Final Blog: Practices of Theatre
Choices are the framework of acting. The Stanislavski system focused on the development of artistic truth onstage by teaching actors to “experience the part” during performance. Actors were instructed to use their own memories in order to express emotion. Stanislavski also proposed that actors study and experience subjective emotions and feelings and manifest them to audiences by physical and vocal means. Stanislavski believed that the truth that occurred onstage was different from that of real life, but that a ‘scenic truth’ could be achieved onstage. A performance should be believable for an audience so that they may appear to the audience as truth (wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislavski’s_system). The focus is on physical actions as a means to access truthful emotion, and involves improvisation. With these actions comes objectives. The objective is a goal that a character wants to achieve. This is often worded in a question form as “What do I want?” An objective should be action-oriented, as opposed to an internal goal, to encourage character interaction onstage. Objectives are divided into scene-objectives and super-objective which the actor must decide on after careful analysis of the play. The focus remains on reaching the subconscious through the conscious. All costume, sets and lighting seek to reflect reality as closely as possible. They should fit to the time period that the piece is performed as.
Theatre of the Absurd encompasses many different works, for example: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. The bases of the acting style in Waiting for Godot is clowning. A clown is a comic performer who employs slapstick or similar types of physical humor, often in a pantomime style. The comedy that clowns perform is usually seen to be that of a fool where everyday actions and tasks become extraordinary and where the ridiculous, for a short while, becomes ordinary. It consists of improvisations on a stage and as such is a form of theatrics expression. Clowning focuses on the anatomical basics of human movement brings illumination to the root of diverse methods for acting or even for spiritual modalities. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and even basic causality frequently breaks down. Meaningless plots, repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods. There is a fine line, however, between the careful and artful use of chaos and non-realistic elements and true, meaningless chaos. While many of the described by this title seem to be quite random and meaningless on the surface, an underlying structure and meaning is usually found in the midst of the chaos (wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Absurd). Because the characters are so very symbolic, the costumes, lights and set reflect that; everything has meaning. Theatre of the Absurd is a cerebral experience, meaning the audience does not have to connect emotionally to the characters. The aim is to present a problem so blatantly that it seems to no make sense.
The dance is often done in a trance-like state, on bent legs with rolled up eyes. Hijikata’s first dances were often grotesque, twisted, dark and perverse. Ohno’s butoh is more ethereal and floating, ever reaching to the light. (zenbutoh.com) Most dances start out as improvisational and then as the process continues, the director and performers use the improvisation to create the choreography. There are basic elements to every Butoh performance. The first: all performances are set to music. Music influences the pieces and can often stimulate much of the choreography. Next is that there is no dialogue or speech of any kind. Sounds are allowed, which often come as screams or animalistic sounds. These should be produced naturally while rehearsing, to make the performance more fluid. The third element is the make-up. When performing Butoh, it is standard practice to cover all exposed skin with white makeup. White in many eastern cultures represents death, and the white paint is another physical representation of it. An interesting aspect about Butoh is that it can performed anywhere. Butoh in itself defies theatre norms, so why would it need a stage to always conform too? Butoh explores the body on the edge of crisis, and does not require conventional theatre techniques like Realism or Theatre of the Absurd. Unlike Theatre of the absurd, Butoh is a visceral experience for the both the performer and audience member.
“…;the essential thing is that your movements, even when you’re standing still, embody your soul at all times.” —Kazuo Ohno
All three styles are extremely different in there practices. One employs careful analysis and extreme structured rehearsal, while is based mostly on improvisation. They employ different techniques to produce cerebral or visceral (or both) reaction from their audiences. One doesn’t even need an audience to be performed, while the other needs audience reaction to make the performance even stronger. But in the end, theatre is theatre no matter what part of the globe. There is no other feeling in the world performing or watching live theatre. All three of these practices do what they were intended to do: bring a message to a society through creativity.
