Rehearsal Notes, Dec 10th/11th

The piece really came together in these rehearsals. The pressure of the looming performance meant that as actors and collaborators everybody stepped up and worked especially hard.

We realised that the most difficult thing about the staging of this play was not projecting our voices or making our movements clear; the hardest thing was remembering the cues for all of these things, as some of them were as tiny as a “point” hand sign. If one member of the group didn’t commit to a movement or line, the whole energy drops and it is no longer a full Brechtian ensemble. Writing down moments on a script is vital, and I found that any movement I didn’t note down, I then forgot in the next rehearsal.

Learning how to manipulate the props in the space was challenging also, particularly when certain members of the group had not learnt their lines. This demonstrated how important it is to be off script when working as an ensemble as everybody is dependent on each other. Including the tents, banners and rostra meant a whole new lot of logistics needed to be thought out such as the journey the “STOP BEING EMOTIONAL” sign travels and how we can weigh the tents down outside. Learning how to incorporate all of these elements of performance was an interesting task, as it demonstrated to me that as an actor it is my responsibility to organise these things before the issues arise. An example of this was when we secured a car to use as lighting in the dark performance space.

These last minute and pressured changes really helped the group engage fully with the performance and make the most out of rehearsal time. Having a full day to focus on the play was worthwhile, because then we could focus entirely on the task in hand and not only achieving the best grades possible but also creating and performing the best piece of political theatre we could.

SCRIPT ANNOTATIONS:

A mark of my track onstage

Rehearsal Notes, Dec 3rd/4th

In rehearsals we have learned about and developed many ensemble disciplines as well as collectively creating and devising the piece. The skill of being part of an ensemble is vital, especially in Brechtian theatre – a form that a lot of theatre takes nowadays – because working together towards a common goal swiftly and collectively is essential for creating the highest quality performance possible.

Equal views on characterisation

Specifically in this play, the whole cast are playing only one of two characters and so large movements and gestus that add to characterisation and the meaning of the text are vital. It is important that all cast members have an equal understanding of what the two characters are like, for example the child leans his weight on one leg, crosses his arms and bites his nails. Without this mutual understanding between the actors in the play, the audience will find it more difficult to read the concept of the two sides, parent and child as every actor will look completely different, not variations on a theme.

This is easy to achieve and also encourages less vocal members of the group to speak up their views on the characterisation. It helps the actor gain more ownership over the piece as they shape their characters, not the writer or director.

Upholding of transitions

In all types of theatre acting, transitions are often the biggest responsibility of the actor as they hold a production together. There is little point in having stunning scenes and then stodgy movement from one to the next because the atmosphere and energy is lost and the actors must work even harder to keep the piece engaging. With regards to In the Beginning the transitions between actors, images and movements are incredibly important, especially since everything must be so much bigger as the space is so open. We have used physical movements such as supported forward rolls to move characters from one level to another to keep the energy levels up and the narrative flowing.

Commitment to preparation

This piece is almost entirely reliant on a group effort. The amount of props and small moments in the piece mean that work outside of the rehearsal room is just as important as work inside.

To make the piece visually stimulating and to add meaning, we have rehearsed the recreation an Occupy camp on one side of the stage, representing the children, and a cosy living room on the other, representing the child, but this requires a lot of extra searching for props and set by individuals. Keeping the piece ticking over in the actor’s mind will overall enhance the piece as the little things will make it more effective: so far I have made an Occupy sign and I have located a tent for the camp.

Learning lines and stage directions in your own time is also vital, particularly with a production with so many cues. Taking notes on your script in rehearsal is absolutely essential so they can be translated and memorised outside and make the piece more fluid for the whole.

Preparation is extremely important whatever pieces an actor is in and ideally they should have all lines learned before the day of the first rehearsal. With props, such as banners, being so prominent in Brechtian theatre the more available props the better, reiterating the importance of being “on it” outside of rehearsal.

