Mark and the Marked: Week One
MONDAY: Introductions
Material Covered:
- Warm up – ZA cardio and stretch, KW experiential anatomy and peeing on the space
- Intro to making emotional noises, noises of disgust
- Wonky read through- walk and talk through the games of the show, read the text
- The Find the Game Game and debrief- a feeling that the show may have influenced the games
- The Game of Clicks: passing a click, ultimate frisbee versions, including the audience, passing it though body parts. Tried with and without vocalisations and kazoo sounds
- The Game of Objects: discoveries with kazoos, introduction to clown logic
- Discussions covering: clown principles- playing your own natural idiocy, playing one idea at a time, with clarity, having no subtext. Clowning encounters (LW and JN modules at drama school, ZA one off workshop with NYT) Working with the audience, including safety.
Quote of the day: ‘I’ve forgotten how to make noises with my mouth’ (Zaki)
Who was I today?
- Expert: sharing anatomical knowledge, citing influences
- Clown: playing games, pushing for more
- Director: shaping, selecting and rejecting
- Teacher: explaining, guiding into new forms
- Colleague: sharing anecdotes and experiences, finding mutual friends and colleagues
When someone stands out, it’s both an opportunity and a risk (JN)
Actors seek narratives, moving through abstract ideas: we’re hostages, we escape, sshhh, we’re astronauts. (ZA)
There’s a difference between hijacking moments and someone giving a nudge into something we hadn’t realised we wanted (JN)
(The game lets us) be OK in the downtime, to let there be silence (JN)
Problem solving with kazoos- it has to make illogical sense- we have to see the thought (LW)
Journal extracts from group discussion: 14/02/22
Actors seek narratives, moving through abstract ideas: we’re hostages, we escape, sshhh, we’re astronauts. (ZA)
There’s a difference between hijacking moments and someone giving a nudge into something we hadn’t realised we wanted (JN)
(The game lets us) be OK in the downtime, to let there be silence (JN)
Problem solving with kazoos- it has to make illogical sense- we have to see the thought (LW)
Journal extracts from group discussion: 14/02/22
Reflective Observations:
We balance the space during gameplay, there’s constant motion from everyone.
We laugh at surprises, changes, cleverness and mistakes, optical illusions, complicity and poo taboos.
I use ‘we’ consistently when asking the cast to do something. I wonder if my directorial clown persona at this stage is a representation of kid audiences.
Games develop by themselves, there’s a constant ‘yes, and’, fed by laughter. At times I'm almost having to hold them back to stay with an interesting moment- ‘stop evolving!’ I scold them.
We found and named:
The game of falling in love with a teacher
The game of artificial resuscitation
The game of there’s a fly on that poo
We balance the space during gameplay, there’s constant motion from everyone.
We laugh at surprises, changes, cleverness and mistakes, optical illusions, complicity and poo taboos.
I use ‘we’ consistently when asking the cast to do something. I wonder if my directorial clown persona at this stage is a representation of kid audiences.
Games develop by themselves, there’s a constant ‘yes, and’, fed by laughter. At times I'm almost having to hold them back to stay with an interesting moment- ‘stop evolving!’ I scold them.
We found and named:
The game of falling in love with a teacher
The game of artificial resuscitation
The game of there’s a fly on that poo
TUESDAY: Working without Words
Material Covered:
- Warm up: cardio and yoga (JN) vocal (KW)
- Working though Mat Rolling sequence, using the 2019 video for reference. Re-running at the end of the day
- Handshakes: improvising in pairs, exploring tricks (with an injury- Zaki was dropped on his head while we were trying to work an assisted flip) simplifying and setting.
- Playing SFX from Go Button
- Finding and setting Pow Swish Boom gestures and reactions, then putting a loose shape on the sequence with horn interruptions, bringing in acting moments
Quote of the day: ‘I’m owning my gravity’ (Lucy)
Who was I today?
