Abigail

Dear Abigail
I wanted to include that song very much because it starts that scene off and is really important. I knew you sang and I felt I could entrust you with it. As for the acting side, I hadn't put stuff down on paper though some thoughts were coming together in my mind (not to do with the beginning of Scene 10). I didn't want to say something that we found later didn't work.

But we will find something good.

If our rehearsal doesn't throw up something really interesting, then another option is for you to have something juicy in Scene 5 with Rebecca and Carly.

Let me know what you think. Either on Thursday or on the Blog.

I promise that neither you, Carly or Rebecca will be disadvantaged in any way by having your information later than other people.

Steve

Carly and Rebecca ... Plus?

Dear Carly and Rebecca

I'm totally open to your own suggestions.

One option, though, would be to add a seventh scene; namely 5. It's a wonderful and powerful piece of theatre - and if there are other students who would like to undertake a bit more than they have already, then I think we would have time both in rehearsal and in the performance on the day to do the whole thing.

Speak together, both of you. See what you think of the idea - and present me with any others you might have first thing Thursday morning.

Out of my lack of attention, I'm sure we'll get a great result...

Steve.

Street of Crocodiles

Street of Crocodiles

Carlos is participating in a performance of Complicite's 'Street of Crocodiles' this week.

The play is based on the book by the darkly Surrealist Jewish writer Bruno Schulz about how his family is swept up by the Holocaust in the years preceding WW2.

Performance at The Albany Theatre. Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17.
Time: 19.30
Douglas Way. Deptford. se8 4ag.
BR Deptford/New Cross 11 mins from London Bridge.

Theatre de Complicite.......The Albany

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.