PRODUCTION DESK - Table in the auditorium at which director/designer etc sit during rehearsals (especially technical rehearsals). Usually has its own lighting and communications facilities.
Director, be careful! Actor can do three things: mirracle, nothing -- and total destruction of your show. I wrote (still writing) three other books on actors = Acting I, Method, Biomechanics. Read them, because here I speak about how to use them, actors, when you know how to use them...
Listen, you study how to play violin, and then you study how to play music. Do you understand the difference?
If you didn't read Acting, BM and Method pages -- go back and do it, read (take notes), then, come back...
What is "Chronotope"?
What is the difference Acting and Performing? [ read THR theory pages! ]
Please, use the exiting language of motion, the symbols shaped by the milleniums (circle, squre, triangle and etc.) -- you can't invent anything unless you work with the old architypes. They all are out there -- Egypt, Kabbalah, Hindu, Zen, Christian images ...
Questions
... I know, it will never be done. I can write my notes, but I can't describe the dynamics of the live show...
Notes
... Every theatre event is a process. And by that I mean that something happens which is not the same in the middle as at the beginning, and not the same at the end as the middle. And when the event is right, in other words, when the words are properly conceived by the author, when the acting is properly conceived and implemented by the actors, there is a change of temperature. That, whatever the audience, it is hoisted to a higher level of understanding than it is normally capable of. --Peter Brook on Shakespeare and the theatrical event *
Stage Direction ( Originally Published 1916 ):
"THAT stage atmosphere, in the matter of decoration of the scene, readily may be provided by an upholsterer, is a fallacy that has put into practise these many years. Yet one cannot forget that magnificence of mounting in the Attic theater, provided by rich citizens who knew little or nothing of poetry, frequently won tragic prizes over intrinsically better work.
In the test wherein " a single impression must reach the eye and ear," this time-worn method is found wanting. An artist in charge will achieve an infinitely better effect with a fraction of the material brought by the mechanic; and he will not yet reduce his furniture to the traditional two chairs, indicating that two persons are to be seated, removed when they are not. He may use pictures that are not to be pointed at, flowers that are not to have their fragrance remarked or that are not to be used in corsage or buttonhole, and pianos the keys of which are not to be touched; but one or all will have contributions to the unified impression.
Like the scenery itself, the decoration should be not so mean as to excite ridicule or contempt, or so gorgeous as to divide eyes and ears. But every picture, every rug, every piece of furniture in a setting, should be part of the general composition, and should be balanced and arranged with good taste—after the specific accommodation for the action has been made. The figurines that stand prominently at left in Act I of " As a Man Thinks," are splendid examples of accommodation of the action in this manner. They are much interwoven with the main situation of the play."
stage direction -- part of the script of a play that tells the actors how they are to move or to speak their lines. Enter, exit, and exeunt are stage directions.
Lighting and colour: Primary sources of emotion?
Space and time: How Mise-en-Scene creates and manipulates space and time
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)
Drama / Theatre / Performance by Simon Shepherd, Mick Wallis; Routledge, 2004 - Part One: A Genealogy
- 1: Drama and Theatre as University Subjects
- 2: Drama and the Literary Tradition
- 3: History, Theatre, Society
- 4: The Essence of Drama
- 5: Women, Theatre and the Ethics of the Academy
- 6: Performance, Art and the Avant Garde
- 7: The Rise of Performance Studies
- 8: Performance Studies: Some Basic Concepts
- 9: Postmodernism and Performance
- 10: Recent Mappings of Drama-Theatre- Performance
- Part Two: Keywords
- Action
- Aleatory
- Catharsis
- Character, Mask, Person
- Defamiliarisation and Alienation
- Embodiment
- Empathy
- Interculturalism
- Kinaesthetic
- Mimesis
- Performativity
- Presence and Representation
- Semiotics and Phenomenology
Design for the Stage: First Steps by Darwin Reid Payne; Southern Illinois University Press, 1974 - Introduction
- Part 1 the Scene Designer
- Part 1 the Scene Designer
- §2 the Designer's Role in the Production Plan
- §3 the Designer and the Playwright
- §4 the Designer and the Director
- §5 the Designer and the Physical Stage
- §6 the Designer's Areas of Influence
- §7 "The Art of the Theatre: the First Dialogue"
- §8 "The Building or the Theatre"
- Suggested Reading
- Part 2 Creative Research
- §9 the Nature of Research
- §10 External Research
- §11 Internal Research
- §12 Historical Accuracy
- §13 Research into Designs
- §14 the Designer's Library
- §15 a Filing System for the Scene Designer
- §16 "Stage Design for the Epic Theatre: an Evaluation of Caspar Neher"
- Part 3 from Text to Designs
- §17 a Note: an Explanation Concerning Explanations
- §18 from Text to Designs
- §19 Reading the Script: Some Initial Considerations
- §20 Environment: Creating a Living Atmosphere for the Actor
- §21 the Overview: Madame Butterfly
- §22 Research into Action: Romeo and Juliet
- §23 Detailed Analysis of the Script: the Church Scene in Faust
- §24 the Design Concept on the Stage: the Glass Menagerie
- §25 a Note on the Progress of Scene Design During the Past Decade
- §26 the Scene Design as a Physical Embodiment of Abstract Qualities: the Caretaker
- §27 on Being Upstaged by Scenery
- §4 the Designer and the Director (31-32):
"In an article by Harold Clurman called "In a Different Language", a director says this of his profession:
That action speaks louder than words is the first principle of the stage; the director, I repeat, is the "author" of the stage action. Gestures and movement, which are the visible manifestations of action, have a different language from that which the playwright uses, although the playwright hopes that his words will suggest the kind of action that ought to be employed. The director must be a master of theatrical action, as the dramatist is master of the written concept of his play....
