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The development of RT stems from a desire to create performance
based outcomes for actors in training in method-acting
workshop environments. Actors working with RT processes, practice
performance skills while putting themselves whole-heartedly in the stories
being played out.
Deep experiential learning requires emotional, physical and mental investment
which lead is to an immersive experience for the participats and observers–
this process supports the goal of believability in acting
and story telling. Creating a state of believability, or a believable
performance, while subjective, can be thought of in these terms –
emotional investment tends to lead to emotional truth which tends to lead
to a believable performance. Another way of determining a ‘believable’
performance may be to ask the questions: do we relate, do we empathise,
do we understand or do we respond physiologically or emotionally in an
automatic or unconscious way?
Raw Theatre seeks to create story enactments – performances –
that strive for the authentic, the believable
and the immersive experience. This is reflectied in a
pedagogical desire for student actors to gain an experiential understanding
of an organicaly derived performance as they philisophicaly embrace the
tenets method acting.
Method Acting has many interpretations – in its
simplest form it might be expressed as a series of craft processes, which
allow an actor to achieve emotional truth in the role being played. One
measure of a good story is its inherent capacity to keep us wanting to
know what happens next. This desire to want to know what happens next
is experienced as a deep form of engagement. Method Acting strives to
create an emotionally believable performance where the audience does not
question the veracity or truthfulness of the role being played within
the context of the story. While disbelief is suspended, the viewer rarely
forgets a fiction is being witnessed, however to facilitate the deepest
level of engagement possible, Method Acting strives to create the most
believable performance through a deep connection to the emotional truth
of the story experience.
When a note is played on one instrument, other instruments nearby also
vibrate or resonate with that frequency. So it is with method based acting
or method based story telling – as a witness to a believable performance
or an emotionally true performance we are more likely to resonate with
the frequency and come to empathise, sympathise and understand at a deeply
engaged level. This in performance terms can be reffered to as an ‘organic
performance’.
To achieve an organic performance the actor is able to
trust the assimilation process of rehearsal and allow the immediate and
un-expected to occur within the form of the piece being performed. Assimilation
is the body’s organic response to learning, as a building of knowledge,
which includes spontaneity and discovery each time the work is performed
– knowledge and refinement of practice occurs over time through
openness and repetition. In RT the organic performance occurs as a process
of assimiliation due to the resonating strength of a) the body story being
told and b) the degree of emotional commitment of all involved. As the
story is usually not re-told the assimilation process occurs for all players
and participants as the enactments and interventions unfold.
The nature of improvisation is defined by that which
is un-rehearsed. In some forms of improvised theatre, ingenuity, quick
wittedness and inventiveness are pre-requisites as the who, what, where
and when of the given circumstances are established (Spolin 1999). While
RT does not downgrade these attributes, qualities such as empathy, openness,
vulnerability and emotional risk also come emerge as fundamental requirements.
These qualities are fundamental to RT because they are fundamental to
the Method Acting process striving for organic performance.
The implications of the development of RT leads to possible performance
outcomes that go beyond a classroom structure, leading toward educational
potentials at a tertiary and corporate level and further toward the mass
entertainment arena. Before these phases of development occur the major
work in the first phase of development has been focused on the needs of
the actor in training.
These
needs may be categorised on three levels:
@ Instrumental Awareness
@ Organic Craft Processes
@ Story Telling
Instrumental Awareness covers an actors’ self awareness.
As actors are both ‘the canvas and the art’ they must develop
a heightened ability to know their own tendencies, habitual behaviours
and areas of resistance that may or may not impede artistic expression.
Actors in training are encouraged to face themselves, be self examining,
unearth fears, develop greater empathy toward the human condition and
strive toward increasing flexibility and range in all forms of expression.
RT assists this process through its processes of story telling where the
material for the stories performed are derived from the lived experiences
of the actors themselves.
Actors develop a set or a kitbag of repeatable craft processes which serve
as a means to unlock, explore and discover dramatic material. Organic
Craft Processes are a set of experiential methods which use;
sense memory, emotional memory, observation, external to internal transfer,
imagination and available stimulus. RT uses many of these craft processes
either explicitly or implicitly in the formation and enacting of the stories
being played out.
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Actors also need to develop an understanding of story telling.
