Peggy Phelan: 'Performance's only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance'...
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Stage Directing Theory
113. Audience makes it conclusive, so never make a final statement.
(Phelan Unmarked: the politics of representation 1993): To attempt to write about the undocumentable event of performance is to invoke the rules of the written document and thereby alter the event itself. . . the labor to write about performance (and thus to “preserve it” it) is also a labor that fundamentally alters the event. (148).
Peggy Phelan: It does no good however to simply refuse to write about performance because of this inescapable transformation. (148)
In Beckett audience is on stage. On the set. (Should the curtain in the house be up? Let them feel uncomfortable. Or to raise the courtain at the end -- you are on stage. After the words "Lets go.")
2006
2007
spectator.vtheatre.net -- new [ notes in anatolant.vox.com : virtual theatre blog? ]
* 110. Audience must be made to believe it is real, even though it isn't real...
Or must I say SPECTATOR as ACTOR?
You know that it only looks like that the public doesn't act, don't you see it?
Of course, they do.
That's why the phenomena of theatre exists -- because they are the secret actors, the audience.
Take a good look at them!
They are "secret performers" (even Freud wrote it). Without their inner acting the mimesis and indetification effect won't be passible. Their invisible acting (and partnership with the stage) gives the actors that energy (and fear).
Actor is this PROJECTED DESIRE of the spectator!
Actor is a dream of living being alive!...
What is this dance of two, the stage and the house?
[The last two directories -- Virtual Theatre and Theatre Theory -- is the place where the development of the BOOk of SPECTATOR will be done. This is a research field.]
* 111. Audience is the most important character.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgement
Preface: 24 hours acting
Intro: Biomechanics--how to use it?
PART I. SPECTATOR AS ACTOR
CLASS ONE. DRAMA NATURE & STRUCTURE (3 texts)
Composition of Action: Aristotle's Poetics and Three Step
Cycle by Meyerhold.
The Beginning, The Middle, The End
OFF-ACTING: AUDIENCE-->RE-ACTING-->PRE-ACTING
AUDIENCE--NATURE OF DRAMA
CLASS TWO. ACTOR'S ACTOR
Artist and Medium. ACTOR'S TEXT
PRE-ACTING
PART II. SPECTATOR AS WRITER (MONOLOGUE)
CLASS THREE. FIRST TEXT
I. Monologue or Scene
II. Improv
Situation (Given Circumstances) and Character(s)
Actor's Text--PERFORMANCE. Subtext -- action
CLASS FOUR. FIGHT. RE-ACT!
Conflict open: Contra-Test v. Sub-Text.
No action possible without conflict.
Objective and obstacle. Inner conflict, inner monologue
CLASS FIVE. DRAMATIC SPACE
Scenometrics: Space in Action
Time Matter in 3D
PART III. SCENE
CLASS SIX. Space: floor plan. Blueprints for action
CLASS SEVEN. SPACE OF TIME. TIME MASTER (DIRECTOR'S TEXT)
Subjective Time: Character's universe. POV
CLASS EIGHT. Character treatment
5 W's: questions to ask -- Who, Where, When, Why, to Whom?
PART IV. PLAY
CLASS NINE. Identification. Mask and face.
CLASS TEN. YOUR STYLE
Styles: Grotesque, Realism, Naturalism and farce.
CLASS ELEVENTH. COMEDY AND COMEDIA
CLASS TWELVE. SYSTEM OF METHOD
Stanislavky v. Stanislavsky
APPENDIX
Glossary
Bibliography
List of pictures
Syllabi
Home work (Journal and Camera)
Tests (6) = Auditions
Historical Notes on Biomechanics
Three acting levels in one book?
Defined by the degree of difficulty?
The programs are different and the students in the same
class are on different levels of being ready.
Each "class" in the book: basic, intermediate and advanced.
What is an event? How else could action be built?
How does spectator act?
Creating the space (from Empty Space) -- spectator's gaze.
Pre-acting: creating the object to react.
I haven't noticed when I began to use Meyerhold's formula in
acting classes:
ACTOR = CREATOR + MEDIUM
Perhaps, out of frustration with exercises, when the second
part "Medium" was over-emphasized. They weren't ready help
themselves, they needed a couch, a teacher and a director. I
watched them going from Fundamentals of Acting to Intermediate
Acting, to Advanced Acting One and Advanced Acting Two.... When
would they be able to do REAL home work, when "Creator" will
begin to shape the Actor? Something was missing, they understood
the need for Actor One, but somehow they didn't know how to apply
it. I saw the same faces in my directing classes and playscript
analysis. Finally, I noticed that more and more I talk about
spectatorship. Yes, I have to start where theatre begins.
I brought in another Meyerhold's definition -- Pre-acting.
I couldn't enter the time exploration without teaching the
space.
There are many reasons why I haven't written this book earlier and a very few to write it. Finally, I realized that the course must be reversed, I have to start with text and arrive to
exersices when we in class will be ready to need.
