The Theatre Team: Playwright, Producer, Director, Designers, and Actors. Contributors: Jeane Luere - editor, Sidney Berger - editor. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1998.
Directing for the Stage: A Workshop Guide of 42 Creative Training Exercises and Projects (Paperback) by Terry John Converse 1566080142
The Directorial Image: The Play and the Director by Frank McMullan; Shoe String Press, 1962 * 1. Creative preparation a. Receptivity to and evocation of images b. Response to world of playwright * 2. Audience appeal a. Theatrical credibility b. Degree of audience involvement c. Compulsion d. Audience gratification e. Structural characteristics * 3. Potential dramatic values a. Mood b. Mood variations c. Theme d. Character e. Plot f. Dialogue * 5. Focus and configuration of the play a. Relative dominance of dramatic values b. Type of play c. Style of play * 6. Over-all image
* The Theatre--Advancing by Edward Gordon Craig; Little, Brown & Company, 1919 - Part I - A Plea for Two Theatres: This Essay Is Dedicated to the Tired Business Man - A Durable Theatre - The Modern Theatre, and Another - In Defence of the Artist - The Open Air - Belief and Make-Believe: A Footnote to "The Actor and the Über-Marionette." - Imagination - Part II - Theatrical Reform - Public Opinion - Proposals Old and New: A Dialogue Between A Theatrical Manager and An Artist of the Theatre. - Part III - Gentlemen, the Marionette! - On Masks: By A Bishop and by Me - Shakespeares Collaborators - In a Restaurant - "Literary" Theatres - Art or Imitation?: A Plea for An Enquiry After the Missing Laws of the Art - A Conversation with Jules Champfleury - The Theatre in Italy: Naples and Pompeii: A Letter to John Semar - Church and Stage: in Rome: "When in Rome Do as the Romans Do." - Thoroughness in the Theatre - On Learning Magic: A Dialogue Many Times Repeated - Tuition in Art: A Note to the Younger Generation of Theatrical Students - On the Old School of Acting - A Letter to Ellen Terry - Yvette Guilbert - Sada Yacco - New Departures - The Wise and the Foolish Virgins - To Eleonora Duse - Ladies, Temperament and Discipline - Part IV - The Copyright Law: A Suggestion for An Amendment - The New Theme: Poverty - The Voice - Theatrical Love - Realism, or Nerve-Tickling - The Poet and Motion Pictures - The True Hamlet - The Futurists - Fire! Fire!
The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski by Edward Braun; Holmes & Meier, 1982 - I. The Meiningen Theatre - 2. Antoine and the Theatre Libre - 3. The Symbolist Theatre - 4. Alfred Jarry - 5. Stanislavsky and Chekhov - 6. Edward Gordon Craig - 7. Max Reinhardt in Germany and Austria - 8. Meyerhold - the First Five Years - 9. Meyerhold - Theatre as Propaganda - 10. Piscator in Berlin - Ii. Brecht's Formative Years - 12. Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty - 13. Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre
"Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays" by David Ball * : biblio @ script.vtheatre.net
[ appendix ]
Art and Craft of Play Production by Barnard Hewitt; J.B. Lippincott Company, 1940 (basics)
Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques by Viola Spolin; Northwestern University Press, 1963 - Theory and Foundation - I. Creative Experience - Ii. Workshop Procedures - Exercises: The Workshop Sessions in This Section Can Be Used in Progressive Sequence. - Iii. Orientation - Iv. Where - V. Acting with the Whole Body - Vi. Non-Directional Blocking - Vii. Refining Awareness - Viii. Speech, Broadcasting, And Technical Effects - Ix. Developing Material for Situations - X. Rounding-Out Exercises - Xi. Emotion - Xii. Character - Children and the Theater - Xiii. Understanding the Child - Xiv. Fundamentals for the Child Actor - Xv. Workshop for Six-To-Eight-Year-Olds - Formal Theater And Improvisational Theater - Xvi. Preparation - Xvii. Rehearsal and Performance - Xviii. Post-Mortem and Special Problems
