Doubling down on theatre: a duality of styles explored

Di Trevis in a rare moment of stillness
and

Phoebe Zeitgeist challenging and confusing with their presentation

First, the sublime:
The masterclass with Di Trevis, legendary actor’s teacher, accompanied on piano by Dominic Muldowney, the Music Director of the Royal National Theatre. Too much to process right now but a couple of things jump to mind immediately.

She has been spending a good deal of her time in Palestine lately, working to help young people consider other options than strapping on a bomb, through her work with the Freedom Theatre of Palestine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freedom_Theatre

She spoke of how valuable the Freedom Theatre’s work is because they redirect angry, despairing and/or depressed people into the act of co-creation within the communities in which they find themselves trapped, often with bombs going off overhead in the evening.

“How much better is it to offer someone an opportunity to learn lighting, build sets, work on costumes, learn acting, actually manage a theatre, and through that work, find an outlet for your voice?”, she asked.

When asked her thoughts on popular theatre and the choices that play selection committees or the actual A.D. themselves make when they choose their seasons, she said,

“Well, it’s tragic. Every theatre now seems to care more about playing it safe and catering to their funders than making exciting theater. Let’s face it, usually an A.D. will say, we need two or three musicals, one or two surefire hits, and we can then slot in one “risky” production.

We show every manner of violence on stage these days without giving it a thought other than how many tickets it might sell. We show rape, we show child abuse, hell, we could probably show the rape of a child if it were done in neorealism and presented as arty. But the sad thing is that we cannot, and dare not, discuss Zionism because we’ve been told that would bring about the end of our theatre. The money will simply dry up if we make our moneyed patrons too uncomfortable. All other politics may be safe but we do not touch Zionism. And that’s bullshit.”

Her time in Palestine has had a huge impact on her sense that theatre can be a valuable tool in righting injustice if it gets off the big stage and away from expensive sets and out into the community.

“What is wrong with the priorities of theatre Boards?” she asked, rhetorically. “I mean, why on earth do they need to spend thousands of dollars on new light boards, fancy revolves, high tech sound equipment, set designs, costumes, buildings, but they expect actors to work for free to subsidize their investments? I mean, I have worked with actors who cannot afford a fucking haircut, brilliant actors who are expected to wait tables or hold down some other job just so they can perform? Theatre companies have their priorities all wrong.”

When working in the classroom, Di, emphasized that we need to get back to the basics. Define the action. Pretty Stanislavian, but with a twist of reductionism. She feels its a travesty that so many beginning or amateur actors think that weeping or becoming hyper emotional on stage is “good acting”. “That is a misunderstanding of the method. Well, actually, it’s a lack of a method, a lack of technique”.

I watched her work with one woman and it was like watching time lapse photography. She asked the woman to read the text. Just read it in place. Then, layer by layer, she had her re-do it, answering a series of questions about space, audience, message, use of pause, body and muscle action, until in less than 15 minutes, the woman delivered an excellent version of the words she had at first sort of overacted.

For myself, the work on repetition of a phrase within text was an eye opener. She called it the “Bellwether Effect” and likened it to a rule of 3, with the need to move the human heart, regardless of whether you are playing comedy or tragedy or singing a musical. Exploring the gestus within the repetitions helps to expose the most powerful delivery within a certain state of mind, whether it is comical point or dramatic.

Regarding musicals and singing text, she stated that one must consider each song like a small play of its own within the main play and stressed how important it is to follow the rules of telling the story.

She has very strong feelings against actors wearing microphones on stage, whether it’s for a musical or not.

“Everyone thinks it is so professional to mic their actors now, as though it is high art. But here’s the thing, when you mic an actor they then do not have to do the reach. The actor, deprived of doing the full reach, will never get the full emotional impact. It then steals the potential truth needing to be told from the audience. If the theatre is so huge that microphones have to be used for audiences to hear the performers you want to question what the real intention of the company is. And I would say it is to make money, lots of money, probably at the expense of their actors.”

There was considerable mention of, and work on, not being seduced by the beauty of the music when you are singing, but rather steeling oneself to remain with the importance of the lyrics. “Let the music be beautiful if it is beautiful. Your job is to sing the story truthfully”.

She said so many amateur theatre made the mistake of casting musicals for the “best” or “prettiest” voice, when in fact, often the magic occurs with the untrained voice which is unafraid to go within its guts. As an actor who sings but is not a singer, I appreciated that.

Moving ahead some hours to the second part of the day, we come to Phoebe Zeitgeist and their workshop in which the actors do not use their voices at all until they have found the “raw and naked truth at an animal level of the text they are determining to deliver”.

From Milan, Italy, the group was young and very intense. They first presented a fragment, an “immediate composition”, rather than an improvisation, which the Director feels it a dated approach. I have to say, it looked and felt like structured improvisation to me, sort of like what you might see at a comedy improv night when the cast has tuned into one another and done some advance work on punchlines, timing etc. But what do I know?
There was a lot of noise within the silence because the third character was a musician, who used drums in both traditional and non-traditional ways, cymbals, and a xylophone. Plus the actors kicked a lot of bells and cymbals around the floor as they physically assaulted one another in some kind of meditation on power and control.

Two men were dressed only in soiled underwear the entire time, except for when they each donned horses tails in an S&M struggle which ended with them making love roughly.

It reminded me so much of early Living Theatre work of the 70’s and some of my own early actor’s training workshops that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud a few times. Who knows? Maybe that was what they wanted. However, as I looked around the room at the scholars and academics in the room, they looked annoyed and several were openly smirking at the action on stage.

It all went on for a long time until we were treated to a video, which incorporated voice and lights.

Then it was the talk back. The Director read a lengthy paper in her beautiful Sicilian accented English about their process of deconstruction of expectation and a lot of other stuff. She also explained that the video was a staged version of what we had witnessed today, only each workshop performance is a research for them so no two are the same.

When it was time for questions, no one spoke. I felt bad for them because they had worked very hard out there, so I asked about the physicality within the power-and domination-leading-to-sex part of the improvisation, er “immediate composition”. “Within that construct, how do you determine who is going to be the top in any given performance?” I ended my question with.

My fellows sniggered but I was serious and besides, I wanted to give something back to them, which at least could be some sense of interest.

They spoke to one another in Italian for a few moments, taking my question very seriously, and then answered that there are subtle cues within the mood of the observers, in the musician’s accompaniment, and in the text, which they have in their minds even if they are playing unclothed, or “fully exposed” and in silence.

All in all it was a very Italian, very 70’s feeling piece and the workshop felt the same. Still, it was alive and the company has a definite voice.

As people filed out of the room leaving them standing alone up front, I approached and said, “Thank you for taking such a risk today and for sharing your work with us”. They seemed so happy to be approached and each one of them took my hand, shook it, embraced me, and we all parted feeling a little bit better about things.