Comments on happeningfish: Homework for Alice, or, how devising theatre seems...

Ooo yes, I'd dig that. Coming to the play reading ...

2006-11-21T15:02:00.000+02:00

Ooo yes, I'd dig that. Coming to the play reading on Friday? I am giving myself (more) gray hairs over picking the scenes & sketches...all supposed to be funny, all supposed to date to different Players' eras, and all supposed to not be all that fucking long so we can leave the place at some point. Argh. Anyhoo -if you are coming, we can continue this chat live. If no, we make arrangements.

I practically blog a post and you complain of a lo...

2006-11-20T14:31:00.000+02:00

I practically blog a post and you complain of a long sentence? Ool rait!

Yeah, I think that's part of it for me. It's what happens when you start guessing who this character is and what they would and wouldn't do, when you yourself don't have a clear idea of what you would and wouldn't do.

But we chat. Coffee? We could start the Finn-Brits Theatrical Theory meetups.

Yeeeees - I think we could talk about this at leng...

2006-11-19T19:39:00.000+02:00

Yeeeees - I think we could talk about this at length. What reading your comment brought to my mind was the thought that perhaps - although I rather like the internally-logical approach of character creation - the problem with that is people are not necessarily internally logical, I mean "real" offstage people, and that too much internal logic might turn out to create an onstage character that is too "finished" to be truly, emotionally real, although reality is the desired effect.
That sentence was just way, way too long. Apologies. Mayhap we can talk about this in speech where my long sentences might not matter so much as to ... (etc ad infinitum et nauseam)

Sure. In my head, at least, it gets away from ques...

2006-11-18T18:52:00.000+02:00

Sure. In my head, at least, it gets away from questions like "what's my motivation"--because you yourself are creating the story at that moment. You tend to focus on the thing that's happening right now, hmm. This is really hard to explain. For me, stuff that is psychological acting tends to be on a lot of main stages; I think a lot of people think of what I'd call "psychological acting" as naturalism. I guess they're not the same, but for me they're often together.

When devising, it is more frequent that the stage/story has a set of rules. "We are in this place, you are this character, I am this character, we have a relationship that is like this. Now go." And what I usually don't feel is a need to pretend in a naturalistic, psychologically logical way.

Not all texts are naturalistic. Sarah Kane's texts would probably not come through so nicely with a psychologically logical performance, because the texts are not psychologically logical nor do they belong to our quotidien reality. But many texts encourage the actor to find out "who this person is", what he had for breakfast, etc. The job of the actor is sometimes to simulate a human being who does not exist but is perfectly believable. I prefer the job of the actor to be to perform, represent, be transparent about the fact that I am me and not Blanche, and that I am performing what Blanche is. I don't hope to become someone else, but to show something.

You can take this kind of mindset to other plays, of course. But what I tend to find in devising plays is that attempting to round-out a natural-looking and logically-acting human being doesn't get you very far, so you don't feel pressure to do it.

Sense? Or?

Happeningkala, this is very interesting. Could you...

2006-11-18T16:20:00.000+02:00

Happeningkala, this is very interesting. Could you elaborate on "free the actor from psychological acting" for me, please?