Exhale negativity

A theater class blog which enables me to express my views about artistic and not displays and worthy things in our beautiful world.

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One of the biggest international theatre festivals, the Bregenzer Festspiele take place annually on a massive stage, built into Lake Bregenz. The breathtaking set in the picture was part of the 2011 production of Umberto Giordano’s “André Chénier”. Fun Fact: the unusual stage also featured in James Bond’s “A Quantum of Solace”

I am not always a fan of a minimalistic person, although I am a person that believes in the power of minimalistic. It is really enthralling and encouraging at the same time to see theaters that strive to be different and attract the interest of the audience. Theater is not only about acting otherwise setting design would not be crucial and/or significant.

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Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint  was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings were the first Western abstract art known to the current art community. A considerable body of her abstract work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky. She belonged to a group called "The Five", a circle of women inspired by Theosophy who shared a belief in the importance of trying to contact the so-called "High Masters"—often by way of séances.Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.

Hilma af Klint was one of the first women to attend the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, something really outstanding  for her time. In 1882, at the age of 20, she enrolled at the Academy and spent the next five years studying drawing, portraiture and landscape painting.

Another clue that attracted me was that Hilma af Klint was convinced that reality was not confined to the physical world. Parallel to the material dimension there existed an inner realm the contents of which were as true and real as those of the outer world. In order to convey this message, Hilma af Klint employed dualistic symbols, letters and words to express that “Everything is Unity”. Nurturing an inner, spiritual maturity, Hilma af Klint aimed to develop an artistic approach to her esoteric material and express it in her paintings. She struck a delicate balance between regulating her inner impulses and expressing them in her work. A solid education and more than 20 years of professional artistic experience had provided her with the necessary tools for realising her ambition.

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Zeta Douka inspired by Sofia Bekatorou described "outbursts of anger, disrepute, irony." She said that Mr. Kimoulis did everything he could to disrupt her gathering on stage, with phrases such as "get out of here, little girl of the first year of drama school", accompanied by gestures. An incident of physical violence was also reported. After her public statement, numerous actors followed her example and started revealing cases of sexual or violent harassment. 

When I realized how many ACTORS have been affected and harassed at the same time I thought how wonderful would it be to create a performance with all of them. No specific ideas about the plot but the main aim would be to share the message that everyone should talk when he or she feels harassed.

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Don’t you Worry child

https://youtu.be/3mWbRB3Y4R8

"Don't you worry, my child. Heaven's got a plan for you." The very tone of this song and the simplicity of the video seems to bring back memories of another time. Memories of a world far more real and beautiful than this one.

This song could definitely be used at the end of a performance where the parent-child relationship would stood as the medium towards happiness and relief.

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Melina Mercouri is one of the great women figures of Greece in the 20th century. A many-sided and vibrant personality, she played a leading role in the struggle against the Colonel’s Junta in 1967 – 1974 and was a great theatre and film actress of international fame. The parts she has portrayed have made cinema history. She was also a politician who left her mark on Greek culture.

What fascinated me the most concerning her personality and achievements was to link culture with education at all educational levels, by creating a new system of post-training of teachers so that in all subjects there be included cultural references. And above all the children find pleasure in learning. She advanced the slogan Education through Enjoyment.

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Yvette Nolan is a Canadian playwright, director, actor, and educator based out of Saskatchewan, Canada. She was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. She has contributed significantly to the creation and performance of Indigenous theatre in Canada.

Playwright, director, dramaturg, actor, and educator, Yvette Nolan has contributed substantively to the creation and performance of First Nations Theatre in Canada. She was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father in 1961.

She has written more than a dozen works for the theatre: Blade (1990) shows how a young white university student murdered by a serial killer is reconfigured as a prostitute by the media. In A Marginal Man, a man who decides to protest violence against women becomes a target of violence himself. Child shows how two women, one Indigenous and one white, are affected by incest.

In 2007 Nolan received the Maggie Bassett Award for service to the theatre community; in 2008 she was awarded the City of Toronto's Aboriginal Affairs Award; and in 2011, she received the George Luscombe Award for mentorship in professional theatre.

She is currently based in Saskatoon, where she teaches playwriting to undergraduates at the University of Saskatchewan and pursues a Master of Public Policy degree.

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Felix Barrett quote

Felix Barrett, MBE is the artistic director of Punchdrunk, a British theatre company internationally recognised as pioneering ways for audiences to experience culture. He said “I wanted to create productions where the audience is physically present, so that they are driven by a base, gut feeling and making instinctive decisions. That sort of show leaves a far larger imprint on you than just watching something. But I love straight theatre – I didn’t create Punchdrunk as a protest, just an alternative form.” 

