We did some stretching and Stuart added a stretch in which is called the boat.
This stretch is a very good stretch as it really works your centre and your core strength.
We then did an exercise based on trust where half the class would walk around with their eyes closed, and people with their eyes open would tap them on the shoulder and the other person would fall back into their arms. This exercise is perfect for forming trust and creating a sense of ensemble with a new company and I think it worked really well as I felt safe when I had to fall into people's arms and I hope I ensured that trust into other people.
We then looked at a Complicite exercise which we renamed Octopus, Dolphin, Moonfish. This exercise requires us to react to a piece of music and create an individual 'Octopus'. Then we gradually had to form with a few other people and develop our movement together. This was how we formed a group of Dolphins. And again, eventually we had to form together as an entire company as Moonfish, everyone doing their variant of one different move. It was a really great exercise to help form a sense of ensemble and also for improvising a physical sequence. We did this exercise to 3 pieces of music and each time, everyone's movements were totally different and unique.
Mozart - Adagio in B Minor, K. 540 (composed by Vladimir Horowitz)
The XX - Violent Noise
Brian Wilson - Our Prayer
We then looked at the workshops we each had prepared in our groups for Yoshi Oida, Peter Brook, Antonin Artaud, Oliver Sacks and Brian Wilson. This is some information I gained from these presentations and workshops.
ARTAUD - Antonin Artaud believed in assaulting the audience and came up with the Theatre of Cruelty. He wanted to put the audience in the middle of the action so that they were engulfed and physically affected by it. He put a large emphasis on sound rather than dialogue. We did a great workshop with Jake where he explained how Artaud believed the world of theatre is completely different to the real world, so there are different rules that apply. He asked people to shoot each other and kill each other. He managed to revive a kind of primal instinct inside of us. We had to lay down and imagine that we were killing the two people next to us. It was a bit strange because he somehow managed to make me feel angry at nothing and for no reason.
SACKS - Oliver Wolf Sacks (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, writer, and amateur chemist. He was Professor of Neurology at New York University graduate School of Medicine. The 1990 movie Awakenings was based on his book 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat'. The book consists of of 24 essays split into 4 sections. He often takes inspiration from patients he has experienced during his time as a neurologist. He also wrote a book called: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. It is a 2007 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks about music and the human brain. We looked at the different stories explored in it in our final piece:
- One man, who was a doctor and not musically skilled whatsoever, was once struck by lightning. As he recovered, he discovered that he could suddenly play the piano and read music. One of the pieces he could play almost instantly was Winter Wind by Chopin.
- Another man had an aneurism and as a result he felt no emotion and could not ever interact with others properly due to this. However, Goodnight Irene by Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter was played to him and he got up and danced to this song ecstatically.
- Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Judy Garland was played to someone with Alzheimer's who could't speak, however they sung this song when they heard it.
These are all examples of how music can be a temporary medicine.
OIDA - Yoshi Oida has been acting in Theatre and television since 1953. In 1968 he went to France to work with Peter Brook. In his book "The Invisible Actor" he tells of his time as an actor in Japan. We did an exercise where we had to take 2 different films and create a piece by fusing them together. This was because Oida liked to create fusion theatre, mixing multiple cultures to create something new. We also watched a video of him during a performance where he plays a character who is paralysed on one side of his body. The scene shows him shaving and it was amazing to see how when he moved to the paralysed side of his body, how you can really tell he was paralysed.
BROOK - Peter Brook is an English theatre and film director who has been based in France most of his life. He has been called "our greatest living theatre director". He directed his first ever play in 1943 and is still doing so to this day. Brook has been influenced by the work of Antonin Artaud and his ideas for his Theatre of Cruelty. Brook has collaborated with a range of directors, writers and actors during his career including: Paul Scofield and Glenda Jackson; designer Georges Wakhévitch, and writers Ted Hughes and William Golding.
WILSON - Wilson experiences auditory hallucinations and has been formally diagnosed as mildly manic-depressive with schizoaffective disorder that presents itself in the form of disembodied voices.
He began having hallucinations in 1965, shortly after starting to use psychedelic drugs.
In 1984, Wilson had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, with doctors finding evidence of brain damage caused by excessive and sustained drug abuse. Wilson's understanding of music theory was self-taught. The first instrument he learned to play was a toy accordion before quickly moving to piano and then bass guitar. From an early age, Brian demonstrated an extraordinary skill for learning music by ear on keyboard.
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