Maintaining and creating atmosphere

As the piece requires a lot of choral, ensemble work it is the responsibility of the whole cast to keep up the atmosphere and this is done through total focus throughout rehearsal. Everybody is onstage almost all of the time and so a communal mood will translate better to the audience. This is the most effective way of working but actors to often tire very quickly –some may think sweat and fatigue are a demonstration of good work and the most productive state of the actor is when they are pushing every emotion.

Equal contribution towards the course of the piece

A huge part of Brechtian theatre is that it is the job of everybody – including the actors and the director - to offer up worthwhile ideas. The thought behind this is true ownership over a piece and contribution to the entire course of a play, not just the revelation. Brecht believed strongly in two things: firstly, that a script is not a finished play and that the production presented on the opening night is in fact only just complete; secondly, the course of the story is of equal importance to the final climax and revelation.

This means that continual focus in the moment of the piece will help with individual contribution as well as committing to the present event, not on what is to come.

Over the past two days we have completed blocking the play. The next step is to include all of our props, be off script by next week and rehearse so it is at performance standard. We have solved many problems over the past two days and no doubt props will add extra ones that will need to be dealt with.

For example, lighting the piece, which takes place at 6.30pm in mid December, is an issue. This has been solved by the use of two cars, their headlights being used to light the stage as well as the car itself being used as a prop in the final section of the play.

Next week we will have seven hours worth of rehearsal and I am feeling confident that if everybody commits to the ensemble techniques we have learned to employ in rehearsals this week, the play will have the desired effect on the audience.

Rehearsal Notes, November 27th

Having received our lines the previous day, the class was ready to get going on blocking the play. Half of the morning was taken up preparing for and performing our political protests so we had only a short amount of time to get the piece up on its feet.

As the class already had a vision of how the piece was going to be embodied, it was relatively easy to get to grips with the blocking. I play CHILD and the first two pages of script are heavy on my part. I instigate a human microphone ‘mic check’ as well as play a part in establishing the relationship between the PARENT and the CHILD.

In rehearsal it is very important that we all keep a script and a pen at hand so we can mark down the blocking and extra changes to line distribution.

The piece begins with the growing of each protest on either side of the raised platform outside the canteen. On the left, the children gradually put up their tents, erect signs, decorate their lairs, whilst the parents set up a clean living room space, a complete contrast to the crazy nature of the child’s temporary abode. Once all the props are in place (i.e. pop-up tents, fairy lights, protest banners and signs) this will look extremely realistic, and provides an effective pre-show atmosphere for the audience to witness and ease them in to the action.

There is a lot of choral speaking in the opening stages of the play and this is challenging, especially with the given performance space. We discovered the importance of expression, pronunciation and strong breath, even when rehearsing inside the building. Outside, especially at this time of year, sound is instantly lost in the open air space and so all of these attributes are of upmost importance. The opening of the piece also includes a lot of repetition and human microphone, a common Occupy protest technique to spread messages, to make sure messages are put across to the audience as best as is possible. Large sections of text are said as a group, broken down in the form of a ‘mic check’ and then repeated a third time by one individual to make the message clear and reiterate its importance.

I am feeling really excited about next week’s rehearsal and I have already begun to put together my sign. One side reads “WILL WORK FOR MONEY” and the other “WE ARE THE 99%”, two slogans I found when researching common ones in use during the Occupy protests. I deliberately made the sign look rather make-shift and shabby, the words being in black pen over cardboard, as this reflected the message of austerity the children are trying to convey. After questioning my parents about the matter, I have also discovered that we own a very modest little pink spotty pop-up tent, which will be of much use when creating the protest in the pre-show.

Types of Political Protest - how can we enhance our piece?

“A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations.”

So what are these different types of protest and why are they relevant to our topic? To enhance our piece with regards to staging, characterisation and simply care it is important to research some of the possibilities there are when it comes to protesting, not just as a part of the Occupy movement, but for anything. This will make our piece more relevant to current protests and happenings, as well as more visually interesting for the audience to watch and understand.

