Movements in Physical Theatre

What is Physical Theatre?

Physical theatre is your own interpretation of something or everything. It's creating an image through movements, and using teamwork to do so. It's telling a story using your bodies: visual theatre. Its abstract!

Entertainment for Dionysus.

The origins of Physical Theatre are the telling of stories, actions and imagination. As well as Greek Mythology-400BC, the Romans-55AD, Commedia Del'Arte-16th Century and then finally it being modernized in Japan in the 1800's. Physical Theatre evolved firstly from, as mentioned above, the Greek Mythology. It all began in honouree of their Gods. Specifically Dionysus the God of The grape harvest/winemaking , Dionysus was honoured with a festival under the name of “City Of Dionysia.” In Athens the festival would be celebrated by men performing songs and plays to welcome Dionysus. Athens started the tradition of performing, and back in that era the actors would all play the same person with usually only three actors aloud to perform in each play. Later, more non-speaking roles were welcomed on stage with the other three performers. These became the Greek Chorus. Tragedy, Comedy and Satyr (mixture of Tragedy and Comedy- tragicomedy. Anton Chekhov made Uncle Vanya into a tragicomedy piece) plays were all performed for Dionysus- which started the tradition in theatres nowadays. Tragedy plays originated from ‘dithyrambs’ (A Greek Hymn song and dance in honour of Dionysus) These were song in praise of Dionysus at the Dionysia each year. The dithyrambs were later turned into narratives sung by a chorus. Comedy plays were just as important to Greek Theatre. Comedy plays and their origination is yet to be discovered; but the writer of these traditional plays goes by the name of Aristophanes.  A third main feature to Greek Theatre itself was mime; it was used to tell the audience things that people couldn't say.


Greek Theatre/Chorus
"A chorus is a body of people who speak the same but do not think the same" (Greek Theatre video: http://sdcstream.southdowns.ac.uk/view.aspx?id=7462~4t~V3INjBBD&from=AuthSuccess )

The role of a chorus is to act ("A chorus has to spend a long time reacting to others") and react to things happening in the scene; and they stay on stage throughout the play. Behind the stage, is where the skene is situated and infront of it, is the audience. As we are familiar to today. In the image you can see the sketch of the skene, stage and the audience in a circular shape; this is called theatre in the round. Greek theatre flourished in 550 BC and 220BC; it is commonly know as dark theatre with the constant theme of death. It is known to be "emotionally draining" for the audience as feelings are shared from the chorus to the audience which makes it so emotional for the audience. The reasons for this is because the chorus is the realistic interpretation, for the audience, of human tragedy and the "universal and unfairness of suffering unnecessarily" (From the link above)

My drawing of the Greek Theatre layout.

And it was the choruses role to make sense of what's happening on in the scene, pick up on any emotions and tell it to the audience. 

My drawing of the Keypad workshop.

 As an ensemble of 17, we did a Greek Chorus workshop. Stood in a tight huddle center stage, we were all told to imagine a keypad just at ceiling level. Numbers were shouted out and as a ‘chorus’ we moved our heads to the specific numbers. For example number 1 was far left and 0 was looking down. Some of us were asked to step out and look at the effect from the audiences view; and it looked so in-time and rehearsed despite the fact we had only worked on it for maximum of 10 minutes. It looked extremely effective also. The aim of the Greek Chorus was that they are together and moved as one.

Mike Bartlett incorporated the Greek Chorus into his play '13' a play in which we recently worked on. The play has 13 main characters which is similar to the size group for the Greek Chorus. We tried to incorporate as much as we could of Greek Theatre into our version of '13'. In Act 1 Scene 13, Ruth the Prime Minister is giving a speech to the public. We brought in a selection of actors (9 or 10 of us) to sit in and listen and react to what Ruth had to say. This is similarly linked to what the Greek Chorus did: the Greek Chorus reacted to what was happening on stage almost like an extra way for the audience to understand the stage happenings. Linking this back to '13', the 10 of us on stage reacted to what Ruth was saying. Some were reacting hopeful and supportive of what she has to say, and other whoms who looked down in shame or anger. Us reacting gave the audience the opportunity to connect with the characters and understand more of why we are agreeing or disagreeing. In the past I closely linked the reactions in the scene to those in Parliament. Politicians often react vocally to what the leader is saying, just like we react to Ruth.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsAa9VmwOaI :This video backs up my suggestions of choral reaction, to what Gordon Brown says and how we incorporated Greek Chorus into '13'.
    Continuing with the reactions we were set a task as a group to react to what Nathan and Jake were reading. The piece of text (unfortunately we were not told the name or given the text to keep) was a piece from a Greek Theatre play involving two male characters disagreeing on what the other says. Jake and Nathan stood on opposite sides of the room and began to read. Our job as the Greek Chorus was to listen and decide whether we were for the one character or for the other. This workshop was quite difficult as we were not familiar with the text but once we had got the hang of it, it really highlighted everyone's thought process. Some stayed with Jake, even though he was the killer and others were drawn between the two and some were staying with Nathan. If we had more time to work on this, it would've been interesting to incorporate the swerve and duck activity into us choosing Nathan or Jake.
The swerve, duck, push and pull activity: For this we walked around the room and when instructed we had to either push, pull, swerve and a duck around the other people in the room. These alone create they're own story basing on the speed the sequence is performed in.

