Lysistrata Concept Design

Decadence: Exploring ideas

George & Taylor

 The performance of pantomime originates at its earliest in Ancient Greece, although performances were not necessarily silent. In Medieval Europe, early forms of mime such as "mummer plays" and later "dumb-shows" evolved. In early nineteenth century Paris, Jean-Gaspard Deburau solidified the many attributes that we have come to know in modern times—the silent figure in white-face.
Mime is usually performed on-stage, with Marcel Marceau and his character "Bip" being the most famous.Traditionally, these sorts of performances involve the actor/actress wearing tight black and white clothing with white facial make-up. However, contemporary mimes often perform without white-face. Similarly, while traditional mimes have been completely silent, contemporary mimes, while refraining from speaking, sometimes employ vocal sounds when they perform. Mime acts are often comical, but some can be very serious. 

Plain white worked well

The use of the plain white face is to show the lack of emotion being displayed by the character - We thought that by having contrasting colours with a white face will show that we are paying similar yet contrasting characters

I hired out some models!

Knowing that Berkoff studied a lot of Mime work (with Marcel Marceau being influential to him) me and Taylor discussed ideas on costume design and we thought it would be good to have plain white faces with contrasting features and so, this half term I took home a box of face-paints and stage blood and started experimenting with various styles and design.
 



We got a little carried away with the make-up experimenting, after all it was Halloween!

Decadence - The beginning

    Today we were given part of the script "Decadence" after hearing it being read out to us I was instantly mesmerised by the creativity and sense of intelligence you got just by reading a few lines!
    We were told to chose our parters and so I chose Tayla because I feel we could create a good performance together.
    To begin with we both read through the script ourselves and briefly discussed any ideas we had, once we had a few ideas, we organised the script and highlighted the lines we would say. 
    We thought a lot about audience awareness, whether to have them in Rows, scattered around or as a plain audience, in the end we decided it would be good to arrange them in a scattered semi-circle and have us pacing around them - breaking the fourth wall completely.
    We also thought about costume design after watching a performance of decadence (Linked below) We have decided that it would be good to be dressed as opposites - emphasising the way we read our lines, My character (Violent and malevolent) shall be wearing black with white face-paint/Black features whereas Tayla's (Tame and Collected) character will be wearing Red with the same style face-paint just with read features
    We are going to mime out small performances in our piece, for example we will use a member of the audience when I speak about (what I will refer to as) the "Car incident". We also mime out little things such as the bottles of poison - by using Berkoff's Rule of 3 - but we will not be using many props other than chairs and perhaps some water to keep in with Berkoff's use of minimal and simplistic scenes, our 'acting abilities' should be enough to keep the audience attached!

Metamorphosis

To ease us in to the style of Berkoff we were given a few pages from "Metamorphosis" to work on, just to get the idea of what Berkoff's work was like.

Summary
Metamorphosis was originally written by Franz Kafka, one of Berkoffs main influences. The piece focuses primarily on the thoughts and feelings of Gregor Samsa. The narrator only describes events that Gregor sees, hears, remembers, or imagines from the actions around him. Gregor is the sole financier of the family and he carries the wait of the world on his shoulders and his family expect him to do so until one day he awakes as a dung beetle! his family mistreat his and completely forget about him throughout the play, Due to a rotting apple his father threw at him, Gregor the beetle starts to rot alive and eventually dies. The themes in this play are; The absurdity of life; the disconnect between mind and body; the limits of sympathy; alienation

Mini-Project
Once we were given the script we were arranged into small groups (Me, Holeigh, Paige, Taylor and George) The first piece we were given was a page and a half, just so we could loosely get the hang and use different techniques such as mime with the rule of three. The next piece was the larger lodgers scene and in it we focused ore on accurate miming and pace of the performance to try and make it fit more into a Berkoff style. Our group tried to focus more on the mime rather than any props used to describe the story as Berkoff would have prefered a more minimalistic looking stage. We found the hardest part which we had to focus on was the lodgers, all three of these were played well by holeigh, we discussed different ways to show how they were different characters being mult-roled. This was whon through gestuures, posture and tone of voice

