Session videos
The session was organized so that each one of the researchers involved
should come up with one practical experiment or exercise suggestion. After
short deliberation, it was decided that the order should be Mario, Marie, Chusi
and Cariad. Valeria would not conduct any proposal for she oversaw the video
recording. Now follows the descriptions of the dynamics, followed by a few
observations:
a) Mario: The invisible ball
Organized in a circle, the participants played of throwing a tennis ball
to each other. It was important to stablish eye contact between players who
were throwing and receiving the ball, and try not to let it fall. After some
time, the ball is removed, and the participants proceed with the game, this
time imagining the ball while doing the same things as before. The goal here is
to make the whole group to imagine the same ball, and to “put it in space”, by
both body and gaze control.
What´s gaze got to do with it?
This is a basic theatre game, and explores the ability
to invoke the existence of something through both body and gaze reactions. “Put
something in space”, as would Viola Spolin say, is the result of imagining,
reacting to this imagination, and acting over it, so it can be communicated to
the others.
One of the basic issues regarding this game is the
training of the ability of building an imaginary situation that could be shared
by both the artist collective and the audience. And it can have many
directions: the artists´ engagement can lead the audience to be touched by the
make-believe, at the same time that the audience´s engagement produces (is made
by) the perceptive completion of the incomplete world displayed on stage.
b) Marie: The Ropes
Was shown to everyone in the group some ropes, in different sizes. Each
one had to choose a piece and experiment animating it for a while, with the aid
of music. After a while experimenting alone and in relation with the others,
each one had a time alone to display a quick improvised scene with their
findings.
This work is a classical contact with the work of the
puppeteer, and acts on basic principles for animating puppets, but can also
generate a fine experiment on the bodies of puppets, of viable integrative
games between materials and the performer´s body. It can even go as further as
to question the presence of a puppet´s body in animation performances.
So, it can be said that the game may reveal at least two different levels of
approach, being the first, more evident, an exercise in which players can,
first, quickly build a functional puppet made from basic material (the game has
been tested not only with ropes, but also with paper, cloth, random objects,
pieces of clothing, and more). Second, the players get in touch with, and
train, the structural principles of level,
axis and focus. These principles were already explained in other places, for
they are important departure points to understand and practice puppetry as portraying
objects as things that are imagined having autonomous life, even if does not
resemble anything we ever met. This level holds some importance to this study,
for it deals with the concept of focus,
that in many cases is related to the simulation of sight on the puppet. The
focus is not only the point from which the puppet perceives things, but mostly
the place that originates its reactions. It shows the relation of the puppet
with the world exterior to it, but also portrays interior life.
The following deeper layer concerning this game
discusses the need to build something close to a puppet (in this case,
something resembling human or animal in shape, that has an imagined autonomous
life, that acts in a theatrical situation). Artistic (theatrical-dramatic)
exploration with the materials may also lead to some interesting situations in
which dramatic relations between performer and material can be potent and tense,
but without having the need to build up a puppet-like figure in advance. This
approach, unorthodox as it is, needs the aid of more examples to be properly
put and studied. And I guess I´ll manage to come up with a few throughout this
research.
About gaze: this deeper approach leaves some
interesting thoughts on the matter, being the first wondering that such dramatic
situations made with materials usually may employ manipulation dynamics different
from the traditional mediums of string,
rod and glove, leaving more room for the performer to build the situation
through drawing a visual landscape or reacting to stimuli attributed to the
material relations.
