Well it’s always nice to come away from a rehearsal (especially when its for a stage show) feeling like you are a step closer to the final product. Or at least, understanding a little more what the final product is going to feel and look like. Today there occurred a moment when all those little lights in your head start to pop and sparkle… fitting as you’ll see.
I was a little intimidated at the thought of leading a rehearsal. In typical style I had a kind of end point in mind but was not able to pre-fabricate exercises and games to help it develop. So I turned up, homework in hand, praying for the best and trusting that we‘d grope onwards and upwards.
The homework I’d set the four of us consisted of asking everyone to watch a black and white film and bring a five line synopsis and a favourite quote. In addition I’d asked everyone to pay close attention to the scene transitions in their film to see if we could look for filmic ways of hanging material together.
I watched “Ed Wood“, a Tim Burton Film; Daisy had watched “Jules and Jim”, a Francois Truffaut film, Pablo offered up The Cohen Brothers new classic “The man who wasn’t there” and Laura the all time classic “Casablanca”.
I’d brought some table lamps of varying types along and placed them on tables around the space. We tried simply sitting at a table/lamp and talking about the films we’d chosen… given that we are trying to avoid text wherever possible we quickly changed tack.
More conductive was when we tried one person “narrating” their film to the others who sat at a table and used their lamp, turning them on and off, and exploring actions to, in some small way, “perform” the section pertaining to them.
We tried Casablanca with Pablo as Rick, Daisy as Elsa and Laura as Victor. I tried narrating the film and allowed the performers to light themselves and perform when they saw fit.
What were nice were the small actions, performed in the light of one lamp. So when I said Rick was a hard man who took no risks for anyone, Pablo did nothing more than lace his fingers and lean forward towards the lamp. This was the first eureka moment I guess. It was finding a form that suited and in some way reflected the ability of film to exist in close up, sharp focus on details of movement and express an attitude, thought, idea….
We tried some of the other films in the same way but it developed onwards when Daisy asked to re-run her narration of “Jules and Jim” as she had read it the first time out and she had missed our actions… then in amongst the ensuing conversation about pace we wondered about introducing rules to do with the lamps and when they were to be lit. So in addition to the performers reacting when the narrated plot seemed to call them to action we agreed that only one performer should be lit at a time…
Quickly this developed into games where narrative description melted away and we simply had images alternately lit by two “non-performing” performers.
As soon as we started to play with this we saw the endless possibilities of rules we could start imposing here. Performers being only allowed to move in the dark, performers not moving but the “non-performers” moving and changing the light sources, their regularity, clarity…
There also became this interesting third performer who was one of the “non-performers” who was simply waiting for it to be their turn to light. Their relation to the vignettes of scenes caught in freeze frame, in the light, became as interesting as the vignettes themselves. I found myself peering around; searching them out each time the scene became lit.
Suddenly it was half past nine and we realised we had been at it for two and a half hours and we ought to be getting on home. Sometimes you do really wish some rich patron would come along and offer to pay us all to have days and days of rehearsals so we can carry on and on when we get the bit between our teeth on material development…
Sad times.
Still in terms of a method for slotting together, unifying and differentiating material we seem to have hit upon something that has plenty of meat on the bone.I’m just glad my rehearsal groped its way somewhere…
I was a little intimidated at the thought of leading a rehearsal. In typical style I had a kind of end point in mind but was not able to pre-fabricate exercises and games to help it develop. So I turned up, homework in hand, praying for the best and trusting that we‘d grope onwards and upwards.
The homework I’d set the four of us consisted of asking everyone to watch a black and white film and bring a five line synopsis and a favourite quote. In addition I’d asked everyone to pay close attention to the scene transitions in their film to see if we could look for filmic ways of hanging material together.
I watched “Ed Wood“, a Tim Burton Film; Daisy had watched “Jules and Jim”, a Francois Truffaut film, Pablo offered up The Cohen Brothers new classic “The man who wasn’t there” and Laura the all time classic “Casablanca”.
I’d brought some table lamps of varying types along and placed them on tables around the space. We tried simply sitting at a table/lamp and talking about the films we’d chosen… given that we are trying to avoid text wherever possible we quickly changed tack.
More conductive was when we tried one person “narrating” their film to the others who sat at a table and used their lamp, turning them on and off, and exploring actions to, in some small way, “perform” the section pertaining to them.
We tried Casablanca with Pablo as Rick, Daisy as Elsa and Laura as Victor. I tried narrating the film and allowed the performers to light themselves and perform when they saw fit.
What were nice were the small actions, performed in the light of one lamp. So when I said Rick was a hard man who took no risks for anyone, Pablo did nothing more than lace his fingers and lean forward towards the lamp. This was the first eureka moment I guess. It was finding a form that suited and in some way reflected the ability of film to exist in close up, sharp focus on details of movement and express an attitude, thought, idea….
We tried some of the other films in the same way but it developed onwards when Daisy asked to re-run her narration of “Jules and Jim” as she had read it the first time out and she had missed our actions… then in amongst the ensuing conversation about pace we wondered about introducing rules to do with the lamps and when they were to be lit. So in addition to the performers reacting when the narrated plot seemed to call them to action we agreed that only one performer should be lit at a time…
Quickly this developed into games where narrative description melted away and we simply had images alternately lit by two “non-performing” performers.
As soon as we started to play with this we saw the endless possibilities of rules we could start imposing here. Performers being only allowed to move in the dark, performers not moving but the “non-performers” moving and changing the light sources, their regularity, clarity…
There also became this interesting third performer who was one of the “non-performers” who was simply waiting for it to be their turn to light. Their relation to the vignettes of scenes caught in freeze frame, in the light, became as interesting as the vignettes themselves. I found myself peering around; searching them out each time the scene became lit.
Suddenly it was half past nine and we realised we had been at it for two and a half hours and we ought to be getting on home. Sometimes you do really wish some rich patron would come along and offer to pay us all to have days and days of rehearsals so we can carry on and on when we get the bit between our teeth on material development…
Sad times.
Still in terms of a method for slotting together, unifying and differentiating material we seem to have hit upon something that has plenty of meat on the bone.I’m just glad my rehearsal groped its way somewhere…
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