The next thing we will be working on is a long piece called "Decadence" similar to "Crave" (Inspired by Berkoff) by Sarah Kane that I have previously read and also adore her work

Berkoff - 'Total Theatre'

• Large scale mime and the juxtaposition of this with spare dialogue and phatic utterances.
• The replacement of props and furniture with what can be created by the actors bodies.
• The almost 'hieratic' leading characters, taking the audience through the narrative.
• The link within the idea of the 'Total theatre' which seeks to attract an almost spirited response from the audience through using all the resources of theatre including athletics.
• Emphasis upon the figure of the actor as the most important and creative aspect of performance.
• Berkoff has a distinctively physical style of acting with the emphasis on physical theatre and mime.
• Scenery is significant by its absence.
• Through the actors words, position and physical attitude in relation to the audience, Berkoff's characters establish themselves as 'story tellers'.
• Performances are orchestrated, the words uttered, the way they are spoken, facial expression and movement are all choreographed to inform each other.
• An actor can be visually a lone figure on stage but take on different purposes.

"I didn't want to do anything even remotely ordinary"

Influences

Laurence Olivier (1907 -1989) Was possibly the greatest theatre actor in Britain. His acting and direction of Shakespeare such as Richard III and Henry IV are considered definitive. In the cinema he achieved matinee idol success in films such as Rebecca. When Olivier died, his wife, actress Vivien Leigh was in season in the national theatre and pulled out. Berkoff was brought in to fill in the empty slots. Berkoff's admiration of Olivier is apparent from his one-man show Shakespeare Villains.


Edmund Kean (1787 - 1833) Was an actor Berkoff admired and someone he probably saw as a role model. Like Berkoff, Kean had an under-privileged background and fought to establish himself in theatre. Kean was popular presenter of the Shakespeare and combines passion with melodrama.


Bertold Brecht (1898-1956) The German playwright Brecht left Germany when Hitler came to power. His plays show his anti fascist stance and were also innovative in particular his verfrendungseffekt (alienation effect) which Berkoff uses in "East" where actors destroy Naturalism by, for example addressing to the audience

Antonin Artaud (1896 - 1948) Artaud's theoretical writing is the manifestos for a theatre of cruelty which accounts for his immense influence on modern theatre. Artaud wanted to move from staid structured melodrama towards a theatre reinvigorated by danger and cruelty, using power of words and gestures to release emotions. Berkoff followed Artaud and wrote his own Three Theatre Manifestos, and in the documentary "changing Stages" Berkoff talks of the influence of Artaud who wished to get rid of all playwrights with their domestic and psychological obsessions, since he felt they got in the way of true theatrical obsession. "The actor exists without the play...He can improvise, be silent, mime, make sounds and be a witness." Artaud suggests that the actor should look for texts, not written expressively for the recruiting of actors to bring them to life, but works that already exist in the public consciousness... ancient works and myths.
Artaud believe in the theatre of cruelty, and intimidating the audience and making them feel small and irrelevant. He believed in using unconventional settings, and very abstract movements and characterisation.

 

Jean-Louis Barrault (1910-1994) Barrault formed his own theatre company and developed his use of mime on theatre which influenced Berkoff when he founded the London Theatre Group

Berkoff studied with Claude Chagrin, a pupil of Jacques le Coq, and later briefly with Le Coq himself. Le Coq's mime, movement, masks and ensemble of acting are characteristic of Berkoff

Berkoff talking about Edmund Kean

Steven Berkoff - Beginning

We started studying Steven Berkoff by firstly getting together a few quick tasks to help the group understand what Berkoff's performances were like - Snappy and effective. These tasks involved things like creating a piece of drama where you show your morning routine, only we were asked to over or under- exaggerate everything in the Berkoff style.

Steven Berkoffs works consisted of pieces involving minimalistic set designs and instead relying on the actors shear talent to produce a piece, mime is always used in his work and these mimes are often emphasised, creating a more interesting piece for the audience - so everything is pretty much (positively) taken completely over the top. Pace is also important and is emphasised more with a good voice control - similar to the work of Pinter- With this pace gestures are added making the vocals more interesting.
    The emphasis in Berkoffs work gives a comical effect often juxtaposing the inner story.

Steven Berkoff