Investigating Practitioners
Relationships, everybody in the world has them in their own unique and individual ways, it’s how we’re connected to one another. But when we think of the initial word we presume it’s a sexual connection between a man and women; why is this?
I’m going to be talking about the relation between relationships and society and linking it to Boal and Stanislavski. When researching the definition of relationships I found that the meaning is when two or more people share a connection in some way.
My artistic aim is to emotionally move the audience into taking away morals from the performance and applying it to their everyday lives and educating others around them, also to engage them in the piece and to influence, compel and inspire the audience into making change in our world in the attempt for equality and freedom; educate the audience about the importance of diversity and equality.
My theme is based on the relation we have to the basic form of ‘Relationship’ which is simply a connection with another being and how the media and society twist the definition to mean something else such as headlines in newspapers and magazines about man and woman relationships breaking up or a mystery women lurking in a celebrities beach holiday. My main point is that other same sex relationships have been fighting endlessly for years to have their rights broadcasted worldwide and its only recently that people are reading about the first gay marriage or celebrities are coming out as gay, bisexual, lesbian, intersex or transgender (LGBTI) and feeling more comfortable in their own skin.
Despite all these changes there are millions of people around the world who still feel uncomfortable to be themselves and face threat and even danger for walking out their own door because of the smaller minded individuals out there that don’t understand how essential having freedom for a person is no matter what sexual association or orientation they may have.
Recently a popular event took place in the shooting of masses of couples in a gay nightclub in America. The killer said they ‘did it in the name of Allah’ but no matter what religion a person comes from everybody should respect each other’s choices but especially when they are not inflicting any harm on others and doing anything wrong.
A massive figure who just came out as gay and has gone through incredible transformation and surgery recently is that of Caitlin Jenner. She, and I am using the pronoun she because you have the right to associate with any gender you feel most suited to, has faced masses of online hate (trolling) because of her change. Quite recently I was in my local gym’s changing room when I heard a couple of teenage boys talking about the subject and one of them said ‘Imagine if one of those came in here, we’d kick its head in’ and started laughing; the fact that these young boys said ‘its’ and ‘those’ suggests they don’t even regard people like Caitlin Jenner as human and in their heads they are mear monsters roaming about there daily lives hassling anyone who seemed to glance at them. How, in 2017 do we still have this bigotry and dehuminisation going on, I accept that certain religions may not take kindly to people of same sex agendas but this hate needs to stop; after all, we’re all human beings?
Countless amounts of men and women despite their age have been so enclosed in their emotions they can’t let out that they have been compelled to kill themselves, and in many cases, have succeeded.
I’ve picked these two practitioners to really highlight the problems that people face in this era and how we simply haven’t come far enough for everyone to live with freedom and equality.
Boal’s work relates to my theme of relationships within society because his work covers all social aspects within society for example his main theory is theatre of oppressed. He wants to present the world as changeable, where individuals have the ability to make a difference within their own community.
Boal is suitable for the performance because his techniques have the ability to influence the audience to make an impact on their society and surroundings in which they live and having an external impact on others.
In one of Boal’s performances I saw that he was using the technique of Forum Theatre which had the effect of every audience member leaning forward to observe and the majority of them put there hand up of called out purely cause they couldn’t resist being involved; the actors has their undivided attention. Theatre of the oppressed is excellent for accurately combining all of the pain and suffering that the characters have endured into a performacne where the actors have to suffer and in turn gives a further realism to the piece. The use of invisble theatre is also useful for engaging the audience from the get go and with this piece you have the ability to completely play around with it since you can improvise and there is no particular order where you can slide this into within the performance; it is very malleable. Therefore I would use this technique in my piece about relationships because I want to have this effect on my audience for my artistic aim which was to engage them in the piece and to influence, compel and inspire the audience into taking away morals from the performance and applying it to their everyday lives and educating others around them.
Stanislavski is suitable for the performance because the use of his techniques have the ability to make people have an internal impact and that they’re not just watching commercial theatre like a place to pitstop for a while like a garage and that they will be more emotionally invested in the piece and that they’ll walk away with a visceral reaction.
Some of these techniques are the 6 Fundamental Questions and Given Circumstances.
In one of Stanislavski’s performances translated from Russian I saw the use of the 6 Fundamental Questions and Given Circumstances; I saw that the effect of this was nearly every audience member bursting into tears, giving a standing ovation and taking a considerable amount of time to leave their seats, from this I inferred that they had a direct emotional link to the actors themselves and were severely emotionally moved by each of their performances.
