Has Time Ever Changed? 

Something that began to inspire me at the beginning of our process, was this quote, said by Chekhov:

“We struggle to change life so that those who come after us might be happy, but those who come after us will say as usual, it was better before, life now is worst than it used to be.”

(Patterson, 2005). Chekhov was suggesting that we try to make things better to make everyone, including ourselves, happier. However no one will ever be happier as they will always want and expect more. They will always look back on the past thinking it was better, instead of being positive and looking at the future. This was said a long time ago, but is still relevant today, I began to question whether  generations after generations people had really changed or not. I came to realise that with every single piece of existing text which we’ve found, whether it be modern day song lyrics, Shakespeare’s words, famous speeches, they can all still be relevant in this day of age. This made me query whether things have really changed throughout these time leaps. Of  course they have in cases, we have come a long way, however at the same time we really haven’t, these texts can still be very relevant, especially when the context was changed.

Although we haven’t used Chekhov within our piece, this was something that inspired me early on in our piece and contributed to inspiration for the peformance. I looked at some of Chekhov’s work,

“Chekhov’s plays stand as powerful statements that at least to the fact that things were never better, and that hope for the future matters more than anything.”

(Patterson, 2005). I came to realise that this is an aspect of our performance “Take Me By The Tongue”. Although this is fiction, maybe the reason his work can be connected to so easily is because “Chekhov claims to represent the world as it is, without moral judgments. Most of the climactic action in his works takes place offstage, often before the beginning of the play.” (Lewis). Because to this his work can seem really real and very realistic and therefore relatable. Our performance isn’t realistic, but it should be relatable. If you can relate and engage with it, then you can question more topics. 

I was really inspired by his play Uncle Vanya, particularly the last speech of Sonya’s, where she comes to realise that the rest of her life will consist of having to

“labour for others from now into our old age without respite… throughout the long days and endless evenings…”

(Chekhov, Frayn, 1988, 59). I felt connected towards this character, and that people could still easily understand and relate to her, even though this was written over two hundred years ago and set in Russia. This began my process of understanding that with a majority of texts that we are looking at, the older ones are still relevant today, in one way or another. I questioned whether the modern texts will therefore still be relevant, say in 100 years to come, will people have changed? Or will we still have the same problems which are currently here today. This was the main inspiration for me as a performer, looking at the way some things haven’t changed, and the idea of having hope and positivitys for the future.

Works Cited

Patterson, M. (2005) The Oxford Dictionary of Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chekhov, A. Trans, Frayn, M. (1988) Uncle Vanya. London: Methuen Publishing Ltd.

Lewis, P. Anton Chekhov.[Online] The Modern Lab at Yale University. Available from: http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Anton_Chekhov [Accessed 27 May].

With the pre-existing text that was created into individual scenes, the challenge was to fit these scenes into an order that created a smooth, sleek dramatic progression. Stanislavski suggests breaking up the play into units of action. This is achieved by allocation each scene a title/description that captures the essence of the scene.  By titling each scene, in terms of what it was about and what we wanted to convey, it helped us to put the individual scenes in an order that allowed crescendo for the piece.

“There is a progressive growth in a play that is designed to achieved maximum dramatic effect. Actors, directors and designers concerned with craftsmanship should learn to understand and illustrate this process.”

Take me by the Tongue 29/05/14

(Thomas, 2005, 52). In doing this the next event should gain more interest than the last, and keep the audience on their toes. We were aware that some scenes could have more energy that others, we didn’t want the beginning of our piece to be on a high note, with only lighter scenes towards the end, therefore this had to be carefully considered and constructed. It was very important to end with a scene that left the audience remembering the right messages. By ending with a comedic scene, it didn’t throw the message in their face but was hidden under a light note, we never wanted to tell them what to think but merrily suggest topics. In order to help remind them what our overall piece was about, we ended with the song which inspired our performance name:

“Take Me by the Tongue”

(Maroon Five (2011) Moves Like Jagga). This allowed us to remind them that we had taken our title, from a lyric, that the beginning was full of lyrics, and the whole piece had come from pre-existing texts or spoken words, handed down to us.

