Challenge: Create a short, theatrical performance which attempts to hold the audience in suspense.

While the last challenge, (Shared Imagination,) began by considering what theater did better than film or TV, I’ve recently been thinking that live performance is perhaps less equipped to hold an audience in SUSPENSE.  (Prove me wrong!)  SO, let’s explore this:

• How do you create suspense in a live performance environment?
• What various methods can be used (plot, or abstract movement? Realism?  Expressionism?  Melodrama?  Absurdity?)
• How does performing in a live setting enhance or diminish a sense or suspense.

Create a short piece that explores some of these questions.  Use any methods, tactics, or tricks up you sleeve in attempt to instill a sense of suspense into the live audience the night of the lab.

Specifics:

Work quick:  Spend roughly 4 hours on creation and rehearsal.

Work small: create a performance that lasts 3-5 minutes.

Contact David (david@buildingstage.com) with questions or interest.

]]> http://www.buildingstage.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=676 0 http://www.buildingstage.com/blog/?p=674 http://www.buildingstage.com/blog/?p=674#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:14:44 +0000 Joanie Schultz http://www.buildingstage.com/blog/?p=674 David created this challenge for this upcoming lab at a really opportune moment for me, as this idea of shared imagination is at the forefront of my mind.
I’m currently reading a book by British director Mike Alfreds, entitled Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor. Alfreds is best known for his company, Shared Experience, which toured the world, and many I know saw his work and was blown away back when Chicago had an international theater festival. (Side note: why don’t we have that anymore?) This book is an incredibly detailed account of how he directs and the process he created for actors. But that’s not the important part here, the important part are the ideas that correspond with the lab next week.
He writes that he was trying to articulate what it is that theater does that is different from the other arts. I believe that many of us have tackled this question since the dawn of movies with sound. How are we special? Well, we are doing something live. How is that different from something recorded? And how is theater different from other live events like a concert, lecture, sporting event, political rally, and so on? What it comes down to, Alfreds realized, is that in the theater, “one of the groups of people transformed themselves into yet another group of people before the very eyes of their audiences… creating the amazing double reality of being themselves in this performance space at this moment and simultaneously other people in another place at another time; being both here now and there then.” Therefore, he concludes, “The audience and actors shared an act of imagination” (Alfreds 13).
It is this sharing of imagination that actually makes the theater special. Any piece of theater, even the most “realistic” play, requires the audience to participate in that act of imagination. The actors in front of you are both the actors in present time (as a theater production is always in the now), and they are the characters in the time their theatrical world dictates.
He then goes on to tell an inspiring story of the first show Shared Experience created. It was a ten-hour four-part adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House (which, by the way, makes The Ring Cycle sound like a sitcom.) They performed this in their own clothes, without set, and in basic white lights shared with the audience the entire time. The results (according to Alfreds) were astounding. The audience members were forced to stretch their imaginations, and in a way more akin to reading a novel, were able to bring their own visual worlds to the play. Afterwards, audience members actually complemented the lights, and when Alfreds assured them that there were no light cues, they insisted they had memories of candlelight, chandeliers, fires, gas lamps. This is the power of the imagination.
Alfreds’ story is so inspirational, it is so exciting. I wonder if we could create something like that for our lab? I still haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to tackle this in the lab, but the challenge is incredibly thrilling.

Challenge: Make the audience see something, not with their eyes, but in their imagination.

Step One: Choose a specific visual image (the seashore, a camel, a bloodstain, etc.)

Step two: Create a short performance with the goal of injecting this image into the imagination of the audience.

Notes:

I think one of the things theater has over other art forms/media is that it allows  a group of people, in the same room, the opportunity to use their various imaginations together.

While TV or the Talkies can cut from an apartment complex to a ship at sea, we are limited by what we can actually bring into a theater space.  I think this limiting factor can also be  our greatest challenge and inspiration.

Without showing the audience the thing you want them to see, how close can you get to making them think they’ve seen it?  How do you play on all of their senses to paint a potent picture in their imagination?

Go for it.

Specifics:

Work quick:  Spend roughly 4 hours on creation and rehearsal.

Work small: create a performance that lasts 3-5 minutes.

NEW TO THE LAB- announcing the Micro-Challenge!

Open to all! Show up 30 minutes early for our version of a “Quick Fire” challenge.   30 minutes to create a 1 minute response to a challenge, on the same theme,  announced at 7pm.

LAB 6

March 2

7pm- Micro-Challenge Announced!

7:30- Showing begins!  Discussion follows.

@ the building stage

I know I may be stating the obvious here — but sometimes it’s very difficult to access this deeper listening. At times when there are so many nerves in us and costume pieces on us and light and music cues around us – it’s just plain difficult to connect with our partners. But that’s the only thing that will bring us to an exciting performance level. We must be as selfless as we can be. We are what we are because of each other. When we are out there on the boards we need only think of how to help tell the story. We are a single part of a whole. Saturday when we open and for every day of our run – let’s work and listen so that our fellow actors have their best performance ever.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Well, a preview is a hybrid between rehearsal and performance, in that the production team (director, deisgners) are still working on the show.  This doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily seeing "unfinished" work (although more details may come into the design before opening), but that in it’s mostly finished state, we are still gaging whether things "work".

Why do this in front of an audience? Because the audience is part of the production! To only rehearse and open a play is missing a step, because we would not have ever worked with the other part of our show, YOU.  The audiences reactions, lack of reactions, how they respond, and how things change with the live audience otherwise, are all important parts ot the equation.  This is particularly true when setting sound levels, timings of lights and music, and in the actors timing with audience response.

Usually the production team and designers job are completed when the show officially opens.  By then, we hope that much of it is set, other than the things that change from night to night and make live theater the lively place it is.  The Building Stage has always worked against that theory, and our shows consider every performance informational and could help shape and change what we ultimately close the show with.  This is why we haven’t had previews in such a replete way before.  But, by having these official previews the next two weekends, we can then have a week of rehearsals after each one and before opening to refine and perfect the opening show, so that when the critics write about us, we know we feel confident with the performance they wrote about.

So, if you join us for previews, thank you! You just became an integral part of our process, and you’re getting your tickets a little cheaper!  And you’ll see me there. 

1: Created by Max Wirt

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

2: Created by Fannie Hungerford

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

3: Created by David Amaral, Eddie Bennett, Daiva Bhandari, and Pamela Maurer

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

4: Created by Blake Montgomery and Joanie Schutlz

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

I’m still quite excited about the enormously creative theatrical sketches the Lab has produced, but I find myself rather desperately seeking ways to help the lab “get legs.”  How can we get more artists involved?  How can the Lab be more of a tool and an arena for artistic experimentation?  And how do we share this?  How do we get people, artists and general audience, excited about attending the Lab?

I pose these questions to you, whoever you may be.

Artists: what do you want from Lab aimed at promoting theatrical experimentation.  If the Lab were [insert idea here] I would be so damn excited and inspired, I would yearn to be a part of it.

Audience types: If the Lab were [insert suggestion here] I would mark my calendar weeks in advace in order to witness the experimentation, and be part of the following discussion.

I always say it: the entire LAB series is an experiment in itself.  We’ve done some initial tests, and perhaps a few results to analyze.  But I want some more cooks in this kitchen.

How do we grow the Lab into something we need to do?  How does it become a ritual important enough to engage in monthly?

What do you think?