Tag: Theatre

Tilfældighedsdigte

Featured Monica Carroll4 Comments

Writer, what do you create from accidents?

The tenth poem in Danish writer, Klaus Rifbjerg’s Portrait, portrays the wedding in Rifbjerg’s typical experimental style of words dislocated from logic and expectation. Rifbjerg calls these poems tilfældighedsdigte (accidental/coincidental poems).

slam your legs up on the supper buffet

you have not yet been betrayed

the bridal waltz will be danced

put him down then the liar take him eat him

in the bed of chewed blood oranges

now you are home shit princess

now you can kneel in Abraham’s bosom

of imperishable nylon

dip your vinegar sponge in the midst of the slush

Rifbjerg, K. 1963 Portræt. Copenhagen: Glydendal

Albumins

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Joan Littlewood: “I don’t care who we are. If five of us are gathered at random in this room and we have a subject and it’s exciting, we’d get together on it; you read one bit, I’ll read another, someone can dance, someone knows about music. The objective is just in the team looking for protein; they might not find it, but they might find something quite different” (Littlewood in McCrindle 9:1971).

How do you know when you’ve found protein, Writer?

Joan Littlewood (1914-2002) was both the founder and director of London’s Theatre Workshop.

McCrindle, J. F. (Ed.) 1971.  ‘Joan Littlewood interviewed by Margaret Croyden’ in Behind the Scenes: Theater and Film Interviews from the Transatlantic Review. New York: Holt. Pp. 1-12

Sō′mə

Featured Monica Carroll9 Comments

Monika Pagneux, theatre movement teacher, says in creating that we are not in representation, we are. Pagneux refrains from writing, photographing, recording her work. She insists it exist in the work, in the flesh bodies, of her students in practice.

Writer, how do you flesh-live writing?

Filthy dirty

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“Well, to tell you the truth the dolly wasn’t beautiful at all; she was filthy dirty, she’d lost all her hair, and she was made of old rags. What’s more, this dolly used the most terrible bad swear words and the little girl learned every word and repeated them. ‘Who on earth taught you those dreadful words?’ her Mummy asked her. ‘My dolly’, replied the little girl” (Rame and Fo 1991:55).

Who teaches you new words, Writer?

Rame, Franca and Dario Fo 1991. ‘The Same Old Story’ in A Woman Alone & Other Plays. Trans. Gillian Hanna. London: Methuen Drama pp. 49-60

Pernicious Enemies of Art

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In Stanislavski’s diary he wrote that his teacher, Arkadi Tortsov, spoke to the class against pernicious enemies of art. He said, “‘You must fight them as hard as possible, and, if that does not work, then they must be driven off the stage. And so,’ he turned to Varya once more, ‘make up your mind once and for all. Did you come here to serve art and make sacrifices for it or to exploit it for your own personal ends?’” (Stanislavski 2008:35).

Serve art. Make your sacrifices, Writer.

Stanislavski, K. 2008. An Actor’s Work. A Student’s Diary. Trans. Jean Benedetti. London: Routledge: From Konstantin Stanislavsky, 1950. Rabota Aktera nad Soboi [The Actor’s Work on Oneself] Moscow: Iskusstvo

Familiar with ostranenie

Featured Monica Carroll3 Comments

How do you revive your writing eyes, Writer?

Seeing the world, rather than merely recognising it, is an offer of complicating perception. Agents of estrangement can bring about ostranenie (after Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky). Children and the child-like, animals wild and free, the stranger, the alien, the visitor, the guest; all can move us into seeing.

Fear and scruples shake us

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What do you do if shaken by fear, and by scruples, Writer?

“…Let us meet,

And question this most bloody piece of work,

To know it further.”

Shakespeare Macbeth Act II Scene iii

On the Fire Department

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There’s always a reason.

“When talking about this, Brandi felt very ashamed, holding her stomach and almost doubled over with shame. She thought the first fire was ‘just gonna take care of it and forget about it … but it didn’t stop is all.’ She ‘thought she could leave it alone.’ She ‘doesn’t remember when the second one was.’ She connects her setting fires to times when she and Louie would get in arguments. They had a fight when she asked him to help pay her car insurance. She had been doing everything around the house and repairing all his vehicles. He responded ‘Why should I take care of your bills?’ Brandi says that she set fires ‘to get back at him … make the fire department look bad … he was on the fire department 30 years’” (Kinsler and Saxman 2007:91-2).

Seek the reasoning, find the reason, Writer.

Kinsler, P. J and A. Saxman, 2007. ‘Traumatized Offenders’ in Quina and Brown (Eds.) Trauma and Dissociation in Convicted Offenders, pp. 81-95

Quina, K. and L. S. Brown (Eds.) 2007. Trauma and Dissociation in Convicted Offenders. New York: Haworth Medical Press

Remember Your Nest

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“You may have sympathies, you may have grievances, you may have met with wrongs, and you may use them, if you chance to wish to, in the making of a play. But never in order to attack the wronger, never in order to voice your grievance, but merely using the material because it was sent to you by fate, as a wind of spring may chance to bring a straw to building birds” (Lord Dunsany 1928:62).

Straw comes. Build a strong nest Writer.

Lord Dunsany, 1928. ‘The Carving of the Ivory’ in The Art of Playwrighting. Lectures Delivered at the University of Pennsylvania on the Mask and Wig Foundation. University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 47-68.

Take up the Whole Stage

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Make it so they don’t know where to look, Writer. Make them dizzy.

Helmut Vaag, on the performance of his play Reinuvader Rebane (Cunning Fox):

“The extent of Ferdinand Veike’s imagination makes you dizzy. His puppet show takes up the whole wide stage. Until now, the stage of a puppet show has been four metres in width; Ferdinand Veike, however, makes use of as much as ten metres and perhaps would have used more, had the size of the room allowed it. He staged the play in a way that had the performance going on in three different points at once, so that the audience did not know where to look.”

With thanks to Mirko Rajas for the lead to Helmut Vaag via the 2012 Bachelors Thesis Estonian State Puppet Theatre – The First Decades, Turku University of Applied Sciences