Minus workshop 5, part 2: the question for workshop 6, The world or what we do in it?
I've yet to reconcile meaning, shifting meanings, and emotion, emotion considered in terms of putting an emotion in the body. Other than:
- go by way of association—the past, when associations are formed;
- go by way of imagination—a virtual form (in the immediate future, a flickering and changing image) for the present actual perception (outside);
so that the question becomes what does this mean in the language of theatre? (Language here is a cognate for theatre as being a perceptual attribute, constituting an organ of perception in the actual movements and gestures which include language of the actors.)
Rikki, Ann—one of the Chinese dancers from the workshop before ours, Kwan, Mike, Chenby, Alex and Xiao-Ping—Wong Xiao-Ping, English name Bree, new to Minus, a month in NZ, who heard of the workshop through Meet-Up, where Ellen Melville Centre post. As I told him, our first Chinese man in Minus. Later in the workshop he showed striking vulnerability. In the break he told me he had been in different countries and cultures, including Jordan; and seen styles of life not bound by the strictures as in China of the Party: he had seen what it meant to think freely.
Chen turned up, then Yuka, early for her. My notes start at the end of the workshop, with an image, a photo to arrive at. Having put the emotion in the photo of a brother and sister fighting over a teddy bear into their bodies, Yuka and Chenby were asked to arrive here: the brother has snatched the teddy bear and holds it away from his sister with his right hand while holding her back with his left.
My preamble for this part of the workshop, working with photos, again from The Family of Man, included saying that each actor has their own process. . . to get there, to wherever the emotion is. One actor will beat herself up until she feels it. Another will write a book, and process it intellectually, to get it. Then there are actors who like to know where they are going and just get out on set and do it, like Julianne Moore.
In the photo exercises we did however, Rikki and Chen improvised together to stage the moment where an old woman looks out into all of time and a young child looks away, into the light coming through a window. Chen was the naughty child and Rikki had to rein her in, and constantly broke character. Even for the beautiful image of war, three men, one to the side addressing himself to a journal and smoking, and two soldiers embracing, one consoling the other, with Xiao-Ping and Mike and Alex, rather than engaging in three distinct processes, the three worked together—but they did get it.
I had said that if one gets there first, to stay and wait in that place for the others to join him or her. Yuka and Chenby attempted to build up the emotion by repeatedly snatching back the teddy bear but the action being realistic did not release Yuka or Yuka could not release herself from it to get to the emotion and hold it in the image. She told me later she had trouble with the realistic action. Then Chenby swapped their roles, she took the role of the sister and Yuka the brother. It effectively clicked into place all by itself, Chenby released and releasing herself from the action to portray the emotion, or, rather to inhabit the emotion. And this is the question I led with in the title to this post, the question for workshop 6, Is it the world, of emotion, or what we do in it, that gives the scene its energy and life?
At the time I recorded this as how to arrive at an action-photo? a photo taken in mid action? The stillness in the soldiers gave Mike and Xiao-Ping and Alex enough time, if one arrived there first the waiting was easy, but to grab both the emotion and the action at once and hold it there is more difficult. I said, the action in the photo articulates the emotion. Perception, the language of photography and what can be said in that language, differs from that in theatre, a different language. I repeated throughout the workshop in fact that these workshops have exercises to learn the language of theatre.
Theatre has slowly to arrive at what the photo snaps in midflight. And the action in the photo has a gravity, an emotion expressed in the action, but the action is not how to get there in theatre. Gravity is its animating principle, frozen in the shot. Let the gravity pull you into the image, I said. Be in. Wait for others to join you.
The two life-stories were highlights. Again they were, for Ann and Xiao-Ping (Kwan accused me of pronouncing it Shopping which became a running gag. Mr Shopping, I said, please...) related by a theme, this time, although very different, of goodbyes. Xiao-Ping circled the space, came to the centre and contained some living things in a small space. He circled back around considering whether he needed to assert their containment once more, to make sure they wouldn't escape.
He made several circuits and in a final image came to the centre lifted whatever was confining the creatures—he said when asked birds but the care he took indicated they might also be the spirits of people—above his his head and released them. Simple and profound, said Chen. Xiao-Ping's life-story reminded me of Chen's, in 2014, when she had first joined Minus. (I describe it in my exegesis, here.)
Alex said the circular shape his movements described reminded him of a clock. I asked if he could show this and so Xiao-Ping did his life-story again to lead a session of thief. Both Alex and Chenby contributed.
Ann started her life-story with rigid dance movements recalling those sharply delineated ones in Chinese dance but as she proceeded, walking back and forth across the acting space, her movements became looser. Suddenly she was pregnant. At first she was surprised, then shrugged, that's life. Her face expressed a wonderful levity and joy towards life.
She had the baby, drawing it up into her arms to cradle it. She stood and showed how the child grew. Its first day at school was very emotional and she said out loud, I love you. Later she said everyone had turned to look at her, since she had surprised herself, but she was not embarrassed and thought, O well, let them! It's what I feel. As the child grew there were more goodbyes, until it was time, she said, because you have to, to let her children go out into the world.
The workshop, after walking, attuning, began with thief. The Minuses from its first incarnation ended up performing for the group. I felt privileged and moved to have made a space where such things can happen, moved by the way 8 years may have passed since Minus's last performance, but the techniques we established then had stuck, more than stuck, were still animating the stage like this. Mike had led and before he did I had explained some of the techniques, so you could say it was a demonstration or even proof of concept! but I did afterwards upbraid the new Minuses, joking that they were lazy.
I asked Rikki why he didn't join in. He answered that he wanted to watch. He was afraid, he said, of bowling straight in and being, although he didn't say it in these words, too theatrically big. Perhaps he saw the delicacy of the crystal tree and gained an insight into what he took, and said later he liked, to be the freeing up that the form provided.
Form. Meaning. These things have been on my mind for workshop 6, after which, only 3 more before I fly away to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I talked briefly with Chenby about whether she would want to continue, perhaps with Alex, perhaps rotating with others, the workshops, leading them; I had actually pre-booked some more Monday slots for the workshop with Tabitha, Rasoul's colleague, at the Ellen Melville Centre.
