BioMX and Dada

BIOMECHANICS & DADA

Meyerhold:

BioMX and Dada

2009 LUL

2008-2009 -- STAGEMATRIX.COM

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Italian Futurist Theatre, 1909-1944 by Günter Handler Berghaus; Clarendon Press, 1998 - Part I: Introduction - 1: Futurist Theatre: `A Preliminary Characterization - Notes - 2: The State of Italian Theatre Before the Advent of Futurism - Notes - 3: Marinetti's Early Writings and Aesthetics: a Prelude to Futurism - Notes - 4: The Founding of the Futurist Movement and the First Manifestos - Notes - Part II: The Birth of a Futurist Theatre - 1: Political Action Theatre as a Performative Genre - Notes - 2: The Beginnings of a Futurist Performance Art: the Early Serate - Notes - 3: Futurist Dramatic Theory: the Early Manifestos - Notes - 4: Futurism and the Professional Theatre: the First Companies Touring with a Futurist Repertoire - Notes - 5: Theatre Performances in Art Galleries - Notes - 6: The Stage Works of Giacomo Balla - Notes - 7: Enrico Prampolini's Early Futurist Career - Notes - 8: Fortunato Depero's Theatrical Experiments of the 1910s - Notes - Part III: The Second Futurist Movement, 1920-1930 - 1: Futurism Under the Fascist RÉgime - Notes - 2: The Revival of Futurist Theatre in the 1920s - Notes - 3: Futurist Cabarets, Artists' Festivals, and Banquets - Notes - 4: From the Religion of Speed to the Cult of the Machine - Notes - 5: The Machine Art of Vinicio Paladini and Ivo Pannaggi - Notes - 6: Fillia's Theatrical Experiments of the 1920s - Notes - 7: Enrico Prampolini's Theatrical Career in the 1920s - Notes - 8: Fortunato Depero's Contribution to a Futurist Mechanical Theatre - Notes - 9: Fedele Azari and Futurist Aerial Theatre - Notes - 10: Vasari's Apocalyptic Vision of the Futurist Machine Age - Notes - Part IV: Epilogue: Futurism in the 1930s and 1940s - 1: Futurism Tied to the Procrustean Bed of the Fascist State - Notes - 2: The Last Signs of Life in Futurist Theatre

[ script.vtheatre.net/dada ]
FORMALISM
FUTURISM

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* Use Dada/Futurist texts for your improv; I like it better than the generic exercises.

new Spring 2002 THR221 Intermediate Acting (focus on biomechanics) * Comedy & Biomechanics Forum *

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THR221 Intermediate Acting GeoAlaska: Acting, Directing, Theory, Shows, Books

GeoAlaska: Theatre & Film

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virtual theatre THR121 Fundamentals of Acting Fall 2004

ShowCases: 3 Sisters, Mikado, 12th Night, Hamlet, The Importance of Being Earnest, Dangerous Liaisons, Don Juan prof. Anatoly Antohin Theatre UAF AK 99775 USA

2006 * * stageplays *

Organization of the book : SYNOPSIS

Dada in Script Analysis

DADA (1915-1920): Dada is the offspring of a specific world view which is hostile to bourgeois society and the principle of art for art's sake. Dada is opposed to ART.
Zurich was the birthplace of DADA.
Given Switzerland's neutrality, Zurich became a place of refuge during World War I.
Hugo Ball (pacifist and poet) and Emmy Hennings (poet and singer) fled Germany just after war was declared.
Ball started organising Cabaret style performances and was the initiator of the Cabaret Voltaire. This was one of the first clubs to start combining the multiplicity of avant-garde talent. The prime uniting feature of the Dadaists was a hatred of war.
Their primary aim was to enrage and taunt the public.