- Participant: following, not leading the warmup
- Repetiteur: recreating from an archive recording
- Director: provoking and editing material for Handshakes and Pow/Swish/Boom devising
- Colleague: checking in on Zaki after an injury
Learning is less tiring- I can do it as my clown. Devising requires my thinking brain (JN)
Learning a track is in chronological order- it feels less organic because you’re using the planning part of your brain. If the clown exists in the moment, and has no past or future, it’s hard to keep that with set choreography when you’re trying to learn it. (LW)
Learning is introspective (JN) - I gave the others less presence (LW)
Things going wrong is OK- it drops you into the immediate- fixing brain (JN)
Video observation means you have to shake off a previous performer- Miles has a great walk, but I can’t do that walk! (JN)
Collaboration is the best deviser (LW) There was lots of collective ‘yes-and’ work today
Voice is an expressive element without text (JN)
Journal extracts from group discussion: 15/02/22
Learning a track is in chronological order- it feels less organic because you’re using the planning part of your brain. If the clown exists in the moment, and has no past or future, it’s hard to keep that with set choreography when you’re trying to learn it. (LW)
Learning is introspective (JN) - I gave the others less presence (LW)
Things going wrong is OK- it drops you into the immediate- fixing brain (JN)
Video observation means you have to shake off a previous performer- Miles has a great walk, but I can’t do that walk! (JN)
Collaboration is the best deviser (LW) There was lots of collective ‘yes-and’ work today
Voice is an expressive element without text (JN)
Journal extracts from group discussion: 15/02/22
Reflective Observations:
There were two types of choreographic learning today- a pre-conceived track that I was teaching (Floor Rolling) and a making and setting of motifs in the room (Pow/Swish/Boom gestures). Different performers found more play space at different moments in these processes. Learning choreography- real uncertainty disrupts playful failure- a more guarded quality of watching each other. Dealing with props (rolls of floor and buckets) puts actors in their heads and out of their bodies.
Risk: Actual injury pulls back the impulse to play and take risks. Fake and safe violence restored it today.
Spontaneous dancing has a different feel to doing dance (see Blog: Bubbling with Pleasure: Part 1 for more on this idea)
We’re laughing at failure and success, I’m also laughing to encourage- I can see where a gag will be.
I narrate characters’ inner monologue- we could try this with danced solos.
Clowning is often rooted in work- functional activity, tasks and things you’ve been instructed to do. It’s low status- serving something big and unseen (Avner the Eccentric's Exceptions to Gravity plays with this beautifully). The Floor Rolling sequence represents manual work.
There were two types of choreographic learning today- a pre-conceived track that I was teaching (Floor Rolling) and a making and setting of motifs in the room (Pow/Swish/Boom gestures). Different performers found more play space at different moments in these processes. Learning choreography- real uncertainty disrupts playful failure- a more guarded quality of watching each other. Dealing with props (rolls of floor and buckets) puts actors in their heads and out of their bodies.
Risk: Actual injury pulls back the impulse to play and take risks. Fake and safe violence restored it today.
Spontaneous dancing has a different feel to doing dance (see Blog: Bubbling with Pleasure: Part 1 for more on this idea)
We’re laughing at failure and success, I’m also laughing to encourage- I can see where a gag will be.
I narrate characters’ inner monologue- we could try this with danced solos.
Clowning is often rooted in work- functional activity, tasks and things you’ve been instructed to do. It’s low status- serving something big and unseen (Avner the Eccentric's Exceptions to Gravity plays with this beautifully). The Floor Rolling sequence represents manual work.
WEDNESDAY: Finding the Game
Material Covered:
- Warmup- cardio and stretches (LW)
- Devising work though gameplay on three new sequences:
- Is this the place? This must be the place
- Leapfrog
- Piggy in the Middle
- Discussion on our training experiences
- Afternoon Warmup: dancing- sharing music (KW)
- Recap of Mat Rolling
Quote of the day: ‘You feel an obligation to yourself to keep the magic of the first time' (Joel)
Who was I today?
- Director: provoking and editing material
- Artistic Director, colleague and conservatoire-trained performer: casting and training chat
- Clown teacher: tiny via negativa experiment
‘It’s a two-man job’ – I repeated an unhelpful instruction as a moment of via negativa-
It gives lots of other options- good wrong things. (ZA)
Creating game scaffolding: 5 solo crosses, a near miss, buckets…
A springboard of structure (LW)
Actor’s brain as satnav (JN)
The scaffolding came from the game (JN) - It’s an evolution (of the game) (LW)
On training: We feel disembodied (brain and body disconnected) by some forms of physical training
We’re a piece of meat (ZA) - More mechanical than human (LW)
East 15 didn’t want to strip actors down and make a blank canvas, they wanted to build on what’s already there (LW)
Having another string to your bow (music, combat, dance) makes you more comfortable with trying other new things. A built-in readiness for interdisciplinary work.
Journal extracts from group discussion: 16/02/22
It gives lots of other options- good wrong things. (ZA)
Creating game scaffolding: 5 solo crosses, a near miss, buckets…
A springboard of structure (LW)
Actor’s brain as satnav (JN)
The scaffolding came from the game (JN) - It’s an evolution (of the game) (LW)
On training: We feel disembodied (brain and body disconnected) by some forms of physical training
We’re a piece of meat (ZA) - More mechanical than human (LW)
East 15 didn’t want to strip actors down and make a blank canvas, they wanted to build on what’s already there (LW)
Having another string to your bow (music, combat, dance) makes you more comfortable with trying other new things. A built-in readiness for interdisciplinary work.
