Chusi: The Viewpoints

The dynamics proposed by Chusi was directly taken from Bogart and Landau´s Viewpoints. The fact that the sequence of experiments were already taken from a previous work system, it created a sense of continuity and also allowed the group to relate its flow and objectives for puppetry in a rather clear way.

It is a sequence of experiments quite familiar to anyone who had ever been in touch with the VPs, as briefly as it could be. Here follow the exercises, combines with some comments:

PART 1: The walks

      a)     It was asked the group to walk around the room, with a brief stop to adjust spinal positioning (erect, though relaxed), direction of the eye (straight). NOTE: The whole group (Cariad, Marie, Mario and Valeria) was engaged on the exercise, with Chusi orienting from outside.

       b)     While walking in the room, anyone could stop and resume the walk when and as they want;

     c)     Next, the group was told to explore different walk speeds by themselves (without being influenced by anyone else);

     d)     The exploratory walk could incorporate both change of continuity and speed, as before, but now everyone should be aware of the negative space, or: the matter of the surrounding space and the way the room is filled;

      e)     Now everyone should try, as they walk, to be aware of everything happening in the room: how far one is from a wall, who is passing behind you, where is everybody and what are they doing;

     f)      Now, as everybody walks, they should try from time to time to follow someone, by either copying or reacting to the other´s walk;

      g)     Whenever anyone crosses my way I must change the intention or the way I walk;

      h)     Now try to walk as if you were in a bubble; if no one could affect or be affected by the actions of the other.

The exercise deals with the effect caused by other people´s actions and reactions. Deals with the permeability of actions and the way people respond to the environment. At first is created a walking repertoire (a, b & c) and then, through stages d & e, an awareness of the surroundings is gradually brought to conscience, until it is assumed in stages f & g. Stage h (in a bubble) is a display of how difficult it is to go back – or to merely leave – to a stage of unawareness of the surroundings – to a non-responsive stage.

In a brief talk after this experience the group agreed that it is hard to simply “be in a bubble”, but also that something happened differently than when reacting to the group was mandatory.

ABOUT GAZE: It became quite clear that we tend to be responsive to the environment, even when we do not engage our eyes on this perceptive task. This responsiveness is something we can´t help, and it is also a perceptive hint of something´s independent life. More about it will be addressed below.

PART 2: Walking the line

The group was put side by side at one end of the room. From a certain moment, anyone could do the following movements: move ahead, move back, jump, lie down.

     a)     The group perform the movements by their own, without any guidance from any member of the group. Anyone can begin the exercise when want, and may combine his movement in a desired fashion;

      b)     All movement must be made in relation to another person. “Someone else” would decide when to start and all changes and decisions on movements must be done as a “response” to someone else.

The first difference noticed between parts a and b of the exercises concerned timing. There were more pauses. The movements took longer to start and there were moments when nobody moved followed by blasts of movement. But I guess that the main alteration concerned tension and tonus. The pauses were filled with anticipation and the movement relationship tended to portray some kind of a dramatic tonus.

This brief experiment, though it only “scratches the surface” of possible collaborations between Viewpoints and Composition for puppetry training (as most organized training systems can), it seems to deal with a main subject, which is the one concerning the ability for perception-reaction as a fundamental index to independent life.

The training for perception and reaction from environmental stimuli, that is also present in other training systems, such as the neutral mask, approaches the matter of gaze in at least two different directions:

a) from the puppet: the gaze is close to the perceptive-reactive apparatus that moves in both ways of perceiving the outside world and portraying the impression of inner existence to the audience.

b) from the puppeteer: awareness as specific understanding of gaze (Bogart uses the sense of hearing instead of sight, as she presents the “Extraodinary Listening”), talks about an overresponsive state, in which matters of space, material and time shapes the reactions and meanings to the performing actions.

This must be addressed in more depth.

An interesting discussion to be conducted should be the fact that through gaze it is possible to perceive autonomous life, at the same time that gaze is one of the main perceptive bonds an entity stablishes with its surroundings. The impression of autonomy is, in a way, related to the responsiveness to the surroundings that determine the actions one may produce. The more a character is bound to what it reacts to, the more it displays autonomy.