floor, then you begin to connect as a performer with a state of tiredness, disappointment or hopelessness; a connection which may lack none of the truthfulness of other 'methods'.
And, then, if you turn your focus out to a person or an object at a distance from yourself and allow yourself to be drawn as if by a powerful string attached to your breastbone, you discover, within yourself, a feeling of hope, inspiration, determination, blessedness, salavation, enlightenment etc.
We look at 'Neutral', 'California', 'Lowest (or 'Outbreath'), 'Virgin Mary' (or 'Attraction'), 'Bomb in the Room' and 'Highest'('Tragedy').
There are different names. Each one locates an area of physical intensity.
That each state can be played in all 'genres'. Big as in Melodrama, Ballet, Opera, Noh. Tiny as in Film acting.
We work on transitions from one state to another. And back.
We apply it to song. Rose, Rose etc on the floor from Highest to Lowest and back to Highest - in the space of one verse.
We do not have time in the 90 minutes to apply it to text - to a monologue, for example - but it would be perfectly possible.
Some students may choose to thus employ it over the coming Rehearsal Weeks. Support and encouragement in its use will be given if required.
Whether this technique will prove useful or not to students in the future will depend on individual preference, but as an excercise it does show the energy that is contained within the body. And is needed in any moment of performance.
Our last day of 'Training'. The Casting has been posted. Work on the different 'States of Intensity' used by the LeCoq method, by Philipe Gaulier in London and most prominently by the Complicite theatre company in Britain. For Performers like Hayley Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter and Marcello Magni, teachers like John Wright and other companies like Told By an Idiot, it is their Bible and Mantra. Their 'Method'.
It's based on Commedia work, on the use of mask and the idea that you already 'know' all your emotions. That they are already there in what dancers would call your 'muscle memory'. That you find the emotion through your physicality.
According to this technique, if you 'collapse' your body on an outbreath, allowing your head to loll forward onto your chest and slump towards the floor, then you begin to connect as a performer with a state of tiredness, disappointment or hopelessness; a connection which may lack none of the truthfulness of other 'methods'.
And, then, if you turn your focus out to a person or an object at a distance from yourself and allow yourself to be drawn as if by a powerful string attached to your breastbone, you discover, within yourself, a feeling of hope, inspiration, determination, blessedness, salavation, enlightenment etc.
We look at 'Neutral', 'California', 'Lowest (or 'Outbreath'), 'Virgin Mary' (or 'Attraction'), 'Bomb in the Room' and 'Highest'('Tragedy').
There are different names. Each one locates an area of physical intensity.
That each state can be played in all 'genres'. Big as in Melodrama, Ballet, Opera, Noh. Tiny as in Film acting.
We work on transitions from one state to another. And back.
We apply it to song. Rose, Rose etc on the floor from Highest to Lowest and back to Highest - in the space of one verse.
We do not have time in the 90 minutes to apply it to text - to a monologue, for example - but it would be perfectly possible.
Some students may choose to thus employ it over the coming Rehearsal Weeks. Support and encouragement in its use will be given if required.
Whether this technique will prove useful or not to students in the future will depend on individual preference, but as an excercise it does show the energy that is contained within the body. And is needed in any moment of performance.
posted by Steve at 7:59 PM
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