"Cabaret Voltaire"

one rented room in an inn * club house * artistic cabaret * nightly performances * included exhibition of avant-garde art work: Picasso, Marinetti, Arp.
15-20 tables, seating capacity of 35-50 people
performances lasted to early hours of morning (friction with neighbours and police)
anti-war/anti-art
dramatic readings of plays, novels, and poems.
improvised performances around Marcel Janco¡¯s grotesque masks (cardboard cut-outs, painted and glued).
most popular item was the recitation of simultaneous poetry.
members punctured performances with drums, gongs, howls, sirens and cow-bells.

[ pix ]

Summary

Grotesque is the exaggeration of features or of impulses or of particular characteristics. So a gargoyle for example is a grotesque. Any artist when they are looking at a subject tends to exaggerate some features and you see the extreme exaggeration like Picasso, you see it in say a Dobell, all artists have a particular eye that they bring to their subject. Now what Meyerhold does is bring his eye to performing, and he says "how can we make a really strong image on stage?" That image leads to the extension of character and you find that in the commedia. [ * ]

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Notes

Dada Theatre Overview *

2004 & After

Proclamation without Pretension Tristan Tzara ~ Dadaism : Movement launched in 1916.

Dada = in French, a child's word for Horse.

Was decided to be the perfect term to mean nothing and yet everything.

Because of Dada, Everything, Anything, Everywhere, Anywhere, is Art.

~ The Founder : Tristan Tzara * Wrote Dada Manifesto (mission statement). Flourished chiefly in France, Switzerland, and Germany from about 1916 to 1920. Produced the last play in Dadaism. The Gas Heart Contained characters like Mouth, Nose, Eyes, Ears, etc.

Theatre and Art Respond to this Craziness.

~ The Core of Dada :

~ Dadaism was based upon the principles of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, and cynicism.
~ It was an anti-bourgeois form which was ultimately embraced by the bourgeois it attempted to reject.

Theatre and Art Respond to this Craziness.

- Before Dada art was in Form. After Dada Art is Attitude.

~ Dadaism had Three Goals :
~ Invent forms of senseless art with the purpose of shaking up the audience.
- Not necessarily theatre audience: readers, viewers.
~ Advance the notion of chaos so that all order, all systems, all conventions be abolished.
~ Wanted to bring about the utmost degree of misunderstanding between the audience and art.

~ A World Gone Mad :
~ Insanity was the cause of the problems in the world.
- Only a world gone mad could cause a World War.
~ Decided to replace logic with calculated madness.
~ Direct confrontation with their audience.
~ No restraint.
~ Illogical work.
~ Noise...made fun of anything that purported to be a solution to the problems.
~ Very Angry and Aggressive form.

Surrealism :

~ Andre Brenton wrote the Manifesto of Surrealism.
- Like the Dadaists, didn©öt like the current social or political situations.
- Felt that they could give answers and not just craziness.
~ Brenton was a originally a Medical student who had become interested in Freudian Psychology while working with shell-shocked soldiers from WWI.
~ Surrealism and the Unconscious mind.
- Focused upon Freud's psychology of the unconscious mind and dreams.
~ Wanted to get back to associating things instinctively and not logically.
- This would lead to new perceptions on the worlds problems.

The Theatre of Cruelty : Artaud

- Actor, director, and cult figure.
- Not Mainstream.
~ Did not involve texts.
- Improvisation.
- Theatre should be like therapy.
- Drama should be savage, like shock treatments.
- Goal was to cleanse the audience of guilt.

Related (Daniil Kharms):

The Oberiu Theatre (1928)

Suppose two people walk out on the stage, say nothing, but tell each other something by signs. While they are doing that, they are solemnly puffing out their cheeks. The spectators laugh. Is this theatre? Yes, it is. You may say it is balagan.[1] But balagan is theatre.

Or suppose a canvas is let down on the stage. On the canvas is a picture of a village. The stage is dark. Then it begins to get lighter. A man dressed as a shepherd walks onstage and plays on a pipe. Is that theatre? Yes.

