Methods in making theatre - part one

You asked me to write down some of the exercises, what we have worked with during our rehearsals in Denmark, and later in Hungary.
I was hesitating a bit, because I don't have a completly worked out system yet.

But I can tell some of the exercises, what I have. I think it is more important to understand the reason of them, than the exact way how one or another goes.

One of the most important fields what you have to work with is what you are paying attention to. Let's call this focus.

You can only be free in your work, when you are focusing on right things.

When a beginner enters to a rehearsing workshop usually he can not focus well. He is worried about others watching him, he is busy to produce something. But he is not focusing on what he wants to produce, just on the will of producing something.

Put a chair on the stage and ask a beginner to walk towards the chair from a certain point and sit down, and than stand up and leave the stage on a certain point. He will have difficulties managing this very simple task.

Everyone can walk, shout, cry, breath deeply, look in another's eye, smile, be angry, laugh, make breaks in between his actions, but at the begining it seems impossible to do these things while other's are watching you, and you are aware of this attention, moreover you are doing these things to be watched.

This is the abstraction in theatre. Each of your actions have two goals. When you are not doing theatre you are shouting to express your anger. When you are doing theatre, you are shouting to express your anger and to be observed at the same time.

You need to have to be in two states at the same time, one in the state of the emotion, what you want to express, and another is the cool-headed controller of the whole situation.

One of the most difficultest things, what a percussionist has to learn is to move separatly his hands end feet. It is complicated.

In percussion you have to make divison between the parts of your body. In acting you have to divide mental things.

Time is an important component in avoiding the wrong direction of focus. It means one has to have patience when studying the work in theatre. But to get more and more used to the situation that your actions are being watched is just the first step in the work with focus.

You have to learn what to focus on. These are parallel processes. You will drop to focus on excrescent things, which are obstacles in your work, when you start to find new things to focus on.

Humility. You need to be patient and curious. Your curiosity needs to be stronger than your desire to reach accomplishment.

What to begin with?

On my opignion you have to get in touch with the tools what you are using when you are acting.

You have basicly three tools.

Your body.

Your partner(s).

The space.

(There is one more indispensable component in theatre: audience, and you have to learn to focus on this component aswell, but it comes later.)

You can only work with things, which are familiar to you. So I advise exercises, which help you to sart to get to know these tools.

Some exercises. Your body.

Connect your movements with your breathing. Stay still while inhaling and imagine one movement, and realize this movement while exhaling. Do this movement exactly as long as you are exhaling.

Imagine a movement while inhaling, and when you exhale realize the opposite of it. For example, you are standing and you imagine that you will sit down, but than you spring up. (Let's call this the contra-movement.)

Imagine a movement, and realize both, first one third of the contra, and than the whole original movment. Try to find a very concrete goal for yourself. For example walking across the room and shuting the door. Realize this series of movments with this method; imagining every single part of your moving, move only during exhalation, and do the 30% of the contra and the whole original movement aswell.

Write down extrem situations from your own experiences. Situations which effected your body (aswell). For example when you fainted, when you were drunken, you had an operation in hospital, state of high fever, a sexual act. It is very important to write only about physical phenomens, do not write about what you were thinking, or what were your emotions, strictly narrow down your sentences to describe how your body was behaving in these situations.

Maybe you will find it to difficult to remember any of these kind of situations, than for the beginning choose something from everday life, and try to write down how you are eating, how you are smoking, gonig down the stairs, having a shower, etc. Write down as many things about your body in these situations as possible. What are the positions of your body parts, how they move, when they move slowly, when fast, how are you breathing, where are you looking at, which of your mussels are relaxed, which are in tense. Do you feel pain? What kind of pain. And so on.

When you feel you have collected as many sentences of one situation as possible try to feel tha state(s), what you have described in your body. Do not act it out. Close your eyes and try to find the feeling inside. Than make one still picture which can describe the whole situation. This picture is to describe what you feel, and the goal is not to explain to the audience in a very concrete and understandble way what was the situation exactly. They do not need to know, if it was an operation for example, they need to get the feeling what you want to express. If you are doing well they might feel something similar in their bodies. Ask them to describe what they have experienced.

