"A starting point is a spring board you take off from to land on a platform of possibilities" Often, we are in search of the Big Idea that will give us the significant edge. Let us for a minute think about the combined power of multiple ideas and what that means. In devising new work, starting points are critical. Not that they necessarily dictate how your work shapes up, but they give you an interesting direction by which new content may be generated. A starting point can be just about anything. It can be a word, an image, an event, a person or simply what's in front of you or outside the window. If your starting point is intangible or of the past, think about it, deeply. If it is tangible and of the present and available with you or near you,observe it, keenly. In the process of observation or thought, it is important to be able to document in detail what you are going through. Once documented, make informed choices about priorities within the set of documented ideas, events and thoughts. An important aspect hereon is the conversion of thought to action. A series of such constructed actions by multiple members will open up a variety of ideas. The complementing or contrasting themes that emerge between team members can be explored to create interesting narratives or sketches. In a recent workshop with Head of a Woman, a London based international theatre collective, my starting point was established as a date. I had to detail out the events of a certain 21st of October in 2002. Coincidentally, it was the year I started pursuing theatre and in all probability, I would have been rehearsing my one line part in Twelfth Night. Detailing out this day set the base for my work. The performance at the end of the week long workshop had nothing to do with 21st October, but the starting point defined and directed the work in a particular direction. We ended up devising a promenade theatre piece that was a game in which the actors alone knew the rules. A different starting point every week and content generated in this direction will essentially leave you with a pile of material to choose from and play around with. Once you get started, you will need to couple your working methods along with certain performance directives. These are tools that will enhance your work and enable you to look at your work differently. A directive can be anything from tossing a coin to make decisions or to look at news paper images and relate your work to that. Devising is interesting because it lets performers think about themselves, their lives and their actions. People on stage are no more merely giving away lines from a script they recently got familiar with, but living a moment that they created with a certain objective. This raises the stakes, for all those involved, be it the audience or the performer.Devised work ends up being more precious for the performers, since they made every bit of it, from scratch - from that very word - 'starting point'.
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There are objects all around us. Some to use, some to look at, some to be with, some to take help from and some to give away. From furniture to utensils, toys to artifacts, clocks to mobile devices, clothes to shoes to hats and more - Objects complete us in multiple ways. We invest time, energy and money using the many objects we do. Objects come into our lives, serve their duties and disappear. How would it be if these lifeless objects that are so intrinsic to over lives come alive? "The only rule in puppetry is to bring to life inanimate objects" (Francis in Ganesh Ram: 11.11.2012). The thought of possessing the power to 'bring to life' is fascinating. The magic of making anything and everything speak, move, walk and talk seems like a bestowed boon of sorts, waiting to be explored and experimented with. Mark Down, Puppeteer from Blind Summit, focuses on breath and its importance in completing the illusion for audiences through puppetry. Breath and bringing to life go hand in hand. Neither can exist without the other. Though they complement each other, they are essentially one. "'Breath is the engine of all emotion"(Down, 2012). All living things; plants, animals and humans breathe. They breathe to exist and to serve a purpose. A purpose that ensures the status quo. Though breathing is involuntary, it can be controlled. A controlled breath has the power to bring to life objects that can therefore influence. This brings alive characters, plots, stories and situations that transport us into another world, shaping our imagination and creating unique experiences using space, form, rhythm and time. That is what puppetry can deliver. An experience that uses the audience's imagination to construct a new reality. Down also explains that Puppets coming to life is based on four distinct breath oriented functions. "Inhale. Suspend. Exhale. Suspend. Most action occurs on the suspended in-breath, or if you prefer in the controlled exhale: speaking, signalling, starting to walk. The in-breath is literally the inspiration for action, or the intention. The exhale acts as brakes for the movement, and the suspended out-breath is when we assess the action and the results. When the breath pauses, the action is suspended. The scene pauses, but it does not stop."(Down, 2011) The Hindu Yogi science of breath qualifies life as a series of breaths. A toddler inhales the very first life inducing breath and releases it in an long wail while life ends for the aged in an faint gasp, when they cease to breathe. Life and death are both an action and function of breath. Adrian Kohler of Handspring Puppetry relates this aspect to acting, puppetry and theatre. "An actor struggles to die onstage, but a puppet has to struggle to live. And in a way that’s a metaphor for life." (Kohler, 2011) According to Penny Francis, 'The term puppetry denotes the act of bringing to imagined life inert figures and forms (representational or abstract) for a ritual or theatrical purpose - for a performance'. (Francis, 2012: 5). To enable that imagination successfully, an audience have to see, hear and feel a puppet breathe, move, communicate and therefore live. This life is bestowed on a puppet by its operator, the puppeteer. The puppeteer is truly the mother of a puppet, feeding it and nourishing it to stay alive. ''The puppet is an entity which absorbs its operator's energy and is thereby able to convince the spectator of its vitality. It is a matter of transferred, not duplicated kinesthetics. If the puppeteer is projected 'into' the puppet character, it cannot but be the cynosure, it cannot make a wrong gesture; it cannot produce the wrong voice.''