A chair appears on the stage; on the chair is a samovar. The samovar boils. Instead of steam, naked arms rise up from under the lid.

All these—the man and his movements on the stage, the boiling samovar, the village painted on the canvas, the light getting dimmer and getting brighter—all these are separate elements of theatre.

Until now, all these elements have been subordinated to the dramatic plot—to the play. A play has been a story, told through characters, about some kind of event. On the stage, all have worked to explain the meaning and course of that event more clearly, more intelligibly, and to relate it more closely to life.

That is not at all what the theatre is. If an actor who represents a minister begins to move around on the stage on all fours and howls like a wolf, or an actor who represents a Russian peasant suddenly delivers a long speech in Latin—that will be theatre, that will interest the spectator, even if it takes place without any relation to a dramatic plot. Such an action will be a separate item; a series of such items organised by the director will make up a theatrical performance, which will have its plot line and its scenic meaning.

This will be a plot which only the theatre can give. The plots of theatrical performances are theatrical, just as the plots of musical works are musical. All represent one thing—a world of appearances—but depending on the material, they render it differently, after their own fashion.

When you come to us, forget everything that you have been accustomed to seeing in all theatres. Maybe a great deal will seem ridiculous. We take a dramatic plot. We develop it slowly at first; then suddenly it is interrupted by seemingly extraneous and clearly ridiculous elements. You are surprised. You want to find that customary logical sequence of connections which, it seems to you, you see in life. But it is not there. Why not? Because an object and a phenomenon transported from life to the stage lose their lifelike sequence of connections and acquire another—a theatrical one. We are not going to explain it. In order to understand the sequence of connections of any theatrical performance one must see it. We can only say that our task is to render the world of concrete objects on the stage in their interrelationships and collisions. We worked to solve this task in our production of “Elizabeth Bam.”

“Elizabeth Bam” was written on commission for the theatrical section of Oberiu by one of the members, D. Kharms. The dramatic plot of the play is shattered by many seemingly extraneous subjects which detach the object as a separate whole, existing outside its connection with others. Therefore the dramatic plot does not arise before the spectator as a clear plot image; it glimmers, so to speak, behind the back of the action. The dramatic plot is replaced by a scenic plot which arises spontaneously from all the elements of our spectacle. The centre of our attention is on it. But at the same time, separate elements of the spectacle are equally valuable and important to us. They live their separate lives without subordinating themselves to the ticking of the theatrical metronome. Here a corner of a gold frame sticks out—it lives as an object of art; there a fragment of a poem is recited—it is autonomous in its significance, and at the same time, independent of its will, it advances the scenic plot of the play. The scenery, the movement of an actor, a bottle thrown down, the train of a costume—they are actors, just like those who shake their heads and speak various words and phrases.

The Oberiu Group, or Association for Real Art, was rescued from oblivion for English-language readers by George Gibian in 1971, with the publication of a selection of the surviving work of Daniil Kharms (1905-42), and Alexander Vvedensky (1904-41), much of which they had never been able to have published. The Oberiu group to which they belonged was formed in Leningrad in 1926, its best known member the poet Nikolay Zabolotsky. Broadly futurist in tendency, though critical of zaum, the ‘transrational’ language explored by futurist poets (a splintered and reinvented language of emotive speech sounds), the Oberiu put on various readings and performances, wishing to be active in theatre and film as well as poetry and fiction. Its production of Kharms’ play Elizabeth Bam in 1928, however, together with the publication of its manifesto (whose section on theatre was apparently written by Kharms), incurred the disapproval of the authorities, and their programme of performances did not survive past 1930. Kharms and Vvedensky were both arrested in 1941; Vvedensky was shot, in obscure circumstances, soon after; Kharms died of starvation in the Leningrad blockade.
Twentieth-Century Theatre: A Sourcebook by Richard Drain; Routledge, 1995 pp. 48-

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Dada and "Fish in the Tree"

Michael Chekhov: 6 Lessons to the Actor (in class). Dada is close to Improv (Psychological in Method Acting) and physical in BM. How to use Dada texts in classroom.
[ The Absurd section in script.vtheatre.net -- no way to teach Beckett without Dada tradions. ]

Extreme Comedy, not just physical, but psychological!

