Charlotte Swaby 0803698 - 'Blog Assessment 2'

In order to create Four Ways to Speak out, we used the key strategies of Robert Lepage’s RSVP model of devising throughout the creative process. The model according to Lepage is “the generic method for liberating personal and group creativity” (2003, p23) and it starts with Research, where you do exactly that. We gathered key information on our narrative theme of domestic abuse and discussed possible theories and skills for the performance in relation to the ensemble and each individual. The research stage is very process orientated and it started back in semester one of the module, with the play sessions. Callery states that “play is very much about creating many worlds, whether individually or collaboratively” (2001, p97) and here we all learnt, through task led exercises, the naturalistic and stylistic techniques used to create physical theatre. This gave each performer a wide range of knowledge and provided each person with a substantial technique palette in order to create an extensive range of material. These strategies highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the ensemble and we tried to break down the social taboos that the group and individuals had inhabited only then could the ensemble work in the collaborative sense, successfully. We then moved onto the Score stage and constructed many feasible sections in either groups or as the whole ensemble using the strategies we had learnt thus leading us now onto the Validation stage of the devising process because we have now begun to structure the successful sections created, in order to construct what will become the final performance.

My character for Four Ways to Speak Out was rooted in my mind every since we wrote letters to establish our characters place in the community and the involvement we had with the women, however it became a struggle to distinguish and find a place for this character in relation to the way in which the ensemble started working and to what movements were being created. But as described by Robert Lepage when talking about the creation of character, he does describe it as “work in progress” (Lepage quoted by Dundjerovic 2007, pg27). Through the score stage, because the sections were being created in no particular order, there never seemed a time to explore my specific character because I could never predict how my character would feel at certain points especially as the piece was not yet completed, therefore it offered me no chance for my character to establish a true emotional connection. I started to feel frustrated and it became more of a force to try to establish my character and I found it hard in waiting for it to just happen. I did feel at several points somewhat of a loss in relation to my involvement in the piece and to what was coming out of the process for me. In fact my character had never been anywhere near certain until the working weekend session where in seeing the piece in the validation stage, it was there that my original idea of a character did in fact now seem to play a good role in the piece as whole. However looking back I feel that having waited until the validation stage this has now made my character more real and plausible in the piece and I now feel a strong emotional and exciting connection to the work with a real sense of awareness of the ensemble, to what is happening and where the piece will end up.

In terms of my character’s physicality, in the beginning my gravity is quite centred as I use the positioning of the neutral stance and the qualities of pedestrian movement to enter the space. I observe the community as a whole in wonder of what is happening and when the ensemble start the collective movement I simply go along thinking nothing of it. I uphold this centred physicality until I begin to discover what has happened to the women and from then on my physicality begins to have much more of an emotional intention because of the close relationship I had with the women in the past. I feel nothing but guilt for not knowing where she is and I feel that I’ve let the women down and in turn the whole community. Not only does my physicality become more emotional, focused and detailed, but my sense of gravity begins to constantly switch to show my turmoil, going from being either still or into displaying a sudden surge of emotional energy. In stillness I am that overwhelmed with guilt, my focus is so strong that I stare into space and try to come to terms with what has happened and where, like Marshall states, I can then “enable the real dramatic truth to manifest itself” (2002, p33). As Lecoq claims “the study of the performer’s anatomical features can prove helpful in the development of physical characterisation” (2000) so when I find out what exactly happened to the women, I sink to the floor and really curve my spine to hug my knee so that I am very closed in thus becoming a key physicality for my character. As mine and the community’s emotion heightens I start to wring my hands quite anxiously and this surge of emotion of everything that has happened eventually becomes so overpowering that I drastically run to my partner from one side of the stage to the other and throw myself at her with such a high emotional intention you can really hear all the built up emotion through my breath truly exploiting like Callery states an “intensified energy of action on stage” (2001, p27). Any particular repetition of gestures for me come from the use of the wringing of the hands but in terms of my physicality it’s my relationship with the constant switch in gravity that becomes a key motif for my character throughout the piece.


Bibliography

Callery, D. (2001) Through the Body: A Practical Guide to Physical Theatre. Routledge. New York

Dunđerović, A. (2003) The Cinema of Robert Lepage: the poetics of memory. Wallflower Press. Great Britain.

Dundjerovic, A. (2007) The Theatricality of Robert Lepage. McGill-Queen’s Press. Great Britain.

Lecoq, J. (2000) The Moving Body. Methuen Publishing Ltd. London.

Marshall, L. (2002) The Body Speaks: Performance and Expression. Revised Ed. Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. London.