Good morning All
All my proposals got finished as planned yesterday and the broccoli and yoghurt soup was delicious. However the piece of New York cheese cake that followed was possibly a mistake!
Having being invited to run a workshop in Wroclaw I have been considering the precise nature of what I want to explore with Polish actors. The Polish actor training is historically demanding, highly physical, disciplined and emotionally exposing. The cultural scene is heavily set by the legacy of Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor and others in particular and carried on by a new young group of directors. I am sure that my coming back into that space 25 years on will renew my sense of the core, uncompromising - almost holy respect for the body as 'expressor' that pervades Polish theatre.
The emphasis of much of Grotowski's early work was on the actor as an instrument through which any number of images, ideas and emotions are channelled. As such the body must be trained and tuned to allow emotion and voice to flow through it unhindered. This is tough, because we use our bodies in all sorts of ways for everything! Tuning them as instruments as a primary attention may present all sorts of personal challenges. However its an investment that might be made by an actor if she wants to move beyond the lazy and the ordinary.
Another great influencer in the field of body and movement in theatre in the UK and aligned to Grotowski's approach is Litz Pisk who died in 1998. She is widely regarded as the finest and most influential teacher of modern theatre movement. She was professional director of movement at the Old Vic, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the English National Opera, and in television and films, including the movement for Vanessa Redgrave's film role in Isadora. She was Director of Vienna's School of Art and Movement, and a teacher at the Old Vic School, the Bath Academy of Art, RADA and the Central School of Speech and Drama. The Actor and His Body is her seminal work.
You would think perhaps that it is nigh on impossible to learn anything about movement from a book, but hers is perhaps unique in this not least because as a visual artist her dynamic line drawings express the quality of movement she describes in her exercises. Its a practical book, which guides the actor through a wide range of ways of freeing the body, and has much synergy with the work of Kristin Linklater who I talked about in a recent blog on voice.
Litz Pisk's way of working had nothing to do with striving for a preconceived ideal physique; instead she was concerned to free the individual body she saw before her from all its constricting habits and limitations. Initially this process might involve a certain amount of chaos, welcomed by her as a first step on the road to what she called "a second simplicity". When you could stand before her relaxed and balanced you were ready to allow your imagination to shape your body.
After her death the director Michael Elliott said of Litz Pisk.
"She had a contagious seriousness that can create an atmosphere of deep concentration as if by magic, with a glance of the hooded eyes and a half-lost mumble".
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| Naughty but nice! |
All my proposals got finished as planned yesterday and the broccoli and yoghurt soup was delicious. However the piece of New York cheese cake that followed was possibly a mistake!
The emphasis of much of Grotowski's early work was on the actor as an instrument through which any number of images, ideas and emotions are channelled. As such the body must be trained and tuned to allow emotion and voice to flow through it unhindered. This is tough, because we use our bodies in all sorts of ways for everything! Tuning them as instruments as a primary attention may present all sorts of personal challenges. However its an investment that might be made by an actor if she wants to move beyond the lazy and the ordinary.
Another great influencer in the field of body and movement in theatre in the UK and aligned to Grotowski's approach is Litz Pisk who died in 1998. She is widely regarded as the finest and most influential teacher of modern theatre movement. She was professional director of movement at the Old Vic, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the English National Opera, and in television and films, including the movement for Vanessa Redgrave's film role in Isadora. She was Director of Vienna's School of Art and Movement, and a teacher at the Old Vic School, the Bath Academy of Art, RADA and the Central School of Speech and Drama. The Actor and His Body is her seminal work. You would think perhaps that it is nigh on impossible to learn anything about movement from a book, but hers is perhaps unique in this not least because as a visual artist her dynamic line drawings express the quality of movement she describes in her exercises. Its a practical book, which guides the actor through a wide range of ways of freeing the body, and has much synergy with the work of Kristin Linklater who I talked about in a recent blog on voice.
Litz Pisk's way of working had nothing to do with striving for a preconceived ideal physique; instead she was concerned to free the individual body she saw before her from all its constricting habits and limitations. Initially this process might involve a certain amount of chaos, welcomed by her as a first step on the road to what she called "a second simplicity". When you could stand before her relaxed and balanced you were ready to allow your imagination to shape your body.
"She had a contagious seriousness that can create an atmosphere of deep concentration as if by magic, with a glance of the hooded eyes and a half-lost mumble".
So I will return to Litz shortly and reread her book as a refresher. I owe much to her approach in how I like to work with actors and of course these influences become unconscious in one's own practice. I always find it salutary to return to a source of influence and rediscover things that I may have forgotten or indeed never learned in the first place!
I'm off to check in on our show Mullered at St Bonaventure's school in Upton Park this morning. I'll pass on the donuts!
Have a good Monday.
Have a good Monday.
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