(Francis, 2012:28) In the case of 'hands on' or 'hands in' puppetry, a medium where the puppeteer is in contact with the puppet's body in some form or the other, the puppeteer is breathing with different parts of his body to enable life in the puppet and make this life visible to audiences. Nikki Tilroe terms this as 'Muscle respiration' and it being a critical technique to create an illusion of life in a puppet. (Tilroe, 1988: 18-19) Based on the puppet, its form, size, shape and desired attitude, the puppeteer alters his breathing speeds, rhythm, size and form to communicate the story and create the illusion of life, motivating the audience to suspend their disbelief. Basil Jones, co-founder of handspring puppet company believes that breath is a crucial indication of the puppet's life on stage. " The audience can see and feel you breathing and therefore see the puppet living. The rhythm and the a-rhythm of the breath and the way it changes is a very important emotional indicator as to the thoughts and the feeling of the puppet being manipulated." (Jones, 2011) Jacques Lecoq believed that every emotion can be achieved with a push or a pull action. "I push or I pull. I push or pull myself. I am pushed or pulled."(Lecoq, 2006: 22) Breathing functions similarly. A push or a pull in breathing can communicate different emotional responses. Rhythm in the simultaneous push & pull of breath is central to perceiving the state of the puppet. "Shock and surprise for instance are achieved by the inhale action at different speeds."(Tilroe, 1988: 19) The emotions pain and exhaustion can be achieved through an exhale of the breath. Emotions such as joy and sorrow can be achieved with both inhale & exhale. However, the way a puppet moves in relation to the breath is also important in fulfilling the desired illusion. A puppet would mostly move backward to portray shock and move forward for exhaustion, while it could move back and forth for joy. In bringing a puppet to life, the role of the puppeteer and the relationship with the puppet is vital in making effective performance. Tadeusz Kantor, a visionary Polish theatre-maker and designer propagated that "There must be a very close, almost biological symbiosis between an actor and an object. They cannot be separated. In the simplest case, the actor must attempt to do everything for the OBJECT to stay visible, in the most radical case the actor and the object must become one." He calls this state a BIO-OBJECT. (Kantor,1993: 240 in Francis, 2012: 20). Francis adds yet another dimension by involving the audience into the equation and introducing a relationship that is shared between the puppet, the puppeteer and the audience. "A delicate triangle of projected energy and response from the puppeteer through the object to the audience has to be formed, but is rarely sustainable for long." (Francis, 2012: 18) This triangle of energy also indicates a shift in focus of the viewer from puppet, to puppeteer to the technique and back to the puppet. "This changing focus is evidence of an alternating belief and un belief in the puppet's autonomous existence. This condition has no scientific label that I can find, but has been described (poetically) as the 'Opalisation effect' (Jurowski, 1988: 41-42) and (confusingly) as 'double vision' (Tillis, 1992: 59). Probably the most accurate word 'oscillation', is used by TA Green and WJ Pepicello (Green, 1983: 157)"(Francis, 2012: 21) To the initiated, the confluence of the puppet, puppeteer and the technique will create the illusion. To the uninitiated, the invisible equation will still facilitate illusion, but they may not be in a position to appreciate the aspects at play. In National Theatre's War Horse by Handspring puppetry, life sized horses are represented using puppets. Three puppeteers, one playing the face and neck of the horse, the other the heart and fore limbs and the third playing the hind limbs and tail, together create the illusion of the horse breathing, moving and reacting to stimuli through the performance. This demands harmonious coordination between the various puppeteers, including breath, movement, rhythm and synchronised reactions that together create the bigger picture for the audience as well as for other members in the performance. Miniscule movements of the horse, the way its body twitches, the up and down action of the body indicative of breath, is clearly visible even from the last rows of the performance auditorium. This is the precision that can be achieved with puppetry. Little did one know that cane and fabric bunched together artistically could come alive as war horses, puppeteered diligently. As a medium, puppetry also offers the unique advantage of portraying situations that are beyond human reach in a performing scenario. Explicit Murder, brutality and other grotesque realities that may be difficult to portray using one's own body, may apply puppetry techniques to show and soften the impact that the performance may render to audience sets. Dancer and performer Dan Hurlin in the context of comparing dance and puppetry says "While Dance pushes the body to its limits, puppetry can explore what lies beyond those limits." (Hurlin in Animated Bodies, 2009: 7) In essence, Breath and therefore breathing is a starting point to almost any form of creative practice that one chooses to undertake. Puppetry uses the operators breath and the object strives to make it its own and therefore comes to life. The human therefore is the technology that the puppet employs to spring to life. As actors or performers, our own breath, its controlled rhythm, size and variation sets our energy levels on stage and outside of it. Apart from contributing to successful artistic creation, breath and its control can be critical starting points in training for personality development, communication skills and voice practices too. Breath is that engine that runs our body, mind and what the combination of body and mind can achieve. What is the difference between being a performer and an actor ?