"Playing Opposites" (5 Approaches to Acting, Kaplan, Part II).

Anti-Method Approach?

Must be introduced in Acting One "BioMethod" (act.vtheatre.net)

Exerc. in class.

See script.vtheatre.net (there is a link to Dada online texts) -- read the scene below, decide what you want to work on (genre, characters, situation): never work on several tasks at the same time! What does constitute "comedy" in this scene? Situation comedy, comedy or characters? Both? What is the conflict? Use your actor's journal at home for analysis. [If you do it right, understanding, acting, staging something like Durang's comedis would be easy.]
Simplify the composition: where do we start? Crying? -- we are to have happy end! For for contrast: rehearse the first and the last lines, untill they become opposite in mood. Where is the climax in the scene (the point of change -- mark it!) Now go back to the individual characters: simple again. Wife? Type and achitype! Theame with the husband. Extreme (BM calls it grotesque -- big, bold chices). Do your line-by-line analysis! Yes, yes, there is a logic in it! There is more need for analysis in Beckett than in Simon!
[ class exerc. in biomechanics.vtheatre.net ] "Dada kicks you in the behind and you like it!" Berlin Dadaist slogan (qtd. Goldberg, 69) timeline *
ARNALDO CORRADINI [GINNA] and BRUNO CORRA

Alternation of Character / Alternazione di Carattere
[ Dada & Futurism ]
HUSBAND: No. It is useless. It is time to finish it! I shall not deceive myself any longer because I make you cry immediately! WIFE (crying): No! Carlo no!... come here... come here . . listen to me!... HUSBAND (crying tenderly): Pardon me, Rosetta! Pardon me! WIFE (enraged): For God's sake! If you don't stop with this inopportune sentimentality, I will slap you... HUSBAND (at the height of his fury): Enough! ... or I shall hurl you out of the window... WIFE: Darling! Darling! How much I love you! Tenderness grips my heart... give me again your delicious reprimands. HUSBAND: Ah! Rosetta... Rosetta!... my infinite love... WIFE (exasperated): If you repeat that another time, I will divorce you!... (Precisely.) I will divorce you!.. HUSBAND (exploding): Ah! Ah! Wretch! ... go away! ... go away! ... go away!... WIFE: I have never loved you more sweetly! HUSBAND: Ah! Rosetta! Rosetta! ... WIFE: Enough ... (She slaps him.) HUSBAND: Enough, I say. (Slaps her twice.) WIFE (languidly): Give me your lips! Give me your lips... HUSBAND: Here, treasure! CURTAIN
(Texts from Dada Performance PAJ Publications, NY 1987 Ed. Mel Gorden)
Fish in the Tree class project.
* web & classes online : acting (Method) @ Theatre w/Anatoly & Film-North
Virtual Theatre, Anatoly Antohin
[ recommended: Futurist Performance, Michael and Victoria Kirby, PAJ Pub. NY 1986 ]
"Dada," a name picked at random out of a dictionary, was about the removal of logic and sense from the performance world. It's focus was to create a lack of focus - in art, society and life. Many of the major proponents of Dada refused to refer to it as a "movement" or a school stating that one should not turn a whim into a movement. Initially inspired by Futurism, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings developed a cabaret style assault on the bourgeoisie.