Journal extracts from group discussion: 16/02/22
Reflective Observations:
in Is this the place? the cast are starting to gauge when they’re being more stupid than they actually are- finding the truth of the moments. There are missed moments- the cast all inhaled as if to enter and then didn’t- it takes time to get to complicité, but it can be about the duration of a game, not just time spent together.
Holding the space- Lucy leaving her bucket, Zaki reversing slowly off- raises the temperature of the room. It takes courage to let the tension build. Giving status to an object (a bucket) creates tension and drama without needing back story
There’s a shift in the level of play when learning set material- it’s more marked and performative, versus the more spontaneous play moments. I notice the speed of spontaneous gameplay, and the clarity of acting and intent.
We laugh at mistakes as we work.
Finding contrast and juxtaposition of effort and emotion- LW and JN doing two-man-job lifting vs ZA moving a floor roll by himself. We have built pain and a knob gag into one moment- two taboos at once.
I use consistently playful language even in working out physically skilled actions; describing a leapfrog base as ‘a nice round mushroom’. There’s a sense of shared pleasure in everyone’s movement; we all say ‘wheee!’ when someone jumps.
in Is this the place? the cast are starting to gauge when they’re being more stupid than they actually are- finding the truth of the moments. There are missed moments- the cast all inhaled as if to enter and then didn’t- it takes time to get to complicité, but it can be about the duration of a game, not just time spent together.
Holding the space- Lucy leaving her bucket, Zaki reversing slowly off- raises the temperature of the room. It takes courage to let the tension build. Giving status to an object (a bucket) creates tension and drama without needing back story
There’s a shift in the level of play when learning set material- it’s more marked and performative, versus the more spontaneous play moments. I notice the speed of spontaneous gameplay, and the clarity of acting and intent.
We laugh at mistakes as we work.
Finding contrast and juxtaposition of effort and emotion- LW and JN doing two-man-job lifting vs ZA moving a floor roll by himself. We have built pain and a knob gag into one moment- two taboos at once.
I use consistently playful language even in working out physically skilled actions; describing a leapfrog base as ‘a nice round mushroom’. There’s a sense of shared pleasure in everyone’s movement; we all say ‘wheee!’ when someone jumps.
THURSDAY: Characterisation
Material Covered:
- Warmup- yoga based (JN)
- Devising- Painting / Trance Dance- now re-named The Hakka of Bullying / setting kid rhythms
- Split session:
- KW and JN devising- Floor Face
- LW and ZA reading through text
- Rehearsing- Healing, with text
Quote of the day: ‘Be open, be vulnerable, see what happens' (Zaki)
Who was I today?
- Director: rethinking final sections for consistency of playing style
- Counsellor: taking care, and thinking about the audience psychology
- Repetiteur: re-making Floor Face from photographs and memory
- Editor: selecting and rejecting
Playing the emotion as a game - in the palette of joy/anger/sadness/disgust/fear
Not needing to show- They'll see what I feel when I feel it (LW)
Physical game plus emotional response equals a social game (JN)
Slightly more actor brain needed for Red (JN) and Yellow (ZA) than Blue (LW) in darker sections, because of their characters and narrative arcs.
After playing the darker paint games, the cast instinctively took care of each other with wiping paint off faces
A Three-way rubbing off (ZA)
Journal extracts from group discussion: 17/02/22
Not needing to show- They'll see what I feel when I feel it (LW)
Physical game plus emotional response equals a social game (JN)
Slightly more actor brain needed for Red (JN) and Yellow (ZA) than Blue (LW) in darker sections, because of their characters and narrative arcs.
After playing the darker paint games, the cast instinctively took care of each other with wiping paint off faces
A Three-way rubbing off (ZA)
Journal extracts from group discussion: 17/02/22
Reflective Observations:
In the 2019 version the end became more of a dance which felt odd- it was a shift from play to performative, from dance/movement as content to dance/movement as medium, and it jarred. Can we just follow the logic; the game plus the emotional journey? Is there enough logic in dance for play?
We laugh at tricks; a laugh of bonding with the trickster that excludes the victim. What do we feel for the tricked character? Where does this sit with laughing at failure? Are we bonding as an audience by laughing at a clown tricked by the world?
What does fake or forced laughter do? What do an audience feel about cruel laughter? Do they still laugh? For how long?
Where does pity take us? Or sympathy?