It is rarely the director's intention to alter the playwright's meaning. (Of course this has often been done -- consciously as well as unconsciously -- and occasionally with very happy results.) But it is a mistake amounting to ignorance to believe that the playwright's meaning is necessarily conveyed by merely mouthing the playwright's dialogue and following his stated instructions. In a sense the playwright's text disappears the moment it reaches the stage, because on the stage it becomes part of an action, every element of which is as pertinent to its meaning as the text itself. [ Theater Arts 34 ( January 1950)]
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stagematrix.com -- After 2009
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Part III: Chronotope, Space...
Live show... What do we mean by "live"? "Live" is the essense of stage...
... Take yourself, for example! You exist! Are you a thing of your own making or was it necessary for your father to beget you, and for your mother to bring you into the world? Can you look on all the parts of this machine which make up a man and not wonder at the way one part is fashioned with another, nerves, bones, viens, arteries, lungs, heart, liver, and all the other things which go to -- Oh, for goodness' sake do interrupt me! I can't argue if I'm not interrupted...
I have to interrupt Sgnarelle to sing about the space and time around this live miracle -- the man, the actor!
Lesson VI : Where and how the real drama takes place
Finally, we are here, in the zone of real directing. The stage (not empty, but with your actors and their texts) is the MACHINE of directing the minds and hearts of the public!
PERSON consists of the first person (I, we), words that designate the speaker or writer; the second person (you), words that designate the one being spoken or written to; and the third person (he, she, it, they), words that designate the person or thing spoken or written about. (c)1999 Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Relationships with the public exit in all three forms. The dynamics: First Face -- total indetification, Second -- establishing the subjective time & space, Third -- objective chronotope.
We, the public, start and return to the objective relations with stage, but the drama takes place only in subjective chronotope.
I -- spectator, WE -- public. Audience is the state, where I and WE becomes one!
HAMLET
O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
Dies
Now, the mechanics of this process:
How does the configuration of stage effects directing? I opened two pages in theatre theory directory to talk about the basic rules of space and time on stage. Three main types: proscenium, arena and open stage (combination of two). Arena (historically) linked to open-air performance (The Greeks, half of the stadium, and the street or square theatres). The Middle Ages fully introduced indoor performances ("church floor plan and modern theatre" somewhere on my pages) -- our major theatre architecture. "Open theatre" is more and more popular in the twentieth century (Meyerhold). It's easy to understand that the last type offers advantages of both techniques (4th Wall -- method, and Direct Contact -- Epic Theatre). Obviously, the laws of directing and acting in proscenium and arena environments are opposite (in principle).
Chronotope = time + space (always together, more in depth in Spectator Theory). See the "Globe Theatre" inner architecture to notice the combination of two types (proscenium and open-air, natural light) in order to understand that to this day both tendencies are present in any show.
Even the Greeks had the vertical dimension in stage composition (two-three levels up).
Read theatre history books, our subject here is how to use the stage space and how to manipulate the time, transforming both into dramatic continium, the only universe where the connection with the public can exist, where the drama becomes the action in mind and heart of spectators.
Important, compare the definitions of mise-en-scene for stage and film -- we will discuss it in class.
The question is not just technical (blocking must be done in such a way that action is visible from all sides, arena), but in a concept, and -- actors' attitute. On our main UAF stage I direct, using the big apron and four side-stages; in the lab space ("open stage" mostly) -- configuration is flexible). Unfortunatelly, the director, who revolutionized stage space in 20th century (Meyerhold), left almost nothing on metaphysics of dramatic space (constructivism and formalism).
Subjective Time = developing spectator's POV through the identification with the hero. Physical Movement and dramatic flow.
Dramatic Space = mise-en-scene, organized as visual messages. (Including set, prop, costumes, light, sound).
Stage Event and Dramatic Event.
[ Outside of Fundamentals of Directing? Chronotope, Time, Space Files are @ Theatre Theory deirectory. Perpahs, the right place to organize those files and the advanced mise-en-sce study in The Book of Spectator; spectacle, audience, public, matrix, metrics... ]
MASTER: Anatoly, you have to try it again, my boy. You have to introduce space and time on stage in such a way that they can see it. Talk about crossing the stage, coming to downstage -- what does take place? Talk how different this approach is depending on the speed, light changes, sounds...
ANATOLY: Impossible. So much to talk about. This is "live," sir...
MASTER: Talk, talk!
And what now, Anatoly? Would you talk how to be in love with the "stage"?