Public Demonstration - Marching

One of the most common forms of protest is to take to the streets in large numbers and walk down the middle of the road chanting slogans and carrying large banners and cards. This is a widespread practice because it is simple to organize – just one Facebook event can be enough to gather people together – and it is has an instant effect. Roads are blocked, traffic caused; the natural flow of the city is disrupted. A visual representation of how many people are protesting – in Occupy’s case “the 99%” - is an effective element of this, which might be useful for our performance. There is power in numbers.

Here is an example of an Occupy march.

Picketing

A large group of protesters gather outside of a targeted building, therefore discouraging people from entering it. This would be relevant to banks or government buildings that represent certain areas the Occupy movement focus on. We could use this in our piece as a clear visual message to the audience, as protests such as this draw attention from the general public to the issue in hand.

Die-in

This is when protesters fake being dead, and lie in the streets sometimes covered in fake blood and wounds with banners and messages about what the protest is for. This disturbing form of protest is effective because it is visually striking and has a sharper edge than a sit-in but it is still peaceful.

Here is an example of a die-in.

Peace Camp

A very popular form of protest, especially in the Occupy movement, is to camp outside a relevant building or organization for weeks, months or even years to show devotion and protest for a particular issue. For example, thousands of women set up a peace camp at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, UK, to demonstrate their opposition to nuclear weaponry being sent from there. Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp became world famous, as 30,000 women joined hands around the base in protest. It conveys an image of unity and peace. 

The Human Microphone

This is a technique employed by many during the Occupy Wall Street protests. The voice of one speaker is amplified through repetition by the voices of the group around them, conveying messages to an even greater amount of protesters who may be out of earshot. The phrase “mic-check” is used to signify the beginning of a human microphone session.

Here is an example of a human microphone, or amplifier.

All of these different forms have potential to be incorporated in to our piece, and even if they are not, they add to our understanding of the different branches of the Occupy movement and of protest in general. 

Solo Protester - Applying Gestus

Outside of lesson we all looked at real interviews with people who were a part of the Occupy movement and wrote our own transcripts of them.

MEDEA BENJAMIN:

My name is Medea Benjamin; I am here today because I am excited about a growing movement that... includes young people, older people, all kinds of, uh, people from all walks of life, who want to get together and think about a new way to recreate society. And it’s exciting to see people transform in themselves by being in the space and talking and learning, and feeling they’re not alone and... if you can’t find a job it’s not for your own faults it’s the system. If you’ve lost your home, it might not be your own fault, it might be the system. And together we’re trying to find solutions.

INTERVIEWER:

Great. Now, is there a particular reason why, why you’re down here?

MEDEA BENJAMIN:

I’m here because I’ve been trying to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the last ten years, and suddenly people are connecting the dots that if we’re spending trillions of dollars on war, we are not investing those trillions of dollars here in the United States on education for young people, or healthcare for elders or, uh, creating jobs that people need. And people are understanding now that we’ve got to stop spending so much money on the military and invest it in rebuilding America.

*

Barack Obama has been a tremendous disappointment for people who thought he really represented hope and change. We see that in the case of the economy, he put the very barons of Wall Street in charge of, uh, the US economy from Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and, uh, he really, uh, put the, what we call “the Banksters” in charge of the US... bank. And in terms of the wars, he has escalated the war in Afghanistan. There are more troops than when he started, there are more soldiers killed in Afghanistan than when he started and there’s more civilians being killed in drone attacks than when he started. In the case of Iraq, he’s promised us to get all the troops out by the end of the year and that we could take that to the bank, but... I wouldn’t take it to the bank.

Using these transcripts we began to get in to the mind of some of the protesters in the real Occupy movement that In the Beginning is based on. We had to ask ourselves the following questions:

1.       What are they protesting about?

Medea Benjamin is protesting about the cost and morality of ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the lack of jobs for not only young people but the whole of society.