Avant Garde Theatre, 1892-1992 by Christopher Innes; Routledge, 1993 - 1: Introduction - 2: The Politics of Primitivism - 3: Dreams, Archetypes and the Irrational - 4: Therapy and Subliminal Theatre - 5: Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty - 6: Ritual and Acts of Communion - 7: Black Masses and Ceremonies of Negation - 8: Myth and Theatre Laboratories - 9: Secular Religions and Physical Spirituality - 10: Anthropology, Environmental Theatre and Sexual Revolution - 11: Interculturalism and Expropriating the Classics - 12: From the Margins to Mainstream
The Work of Living Art: A Theory of the Theatre by H. D. Albright, Adolphe Appia, Barnard Hewitt; University of Miami Press, 1960 - Adolphe Appia and "The Work of Living Art" - Preface - 1. the Elements - 2. Living Time - 3. Living Space - 4. Living Color - 5. Organic Unity - 6. Collaboration - 7. the Great Unknown and the Experience of Beauty - 8. Bearers of the Flame - Designs - Adolphe Appia's "Man is the Measure of All Things" (protagoras)
Antoine and the Theatre-Libre by Samuel Montefiore Waxman; Harvard University Press, 1926 - Chapter I: Forerunners of the Theatre-Libre (the Dog Barks) - Chapter II: Henry Becque (and the Caravan Passes) - Chapter III: Andre Antoine - Chapter IV: The Beginnings of the Theatre-Libre - Chapter V: The Battles of the First Season (1887-1888) - Chapter VI: The Second and Third Seasons (1888-1890) - Chapter VII: Antoine's Dream - Chapter VIII: Censors and Sponsors (1890-1891) - Chapter IX: Curel and Brieux (1891-1892) - Chapter X: The High-Water Mark (1892-1893) - Chapter XI: The Last of the Theatre-Libre and After (1893-1896) - Chapter XII: The Influence of the Theatre-Libre
Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama by Stanton B. Garner Jr.; Cornell University Press, 1994
The Theater of Meyerhold and Brecht by Katherine Bliss Eaton; Greenwood Press, 1985 - 1: Brecht's Contacts with the Theater of Meyerhold - NOTES - 2: Everyone Sees Me and I See Everyone"" - NOTES - 3: The Actors Were Served Up in Portions on Small Platform- Plates"" - NOTES - 4: A Demonstratively Proletarian Shabbiness"" - NOTES - 5: Conclusions: A Trojan Horse
Twentieth-Century Theatre: A Sourcebook by Richard Drain; Routledge, 1995 - Preface - Prologue - Part I: The Modernist Dimension - Introduction - 1: Alfred Jarry - 2: Adolphe Appia - 3: Gordon Craig - 4: F.T.Marinetti, E.Settimelli and B.Corra - 5: Enrico Prampolini - 6: Tristan Tzara - 7: Guillaume Apollinaire - 8: Walter Hasenclever - 9: Valeska Gert - 10: Stanislas Ignacy Witkiewicz - 11: Ivan Goll - 12: El Lissitzky - 13: Sergei Radlov - Notes - 14: Oskar Schlemmer - 15: Daniil Kharms - 16: Gertrude Stein - 17: Eugene Ionesco - Note - 18: Allan Kaprow - 19: Robert Wilson - 20: Tadeusz Kantor - 21: Richard Foreman - Part II: The Political Dimension - Introduction - 22: Bernard Shaw - 23: Sergei Eisenstein - Notes - 24: Ernst Toller - 25: Vsevolod Meyerhold - 26: Erwin Piscator - 27: Workers’ Theatre Movement - 28: Bertolt Brecht - 29: Athol Fugard - 30: Ariane Mnouchkine - 31: Judy Chicago - 32: HÉlÈne Cixous - 33: Carolee Schneemann - 34: Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz - 35: Edward Bond - 36: Charles Ludlam - Part III: The Popular Dimension - Introduction - 37: Gordon Craig - 38: Vesta Tilley - 39: Vsevolod Meyerhold - 40: W.B.Yeats - 41: F.T.Marinetti - 42: Vladimir Mayakovsky - 43: Grigori Kozintsev - 44: Blue Blouse - 45: Vsevolod Meyerhold - 46: Karl Valentin - 47: Bertolt Brecht - Notes - 48: Jean Vilar - 49: Armand Gatti - 50: Peter Schumann - 51: Dorothy Heathcote - 52: Dario Fo - 53: John Mcgrath - 54: Armand Gatti - 55: John Fox - 56: Kwesi Owusu - Part IV: The Inner Dimension - Introduction - 57: August Strindberg - 58: Adolphe Appia - 59: Gordon Craig - 60: Vsevolod Meyerhold - 61: LoÏe Fuller - 62: Isadora Duncan - 63: Wassily Kandinsky - 64: Constantin Stanislavski - 65: Paul Kornfeld - 66: Evgeny Vakhtangov - 67: Federico GarcÍa Lorca - 68: Antonin Artaud - Notes - 69: Judith Malina - 70: Jerzy Grotowski - 71: Louise Steinman - 72: Rachel Rosenthal - Part V: The Global Dimension - Introduction - 73: Antonin Artaud - 74: Bertolt Brecht - Note - 75: Enrique Buenaventura - 76: Errol Hill - 77: Luis Valdez - 78: Peter Brook - 79: Wole Soyinka - 80: Ntozake Shange - 81: Honor Ford-Smith - 82: Augusto Boal - 83: HÉlÈne Cixous - 84: Eugenio Barba - Notes - 85: Guillermo GÓmez-PeÑa
American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1969-2000 by Thomas S. Hischak; Oxford University Press, 2000
Mise En Scene by David Bradby, Annie Sparks 0413712303
David Mamet, On Directing Film
0140127224
According to David Mamet, a film director must, above all things, think visually. Most of this instructive and funny book is written in dialogue form and based on film classes Mamet taught at Columbia University. He encourages his students to tell their stories not with words, but through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. The best films, Mamet argues, are composed of simple shots. The great filmmaker understands that the burden of cinematic storytelling lies less in the individual shot than in the collective meaning that shots convey when they are edited together. Mamet borrows many of his ideas about directing, writing, and acting from Russian masters such as Konstantin Stanislavsky, Sergei M. Eisenstein, and Vsevelod Pudovkin, but he presents his material in so delightful and lively a fashion that he revitalizes it for the contemporary reader.
The Art of the Film by Ernest Lindgren; Macmillan, 1963 - Part One: Mechanics - 1. The Division of Talent - 2. The Film-Maker's Tools - Part Two: Technique - 3. The Anatomy of the Fiction Film - 4. Editing: Basic Principles - 5. Editing: D. W. Griffith and Eisenstein - 6. The Use of Sound - 7. The Art of the Cameraman - 8. Film Music - 9. Film Acting - Part Three: Criticism - 10. Film Criticism - 11. To Delight or to Instruct? - 12. The Film as an Art
Philosophy of the Film: Epistemology, Ontology, Aesthetics by Ian Jarvie; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987 - Introduction: On the Very Idea of a Philosophy of the Film: Casablanca - Part One: Movies as a Philosophical Problem - 1: Knowledge and Existence - 2: Plato and the Cave - 3: The Golden Mountain, USDA Approval and Realism - 4: Films and Academic Philosophy - Part Two: Movies as an Aesthetic Problem - 5: Art and Science - 6: Aesthetics and Essentialism - 7: Arguments against Films as Art - 8: Films as Art - Part Three: Philosophical Problems on Film - 9: Philosophy - 10: Popular Philosophy - 11: On Interpretation - 12: Citizen Kane and the Essence of a Person - 13: Rashomon: Is Truth Relative? - 14: Persona: The Person as a Mask - 15: Woody Allen and the Search for Moral Integrity
The Television Handbook by Patricia Holland; Routledge, 2000
Vsevolod Meyerhold by Jonathan Pitches; Routledge, 2003 - 1: A Life of Contradictions - 2: Meyerhold's Key Writings - 3: Meyerhold's Key Production - 4: Practical Exercises
"SO WHAT ARE THE BASIC SKILLS OF A BIOMECHANICAL ACTOR?