The Daughter of the Turkey-herd Woman - fifth part

The prince did not go back to his parents, neither to the house of the Jewish family. He went right a way to the seacoast, he wanted to cross the waves. But he haven't found any boat or canoe, or any means of transport on the coast. He waited there for a month looking out for someone, who can take him across the water. Than suddenly he saw a boat on the horizon, approaching him. There were two sailors in it. As they reached the coast, and they started to anchor, he cried at them: "I want to cross the water." "Oh, we cannot sail anyone cross the water, it is even forbidden for the bird to fly over. That is the command of the king."
"If you refuse to take me, I'll kill myself into the water." And he prepared himself to jump down from the rocks.
Than one old sailor says to the other: "Listen, they might kill us, if we sail him across, but we are both old, look at him, what a pity if his young life ends. Let's take him." "Come and jump in!" Said the other one to the prince. They started to row with him across the water.
The daughter of the turkey-herd woman was closed in separate room, guarded strictly by armed soldiers. When the boat reached the bank, the prince went to her room directly. The soldier in the door warns him: "Stop." He stops for a second, but than makes some steps again. "Stop!" Says the soldier. "Otherwise I'll shoot at you." But his words were bigger, than his braveness, he didn't dear to pull the trigger. The prince stepped up to him. "What are you doing here?" "I'm watching over the fiance'e of the king. She is locked up in this room, so she cannot escape."
"How foolish you are, soldier." Replied the prince." "How much do you get for this?"
"I do not get a penny, this is my duty, I'm a soldier."
"You are certainly fool. Why do you waste your precious time watching over her, without getting any money? Come let's play cards instead."
The soldier shook his head. "I do not have money for that."
"I'll borrow you some. Come on!" He gave half of his gold to the soldier, and they started to play. The prince was a big card player, he could even win the stars from the sky with playing cards, but he let the soldier win. "Listen soldier, if we continue this game, you'll win so much money, that you will not know what to do with it. But this is nothing compared to what you get, if you do a service for me. Will you?"
"What would it be?"
"Take this cup of wine, and take it to her. You'll get this big amount of money, if you do this for me."
"I can do this, this is nothing."
The prince threw his ring into the cup of wine, and the soldier took it to the daughter of the turkey-herd woman. When she started to drink it, the ring hit her teeth, she looked at it, and she realized who's it was.

Twentieth note

I'm going home soon. Home? Sometimes I wonder what is home for me? We talked about this question and worked with it last summer in our workshop, and a even before, a little bit, in Denmark.
What is important in the home? People, who are close, safe place, ability to be understood, and understand others?
I have seen a performance of students, I was amazed by the devotion and humility what they have in their work, and I was shocked at the same time. Their leader used to be an actor in the theatre, where I am studying now. People, who know him from the theatre say, the performance talks about his questions, and problems.
I was wondering, how much distance one has to take from his private life, and private questions, when he is working. Of course, you can only talk about things, which are important for you, but you have to make some steps backwards to have a more general view. Otherwise it becomes your personal therapy, and You misuse your company and the audience, who comes to see you.

About the Way

You have to know, that you have to find the Way.
The Way will not look for you.

Does anybody know, how is this quote from Gurdjieff literally?

Lost language

Lift your arm. She lifts. How big is this mountain for a skier. It takes a long time to arrive to the valley. He has to be careful, not to be too fast, because he is alone. No one can help him, if he gets lost in the snow.

I am folding a hat from the glass of my window.

I nail the smoke of my pipe to the wall.

I breastfeed the asphalt.

I hide the flames of the bonfire under my underwear.

I wrap carefully my last night's dream into a cloud. Big package tough.

I cry under water.

Nineteenth note

Back in Budapest, an intermission in the rehearsals in Transylvania. I am reading Ödön von Horváth plays. Greatly written bitter dialogues, which slowly build up a story. People, who are struggleing, and keep making wounds on each other. This is the way they are only able to interact with each other, this is how they are able to express their pain. He was half Czech, half Hungarian originated, and he lived in Vienna, Austria, and wrote in German.
One track on the CD of Magnus's band (the Blood Sweat Drum 'n' Bass Big Band) perfectly matched to one of his plays; Kasimir and Karoline, a story about a young couple, who splits up. If I would make a performance or a film out of this play, I would definitely use this music.

And a cruel and fantastic Romanian movie: 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. As minimalistic as possible, one camera (sometimes in the hand), no music. All in behalf of telling a story of an illegal abortion in the Romanian dictatorship, in the eighties.

Eighteenth note

I dreamed about two female lions this night. We escaped from them into my room with my mother and my oldest brother. I was holding the door, but they were stronger, they pushed it in, ran a circle in the room, made some wounds, and they went out. We tried to make a barricade, so they won't come in again, and a little later we moved back to my brothers room, because it was easier to close his door. My father was outside, and we tried to worn him with some form of telecommunication (maybe phone) to be careful.

I am in Romania, and I am participating on the rehearsals of a play about an encounter of a girl, who does not speak and a royal court. I do not have any duty on these rehearsals, I am only here to listen and to watch. The theatre is the one, where we have been together at the end of last summer, and where you were waiting with me for the director. The evening before, we had been in another town nearby, on the lecture of the Danish lama, and after on the party with him, in a discotheque. Than we slept in that big open garden, which seemed for the first glimpse abandoned, but after putting up our tent, you noticed some clothes hanged out on a rope, and in the morning a woman came out from the house and looked at us in a frightened way. We both haven't slept a lot, it started to rain, and you ran out to fix the tent. When we were waiting at the porter's lodge of the stage door, you fell asleep lying on some chairs.
This town is very small, everything is very close to each other, which I enjoy a lot. I rented out a room from a young girl, who is teaching art in several schools of the town. My room is almost empty, except for some plastic dolls in the corner, and her drawings on the walls, a lot of big nudes. This apartment is about 10 minutes walk from the theatre. The atmosphere of a theatre in a small town reminds me a little bit the experience, which I had at Odin. The mystery of big and untouchable actors disappear, and theatre becomes a profession, as normal, as anything else.