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My future projects -- filmplus.org/vtheatre : pomo.vtheatre.net
... Peter Brook 2 [ 0 ] CALIGARI
Cast:
Aristotle
Plato
Hegel
Kiekeggard
Marx
Rand
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directing 5 + HamletDreams 2001 (scenes) * 2006 *
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Virtual Theatres: An Introduction by Gabriella Giannachi; Routledge, 2004
Acting in Person and in StyleSubscribe to my Open Class @ 3sisters Actors on ActingSubscribe to my Open Class @ 12night The Director's Eye Subscribe to my Open Class @ Directing! How to Read a FilmSubscribe to Open Class @ 200x Aesthetics
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Shaw -- Pygmalion" (not now)
I only can hope that you learn something from my classes, the directing is most difficult... because it's the most challenging course.... the webpages will be updated, not the book...Sample from THR331 class (self-evaluation):
Director’s Notes
Darren Johnson
Fundamentals of Directing for Stage and Film
Spring, 2003
I took a scene from Act Two of Moliere’s Don Juan and entitled the scene “Two-Timing Done Old School.” This scene was one which was cut from the Theatre UAF production of Don Juan. I had initially included Sganarelle’s reaction to his master’s duplicity, but upon advice from Anatoly and several students, Sganarelle was dropped altogether, as his input constituted a second scene, separate from and distracting to the conflict between Charlotte and Mathurine, who both believe Don Juan’s empty promises.
The actors I finally cast were Honie Harvey as Charlotte, Tara Kulwicke as Mathurine, and the overworked Zachary Hochstetler as Don Juan. I am not making excuses when I say that Zach was overworked; it was my error to try to get a third performance from him. I had asked the actresses if they had other roles, and had even recast an actress to allow her (Tara) to perform in this scene. Zach seemed willing enough, but as director, I should have found someone less pressed upon at this time.
I had also rewritten the scene in a modern, hip-hop vernacular, which I was apparently the only one who found this funny. It could have worked, but given the time constraints on my late start, this idea was mitigated, although some elements were to remain.
After falling behind schedule, the desperation for rehearsals had become such that I left Fairbanks Memorial Hospital with intravenous tubing intact, bandaged, in hospital slippers, and without proper discharge papers. Medicated with antibiotics and more, I made it to rehearsals on time, with all of the actors present. I figured that had I died in the spirit of “the show must go on,” that despite my poor directing skills for the stage that I might somehow become a legend of determination. Unfortunately, for the audience of “War on Comedy,” I survived whereas the scene didn’t.
During the 9th and 10th rehearsals in the Great Hall, I felt we had finally found our rhythm and rapport. Zachary, however, being the pivotal character, was both nervous and ill-prepared when we finally hit the stage on Final Friday (the latter being as much my fault as I mentioned above), and Honie and Tara tried to improvise their way through. I thanked them after the performance, and I pointed out that they made valiant efforts to save a dying cause.
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Directors Lab Lincoln Center Theatre
"I lay down my story so that somebody else can pick it up."
FW: You say somewhere, I think it’s about an African storyteller that “I lay down my story so that somebody else can pick it up.” For a new, young director picking up that story, in a sentence what would you say, what advice would you give them?
PB: My advice is very, very simple. Everything is possible but you must find your own way. So, if you look at my work and think, ‘Ah there is an example, I will start by what he’s done’, you are bound to go wrong. Because the work that I do today is the result of all the work that I’ve done through trial and error, in changing times. And what the young director can take from my work is not in the form nor in the result. It’s in the fact that I’ve been going on for so long. This can encourage them to believe that they mustn’t give up, that they can go forward, that they can have aims beyond what seems possible, that they don’t have to stay with all that other people tell them that they should be doing. Today, it has become a cliché, to praise my work for its simplicity. I’ve never aimed at simplicity. Simplicity happens when things that once were interesting begin to fall away. But when I started work in the theatre, I saw the work of directors of that time doing Shakespeare, who were highly praised because they were so simple. And I looked at them with horror, because their simplicity was dreary. I saw they were aiming at simplicity only because it was considered morally good to be simple. It was like being clean or not showing off. I was so appalled at the barren drabness in which Shakespeare was being done, and I’d be told it was so good because it was simple - "all done in curtains". And there were these grey curtains and Shakespeare, and they said that’s beautiful because it is so simple. And it made me at once react the other way, looking for anything that was elaborate, complicated, rich, startling, anything was better than that dreaded thing called simplicity. Now, it’s taken me a long, long while to go through all that, but someone today must go through it from a different starting point, because the world is different. There is always something to be found. But never in imitating a form even if you think the form is absolutely right. Only in asking oneself: "why did this form touch me? What was behind that form? Can it lead me to another form that can capture the same thing in a way that’s right for us today?"