Greek Theatre has heavily influenced Physical Theatre nowadays. The Greeks introduced us to the Greek Choruses which the likes of Berkoff use in a much more contemporary way. Berkoff uses the Greek Chorus as his ensemble. They tell the story through over-exaggerated movements and grotesque noises.
The Greeks introduced us to distinct comedy and tragedy pieces which is something Frantic Assembly (modern day Physical Theatre group) went by to create both 'Stockholm' and 'Lovesong'. All of our acting and performance knowledge came from the Greeks, they created the art of acting and entertaining people. Their physical aspects of the plays created then have moved and evolved for people like Volcano, DV8, Berkoff and Frantic Assembly to interpret these and create their own new style of Physical Theatre.
(Did you know: In 449BC, Athens, they awarded Greek Theatre performers awards for the best tragedy acting. Just like our BAFTA or Oscar awards we have now.)

Commedia Del'Arte
Commedia Del'Arte was born in Italy in the early 16th century and spread very quickly throughout Europe- creating a influence on the likes of Shakespeare, contemporary Musical Theatre, sit-coms and improvisation comedy. Commedia Del'Arte can be translated to "The comedy of professional actors." Commedia started out on the streets by those trying to sell items to the locals. Like we are all familiar with nowadays, street sellers use a very sing-songy tone when they are shouting out their vegetables and prices. The street sellers began competing with one another to create the best entertainment to attract more customers to their stools in the hope they sell more and get more money. This type of entertainment often included joking about those higher up in the society; this was seen as highly comedic. They would try out different methods of entertainment to bring more people towards their stalls. This type of commedia usually involved lots of jokes on the people who were higher up for example the towns leader or politicians nowadays.  These sellers were often forwarding on fake products but this didn't faze them as they had entertainment to bring in plenty of customers.
 Commedia was completely devised and created by the actors themselves and consisted mainly of improvisation- the actors relied on specific reactions to certain characters to help keep the shows consistent. This specific art form is based on the interaction of traditional stock characters in improvised scenarios of the comical style. These short performances were often shown on the streets and market places of the early Italian renaissance but again this can be traced back to Ancient Greek and the Roman times. Commedia Dell'Arte was formed by 'professional' performers.To be seen as a Commedia player you have recognition from authorities; you could then be called 'arte'. Their main aim was to entertain those of the streets of Italy. Commedia began as a street art act-performing publicly in masks on temporary platforms with simple costumes. These masks represented an identity protector for the actors as they often took the mickey out of those from the hierarchy; so the masks meant they weren't recognised. The masks were often designed with exaggerated but delicate expressions and the mouth was always shown. Each character in Commedia had a different mask to show the audience the pecking order for each character. The pecking order was a way to show each characters statuses, Magnifico being the top and a Zanni being bottom.
To be classed as a 'arte' was a big achievement: it meant you were officially an Commedia player. Most performers stayed playing their characters for 40 years or so which really gave them the opportunity to hone their skills. The majority of performers came trained as gymnasts and dancers as these were also features in Commedia especially in a Lazzi.
A Lazzi is a break from the scene to entertain the audience. Tomatoes or other objects were often threw onto the stage when the audience became bored, and the actors would go into an already rehearsed sequence which usually consisted in making the characters at the top of the hierarchy tree (Magnifico/ the lovers) look silly on stage to entertain the audience. Slipping on a banana skin and swatting a fly were some favourites which have now become stereotyped as a comedic action.
Commedia's plays have been re-written over the years and these versions have been written down in the form of scripts; as these didn't exist in the centuries in which commedia began. Commedia never just stayed in Italy it travelled around the world with tours which resulted in Commedia itself becoming extremely popular all round. France was a popular place for the Italian actors to come and tour in but this didn't last too long as they were caught making fun of those high up in France which didn't settle well with the locals: contrasting to those in Italy. Being caught making fun made the Italians banned from doing such things in France which leads us on to Commedia becoming a very Physical Theatre based industry with elements of mime such as the Lazzi's. The dance and gymnasts feature in this new element of Commedia dell'arte; the dance principles of Commedia were known to be like "quicksilver" and "the swift-footed God of Mercury."