It was a moment, the strange zone, when you are not awake, but understand that you were sleeping. It was something like a vision-thought and I remember saying to myself -- "I must write it down, where is this page I had about Theatre and Theology"? I saw a church, thinking it was a theatre. High windows with the light broken into colors, the set and the paintings, statues and candles, focusing our gaze... And the sound effects from above, the bell, the organ... Oh, and the costumes! What a costume on each performer of this spectacle! And the show -- what a staging! This is close as a director could come to performing a miracle...
Of course, this a special space -- dramatic space. And the time is different from the outside timetables: present is linked with the past in expectation of the future...
Forget the religion, I am talking about this "Theatre Chronotope"!
Do you think it's different in church? Please, read Theatre History books; the ancient open-air theatre was resurrected by the church! You can recognige it even from a distance -- special building in every place, which dares to call itself town. Are we over the religous connotations? Could we talk about the organization of special time and place of a miracle?
Miracle is breaking the "normal" and "common" laws. Miracle is an accident of the regular. Miracle is something which is impossible and can't take place... What do you think a great show is, when you forget everything and live in that strange heavenly world? ...
Oh, the angels of light in dark night empty heaven... I paint, but the colors in 3D and motion have the greatest powers. The moving shadows and reflections, mixing the moods of red and blue... Oh, no, your better read Color Page @ film-north.
The moment we really see, we hear. The sounds and music are in colors, shapes, lines -- you at anything beautiful long enough and you begin to hear its voices. Yes, yes, the sound have the same effect. You hear -- and you see.
Not that simple, my man. It have to be in the right place and time within this chronotope of the show. Eisenstein wrote an isolate shot is "neutral" -- how could it be? Doen't red has its own impact on us? No, said the father of montage, it has to be contextual. Any color is between "before and after": not only colors, but sounds, movements, words, pauses... Anatoly, stop, please -- you driving your students crazy!
Poliphonic Principle (Augustin, Bach, Bakhtin, to name a few): the unity of the whole comes from many (thematic) levels... I hope you understand that I have to continue my theatre love stories somewhere else -- on stage, on paper, in other part of my cyberspace and hypertime...
PS
This part is about StageMatrix! The science of staging.
Only through chronotope we can get subjective time and dramatic space, the new "emotional" universe where shows exists. In film and novel we call it "POVs" (see filmstudy.net) -- film-north.
Part One and Two, again: Dramatic Text and Stage Texts
The DRAMA cycles must be expressed through space and time. Shows = statements in languages of the spectacle. Directing thoughts and feeling of the public....
... the great difference is that the church spiritual experience is meant to take hold of the person and last longer than the theatre experience. So the difference is that both aim toward the same goal, but the theatre is like, in show business terms, like the trailer for a great movie.
The theatre experience can lift you to a spiritual height for two minutes, and then that's taken away and you leave the theatre and you've gotten it. Then you realize that there is something called a spiritual way that, in a much more painful and much harder and much slower process, can lead you there on a more permanent basis. And that's where the two are intertwined.
Peter Brook http://www.jameswehn.com/bindlestick/pad04.html
Where should actors / characters go so that the focus in the right place?
Focus – arrangement of stage picture so as to direct audience’s attention to the appropriate character, object, or event. (H, P, &L: 244).
Blocking – where actors go on stage (64).
Remember stage positions and body positions.
Called "blocking" because early directors conveyed staging instructions by drawing a grid on stage floor and labeling each stage position, or "block." (H,P,&L: 248).
Stage business: -- (366) -- detailed handling of props, specific actions such as answering telephones or turning on a lamp.
Visual composition and picturization.
Physical movement of characters onstage.
Movement, pace, rhythm. (64)
Visual punctuation marks, emphasis, motivations, relationships – all conveyed through movement, pace, rhythm [Edwin Wilson, The Theater Experience, 7th edition, (McGraw-Hill, 1998), 146-147)]
Body language, symbolic values (If Richard II starts high, moves slowly to earth…)
H,P,&L, 244: Achieving focus
By body position – the actor who is most "full front" will have the focus.
By stage area – central areas have most focus.
By level – actor on highest level.
By plane – farthest downstage.
By triangulation – actor at apex of a triangle.
By contrast – actor who is apart from group (sitting, while rest of cast is standing).
By movement – moving actor will have more focus.{Top of Page}
From late 19th century, the proscenium, "picture-frame" (box set, fourth-wall realism) have exploited stage’s potential for displaying pictures.
Not as easy on thrust or arena.
Mood and rhythm can be conveyed through movement: angular, round movements, jerky / smooth, etc.
Progression – the rate at which things happen -- speed and emotional intensity and energy.
What Is Scenography? by Pamela Howard; Routledge, 2002 - Introduction
- Chapter 1: Space Measure to Measure: Playing in the Space
- Chapter 2: Text the Hidden Story
- Chapter 3: Research: Asking Question— Finding Answers
- Chapter 4: Colour and Composition
- Chapter 5: Direction Finding the Way
- Chapter 6: Performers the Scenographic Actor
- Chapter 7: Spectators the Great Mystery
- Postscript
Subjective Time = developing spectator's POV through the identification with the hero. Physical Movement and dramatic flow.