Therefore I would use this technique in my piece about relationships because I want to have this effect on my audience for my artistic aim which was to emotionally move the audience into taking away morals from the performance and applying it to their everyday lives and educating others around them.
This is my research on both the practitioners:
Stanislavski –
Stanislavski’s understanding of theatre was brought about by his close working relationship with the play write Chekhov. The social realism of Chekhov’s characters posed problems that Stanislavski sort to explore & solve, he saw the difference between acting and pretending. Working within his method using the ‘emotional memory’ allows the actor to find the truth within the play of his character, allowing the actor to have greater engagement; with the truth. The power of the actors truth allows his audience in, engaging & identify with real emotion.
Working within an ensemble group in community driven theatre is powerful because as a group of actors each one could represent a person in the community they are playing to. This emotional engagement sends a message of understanding which in turn can be a powerful tool in imparting the motive of the play. Ensemble play is at the forefront of Stanislavski method and community theatre is made powerful because it takes on the social circumstance, political views and current affairs of the community.
Boal –
Augusto Boal is the epicenter of the people’s theatre, his works include classical plays such as Shakespeare being transformed into a performance that normal everyday people can understand, he does this by completely stripping the play of all features relevant to the upper class right wing and imbedding the thoughts and feelings of the lower working class so that they can completely identify and resonate with the play. The presence of Boal in community arts is relevant because it is something that not just the privileged few but everybody can understand, the audience are able to identify with the content and will therefore become more emotionally invested in the piece. Boal is also very useful in community theatre because of the plethora of theatre techniques he has innovated such as forum theatre and invisible theatre. Invisible theatre has the ability to completely engage an audience into a performance because of the sheer confusion and awkwardness that this particular style can create. Influenced by community and giving people within Brazil a voice to fight political change.
Boal’s early years were happy ones, his parents were economically comfortable and their attitudes liberal.
He ended up working with lower class and he wanted them to voice their thoughts.
The decade of the 1930s, Brazil’s terms of trade deteriorated, these events and a large foreign debt which led to an external crisis which took almost a decade to resolve.
Months after revolution Ed Getulio Vargas, became a dictator. During his reign Brazil faced economic problems and the military restricted many things.
Perhaps if Augustus Boal lived in the present day he would be treated differently and his works would be appreciated more and not be censored.
He saw theatre as a dialogue and a way to act out social change.
He developed plays around the experiences of people silenced by poverty and oppression.
For Augustus Boal, being born in the 1930s was a time of change and oppression, which contributed to making him the playwright he is known for today.
Paulo Freire, he was one of Boal’s main influences, he was a Brazilian educator and theorist of education.
Boal used actors that his audiences could relate to socially to engage and inspire them in his performances. Paulo could have been an influence to this because stage 1 is about connecting to people through studying the context of people, where they live, how they speak, what life challenges they face.
“We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.” – In my opinion this quote expresses Boal’s need for political change and why he wanted to work as a community to overcome oppression, allowing them to have a voice within society.
After having being asked to work at the Arena theatre in Sao Paulo, 1956. Boal developed and explored different forms of theatre such as Stanislavski’s system which he had become familiar with in his time in Columbia.
Boal adapted these techniques and associated them with Brazil’s social conditions during this time in which he took a leftist approach basing his ideas around nationalism which was very current during this time period after the country had undergone a long period of military dictatorship.
He directed a number of classical dramas relating them to Brazilian society as well as its economy. One of these plays consisted of John Steinbeck’s mice of men, known in Brazil as ‘ Ratos e Homens’ which was his first performance at the arena theatre.
In 1964 a new military regime began in Brazil known as the coup d’etate supported by the Brazilian elite, industrialists and the military.
Boal’s teaching was often controversial as he was a cultural activist in which he was seen as a threat by the Brazilian government.
In 1971 Boal was arrested, tortured and eventually exiled to Argentina where he lived for five years. It was here he wrote two of his most famous books such as tourquemada 1971 and theatre of the oppressed 1973.
“Augusto Boal studied at Columbia University in New York with the critic John Gassner. Gassner introduced Boal to the techniques of both Bertolt Brecht and Konstantin Stanislavski, and encouraged Boal to form links with theatre groups like the Black Experimental Theatre”
Conclusion – These practitioners are the best suited to my piece about relationships because they both have such strong views and a realistic view about the world at face value; their techniques allow the audience to be fully immersed in the piece and emotionally invest in it. They both have the ability to change the way people view the world on a mass scale and I think that’s an essential part of a performance to do because without it the audience are just perceiving the theatre as a place to pitstop and relax instead of investing themselves in the piece and letting it grab their opinions.