Underpinning the practical aspects of story telling, an actor embraces
an intuitive understanding of ‘the energetics of audience engagement’:
the ability to stay energetically connected and emotionally immersed in
and within the story being told tends to bring an ‘emotional truth’
to the story which tends to keep the audience engaged.As method-actor
training and method acting conduct improvisations, exisiting forms of
PT use improvisation as a primary means of theatre creation:
The basis for RT may be described as a set of ‘method acting’
principles, combined with various forms of participatory theatre (PT),
also known as Interactive Theatre: Interactive Theatre [IT] expands the
experience of the audience by offering them a proactive role, in which
they are invited to join as a collaborator in the creation of the performance….
[IT] combines … the spontaneity of improvisation, and the empoyerment
of participation. (Wirth 1994) … theatre
in which the audience actively and spontaneously cocreates with the actor
the unfolding drama. (Izzo 1998).
Key areas of influence on Raw Theatre stem from forms of Interactive Theatre
known as: Process Drama (O'Neill 1995) dealing mainly with theatre education
in the social context, Playback Theatre (Salas
1999) creating theatricality with the personal story, Theatre
of the Oppressed (Boal 1995) improvised dramatic forms examining roles
of power and oppression, – these forms of PT and their respective
structures, processes, reasons for being and
outcomes vary slightly in nature.
While the practices of Raw Theatre are influenced by and concentrate on,
acting and theatre it is clear that the playing of, and telling of, the
personal story may at times act therapeuaticaly for participants and observers.
Raw Theatre is not a form of drama therapy but may at times may be therapeutic,
as any good story, piece of music, poem, dance or work of art may have
therapeutic value. In making this distinction it is however necessary
to acknowledge the contribution Jacob Levy Moreno (1889-1974), the developer
of Psychodrama, has made, informing much of the poetics and practices
of RT. It is possible to make connections between the practices of RT
to the four pillars of Psychodrama: 1) Role Theory. 2) Sociometry. 3)
The Theory of Spontaneity/Ceativity, and 4) Psychodrama Intervention Constructs
(Lewis and Johnson 2000). In particular Moreno’s
technique of Role Reversal informs many of the enactments of RT.
RT finds itself developing a unique position in the field of PT. The key
to RT and what sets it apart is the depth of examination of the ‘personal
story’. The immediate benefit as discussed above, at a pedagogical
level, revolves around the lived experience being converted to engaging
performance in the workshop context. This will lead to future examinations
of RT’s inherent entertainment values. The extended benefit is that
stories shared with commitment and emotional truth will invariably inform
participant’s relationship with the ‘universal story’.
And in doing, the actor in training experiences the possibility of an
expanded world view.
By knowing and sharing myself through story enactment
I
may come to know and share more of the human story.
To
understand the other is to understand the self.
The need to develop RT lay in a personal desire to create structure around
improvisation which would both enrich and inform the actor’s experience
of dramatic content and story telling elements. And to generate content
with a sense of play and creative freedom within a set of forms that relied
on the story material to emanate form the lived experiences of the particpants.
The lived experiences of the actors are a rich source of material. Exploring
this material through improvisation deepens understanding and creates
connection to stimuli for use in other roles. RT focuses on Role and Relationship.
Connections again are made with Moreno’s – Role Theory and
Sociometry. How we behave in the company of others and the examination
of those behaviours through enactment and role play witnessed /experienced
by observers and participants of RT may be described as energetic differences
or the energetics of body story. RT is very interested in examining how
much of the story is being told at this energetic level. So much of which
is inferred and detected non-verbaly.
The derivation of the story material comes specifically from the ‘body-story’
of the class member being interviewed by the facilitator. The ‘body-story’
refers to the current focal energies of the conscious and/or subconscious
mind, or put another way, the stuff we are feeling most about, right now.
The interviewer/facilitator will initiate a series of questions that will
promote the participant to identify an aspect of his or her body story
they are willing to share.
The RT project already undertaken has seen a set of rehearsals with a
team of actors who are proficient in recognised forms of improvisation
and possess a sympatico with method acting principles. The rehearsal workshops
have set out to explore, discover and define the processes of RT. After
some initial trials and experimentaion it was evident that key elements
needed to be streamlined for sessions to be effective.
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