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Antotin Artaud

"Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones."

Artaud believed that theatre should represent reality and, therefore, affect the audience as much as possible, therefore he used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound, and other performance elements.

In his book The Theatre and Its Double, which contained the first and second manifesto for a "Theatre of Cruelty", Artaud expressed his admiration for Eastern forms of theatre, particularly the Balinese. He admired Eastern theatre because of the codified, highly ritualized and precise physicality of Balinese dance performance, and advocated what he called a "Theatre of Cruelty". At one point, he stated that by cruelty he meant not exclusively sadism or causing pain, but just as often a violent, physical determination to shatter the falsereality. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language, halfway between thought and gesture. Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all theatre is physical expression in space.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Artaud#Theatre_of_Cruelty

The idea of a theatre of cruelty . He therefore tried to provoke conditions that would force the release of primitive instincts he believed were hidden beneath the civilised social veneer masking all human behaviour. Describing the energy and impact of a radical new way of performing and responding in strong and often dark imagery, he envisioned a theatre that rejected rational interpretation. Instead, he welcomed the irrational impulses that could be stimulated by suffering and pain and argued that every facet of theatricality should be employed to increase a sense of danger, violence and disorientation in the audience. However, Artaud argued that his concept of cruelty was not sadistic. He wanted to stimulate what was honest and true and the cruelty he envisaged required a rigour and determination that was necessary if performers and audiences were to confront and experience the dark and terrifying responses that lay at the heart of each human being.

was first introduced by Antonin Artaud to describe a form of theatre that he hoped would unleash unconscious responses in audiences and performers that were normally inaccessible. Artaud was opposed to theatrical productions based on venerated classical texts or established literary forms and thought they merely represented worlds that were irrelevant and highly artificial constructions. He wanted audiences to find in the theatre not an area for escape from the world, but the realisation of their worst nightmares and deepest fears.

Taken from http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/academy/theatres/theatre%20of%20cruelty.htm

Dairy Log

Today we studied artaudian theatre and so to "affect the audience as much as possible" we searched the school for the best place to do so which we decided would be under the stage as it you can get a full blackout under there and so the audience would loose one of their senses. Then the class split in half and we was given a set of actions to peform to/on the other members of the class to play on their senses, which involved alot of sound. My half of the class would be the first audience; the performance actually, instead of scaring me, really excited me, it was a completely new type of performance to me and was actually done really well. When it was my turn to perform I really enjoyed that the underneath of the stage was filled with props and so when hitting these against various other props, or around the room, my audience would react in a different way to each different prop. They for our next performance, as a class for/on our teacher, we added strobe lighting which meant our acting skills would be more required to which I expressed myself as quite animistic and clung to the darkness as my ally.

Butoh

"Not thinking, Only soul"
Kazuo Ohno

Butoh  is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh  movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. There is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all. Its origins have been attributed to Japanese dance legends Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

Butoh appeared first in Japan following World War II and specifically after student riots. The roles of authority were now subject to challenge and subversion. It also appeared as a reaction against the contemporary dance scene in Japan, which Hijikata felt was based on the one hand on imitating the West and on the other on imitating the Noh. He critiqued the current state of dance as overly superficial.

Most butoh exercises use image work to varying degrees: from the razorblades and insects of Ankoku Butoh, to Dairakudakan's threads and water jets, to Seiryukai's rod in the body. There is a general trend toward the body as "being moved," from an internal or external source, rather than consciously moving a body part. A certain element of "control vs. uncontrol" is present through many of the exercises.

Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh

Dairy Log

Butoh is a style of performance that is meant to come from within and so to start the lesson, we practised a Butoh style walk which I think helped my understanding of how, traditionally, Butoh performers would express themselves. Then in pairs, we raced crawling across the room carrying each other as dead weights being told to really let our emotions out, not verbally but still with noises and physical interpretations. We then constructed a Butoh dance to 'Black Skinhead' by Kayne West which was actually quite good however I didn't particularly enjoy studying Butoh; for me it seemed more about strength and rebelling against western stereotypes than a focus on conveying a message to an audience. 

DV8

"...dramatic coherence, human integrity, irresistible visual power, were all there in the most outstanding work I have seen all year."
The Daily Telegraph

DV8 Physical Theatre was formed in 1986 and has been led since its inception by Lloyd Newson.

The company has produced 17 highly acclaimed dance pieces, which have toured internationally, and four award-winning films for television.

DV8 Physical Theatre receives regular funding from Arts Council England and is an Artsadmin associate company. DV8 has also received project support from The British Council. DV8 is a member of the ITC and Dance UK.

DV8 Physical Theatre's work is about taking risks, aesthetically and physically, about breaking down the barriers between dance and theatre and, above all, communicating ideas and feelings clearly and unpretentiously. It is determined to be radical yet accessible, and to take its work to as wide an audience as possible.

DV8 is motivated by artistic inspiration and creative need: these, rather than financial, organisational and touring demands dictate the creation of new works.

Great emphasis is placed on the process by which new work is created. The company has fought successfully for funding to cover lengthy research and development periods in order to maintain rigorous artistic integrity and quality in each new project. The focus of the creative approach is on reinvesting dance with meaning, particularly where this has been lost through formalised techniques.

DV8's work inherently questions the traditional aesthetics and forms which pervade both modern and classical dance, and attempts to push beyond the values they reflect to enable discussion of wider and more complex issues.

DV8 (Dance and Video 8)'s strong commitment to film and video continues. This reflects its ongoing interest in how two primarily visual media can enhance one another and reach a crossover audience from within both forms.

The company's reputation relies on pushing its own boundaries and on the constant re-examination of the roles and relationships of men and women in our society. Its policy insists on the importance of challenging our preconceptions of what dance can, and should, address.

Taken from across http://www.dv8.co.uk/

Physical theatre Mind Map/Word Cloud

01/10/13 - Morning Routines

Today we started our devised pieces with the stimulus title 'Morning Routines'. We Mind-mapped plenty of Ideas and decided we wanted to perform in the style of Frantic assembly because we felt we could relate to their take on Physical theatre most.

The piece started quite abstract with lots of jumping and the use of "quaqua", which we had taken from a previous script, to try and wake up a character but we soon saw it as a battle of day and night nymphs and became more comical.

The two nymphs have set a bet to see if one can wake up the character 'Phil' (Phillchey), whilst the other tries to keep him in bed.