PHYSICAL THEATRE with MARK HILL

Mark Hill

Physical Theatre Notes:

• Physical Theatre: using action, movement, and violence of articulation to express emotion or story or feeling
• We had learned that the Western influenced theatres were mainly focused on words for expressions, however, asian culture emphasized movement and physical theatre
• This week's main focus were on the works of Anne Bogart, Suzuki, and Bhuto Theatre
• Performed many different activities...
• Keeping grounded and being prepared as an actor to move quickly and swiftly to either the right, left, forward, or backwards. This helped the actors to view which areas they carry tension. 
• Furiously following the finger of your partner. This will teach the actor to keep focus and learn to place interest 
• Standing with five people in line, side-by-side. Having only 2 or 3 people always down, without physical communication. This increased group awareness.
• Practicing the different levels of energy. (1-7) Taught actors to be aware of what level of energy they should always be on stage. 
• We had also spent a great amount of time practicing and learning Spatial Relationships. The different relationships were...

• extreme proximity or kiss or kill
• extreme distance
• body angle
• down center stage
• geometric shape
• diagonal lines
• symmetry
• asymmetry
• Activities with spatial relationships
• We performed a warm up that encouraged the use of spatial relationships by having a group of actors constantly change and create different shapes and images with their bodies as a group.
• We then performed a few images influenced by the most common factors of Greek Tragedies. We had pride, downfall, and revenge. We had to create the three different scenes with our bodies influenced by those three factors. The scenes were all so extremely powerful and impactful, especially when there was music and lighting added onto the images.
• He constantly reminded the actors to not "THINK" too much, to act on our feet and learn to move about based off of our instinctive desires.
• We then moved on to learn Gestures.
• There are three communicative ways to express gestures: expressive emotions, behavioral, cultural
• The next day, we practiced the Suzuki Method.
• We placed a huge focus on Hara. This was the practice of placing emphasis and focus onto the center of your body. This is your core and where you will receive energy and foundation. He taught us to keep our legs and torso grounded, however, keeping your upper body light and relaxed.

• Activities on the Suzuki Method.
• We practiced the Suzuki walk, back and forth from the black box. There we had partners to hold us back in order to emphasize oppositional tension.
• We also practiced the kiss-or-kill in which actors would slowly learn how do the Suzuki walk back-and-forth while keeping the body centered, slow, and focused we would kill our partners that we were crossing from.
• He kept emphasizing the need to "making the hard things seem easy is what makes the audience interested. Keeping that tension."

Lifeline and Practitioner

Practitioner

Pina Bausch is known as one of the most influential dance choreographers of our time. She has helped shape what is now considered "modern dance". She was a German dance instructor whose name became wide known due to her unique style and dance interpretation. Her influence increased while acting as the artistic director of the Wuppertal Opera Ballet. According to an interviewer who was with Pina Bausch, he said...

One of the themes in her work was relationships. She had a very specific process in which she went about creating emotions. "Improvisation and the memory of [the dancer's] own experiences ... she asks questions-about parents, childhood, feelings in specific situations, the use of objects, dislikes, injuries, aspirations. From the answers develop gestures, sentences, dialogues, little scenes". The dancer is free to choose any expressive mode, whether it is verbal or physical when answering these questions. It is with this freedom that the dancer feels secure in going deep within themselves. When talking about her process she stated, “There is no book. There is no set. There is no music. There is only life and us. It's absolutely frightening to do a work when you have nothing to hold on to”. She stated, “In the end, its composition. What you do with things. There's nothing there to start with. There are only answers: sentences, little scenes someone's shown you. It's all separate to start with. Then at a certain point I'll take something which I think is right and join it to something else. This with that, that with something else. One thing with various other things. And by the time I've found the next thing is right, then the little thing I had is already a lot bigger."

 Her style became known as Tanztheatre. The Wuppertal Opera Ballet is now called the Tanztheatre Wuppertal Pina Bausch. She started her career with only four dancers, five actors, and a singer. It was very difficult when starting out for Pina Bausch, as most dancers did not want to take a chance on their career with this strange woman using such little dance techniques. Pina Bausch was more interested in the actual connection between the dancer and his or her piece. Her work is widely known for using "dream-like, poetic imagery and bodily language." (Krüger, Wilfried. Biography of Pina Bausch. Web. 2010) 

"I'm not interested in how people move, but in what moves them."

-Pina Bausch

My Lifeline Performance

Basing my own lifeline performance off of Pina Bausch style (Tanztheatre). I have realized that there would be a need for a true emotional connection between the dancer and its piece. The connection must be so profound that the emotional impact with the audience and the dance must be immediate, just as Pina Bausch demanded the attention of her audience with this profound emotional connection. She mixes a sense of reality with a dream-like state, causing her audience to have hope behind the bad situations. Therefore, that is why I would want the costuming of the dancer of my lifeline to wear something that is tan. This tan color will be reality, as it is the color of natural skin. But, I would want the material of my costume to be silky and "flowy", so that it would also have a dream-like quality. The music of my performer would be all instrumental. I would like to use Opus 23. It is a beautifully sad piece that I find very soothing. It has the quality of sounding both sad, yet hopeful. The only props that I would like for my lifeline performance are cloths of different colors. They would represent different stages of my life. The different color cloths would lie in different areas of the stage. The dancer would show the emotion that my lifeline portrays while dancing through with each of the cloths. The stage would not have any props on set. I would only like a few blocks onto which the dancer would be free to climb up on. I would not want any video projections for my performance, as I feel that it would take away from the full-on attention of the dancer's emotions. I want each movement and face expression to be felt by the audience. My vision would be for the audience to be sucked into the dancer's flow and almost hypnotized by his or her movements. Although it is my lifeline, I would want the audience to be able to place their own lifeline and relate to their own emotions while going through different experiences in life. My lifeline has key points throughout its journey: stability -> discovery -> change -> renewed determination. 

However, before getting carried away in my own vision, in order to follow the direction of Pina Bausch, I would have to start with the dancer and some of what they truly feel inside. Pina Bausch said that she would always start with the dancer's raw movements, no music, no props, no lighting. All of these elements would slowly piece together and form into a production. The majority of the movements of my dance would depend on the dancer's feelings and emotions. Pina Bausch would not use just improvisation in her productions, but she would base a lot of her productions on the first instinctive movements the dancers immediately felt when given the idea of her approach. I would show my lifeline first, and then allow my dancer to just start moving to it.