Six Degrees of Separation

Six Degrees of Separation
Old Vic Theatre, Review

It is good to see the drama version of Six Degrees of Separation at the Old Vic Theatre. As same as the film version which I watched before, it is present an issue that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person through a chain of six people, which means that you can scrape up an acquaintance with anybody. In this piece six very different New Yorkers realizing the impact they're having on one to another slightly. This production reminds me to rethink my work. When I planning my Interim project with the idea of family relationship, I do believe there is a connection between people and his family throughout any life moment. as a kinds of six degree of separation rules, the relationship of family seems more stronge. But I still have to explore how to present the tension between one to one.

Focusing on the character of this play, is the people really what he seems? How can anyone be sure that people are who they say they are? Six Degrees of Separation is reflecting our society phenomenon. It can not deny that the script logic is clearly defined and apparent. Compared with film version, The long monolog delivering actors inside world to audiences, it exposing people’s self-confidence and imagination. It obvious that the script has a good characteristic aspect of drama or theatrical event. Its good to see how the director develop these clues. I feel like there still remain some cinema language within the performance structure.

Moving to another point, the play use a doble side painting as a metaphor for society's calmness and mad, well-ordered and chaos. The painting feature on Kandinsky’s style, which exploring his own ideas of abstractionism and impressionism painting. He applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas, sometimes structured good balance seriously, sometimes colored with passion and conflict. By the turn of the doble side painting, the relationship on stage turns to another side, from order to chaos, fram balance to confusion. This scene impressed me, it evoked my understanding of the single image.

Furthermore, Six Degrees of Separation utilizing a revolving stage to shown the scene changes. The main stage extended into apron stage as a thrust area which more close to the audience. There is a curved wall stand around the revolving stage, becoming a semi-obturate space. However it does not apply to each scenes as well as the story lines developed. There set a sofa and a tea table represent a family house, and present the other house when stage turn to the backside. I’m not convinced that these set could represent outside scene as well.

Interim show plan

Enumerating these relationships, we will lead readers to concern about the non-linearly narrative characters, including dream space, memory space and real space involving with each other, which has its own specific time axes, therefore both space and time bears the different and multiplex quality .

Performance Lab plan

Actually the most difficult part for me is how to find the way of telling informations. I raised question to make clear what I’m going go achieve.

No.1
What is your understanding or associating about waiting?
No.2
Have you got a certain begining and ending plot of this performance, do you think it is necessary or not?

No.3What is the girl's characteristic within this performance. Is there need a single conclusion to be revealed?
No.4
A metaphor in this performance is that the girl waiting a flower blossom and waiting for Godot comes, are they matched?

Emanuelle Enchanted

Emanuelle Enchanted by Forced Entertainment
DVD recording Review

“In the summer when the earth changed, it rained for five months and on the night the rain stopped, a silence fell like we’d woke up in a silence from a dream…”

Emmanuelle Enchanted set on a crude wooden stage which hang up a curtain of electric stars. And the action of this piece was divided by five performers that using the curtain to change scenes optionally. They were using the curtain to set up and cut down scenes they were presenting. While one actor pull the curtain on in order to start his performance, but another draw the curtain again trying to stop it. By playing this game there are obvious disagreements about how are they supposed to being presented.

Another interesting idea from this performance is that actors appeared on the scene in a way of dressing up and showing the cardboard signs. such like a title sequence of the film. Characters presented using cardboard signs, such like ‘The Ex-wife of the Ex-president of the USA’, ‘Miss Deep Freeze’ and ‘A Boxer with a Torn Retina’. When actors changed costumes and changed the signs, they became a different characters. As can be seen, a lot of clothes and cardboards on the clothing rack on the side of the stage.

Besides, Forced Entertainment continually used media tech as a tool into performance. In Emmanuelle Enchanted, the monitor and camera were positioned in the middle of the stage, the characters on the monitors talk directly or read news. So the video material takes on a new framing function, giving the meanings of each sections. At the same time, it runs a movement that people running and walls moving with sort of emotion. These walls arranged and assembled in a way of let characters relieve their feelings. It inspirit me using these simple and raw materials as setting could present a third dimension of authenticity. Also the group placed the camera on the stage and all that’s shown on monitor is live. From the audience perspective, all we see is reframed by ourselves. I do like this kind of freedom to observe informations which controls selectivity.

“As its central methodology, the piece uses the act of arranging and rearranging texts, images and space so that new patterns, narratives and meanings emerge.” spoke by Tim Etchells. Emmanuelle Enchanted was like a kind of endlessly game, continually making stories. Based on the set of rules, performance can kept running several times. It may go for a no time-limit performance then. However I fell like it probably need some exciting moment about breaking these rules. That is to say, we work in these rules we set, and attempting to find a way of edit them and tighten them. Emmanuelle Enchanted influenced me to find ways of thinking which articulate the dynamics of our current condition.

Interim festival

performance lab

11 & 12

11 and 12 , Barbican, Review
The latest piece from famous theatre director Peter Brook

"The storytelling is didactic, po-faced and slow," says Hitchings. The intention of 11 and 12 seems like how a small component influence a large issue, especially in this religious context. It bring issues of faith, truth, and relationship between govement and common people. "I would not want to engage directly with the criticisms but say something parallel to them," says Brook. All the storytelling addresses profound spiritual and political issues. However, it is hard to really got involved in, maybe because of the serious religion subject.

Although, the live music of this performance is really fantastic. It reminds me to think about my interim project. My colleagues discussed about how the sound effect create a rhythm of live performance, compared with cinema and television program. It raised a question for me that how prerecording sound and music tie in live performance. In Brook’s piece 11 and 12, he used a musician who plays a group of instruments, such as a kinds of percussion instrument. That was strongly impressed on my memory. The music could play many different properties for each scenes. What is more, because of its simple sets , props and lights, the music becomes extremely important. It leading us to a serious religious atmosphere.

Tracing back to Brook’s earlier work. Brook as an explorer of theatrical performance raised the revolutionary issue “deadly theatre” which inspired a lot of experimental theatre artists. Citing his book The Empty Space "I take an empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space and someone else is watching him, and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged." Brook believe that language own the biggest power to convey informations. The more to make the stage empty the more audiences has a great view. That is why live performance have its unique pureness quality that compared with film and television. In this piece 11 and 12, obvious body and language were also more important than other elements.

Brook’s work experience shown me the consideration of the essence of drama. Theatre artists have to give up the priority of spectatorship from audiences perspective. What we need at present is plays that get inside the minds of love, peace and tolerance, Do not hiding our professional thing, build on a boundary in between audiences and actors. He argues that, “the theatre should be about touching something of the hidden feeling behind certain events, of bringing the invisible into palpable life. For one moment, one's own emotional prejudices can be opened”. From this point, I argue that while created performance work is about sharing experiences, showing the simplicity and understanding easily without any masks, thus the audience could put their trust in our work. Performances could become absorbing.