-Felix Barrett, artistic director of the immersive theatre company Punchdrunk

A phrase that defines the power of a successful performance

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The Bald Soprano

The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco stands for a play that evokes confusion, anxiety, even boredom and fascination and provoked laughter to most of the readers. However, it is a play that I would really love to read. These contradicting and multiple emotions are precisely the reason why I found such interest in this playwright and decided to explore the process of transforming the play text into a ready-to be played performance. 

The Bald Soprano is a classic example of the Theatre of the Absurd, which consists of a series of meaningless conversations that eventually collapse into babbling. The play takes place in a typical English living room of a typical English couple, the Smiths. One afternoon, the Martins suddenly invade the living room of the Smiths. Both the Martins and the maid and the captain of firefighters disrupt the English calmness and keep talking nonsense. Ionesco creates typical and ordinary circumstances that, by being over analyzed, uncertainty of what one truly knows comes to the surface.

By the end of the play, language becomes automatic, and there is no meaning in words. The people, despite having a good understanding of the world, do not have the ability to develop a personal conversation. For the playwright, the people are like puppets, “they hardly have any individuality” nor responsibility for anything. Common logic is suspended since characters begin with logical reasoning, which leads again to absurd outcomes. As a result, the spectators of the play start to wonder about their logic and reason. For instance, when Mr. Smith mentions that there are seven days within a week, everyone thinks this is a very logical statement, but when analyzing each day, which is -for him- Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and then Tuesday again, one begins to wonder how that is actually correct. Time and language are thus abolished.

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Teatro la Fenice in Venice - DN

The most important aspect of set design is to show the viewer where the action takes place. This may be as broad as a country of a whole nation or as specific as a house room.

This is one of the most well-known theatres in the world it is a historic opened in 1792  theatre, situated in Venice, Italy. It has a capacity of 1,500 spectators and due to the fact that its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" creates a more luxurious and at the same time bourgeois and upper-class atmosphere.

The ability of this scene to hold such a great number of spectators and at the same time its ability to reshape the needs of an event makes it unique and that’s the reason why I would like to use its stage. My creation would be different than what it was used and the direct contact in accordance with a royal and convenient atmosphere of theater would seem ideal for the standards that I have set as an ambitious creator. Although, I did not have the chance to visit and see with my own eyes the “Teatro la Fenice” its scene stands as one of the most representative for my ideaels stages at a worldwide level.

The reason why I would like to use the specific theater -Director’s notebook- is its sense of grandeur since we are talking about a very important both socially and historically performance.

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The theater of the absurd

After a mistake that I did in my extended essay concerning the term absurdism I decided to make my own research concerning absurdism and the theater of the absurd.

After the Second World War, artists were uncertain of how to create, following the war's grave consequences and the Nazi atrocities. After the desolation of life, peace and meanings that were previously accepted, were now left without any sense. The artistic response was based on the bleakness of the post-Second World War period. Sometimes, humor and laughter were the only choices of dealing with the immense pain people went through.

“I have attempted…to exteriorize, by using objects, the anguish of my characters, to make set speak and the action on the stage more visual, to translate into concrete images terror, regret, remorse, and estrangement, to play with words and even perhaps to deform them- which is generally accepted in the work of poets and humorists. I have thus sought to extend the idiom of theatre.”[1]

The word absurdism is often used to refer to European drama in the 1950-the 60s, by writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, often grouped together as the “Theatre of the Absurd”. The term the theatre of the absurd was coined by Martin Esslin, a Hungarian- born British theatre critic and academic[2]. Based on his study of the plays of Beckett, Ionesco, Genet and other playwrights, he wrote the book The Theatre of Absurd (1961-2) in which he analyzed and defined their absurdity.[3] “…Ionesco’s absurdity has its own fantastic knock-about flavor of tragical clowning. But they all share the same deep sense of human isolation and the irremediable character of the human condition” [4] (Esslin, 1960). This movement goes against any type of rationalism and realism and pushes the theatre to the extreme. Questions of reality are often met in this drama in the form of a nightmare rather than something funny.

The theatre of the absurd makes the normal unstable and leaves the spectators to deal with this instability in any way they can. “The world to me is a comedy because it is ridiculous. It’s comical because it’s tragic. Comedy is more tragic than the tragedy.”[5]. The Theatre of the Absurd can be perceived as an antiplay, as Ionesco has described his own plays. When I first read the first scene of the play, I had no idea that The Bald Soprano is an anti-play and Ι had never expected to read such an absurd text. 

  [1] “Nonsense Talk: Theatre of the Absurd.” The British Library, The British Library, 3 Aug. 2017, www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/nonsense-talk-theatre-of-the-absurd. 

[2] “Martin Esslin.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Jan. 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Esslin. 

[3] Esslin, Martin. “The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin: 9781400075232: PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books.” PenguinRandomhouse.com, Knopf, www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/47062/the-theatre-of-the-absurd-by-martin-esslin/9781400075232/. 

