Acting - Day 5 - Zombies
Today for class we were supposed to read the article called ‘The Empty Space’ by Peter Brook.
Here are a few memorable quotes:
“…for the actor the word is a small visible portion of a gigantic unseen formation.”
“…a play that rehearses for economic reasons for only three weeks is crippled from the outset”
“In theory few men are as free as the playwright. He can bring the whole world onto his stage.”
“Shakespere used the same unit that is available today - a few hours of public time. He used this tiem span to cram together, second for second, a quantity of lively material of incredible richness. This material exists simultaneuously on an infinite variety of levels, it plunges deep and reaches high: the technical devices, the use of verse and prose, the many changing scenes, exciting, funny, disturbing, were the ones the author was compelled to develop to satisfy his needs: and the author had a precise, human and social aim which gave him reason for searching for his themes, reason for searching for his means, reason for making theatre.”
For me these quote are equally appropriate to songwriting and musical performances.
In class, we started with a very interesting exercise. Some was chosen to begin acting out an activity non-verbally. When others in the ‘audience’ figured out what was going on - they each joined one by one. Giovanni began playing cards, which took some time to figure out, but one by one people joined him. When the group became too large, Devon tried to steal their cash, allowing others to join in as police. As the event unfolded it became more fanciful with people becoming super heroes, mass murderers and then zombies.
The zombie theme was repeated again during a subsequent exercise and at this point it seemed a little worn. It was interesting that people chose to act out references from films in these improvisations. At first I was critical of this, but then I realized that in order to communicate something with motion alone, it’s necessary that the actions be instantly recognizable by the majority of the audience. Only film has a wide enough reach for this. Subtle details of daily life would be much harder to get across.
I really appreciated the creativity of my fellow dramatists, though again it was hard for me to keep up in the non-verbal environment. I need somehow to really develop these non-verbal skills.
Movements tell such a deep story about who people are. Tonight I was at a party and I noticed again how boring the verbal/mental conversations were, but people were saying a lot with their body language. At one point a girl leaned in towards me repeatedly while we were talking about nothing, and I responded to her words and not her movement. A missed opportunity…