2.       What type of person are they?

She is a peaceful yet active protester with a passion for the subjects she cares about. Willing to take part in the interview, she cares about the world understanding why she and everyone else is protesting in the space.

3.       What gestus fits your character?

Large hand gestures to add to and articulate speech as well as frequent nodding of the head to show a positive, can-do attitude.

In a later lesson we used extracts of these verbatim transcripts  combined with various Occupy protest systems to devise short pieces of theatre based around each character in the play - the children and the parents. Our devised piece included a human microphone and hand signals as well as showing the differences between young people in the political protesting world. Some students show a great care and passion for whatever it is they are protesting for, and others seem to view it as a festival-type camping session where they are free to have a good time for as long as they like because they are 'making a difference'. Using this, we can create a greater range of character types within the role of CHILD as all children protesting have different attitudes.
The parental protest was more difficult as it was about how the parents would protest
Some of the pieces inspired parts of the finished play and it was a useful exercise for better understanding the truth and the people within the protests, not just the biased articles and reports. 

What is Gestus?

Gestus is socially encoded expression that is consciously employed by an actor. It is inspired by Charlie Chaplin and his ability to express social types through silent physical movement and mime.

Charlie Chaplin

Brecht felt that traditional theatre focused too much on facial expression and so gestures dried up. He wanted people to investigate their body own body language as well as the body language of a social class, their mannerisms and customs included. As Brecht was uninterested in traditional, psychological drama that presents the mental attitudes and actors of its protagonists as God-given or unknown forces, he wanted to display a character’s actions as choices a person makes because of the social factors affecting them. For example, a ‘peasant’ would lick their plate not because they were a peasant but because that is how they had been brought up to behave in a less wealthy climate.

An exercise for the practical development of understanding of gestus can be found at my other blog for exercises to support the study of political theatre.

The Occupy Movement

"The Occupy movement is an international protest movement against social and economic inequality, its primary goal being to make the economic structure and power relations in society fairer”

The Occupy movement is an international movement - first established in over 100 cities across the US - that arose from the average individual wanting their views heard in government, as much expressed by elected officials only reflect their wealthier lifestyle.

The movement aims to fight back against the system that has allowed the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer; to make the system fairer.

The movement was originally initiated from a blog post by Adbusters magazine to:

“On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.”

    http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html

Thousands of people responded and congregated in Zuccotti Park, which is situated in the heart of New York City’s financial district. For two months, hundreds camped every night inside the park, creating their own base camp as a means of protest. This was soon reflected in hundreds of other cities in the US, and some other countries worldwide, including London, UK.

The movement works with as little leadership as possible. Everybody has as equal power and say in the movement as is possible. It is about empowering the whole.

Occupy wants to build up a system that empowers the everyday majority, giving the power back to the people instead of only government officials.

RESIST, RESTRUCTURE, REMIX.

Issues addressed by Occupy:

Corporate influence – political donations and deals that are made in the interest of profit rather than the benefit of the people.

Corporate personhood – “Citizens United declared money as speech and corporations as people—allowing for unlimited corporate influence through monetary contributions. Human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights”

Student Debt – a rise against student fees and unemployment for today’s youth.

Wrongful repossession of homes – many American’s have been left without homes after having their homes unfairly taken from them after not being able to keep up on their mortgages.

“Too big to fail” banks – money from the people has been unfairly taken to bail out banks, leaving the people with very little money.

Healthcare – free healthcare for all. Hospitals should not make a profit from people’s need for healthcare.

Living wage – workers should be entitled to a reasonable wage that they can live off.

99% budget cuts – cuts are not the answer anymore and now people should work together to mutually help others.

Successes of Occupy:

On 5^th Nov 2011 over $50m were withdrawn and accounts closed from big banks, the money being transferred to local credit unions.

Ending of illegal foreclosures (housing repossession).