Harlequin.

In our Commedia Dell'Arte workshop we got the opportunity to try and physically bring to life each character. We were briefed on each character and then had to embody them. Each character had to have specific body movements for the audience to be able to identify them on stage. For example the Harlequin character: His back is hunched over with his head slightly raised. His arms are always out stretched in a 'M' shape with his hands bent in towards the body. He walks with ballet excecution usually on his tip-toes. Taking a step on the ball of your foot and roll it onto your tip-toes; do this with your foot facing outwards each step you take. Harlequin is energetic and he needs to look light on his feet.

The Commedia characters hierarchy.

Pantalone another of my favourite characters: He stands taller than Harlequin but with a more 'old mans' stoop. The feet are kept together, toe apart and knees well bent. His walk is made with small steps- his legs can only work so fast.

It was actually a lot harder to become one of these characters than I had originally expected. You have to completely and fully embody them to become them to perform them. This was the precise reason why the actors stayed playing these characters for years because as long as it took them to become them they had mastered it and continued until they couldn't play the characters much longer. Playing a character for that long could easily become repetitive and old and that's why Commedia players were seen as incredibly talented.



Our follow up from this Commedia workshop was experimenting with Commedia masks. We all got to try various masks on and walked around the room interacting with others. We were then instructed to continue walking around the room, and in silence react or interact with the other masked characters- relying mostly on the masks facial expression. Recent pop music was then played https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PCkvCPvDXk (Meghan Trainor All About That Bass) We had to either dance or simply respond to the music depending on our masks facial expression. So the mask far left in the image would probably begin to dance like crazy, enjoying his time and maybe even get the more grumpy looking masks (far right) to start dancing. The middle mask in the image may just sway to the music as though they are enjoying themselves but don't like the music. This was a really interesting activity because it was making us become and think like our characters. Reacting to this specific song was good because it enabled those with happy or excited masks to really portray this to an upbeat pop song.
The song was then changed to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tr0otuiQuU a more classical approach to music. (I couldn't remember exactly the music we did it to so I've linked Moonlight Sinatra by Beethoven as an alternative.) For this bit of music, we really had to focus and think on what our characters would be doing to this type of music. I had a happy faced mask so I began to slow dance with another happy face. This meant we were meeting the pace of the music and the style but still showing that we were enjoying the song and the dance. Others, with angry masks, stood and sulked in the corner. And those with sad masks sobbed whilst swaying. I think, it would've been really useful if group by group we could sit out and watch what was happening on stage as the music changed. The atmosphere changed completely and again this would have been interesting from the audiences perspective.

Commedia Dell'Arte influence to both Physical Theatre and contemporary theatre we know today again was at a large. To begin with they introduced women to the stage! Commedia was comedic and quickly evolved into Pantomime we are so familiar with now. The characters of Commedia were extremely physical and Berkoff used this idea of creating very unnaturalistic characters in his pieces now. Masks were a main feature of Commedia and although Jaques LeCoq was a huge influence on mask use today, masks are still popular in Physical Theatre now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpE49xpypws This is a link to show you how theyve incorporated the old fashioned masks into a upbeat and contemporary piece.



Modern day Physical Theatre, such as Frantic Assembly has breached

away from the typical Greek Theatre. But in many ways it’s been incorporated. For example Stockholm and Lovesong-two pieces performed and devised by Frantic Assembly, both have tragedy themes embedded. They are also telling a story through movements however with a little more text involved. Lovesong is representing one couple but only performed by four actors similar to how Greek Theatre began.  After seeing Othello by Frantic Assembly I fell in love with Physical Theatre but mainly the talent that goes into it rather than my personal likeness to performing it. Choosing to do a tradition Shakespeare piece was a brave move for Frantic but it meant that they really opened up a different audience range for theatre. Researching thoroughly before seeing the performance meant that I could properly understand the time and effort put into to making these Physical Theatre pieces which made me really admire to Physical Theatre itself.