A performer performs and an actor acts. This would mean the former is a more truthful portaryal of what one feels and what one one believes in. Acting however, is mostly imitation. You create impulse or stimuli that you want to be influenced by and therefore respond to them in a way that you are motivated to. Performance is about honouring your own beliefs and your own stimuli that is predominantly intrinsic. When a musician is creating music with his violin, you dont say “he’s a great actor”, but you say “he’s a good performer” The same would apply to a dancer, a Circus acrobat, a magician and a puppeteer. Over the last 3 months, I have come to realise the power of being a performer over being an actor. Being a performer is more gratifying. It feels good when Aruna plays Aruna on stage as opposed to playing Martha or Bettie or Olivia. Playing creatively with what comes naturally to you is a basic start to making performance. This does not mean that you don’t learn new things. For example, if performers decide to invest in a new skill through training, that becomes a life skill more than just a skill for a particular show. Performers can learn to Juggle or skate, and then their acquired skills are displayed when they’re performing This way, you are not acting like you are skating, because that’s just not possible. I always believed that I was a hopeless actor. However, over the last 3 months, I seem to develop a strange confidence of being a performer, where I play with material that’s mine. Material that i can personally connect with. Material from my own life – Personal Material. This does not mean that we cannot approach adaptations or scripts that already exist. We just have to approach them in a slightly different manner. Focus on what the play means to you as opposed to what it generally means. Creating performance also inspires you to make original work that’s inspired by what you have seen and experienced. A sense of attachment comes through when performers create work that has their personal stamp on it. I am looking forward to create performance that is devised, original and involves personal material, stories and experiences. Let’s see how and where this goes ! For a long time, I thought pots, made out of clay, were natural things that you could just dig out from the ground. Of course with time, I realized how they got to being the way they are. Even as a kid, I was very interested in making things out of clay. I remember when I was about 9 or 10 years young, I used to make some random shapes out of red clay, that My mom used to buy to plant her money plants. I made some small coasters, small bowls and what not, with really withered edges, cracking at almost every end. I used to make these, and leave them at the courtyard to dry. After about two good days of sun bathing, these models of clay were ready to be my play toys. In Tamil, we called this ‘choppu saaman’, meaning small things used in the kitchen. I remember how I filled up these bowls with rice and gram and all sorts of things including water and mud itself. I can’t really recall what happened to them after that. I remember throwing some of them into a well because i dint like the way they turned out. My mom did complain about muddy water a week later, but I decided to keep quiet. About 4 years later, we had a class trip to Dakshin Chitra (an art hub of South India), where I saw a potter use his wheel and magically make pots of different shapes and sizes. I was totally wowed by it and immediately got to dirtying my hands there. With this help, I made something that resembled a pen pot. Not bad for a proper start, I thought. After that, I almost forgot about my love for pots and how I thought that I would make a great potter some day- not of the magical type though. Recently, when Karthik and I were drawing up a wish list of sorts, pottery cropped up again and I wanted to go learn pottery and make some really awesome stuff. How difficult could it be to just move your hands in a pattern to create some great shapes, I thought. After i quit my job, i did have a lot of time in hand, which i call my creative sabbatical. So i decided I would spend the while doing artistic things that would further stimulate my right brain. I did my research, made a couple of phone calls and before anything else, I realized that learning pottery was really expensive, especially in Singapore. But I was quite determined and after about a month, I found this place call Sam Mui Kim pottery, that offered basic hand building classes at about 500 sgd. I signed up and there I was, in front of a little hand building metallic disc that I was supposed to rotate in an anti clockwise fashion to create magic. Within the first 20 minutes, I was faced with cruel realisation that pottery is not just about artistic building, but a lot about achieving technical precision. What I thought would stimulate my right brain, ended up being an enormously consuming left brained exercise. I was making concentric circles, measuring the centre of a clay flat, cutting the clay out at particular diameters and looking for balanced symmetry. None of that seemed artistic to me from any angle. Over and above all this, there was yet another quality of mine being put to test – Patience. Pottery is about patience. The creative mind goes searching and wandering to find as many things within a given time, the logical brain is also almost like that. But I had to whip both these senses of mine and commonly produce a state of being called patience. At may points during my first session itself, I wanted to give up. I wanted to tear the clay away as it was being built. However, I kept motivating myself thinking that when this is done, I can now call myself a creator. A creator of a perfect pot. After three hours, a successful pen pot was made, not perfectly symmetrical though. I was happy about the asymmetry. Nw I can call the pit artistic. The expert potter Mr Kim Told me that I was very good for a beginner. I knew it was his way to let me know that I should come back for the next class. My palms were aching, my fingers were numb and I was in pain. Creation is bloody painful ! Over the next 3-4 classes, I sort of got used to the rhythm and routines of hand building. And when I saw my first pot all fired up and painted, I felt great. I felt even better, when friends of mine asked me where I bought the pot, when I showed off my new creation. Now I have made pots, bowls, vases and even a tea pot, all in just about 30 hours of painful work and patience. Now I know that I can never look at a pot the same way I did before. I can look beyond the pot now, and understand what would have gone into creating this and that, is my pot of learning |
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