Fail raising a laugh VS Fail raising sympathy
Sadness generates empathy, but do we need to like someone before we can feel for them? Dance often gives us big bad emotions, but do we care about the characters first?
Actors break the tension of performing negative emotions to re-bond with each other - Joel does a fake fart immediately after running a long section of crying.
Today had a rare moment of other cast members as audience (watching Joel’s Floor Face moment). Lucy and Zaki had been working on something else, but the clarity of Joel's action pulled their focus in.
In the 2019 version the end became more of a dance which felt odd- it was a shift from play to performative, from dance/movement as content to dance/movement as medium, and it jarred. Can we just follow the logic; the game plus the emotional journey? Is there enough logic in dance for play?
We laugh at tricks; a laugh of bonding with the trickster that excludes the victim. What do we feel for the tricked character? Where does this sit with laughing at failure? Are we bonding as an audience by laughing at a clown tricked by the world?
What does fake or forced laughter do? What do an audience feel about cruel laughter? Do they still laugh? For how long?
Where does pity take us? Or sympathy?
Fail raising a laugh VS Fail raising sympathy
Sadness generates empathy, but do we need to like someone before we can feel for them? Dance often gives us big bad emotions, but do we care about the characters first?
Actors break the tension of performing negative emotions to re-bond with each other - Joel does a fake fart immediately after running a long section of crying.
Today had a rare moment of other cast members as audience (watching Joel’s Floor Face moment). Lucy and Zaki had been working on something else, but the clarity of Joel's action pulled their focus in.
FRIDAY: End of week round-up
Material Covered:
- Warmup- a long dance groove (there were delays to people’s travel this morning because of Storm Eunice)
- Working though, remembering the week's work
- AM: from start to Pow Swish Boom
- PM: from Leapfrog to the end
Quote of the day: ‘We're investing in nothing' (Zaki)
Who was I today?
- Clown: making honk noises with steps
- Director: emotional tracks, editing
- Movement Director: warmup, staging, technicalities of comic timing
- Colleague: storm drama and concerns about everyone's safety and travel plans trumping concerns about the work
- Friend: going for drinks- chatting and ranting
- Lecturer: leading interview discussions- do the cast want to say the right thing to please me? I’m in a position of authority that I like to undermine
In putting stuff together we’re finding the need for structure- the freedom in structure. We're simplifying movement to make it more effective
Illogical sense- there are ‘lightbulbs’- moments of play (LW)
We're working not in chronological, but emotional order (JN)
Rehearsal room games and jokes developing: ‘I’ve got a business’, mouse wee, cod-serious quotes of the day
I seek them out almost deliberately- for bonding? A sense of play and fun? To fast-track friendship? To lower my status?
Actors seeking familiar roles/family roles- ‘Daddy Joel’, feeling protective of Zaki as the youngest
Journal extracts from group discussion: 17/02/22
Illogical sense- there are ‘lightbulbs’- moments of play (LW)
We're working not in chronological, but emotional order (JN)
Rehearsal room games and jokes developing: ‘I’ve got a business’, mouse wee, cod-serious quotes of the day
I seek them out almost deliberately- for bonding? A sense of play and fun? To fast-track friendship? To lower my status?
Actors seeking familiar roles/family roles- ‘Daddy Joel’, feeling protective of Zaki as the youngest
Journal extracts from group discussion: 17/02/22
Reflective Observations:
In the interview tail off we were messing about with slang words from our slightly different generational perspectives- leng… peng… we’re playing in the ‘serious’ bits of the process too
Working out of order is a compositional approach, not a narrative one. Are there other elements of musicality within my choreographic directorial approach? I've been conducting timing- director as audience or as composer? Timing is vital to both laughter and understanding in non-verbal work, particularly where there's mime. I've started introducing comic timing technical terms- the rule of three, beats, clocks.
Greater tension- a sense of bound flow when the cast are dealing with tech while playing
By this point we have in-rehearsal roles which mirror the onstage roles- cool kid Zaki/ innocent Joel/ happy Lucy/ boss clown Kitty
In the interview tail off we were messing about with slang words from our slightly different generational perspectives- leng… peng… we’re playing in the ‘serious’ bits of the process too
Working out of order is a compositional approach, not a narrative one. Are there other elements of musicality within my choreographic directorial approach? I've been conducting timing- director as audience or as composer? Timing is vital to both laughter and understanding in non-verbal work, particularly where there's mime. I've started introducing comic timing technical terms- the rule of three, beats, clocks.
Greater tension- a sense of bound flow when the cast are dealing with tech while playing
By this point we have in-rehearsal roles which mirror the onstage roles- cool kid Zaki/ innocent Joel/ happy Lucy/ boss clown Kitty
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