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TRISTAN TZARA: Dada is our intensity; it fixes bayonets without consequence the German baby’s Sumatran head; Dada is art without slippers or parallel; it is against and for unity and decidedly against the future; we know wisely enough that our brains will turn into comfortable cushions that our anti-dogmatism is as narrow as a petty official that we are not free and that we shout freedom. Severe necessity without discipline or morals and spit on humanity. Dada remains within the European frame of weaknesses, it’s shit all the same, but to decorate the zoo-garden of art from now on we want to shit in various colours, of all the flags on the consulates clo clo bong heeho aho heeho aho We are circus managers and whistle in the winds of fairs, among convents prostitutions theatres realities feelings restaurants Hohohohihihioho Bang Bang. We declare that the motor car is a sentiment that has molly-coddled us enough with its dragging abstractions, and transatlantic liners and noises and ideas. However we externalise the facile we seek the central essence and we’re glad we can hide it; we don’t want to count the windows of the marvellous elite because Dada exists for no-one, and we want everyone to understand that is Dada’s balcony, believe me—from which you can hear military machines and whizz down through the air like a seraph into the sea of people to take a piss and understand the parable or the parabola Dada isn’t madness—nor wisdom—nor irony look at me, dear bourgeois.

Art was a game…art isn’t serious, I assure you, and if we show the South in order to say learnedly: negro art without humanity it’s to give you pleasure, good listeners, I love you so, I love you so, I assure you I adore you ...
Speech from The First Celestial Adventure of Mr Antipyrine (1916) [ Twentieth-Century Theatre: A Sourcebook by Richard Drain; Routledge, 1995 ] Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), Romanian writer, moved to Zurich in 1915; a year later, barely 20, he and a group of friends founded Dada. His play, The First Celestial Adventure of Mr Antipyrine, was the first work to be printed under Dada’s aegis. Antipyrine: a drug against fever, which Tzara then happened to be taking. Meanwhile Europe’s fever was the war. Tzara recalled: ‘by 1916-17, the war seemed to have installed itself for good. …All the forms of civilisation that are called modern, and even its basis, logic and reason, aroused disgust’ (radio interview, May 1950). The revolt against logic and language are obvious in the speech-cum-manifesto above. The mention of the South and of negro art reflects Tzara’s enthusiasm for the arts of Africa and Polynesia (as distinct from ‘the forms of civilisation that are called modern’). He used their musical rhythms in his writing. It is unlikely that any slur was intended by his phrase ‘without humanity’. Rather the reverse: humanity at the time was demonstrating its values by slaughtering itself on battlefields. Tzara’s play was staged in full when he moved to Paris in 1920, along with its sequel. Handkerchief of Clouds was written a year after he had pronounced in an article The End of Dada’, and was accounted by Aragon ‘the most remarkable dramatic image of modern art’ (Les Collages, 1965). After Dada, Tzara took the short step onwards to surrealism.

NB

Non-scripted performances and Improv
It's fun -- Theatre Games (Acting One directory).

Structuralism and BM in Theatre Theory directory.

Read the pages of THR Theory directory.

Homework

Go to the script directory and read pages on Futurism. Use the 12th Night scenes (right table) for "character physical analysis."

[more scenes from "Fish in the Tree" production]

Next: Formalism

Meyerhold:

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Virtual Theatre: Stage, Film, Web = Future Forms, Theatre of One, the SpectActor! Get Site Info "Surrealism: noun masc., pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing, or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought." (qtd. Goldberg, 89)

TOPICS: drama + comedy + postmodern + time + space + theory + BioMethod + objectives & obctacles + film + students + theatre w/anatoly +

Dada & SurRealist Films

Structure Your Physical Action! Dada Posters (c)anatoly : filmstudy.org & vtheatre.net What Is Theatre? : Incorporating The Dramatic Event and Other Reviews, 1944-1967

"What Is Theatre?", originally published in 1968, collects all of Eric Bentley's theater criticism. Bentley's most productive years as a reviewer coincided with some of the greatest years of twentieth-century drama. His essays cover the premieres of works by T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Jean Anouilh, and Arthur Miller, among others, as well as subjects as far-ranging as Charlie Chaplin and the Peking Opera--and each contains insights that are still relevant. What Is Theatre? is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what our American theater has been, is now, and could become.