Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud - Theories.
Today we started looking at Antonin Artaud and his techniques of acting.
Antonin Artaud didn't have any real success in his life, he lived quite a bad life, he had to go through both of the two world wars.
He also had a drug addiction and had a nervous disorder. After all this he began to write essays and there is now a book of every single essay he as ever wrote called 'The theatre and it's double' and this is where his theories come in.
- What have you understood of the theories? - in your own words.
One of Artaud's theories was called the "The Plague Analogy", this theory is about "Lancing The Abscess". That means pushing yourself to the absolute limits which means being cruel to yourself as an actor so that it would help the theatre expose the audience's sub-concious and release their "abscess" to release their inner evil... Their taboos.
"Lancing The Abscess" basically means everything evil in a society is hidden in ever person's sub-concious-(which is the "abscess" that we speak of), so everyone has this abscess but they hide it because of the morals created by the society around them. Things like paedophilia, murdering, raping, etc.
The other one of Artaud's theories is "Waking The Double". He believes that everyone has another side of their personality that they don't want to let loose.
However, Artaud believed that by "waking the double" as an actor can help them make their emotions louder than the words they speak and brings out the audience's "double".
Theories - Exercises.
We then began to look at these theroies and try some of these out and see how it would feel to be cruel to oneself and if we really could do them.
- Starter exercise - Instruments in a circle - Basic ritual.
The first exercise we did was a ritual in complete and utter silence apart from the sounds of the instuments-(we didn't even know what we were doing, but Andy told us before we walked into the room not to make a single sound), we started copying Andy, in silence. We then all stood up at the same time making a tune with the little instruments we were given-(some people we using their hands and clapping) all at the same time. We then started going round in a circle, keeping the same rhythm as before. We did this for approximately 10-15 MINUTES. Afterwards we all sat down-(still not talking or making any noises) with our eyes closed and we had to think of a word that described how we felt about the exercise we just did. I said "Relaxed" and some of the others were "Energised", "Calm", "Focused".
I found it very relaxing because we were all in-sink with each other and even though no one was talking, I felt like it was still very controlled and secure. It got us all really focussed and relaxed for the rest of the lesson.
- Grid exercise - Cruel to yourself - Feel? - Why?
The second exercise we did was the Grid Exercise. We all stood in a giant square, four actors for each side of the square. In this square there were loads of pathways and we had to walk down, up, left, right and centre trying to get loved by someone, anyone. It didn't have to be boyfriend/girlfriend love, it could have been love from a parent, friend, pet, whatever would have made you push yourself to the limit. I thought of my dad, because I knew that would make me push myself to the limit. It was awful having to think about it for so long and then having Andy shouting telling us to "work harder", but it worked. I think I did push myself, a lot. I'm not sure what everyone else thought of, obviously, but it affected a lot of them too.
When we first started the exercise we were all walking slow, but then Andy was telling us to work harder, making us work harder to get the love we think we deserve, so in the end we all started running around the pathways.
When Andy wouldn't stop pushing us and he said to me individually "Chloe! Work harder! C'mon" I wanted to turn around and hit him. But obviously I didn't I just push myself further, eventually I just started crying and running around the space and I couldn't stop, I then began to shake and didn't know what to do when we stopped.
During this exercise I had a million different emotions rushing through my body all at once. Some of them I've never felt and can't describe. But the main emotions I felt was lonely, pure anger, upset, lost and many, many more.
The reason why I think we did this is to see just how much we can push ourselves until we break completely.
- Slow motion - Size of performance.
The next exercise we did was the slow motion exercise, we did two one was Wrestling and the other was Boxing, we were in pairs and we had to do extreme slow motion moves for a couple of moves. I found it quite difficult to do this, as I'm quite a fast moving person, so it was very different to what I'm used too.
- Ritual - Communicates directly - Not throughout.
The final exercise we did was Ritual, this is where we got into groups and we had to come up with sounds and musical instuments, we looked at the hacker which is a set of rugby players who do a ritual before their match to scare their component and give them luck. My group came up with a piece and this piece had to be the sound of rain or how the rain makes you feel, so this is putting your emotions through by sounds and music. I think the reason we did this to communicate directly and also being able to get our emotions through different ways intead of just words. This exercise made me feel happy and enjoy showing different ways of emotion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74QsimqC2Nw
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