Berkoff
Steven Berkoff is a theatre practitioner, he is also a director, actor and play write. Berkoff became popular in the 70's and he is compared to a "modern day Shakespeare." Berkoff is well known for the "demand he has on his actors" and this is apparent in Metamorphosis; the timings of every movement is perfectly in sync with all the actors on stage, which is something extremely hard to master, a great quote to fit this is that "they're like clockwork themselves." Each movement is so accurately timed.
Berkoff had the very lucky opportunity to work with Jaques Lecoq and a lot of his work includes Brecht and Lecoq elements. He set out with an ambition to create contemporary theatre, "he challenges how we see the world" Berkoff abandoned set and used Physical Theatre to make each of his plays more interesting. Like Lecoq, Berkoff had an interest in the "science of the body" which inspired Berkoff to get into the Physical Theatre industry of acting.

His new style was born thanks to Kafka for example Metamorphasis- showing an oversized insect. A quote from a Berkoff introductory video was that "Kafka and Berkoff were made to work together" as they both represented the "theatre of the absurd." Berkoff brought the Greek Theatre chorus back in fashion; which really flourished his popularity in the 21st century. Berkoffs style includes statci stances, mechanically movements, grotesque aspects, breaking the fourth wall and clarity. As well as re-introducing the Greek Theatre Berkoff also introduced us all to ' a new world, where anything could happen' This is a great definition of Berkovian because in all of his plays, they all represent the unknown of our world. Berkoff includes lots of rude language as well as slang, comedic aspects and also large movements to back up what the actor is saying.
To help us understand Berkoff and his style more we began watching Metamorphasis. And my immediate response is that all the movements are sharp and robotic like. Every movements aim is to breach away from being naturlistic so even down to small movements when the family are eating- the knives and forks are brought forcefully to the mouth. Again in Metamorphasis the set was down to a minimum and the Greek Chorus aspect shone through in the first few seconds.
To widen our understanding and knowledge of Berkoff we tried it practically. We were given a piece of text as our stimulus 'Clockwork Orange'. Oblivious to the storyline or the message the play is trying to portray me, Hannah, Nyakeh, Matt, Brandon and Milo began devising. We wanted to make it as grotesque and robotic as we could to really live the Berkovian style.  Me, Nyakeh and Hannah went mad on the Droog characters (other gang memebers) We wanted them to come across strange and a bit creepy but at the same time comedic for the audience. We portrayed them similarly to the three hyenas in Lion King: a bit useless and tag-alongs to the leader (played by Matt), we made all our movements large and extremely energetic and everything we did was considered rather stupid or comedic. For example when the line "what's it gonna' be then, aye?" we ran round stage repeating "aye, aye, aye,aye?" and pretending to be the annoying seagulls from Finding Nemo-this was scene as comedic because we were making ourselves look stupid on stage.
This task was really good fun and interesting because we knew how we wanted the drooges immediately and as we went through we kept adding stupid things for us three to do. Even though we didn't get to devise for the whole piece of text what we did have was really effective and the exact opposite to what the real message this play is portraying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KZwDW75c- As I mentioned earlier, when given the piece of text we were simply told to read it and work on a Berkovian style performance. We were completely oblivious to the true story line and we didnt even look into it. This meant that when we came to perform it; it was something so unique and different to the original version. This link is to a really good, short video summary of what actually happens in the story.

A second workshop we dedicated to Berkoff was experimenting with our voices. A lot of what Berkoff has created involves only the performers creating the noises. I couldn't find the short clip we were shown of Berkoffs adaptation of The Trial but in one scene the performers on stage are representing an alarm clock so an ensemble of high pitched screams are heard. So this workshop was about mastering different ways to use our voices-just as Berkoff does. We had to give a sound to one part of our bodies. We went around the circle and each of us moved a part of our bodies and made a noise. For example flicking your nose could be a "boing" sound. It turned out to be quite competitive as the less noises we could pick we had to create some more unique ones. We then had to create a conversation only using the letters of the vowels. By this I mean instead of simply saying "a,e,i,o,u" we could change it up to form a question such as " e,i,o,u,a?". It was all about experimenting with our imagination and our voices and it was really beneficial because it jumped us over the hurdle of these noises being embarrassing  when performed on stage.
We also focussed closely on the movements of Berkoff. In small groups of 4 we were given the stimulus of Santas Grotto and we had to create this scene using our bodies, movements and noises. Me, Sophie, Hannah and Luke created the 'naughty or nice list'. Both me and Hannah had bent knees in a sort of squat position to show us sitting down. Sophie and Luke were stood by our sides. In time with one another, Me and Hannah picked up an imaginary piece of paper from between us, stamped it whilst saying "naughty. nice." then turning our whole bodies towards (Me turning to Luke, and Hannah to Sophie.) They then made a noise of either ripping the naughty letters or kissing the nice letters. This was repeated, in different levels of volume and emotions. So we did it shouting in anger, and then whispering. We also did it really quickly and then really drawn out and slowly.

