Artaud - Theatre of Cruelty

Monday 16th November

Today was our first introduction to the works of Antonin Artaud, and his theatre of cruelty. Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty is very much based on the idea that actors should be pushed to their limits, in order to expose a truth to the audience that they don't want to see. Artaud disagreed with the way that theatre was being "taken over" by text and speech and so opted for a more physical theatre use of language and gesture.

Arteud was also fascinated by the idea of his so called Total Theatre, a theatre which insults the senses, whilst playing with perception. He believed that theatre should challenge the audience and encourage audience involvement, rather than being a passive experience.

For our introduction to the meaning behind Artaud's idea of pushing his actors to the limits, we took part in an activity involving complete focus. In this activity we paced around the space, aiming to reach a personal goal in our minds, and the only way to reach this goal was by pacing. We could only pace in straight lines taking 90 degree turns with complete control.

I found that during this activity my body went into a sort of "auto-pilot" where my thoughts were fixed on reaching this goal. We spent over 30 minutes on this activity and after which I felt quite exhausted, both physically and mentally. Obviously this was nothing compared to the limits which Artaud would push his actors in order to create the horrors that he wanted to shock and control the audience with.

IB Theatre - Not I

Friday 18th September 09 -

Last lecture on a Friday afternoon and we always find ourselves feeling shattered. Sadly I didn't dream that I was the only guy in our Theatre group, because now I AM! Jack my traitorous little friend had decided that the 150 hours of service required of us as part of the IB was too much for him (In other words he was too lazy ;) and had dropped out. This leaves me with me with seven girls. I'm not complaining, but the girly talk before lectures isn't exactly exciting. Well, at least that guarantees me the best male part ;)

DV8 Theatre Trip - Today we were informed of a theatre trip opportunity to see DV8 at Hall for Cornwall, Truro on Thursday 8th October. Tickets are limited as only a certain number could be purchased meaning there were less tickets than students, as it is also open to all performing arts groups including A and AS level students and they would go quickly at only £6.50 a ticket.

Not I - For the main part of the lecture we got into groups of 4 (Myself, Daisy and Alice) and were given an extract from Samuel Beckett's play - Not I. Cara instructed us that we could perform any section of it in anyway that we interpreted it. Yes, I know this does sound like an easy task but trust me it wasn't. As you can see from the attached image of the Not 1 script, it was difficult to interpret, but also could be interpreted in many different ways. I am sure that each group will come out with many different ideas.

IB Theatre - First group task

Thursday 17th September -

Today we produced our first piece of IB physical theatre, I'm begining to discover how different IB Theatre is to GCSE Drama; we are given so much more choice about what we produce, and how we go about it. So far its proving to be a lot to get my head around.

And all that Jazz - As usual we started with and intersting warm up activity, today this involved dancing around carelessly to jazz music in any way we liked and not to worry about anything or anyone else, just to let it out. After we became focused we then began to copy other dance moves that people were doing, as and when we fancied. It was an amusing activity but encouraged us to put our all into what we were doing, and not worry about what people thought.

Theres only three rules - You can only - 1. Lift your arms 2. Move your head to either side and 3. Cross your legs. And that was it... we had to create any piece of theatre incorporating just those three rules, and nothing else. My group consisted of Me, Jack and Alice (YES, I'M FINALLY LEARNING NAMES) and we came up with the idea of create some kind of restraunt themed idea in the 20 minutes that we were given.
After a few minutes brainstorming our ideas, we were up on our feet and rehearsing. we were free to interpret the rules however we wanted as long as we obided by them... we chose to use them in a comic way, basically using them to over react any movements we made.
We then watched each others performances and made comments on them, it was really good seeing that each group had created there very own individual pieces, with there own highlights.