Let's begin with what we might want to gain from a training in Meyerhold's system of acting. Why might twenty actors mimic the externals of an Olympic runner in a dilapidated studio in Moscow? Primarily, to acquire skills, skills which are fundamental to the craft of acting: precision, balance, coordination, efficiency, rhythm, expressiveness, responsiveness, playfulness and discipline. You might want to spend a moment thinking about how developed your skills are in these areas before reading on.
These skills are interdependent, they support one another and, although we can discuss them in isolation, separating them out in practice is far more difficult. Everything we talk about here will in some way be related to these skills - they underpin the work in biomechanics and, although it takes a considerable time to develop them to a professional standard, it's surprising how quickly you can make progress. Let's deal with them in general terms before we go any further.
PRECISION
Think of anything you have done recently on stage (a gesture, a turn of phrase, an expression) and ask yourself the question: could I do that again? If your honest answer is 'yes, exactly', then you have been acting with a definite sense of precision. But it is more likely to be 'almost'. In some cases it may well be 'do what again?' Try it and see and then think about how close you are to your original performance. Now reflect upon what other skills you need to have in order to recreate a gesture precisely: coordination, balance, discipline and, very probably, an understanding of rhythm. As I said, the skills are all interlinked.
Meyerhold's theatre was based upon a developed level of precision. He looked to the practice of circus performers and acrobats, who depend for their own safety on their ability to repeat precisely a movement or gesture, and he tried to bring the same skills into the theatre. If there is physical risk involved in the work the need for precision is multiplied, but even in the safe environment of a discussion over the dinner table the actor needs to be sure of what he is doing. Meyerhold understood this and understood too that, once a level of precision is brought to bear on any action, the action itself becomes more watchable for an audience.
BALANCE
In normal life the body has an automatic balancing facility, centred in the inner ear. But Meyerhold's theatre called for extraordinary skills of balance. His training reflects this by forcing the actor to think about the body's natural capacity to keep balanced. He does this by making things unnatural, by insisting your feet are parallel when you want them
to be at ninety degrees, or by asking you to balance other things - sticks, chairs, even other performers. A balanced actor is a confident actor and a confident actor is someone who wants to share their talents with the audience. Again, the connection is with the circus or with gymnastics, the kinds of performance which create a feeling of pleasure stimulated by being witness to the most remarkable feats. Actors don't have to perform somersaults to achieve this feeling of pleasure. Simply holding the stage with a bold and explicit gesture can evoke the same sensation. As long as you don't wobble!
COORDINATION
From both a personal and a group perspective, coordination is a central skill in performance. Personally, the need to master your own individual moving parts and to exhibit overall control of these parts is essential. This may mean something simple like moving your arms in time with your legs. Or it might mean rather complex levels of coordination where, for example, one part of your body is operating at a different tempo to another, or when one action (tapping your head) is in conflict with another (rubbing your stomach). From a group perspective your individual movements need to operate in harmony with the rest of the ensemble - you need to coordinate your work with the movements and actions of the rest of the cast and with the demands of the particular space.
It's no coincidence, that in looking for a metaphor to describe the term coordination, I've had to use musical and mechanical terms - 'harmony', 'operating', 'moving parts'. Meyerhold's theatre was influenced by both disciplines (the word biomechanics itself is a clue to this) and it is worth keeping this in mind as we approach the exercises.
EFFICIENCY
Never waste energy on stage. It's tiring for you and it's uncomfortable for an audience. You need all your physical resources at your command when you are performing in a production in Meyerhold's style and needless gestures or over-elaborate actions simply use up those resources unnecessarily. A novice in middle- or long-distance running understands this immediately, but an untrained actor may spend many months exhausting himself before he realises this fact. For Meyerhold,
the model for an actor was a factory worker, forced by the repetitive demands of his work to rationalise the working process and eliminate anything superfluous. If you have ever worked on a production line you'll know how quickly you have to adapt your naturally wasteful actions to the tempo of the machine. You might also know, when you do master the demands of the machine and you begin to work efficiently, how visually striking your movements become. They are instinctively fluid, rhythmic and precise.