[4] Esslin, Martin. “The Theatre of the Absurd.” The Tulane Drama Review, vol.4, no.4, May 1960, pp.3-15. The MIT Press in collaboration with JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1124873?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents 

[5] “Interview with Ionesco Part 1.” Interview with Ionesco Part 1, YouTube, 24 Apr. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qih8bwcfh1U  . Accessed 5 Oct. 2019.

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Lighting

 “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens is one of the most loved and most famous Christmas stories. I had the chance to see the online version of an adaptation directed by K. Nikolaidi.

What attracted my interest in this perfroamance is its lighting made by Christine Thanasoula. They were colorful and vivid, a clue that I don’t observe pretty often in theater. At the same time there was a projection of the “spirits” through a light projector and it was really realistic. 

To make a performance successful each and every element of theatre has its own importance. So, like other elements of theatre, light play an important role in theatre presentation. It is also one of the most important but sometimes it is under appreciated. 

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Movement is vital

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyxklxISius

There are three aspects of acting that are covered in most drama schools. They are scene work, voice work, and movement. Body language is so important to our communication and hence in drama.

Throughout the course of IB theater I realized the significance of dance i drama and at the same I appreciated the role of the choreographers. 

I believe that this song could for sure be used in a performance where feelings of love would be revealed. This song in accordance with intense and sensual movements will create something spectacular.

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Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson is an American experimental theater stage director and playwright who has been described by The New York Times as "[America]'s – or even the world's – foremost vanguard 'theater artist.'" He has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer.

Since the late 1960s, Robert Wilson's productions have decisively shaped the look of theater and opera. Through his signature use of light, his investigations into the structure of a simple movement, and the classical rigor of his scenic and furniture design, Wilson has continuously articulated the force and originality of his vision.

What really attracted my interest about this creator, is that Wilson studied business administration at the University of Texas at Austin, but he dropped out in 1962 and moved to New York City to pursue his interest in the arts. 

People are afraid to pursue a career in arts, and thus they start with something else. But actually, real art lovers can find their way back.

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Old woman in Candide written by Voltaire

Candide is a book characterized for its theological and philosophical reflections written by Voltaire. Does it have numerous exciting questions, such as what causes natural events? But this post will not aim to analyze the above-mentioned book. 

As I think, very much one of the most moving affirmative philosophical moments in the book is when a woman, going through all the things she's been through-- she's the daughter of a pope, but she's been repeatedly raped. She's suffered disease, poverty, all these horrible things. She says, and yet, I loved life. I had this foolish attachment to this thing called life. And she does.

That's a pretty hopeful perspective. I believe that in a story where someone's life was shuttered, a mindset like that could for sure give meaning to life. Thus I would love to use such an ending after all the suffering that someone faced.

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Playwrights in the early part of the twenty-first century have struggled to transform the tensions of contemporary history into the substance of theatre and drama, but not for want of trying. Stuff Happens, the British playwright David Hare's attempt at docu- drama, originally seen at the National Theatre in London in 2004 and a year later at the New York Public Theater, registers the cynical power play at the centre of the second President Bush's decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein. Definitely a performance that has my outmost respect and I would love to see.

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This post refers to the performance “The Cherry Orchard by Pantelis Dentakis. Through this post, I would not like to analyze or discuss about the context of this performance, since I would like to do something different. This adaptation stood as the medium behind my understanding that my theatrical knowledge has expanded and developed into something completely different and at the same time hopeful and optimistic.

The performance reflected a modern directorial approach that I believe touches on current issues and is at the same time coordinated with the present. The poetic discourse arouses your interest; however, its dramatization is relatively weak since, for extended periods, it approaches the form of the analogy. The director has created a series of compelling images and dramatic moments that widen due to lack of stage action. A kinesiologist could solve technical issues that made it difficult for the actress (movement in the sheet, transitions from one stage unit to another, etc.)

But poetic speech is charming itself, but as I have learned the past one and half years, the theater is action and not just static narration.

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"Two" refers to a dance spectacle about the nature and the formation of identity of the man, directed in a state-of-the-art technological setting with the participation of male dancers exclusively and openness to homosexuality throughout a number of scenes.

«Two» was a form of pantomime for me, but it managed to keep me always alert throughout the performance. It was up to the date, peaceful, calm, and serene, as the journey of a man's life should be. A very interesting show, topical, caustic, innovative, with a lot of emotions, and many different "channels" of communication. My favorite part of this performance was the technique that worked on the spot, which was like presenting obstacles in life that seem like a dead-end at some point. Then lights were dark more than once when a man was running like symbolizing that If you persist and try harder, everything is possible. However, I can say that if I had not been informed about the aim of the director, I would be too confused since, without dialogue, things are more complicated. A more mature and old man could enjoy this play more since he would be able to see parts of his life in it.