FW: But having inspirations.
PB: That yes. One must. That’s very, very important. One must constantly be influenced as I was by the mere fact that someone has managed at some time to do something of a certain quality. That makes one know that a certain quality is possible. It comes back to the Icon. Today I think that for a young painter it’s vital from time to time to go to a museum and look at the amazing quality that was reached at certain periods of history that today is virtually impossible. Just to be reminded of that before you get caught up in people saying that what you do is so wonderful. For us in the theatre it is important to go back to Shakespeare just for that. Come back to Shakespeare, for a moment. Then go back to doing your own thing realizing that whatever you do can never be all that good. This sense of perspective is not discouraging, it’s an inspiration.
FW: What do you look for in your collaborators, particularly your actors?
PB: First of all, what I always said about Paul Scofield, an actor who will listen to you, let you explain with all your possible means of persuasion something you think is absolutely right, then do the exact opposite and make you realize that this is what you really meant. That’s a creative collaboration. But the actor who says, “No, I’ll do the opposite because to hell with it, I don’t trust you”, is a dead loss. That’s a bad relationship and you both suffer. You need openness linked with absolute independence.
FW: And what about the future? What are you working on?
PB: God knows. I’ve always worked a bit like a cook in a big restaurant, where you’ve got lots and lots of things laid out and you go and look into one cauldron and you look into the other and you see what’s coming to the boil. I’ve got further projects on the Brain, further projects with Africa, because these are things and areas where one can never feel “ah now we’ve finished”. And also we need always to come back to doing things that are unshown, unsung and untalked about like these relationships with directors and with other people. These are part of ongoing work.
[ web companion to THR331 Fundamentals of Direction Theatre UAF course ]
... PB: I hate the word ‘warm up’. It’s really a ‘cool down’. When we did the first rehearsal of Oedipus at the National Theatre I had this whole young company and there was also Irene Worth and there was John Gielgud. That was the 60s, when I had already started with the Theatre of Cruelty and I think it was after Marat/Sade, so doing exercises was already a way of life. And the young company were thrilled at the idea of doing all these difficult physical exercises to start with, and there was John sitting down and I hadn’t spoken about it or warned him. I said, "Now we’ll do an exercise". Then everyone came and tried something difficult, saying a line and doing something else and doing a leap or a somersault at the same time or some physical thing along with it, and one after another they all came through except John. It was a crucial moment because you could feel the whole company waiting tensely. They knew that Olivier wouldn’t have joined in. He would have thought ‘this is ridiculous nonsense’, because Olivier in that way was so very old school in rehearsal, although he was new school as a performer. And there was John, this ancient traditionalist - though in human terms, completely different - sitting there. To everyone’s amazement he got up and threw himself into the exercise, and what was so marvelous, with such humility did nothing to disguise the fact that with a stiff embarrassed body he couldn’t do it at all. But he wasn’t ashamed of showing this. He was just admiring all the young people, seeing them do things that he couldn’t do. And they were seeing this Icon, this real Icon trying his best to enter into their thing. In an instant, a real deep feeling of mutual respect began to flow between him and all these rough, young long-haired actors from a different generation.
http://www.dggb.co.uk/publications/article9_86.html
* GODOT.06: Doing Beckett => main stage Theatre UAF Spring 2006 *
©Film-North * Anatoly Antohin. "Stage Grammar"
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last class notes: FINAL Scenes presentations -- May 8 2007 * 7pm after Drama Banquet (4pm) Paula * R/G Ben - Pinter