RHYTHM
Rhythm is one of those mysterious terms in theatre, rather like the word 'movement' in the mouths of football pundits - everyone seems to use it but few would be prepared to explain it! For Meyerhold, rhythm is the glue which binds all the other skills of the actor together. He wasn't in any way mysterious about it. As discussed on p. 55, he broke everything down (from the tiniest gesture to the overall structure of a play) into a tripartite rhythm - a rhythm made up of three parts. He then gave each part a name: otkaz, or 'preparation'; posil', or 'action'; and tochka, or 'end point'. These three parts are the very building blocks of biomechanical theatre. From the work of an individual actor to the orchestration of large ensembles, from a line in a small scene to the formal analysis of the whole play, otkaz, posil' and tochka determine everything.
EXPRESSIVENESS
Expression is the means by which an actor communicates with an audience. A director gives you a task and it is your job to express this vision to the spectators. There are as many different kinds of expression as there are theatre styles, perhaps as many as there are directors, or even actors. But certain characteristics can easily be highlighted when we are talking about Meyerhold's theatre. Meyerhold's mode of expression was exaggerated, elongated and stylised. He wanted to build stage pictures which expressed the central idea of the scene without the need for words, and he wanted his actors to have the wherewithal to do this. Thus, the actor in Meyerhold's troupe had to be physically fit, agile and flexible, just as the actors of commedia dell'arte were in a previous era.
When a biomechanical actor walks on stage there is always some kind of reaction from his fellow performers. They may start, do a double-take or rearrange their perspective to compensate for the new arrival. Think of the work of the great silent screen actors (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd) for a model of this kind of expression. They all use a bold, physical style with clear and precise gestures and they all exhibit a beguiling sense of mischief.
RESPONSIVENESS
Of course, if reactions on stage are so important, it follows that, as an actor, you need to be permanently 'switched on', or responsive, to what is happening before you. Have you ever missed a cue on stage because your thoughts were elsewhere? Or found yourself out of step with the rest of the cast because someone else has done something differently? If so, then you will know what the dangers of being un-responsive are.
But although all stage actors, by definition, must be able to respond to the unpredictabilities of the live event, Meyerhold's emphasis on the responsiveness of the actor was extreme. His ideal is a kind of 'reflexive' actor, reacting almost instantaneously to a given stimulus, as if shocked by an electric charge. The 'charge' may be any number of things: a sound effect, another line, or an entrance or exit. But whatever it is the response time for the actor must be immediate.
PLAYFULNESS AND DISCIPLINE
I have put these last two skills together as they are two sides of the same coin, in a delicate balance with one another. Too much playfulness and a performance can become self-indulgent and without focus; too little and the spark of creativity which is necessary for any kind of work in the theatre can never catch light. An overly disciplinarian atmosphere in workshops can have this effect, extinguishing the lightness of touch which comes from simple play.
The contemporary accounts of Meyerhold in the rehearsal room highlight both aspects of his character. He was an exacting taskmaster who had a precise vision of what he wanted to see on stage. But although this led him to take a sometimes very authoritative approach in his rehearsals, this atmosphere of control would be punctuated by moments of frolicsome play.
Whether you are participant or leader in a biomechanical workshop it is worth reflecting on this relationship. As a leader you must define the right atmosphere for concentrated and sometimes gruelling physical work. But at the same time you have to be responsive to unforeseen occurrences and be adaptable enough to transform the atmosphere with a different exercise or a change of tack. As a participant you must commit yourself to what are very prescriptive exercises at times. But you must also learn to inject your own individuality into these exercises, to play within tightly controlled conditions.
THE EXERCISES
Having defined the underlying principles of biomechanical work, it is now possible to outline the details of some of the practice. Inevitably this is not an all-inclusive checklist of exercises. Work in biomechanics takes years to perfect and the range of sources (from commedia, to circus, from Japanese theatre to the Elizabethan stage) does not lend itself to written documentation. But it is possible to put down in writing some introductory work and to characterise the kind of activities which are appropriate to a training in Meyerhold's style of theatre. There are several sources now available in English which give further details of the practice and you are asked to read what follows in conjunction with these, especially the video archives of Aleksei Levinski (1995) and Gennadi Bogdanov (1997, 1998).
