Artaud - Importance of Sound

Thursday 26th November

Continuing our work with Artaud's ideas around Total Theatre, we begain to explore the use of sound within Theatre and Artaud's "assult of the senses", alongside use of foreign languages, with our own interpretations.

We began to explore the idea of taking the audience on an imaginary journey in order to create audience participation within theatre. For this, we got into pairs and took turns to guide our partner (who was blindfolded) through a journey which we created, explaining to them all the thoughts and feelings that they would be experiencing. The journey which I created was one involving a beach walk and I included the sound of the sea, feel of the sand and green rocks etc. My partner Kitty took me on an imaginary journey through history, as a soldier and general, fighting in legendary battles and crawling through trenches. This for me was an incredible experience, how the loss of sight, can lead you into believing that you are somewhere completely different, and also proved a good way to control and manipulate your audience.

In order to investigate the importance of sound within Total Theatre, we then grouped into 4's and were given a choice of different props that could be used to create a sound-scape. Our group chose to create a sound scape for a battle scene, using various objects, such as blowing into bottles as horns, using stilts to bang against the floor as a march etc etc. The audience were placed into a circle, blindfolded and back to back, we then stood around them in a circle while performing to add to the atmosphere. We were then able to take part in the other groups Total Theatre experience, in which a stormy, raining soundscape was created.

Through producing and being an audience member within these sound scapes, I began to understand that senses do work in the way people say; that if you loose one, others become stronger. In other words, as we had lost our sight, from descriptions and soundscapes, we were able to create our own visual picture with our imaginations of the scenes being created.