Works Cited

Thomas, J. Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers. Elsevier Inc: Oxford.

Take Me By The Tongue might not be a naturalistic performance, however the acting

Take me by the Tongue 29/05/14

still needs to be believable. This requires a performer to be physically active, aware, brave and able to adapt to different roles quickly and believeably. Guskin explains that

“we want the audience to be lost in what we say and do, not standing back, judging whether we are acting the characters well or badly. So the lines must be our own, or the audience will see us acting a character.”

(Guskin, 2004, 42). Every line we say must have a incentive behind why the character is saying it, it needs to be said with intention.  Miller agrees stating that “you must act, then the feeling will come. Intention must be there though.” (Miller, 2010, 90).The action is what matters, it’s what the characters or actors are doing, it’s the different context that should engage the audience. After all theatre is action, we don’t want to watch a group of people saying a bunch of words meaninglessly. By thinking about this for every scene, it made it easier to alter different styles of acting within the performance, for instance I could go from a moment that includes the audience, to a section where I need to be mechanical, and puppet like.

Inspired by this process of Stanislavski’s, Juliet Stevenson says “You take a piece of text and you dig downwards from the text and language towards the roots of the person… you come to understand the character, their experiences, so that the audience understands it, too.” (Stevenson, 2009, 6). This relies on finding the characters objectives, (something they want from the other character in the scene), the obstacles, (which prevent the characters from achieving their objectives), and actions (what you do, physically, to achieve the objective). This is how I have worked in order to make my acting styles believable to the audience. However not only do I think about the character, but what I, as Jade, wants the audience to think about, this is my personal super objective. Once having stepped into my role, and truly felt what is in my character, I step out of the role, and look back to what this scene should make people question. Davies explains a way of doing this for everyone to read other people’s parts, perhaps swapping roles every act. (Davies, 2007, 85). This gets you out of your head, and within the moment, it also allows you to see intentions and characteristics that you may have forgotten about.

During working on such a diverse piece, a challenge that, which I embraced, was to try to be accepting to trying all different possibilities and ways of changing my characters intentions, whether this was to do with an accent or physicality.This required me to be brave and to experiment, to think outside of the box. Davies agrees suggesting that “We must be prepared to experiment, be vulnerable, and if necessary make a fool of ourselves.” (Davies, 2007, 87). Abbott describes that the biggest mistake that an actor can make is trying to act out the subtext in order to make it clear for the audience. This is something in which we wanted to avoid, because we wanted the audience to come up with their own questions whilst watching our performance. We wanted them to leave perhaps confused, dazed, but at the very least questioning subject matters which we might suggest or touch on. Abbott explains in order to achieve this “Actors should understand it, feel it and then suppress it.” (Abbott, 2012, 126). My main goal as a performer was to maintain believability and emotional truth,  if the audience can’t believe in what we’re saying then they will be too busy focusing on that, instead thinking about questions that the performance might pose. As Gusking explains,

“Acting is finding the truth. Some truths are more important that other truths… Good acting is when it is intellectually and absolutely inspired.”

(Kline, 2004, 36).

Take me by the Tongue 29/05/14

Works Cited

Davies, O, F. (2007). Performing Shakespeare. London: Nick Herns Books.

Guskin, H. (2004) How to Stop Acting. London: Methuen.

Miller, B. (2010) The Scene Study Book. New York: Limelight Editions.

Stevenson, J. (2009) Behind the Curtain…. The Guardian, 13 May, 6.

Shakespeare

There are many challenges that can occur when attempting to perform Shakespeare within a different context to the traditional style. Barton describes the main problem as

“how to marry the Elizabethan text and acting tradition with our modern acting tradition.”

(Barton, 1984, 25). We have taken Shakespeare’s words and completely flipped the meanings by setting it within a comedic stand up style. Many people would disagree, stating that Shakespeare can’t be changed, or that we don’t understand the intent or the true meaning. Davies explains, “He was drunk with the power of words and many argue that it is his language rather plot which provides the real structure of his plays.” (Davies, 2007, 89). If language overrides plot, does this mean that the language only ever has one meaning? We challenge this, if language is what is great about his work then surely it could work in different scenarios and various plots. Continue reading →