There is no strict order to these exercises, but I have organised them to suggest a progressive pattern of work - from general skills-based exercises, including a detailed look at the étude 'The Slap' and a revision of basic skills, to those which involve some level of improvisation, and finally to work based on text. Depending on the intended outcomes of the work you may emphasise different aspects of the practice, choosing specific exercises. This is fine but it is advisable to retain an element of the skills-based work throughout the process so that a proficiency in the key skills indicated in the last section can grow.
First, though, you will need to obtain some basic equipment and undertake some warm-up exercises.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
You won't need all of the following for each session and, depending on the particular focus of the work, may not need some of them at all. But at some stage the exercises will make use of everything from this list: • A large room, preferably heated, with a floor which will not perish if you drop things on it.
• A number of metre-length sticks - broom sticks will do but they need to be quite strong. If they are over one metre cut them down - the length of the stick is important.
• A bag of tennis balls - enough for each participant to have one. The same goes for the sticks.
• A sound system.
• A video player.
• A means of documenting the work at times - a video or stills camera.
WARMING UP
Before you begin anything you must warm yourself up. Biomechanics puts all of your muscles under considerable strain and if these muscles are not properly stretched out and warmed up you will injure yourself. There are many ways to do this, either as a group or individually, but however you choose to do it you must make sure that you are physically prepared for the work.
One efficient way to warm up is to work upwards, from your feet to your upper body, neck and head. Begin with flexing the ankles, the calves and the thigh muscles. Once the legs are feeling warmer and more flexible, you can begin to run or walk in different directions. Pause to rotate the hips, to push them forward and back, left and right. Develop a walk which uses an exaggerated movement of the hips and take it across the circle.
Work now on the knees. Sit in a half squat with a straight back. Take the squat lower and lower before straightening the legs to stand again. As a group, with the leader dictating the pace, lower yourself to a kneel without a sound. Stand again, without using your hands to help you up and repeat this cycle. Practise a Cossack dance: the group can even improvise a Russian soundtrack for it!
Move to focusing on the upper body. Isolate the chest and shift it from side to side (left and right) without moving the hips or the stomach. Keep the shoulders parallel to the floor. Try and push the chest forward to make it convex, then back to make it concave. Then, add in the left and right movements so that you can move all the upper chest in a circle - forward, left, back, right - while the lower torso remains stationary. Once again this flexing of the body might express itself in a stylised walk. Put the hips-walk together with the chest movements and begin to see what kind of strange person emerges as you explore the space!
Now pay attention to the head and neck: first, by simply flexing the head in the direction of the four poles - north, east, south and west; then, by improvising different responses using only the movement of the head and neck. These may include 'surprise', 'disgust', 'curiosity', 'panic' or 'lechery'. You can do this in pairs with one partner entering and making an offer and the other partner responding with a counter-offer. Analyse which responses have a forward impetus and which take the head back.
You will find that once this kind of improvisation is set up you will already be using facial expressions to augment the work. So now develop these by thinking of the face as a mask. Warm up the face by making big faces, wide faces, diagonal faces or tiny faces. Again, toss in some suggestions for expressions and try to capture them in a frozen facial expression or mask: 'lust, 'anger', 'shock' and 'hilarity' will all stretch the face in different directions and begin to establish the sense of an external, non-psychological theatre.
There are no definitive guidelines as to how long a warm-up should be, but you want to be happy that all the major muscle groups have been stretched out. A warm-up must also set the right tone. It's like an introduction to an essay - leading us into the work and giving the participants the right tools to understand the following exercises. Think about how you are covering the essential biomechanical skills, even when you are planning the warm-up. In the examples above, the straight warm-up exercises are interspersed with small improvisations and with very early character work. Using this approach, the participants gain a sense of style as well as simply flexing their muscles.
.... " [ move it to biomechanics.vtheatre.net? ]
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