Berkoff was influenced heavily from the Greeks and Kafka. Berkoff has created a really unusual type of theatre and has made it completely his own. As we go through the years theatre is progressing into a much wider society than we've ever experience before-which being an actor is brilliant. And I think the works of Berkoff will impact theatre when I'm in my 60's. Theatre will be a lot more unusual and impossible to define, it will all be different and more and more people will become more interested in it because of its variety. Berkoff will be influential to the next couple of generations.


Frantic Assembly
Frantic Assembly are a contemporary Physical Theatre company which began in 1994 by two drama society members from Swansea. They were both, at the time, interested in the acting side of the industry but until they met in a performance of Educating Rita "it became apparent to us that we weren't particularly interested in what was going on on stage, but having a much better side mucking around at the side of the stage." They would often play around with different movements including the whole body and sequences similar. Scott Graham and Steve Hogget were highly influenced by a Physical Theatre group that visited their drama group. The Physical Theatre company were called Volcano and Graham stated that it was a 'life changing experience' and that 'Volcano introduced us to the wonderful world of Physical Theatre.' Frantic have again created their style of theatre undefinable in the hope that their audience will purely enjoy what they have to offer each time round.
My honest insights of Frantic Assembly when they were originally shown to me was that I could see the effect and talent that went into what they did but none of it particularly interested me. But, I went to see their version of Othello, and I surprised myself because I really really enjoyed it. The way they'd mixed up such a well known Shakespeare play and created something so widely different meant that they brought in and widened peoples likeness to what they do- and I think that is something really hard to master.

A lot of Frantic was incorporated into our working towards '13'. Our first workshop that we had borrowed from Frantics method of devising: relays. In small groups we simply had to race the other groups by running to the other side of the room, jumping, touching the wall and then touching the floor and then running back. This naturally sparked our competitive side. We then had to make this relay motion into a small Physical Theatre sketch. My group made it into a war zone. We had the three boys are the opposite end of the room in a crouched position. One-by-one each boy, in slow motion, stood. Whilst the three girls created a gun out of bodies and limbs. We made gun noises as we repelled our bodies backwards and then forwards to represent a shooting of the gun. Still in slow motion the boys fell to the ground after being shot. This was a very short exercise and piece but it got us thinking how we could use such exercises and create them into what could be a really interesting and compelling piece.
Another interesting activity we experimented with was "balancing the plate". All 18 of us stood in a circle with a water bottle as our center point. Two or three people start to create a smaller circle which is the rim of our plate. We then had to balance out the plate; whilst adding more weight to different points on the plate. This exercise got us to use teamwork between those on the plate. We had to concentrate on where the other people were stood to ensure that the plate wasn't unbalanced. We used this concept for a scene in '13' when we had five us on stage at the same time-we wanted to create a moving and interesting scene for the audience and we didn't want it to be static so the "balancing the plate" fitted perfectly.

Again another of Frantics devising methods was an 'Obstacle and Objective' activity. This is something we've later used for our devising project: Ode To Billy Joe between me and Frank. We had two people on stage. One of their aims was to get off stage and the others was to try and keep them from leaving the stage. As mentioned above we have gone on to use this for our devising project we are currently working. We have created it to become more flowing than what we had previously created but this was the aim because we've have created a more Physical Theatre style sequence.   The video is of me and Frank doing our objective and obstacle piece for our Billy Joe devising project. My objective is to leave Frank and his is to make me stay.

Doing these Frantic activites really opened us up to how we can do simple activites and create some really good pieces that we all ended up using in different parts of '13' and in our devising project.


Frantic Assembly, again, will be a huge influence to more dance students that purely enjoy performing. Dancers will bring Physical Theatre a bigger reputation as it grows over the years. Contemporary Physical Theatre is on the up and in years to come, like Berkhovian. it will really flourish. I think people need to discover Physical Theatre because its the art of combining both amazing talents of the actors and dancers.