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In this picture Rosie and I are analysing the script and discussing what we could do and where. For example, where to put lighting, and what lighting we wanted, also what sounds to use. In this session we also did read throughs and just did a script analysis.

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Within the picture Rosie is rehearsing her own monologue, we spent a lot of time on our own monologues to get the where they needed to be for the performance. We didn’t always rehearse our monologues together as we could learn them in our own time.

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In this picture I am rehearsing the part when I am left on stage on my own. I wanted to put across that I knew what I was doing, and I wasn’t insulting any person with a mental illness especially schizophrenia, there is a very fine line between doing a good performance and being offensive and I wanted to get it just right.

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Antonin Artaud

AntoninArtaudwas born on 4th September 1896 in Marseilles, France.​

He was widely recognized as one of the largest figures of twentieth century theatre and the European avant-garde. Artaud moved to Paris to start his career as a writer, which was against the wishes of his father, but instead he discovered he had a talent for avant-garde theatre.  When he was 27 he sent some of his poems to the journal La Novelle Revue Francaise, but they were rejected. However, the editor, Jacques Riviere, wrote a letter back to him, wanting to understand him, and a relationship developed between them through letters.  Artaud was heavily influenced by surrealism, at one point in his life he was a member of the surrealist movement. He was a playwright, poet, actor, theatre director and essay writer​. He spent most of his older life in mental asylums, due to his depression. He died on 4th March 1948

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Theatre of cruelty

Theatre of cruelty was a project for experimental theatre by the practitioner Antonin Artaud. ​Artaud believed that modern civilization had transformed humans into sick and repressed beings. ​A lot of Artaud’s theatre ideas, techniques are difficult to understand and his manifestos ‘Theatre and its double’ are not recognized as bed time reading.
Theatre of cruelty is used to shock the senses of the audience, sometimes using violent images, sounds, and smells to affect the emotions. ​

This is reinforced by Dunning, N (2016)

‘Artaud-acting-techniques often require the use of noises, grunts, screams – the dialogue is often minimal and requires that the actor looks inside to his or her own primal emotions in order to create the role.’

This discusses the aspects and techniques that Artaud used with in his theatre and how they had effects om the audience.  Artaud experimented with the relationships between the audience and the actors, usually putting the audience in the centre, having the performance surrounding them. ​

This is also supported by Dunning, N (2016)

‘The aim of an Artaud performance is to cause a real experience of discomfort and confusion in the audience that causes them to think and become involved as participants, not onlookers’

Who talks about how Artaud wanted to create an experience for the audience to make it feel somewhat real for them. Therefore, trapping the audience into the drama. Artaud saw both the world around him and theatre as a whole needed a change. There was an appeal to the subconscious, freeing the audience from their negativity. His Theatre could not communicate using spoken language which is a primary tool of rational thought. Lighting used in theatre of cruelty is usually a combination of flooded light and pinpointed, more directed light, for example things such as spot lights.

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Overall, I think that our performance went very well, even though we had a few hiccups. One being I missed a slide out. I finished my paragraph on theatre of cruelty and Rosie was supposed to say a line that lead into my paragraph on Schizophrenia, however she said the wrong line leading into the final slide of the presentation. I didn't go back as I didn't want to mess up any cues for anything, so I kept on going.  I wasn't a major issue however I did miss out on some information. After reflecting on this to improve on this next time we should rehearse and go through the presentation more. Despite this I think that our performance as a whole, went really well making the audience feel uncomfortable with the use of sounds, and lighting and also using live screams to create a horrific atmosphere. I believe that Rosie and I worked really well as a team and this showed with in our presentation and performance. We managed to do what we set out to do which was shock the audience and abuse their senses, which is what we seemed to do after hearing some feedback from others.

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A lot of research and hard work went into the presentation I created for the performance, especially on theatre of cruelty and schizophrenia. I really enjoyed looking into all the different fact on the two topics and I learnt so much and I know now a lot more on the topics and different aspects of theatre. We decided to split the presentation in two between me and Rosie, so we both had the same amount of research to do so it was fair, and we didn’t leave it to one person.

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With in rehearsals, Rosie and I spent a lot of time perfecting our script before making putting it on its feet, also doing this gave us a good script, it did take up a lot of rehearsal time, leaving us with not many rehearsals left. So, from this we have learnt that in the future we should get it on its feet quicker and make changes as we go along if necessary.

However, saying this we did get a few good rehearsals in, rehearsing through our lines and monologues. We also spent a long time picking sound effects that fitted our genre of theatre of cruelty, by Antonin Artaud. This also took time out of rehearsal time, so reflecting back we think that we should do that in our own time and to split up the jobs rather than doing every single together.

We decided to get all of the hard stuff out of the way first, for example jumping off the stage. As my character I had to jump of the stage to represent suicide so I wanted to get that done early on in rehearsal so I wasn’t worried when it came to doing it on the day.

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We took quite a while to decide what we wanted to do for our performance presentation. We started of with the idea of Musical Theatre, however we did not feel that this would show our abilities best as a duo, so decided to do straight acting.

When deciding what we want to do in our piece and what practitioner we wanted to use, we thought about and discussed what workshops we had done in previous lessons and we decided we wanted to use the ideas of Antonin Artaud and Theatre of cruelty. We then researched more into his work also watching videos for inspiration which is linked as video (1.).

We researched into mental asylums as we believed that we could truly get in to theatre of cruelty if we set our piece in a mental asylum, as they are well known for being dark and horrible places. I also researched into Schizophrenia so I was able to create a character based on a mental illness, but also wanting to make it right and not like I'm poking fun at some one.

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NHS (2016) Schizophrenia  [Online] Available from: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/schizophrenia/ [Accessed: 13th November 2017]
Rethink (2015) What are the treatments for Schizophrenia? [Online] Available from: https://www.rethink.org/diagnosis-treatment/conditions/schizophrenia/treatment [Accessed:13th November 2017]
Poetry Foundation [2015] Antonin Artaud 1896-1948 [Online] Available from: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/antonin-artaud [Accessed 13th November 2017]
The Drama Teacher (2014) Theatre of cruelty conventions [Online] Available from: http://www.thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/ [Accessed 13th November 2017]
Dunning, N (2016) Antonin Artaud Acting Techniques [Online] Available from: https://www.nickdunning.com/blog/antonin-artaud-acting-techniques [Accessed 12th December 2017]

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The medical drill will be used to create a sense of threat and to scare the audience, abusing their senses by putting them in the dark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf1lJywmMY8

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Torture scene is all in her head. First scene is reality, which makes her brain create its own reality and scenarios, creating the torture scene as her brain thinks something is going to happen. This is leading into the end of the piece where my character is about to commit suicide. The suicide scene took a lot of thought, time and effort to come up with because I wanted it to be sensitive, serious but also a little bit uncomfortable. When doing my monologue, I decided to put hallucination sound effects on over the top while I was speaking to create the effect that, that is what was going on inside of my head. In the scene I decided to jump off the edge of the stage onto a crash mat, representing the act of suicide itself. I decided that the use of strobe while this was happening, would again, attack the senses of the audience, using harsh and violent lighting, while something so awful is happening. I decided to end the piece on this scene because I thought it brought closure to the piece and it also left the audience members in a state of shock. Which was my aim for the piece by using the techniques of Artaud and theatre of cruelty.

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The lighting sound effect will be used to create an uncomfortable atmosphere. and the audience understand that something bad is going to happen. The use of such a noise is used to attack the senses of the audience by using a sound that is uncomfortable to listen to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY_d6paPGZ4

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Schizophrenia is a extreme health condition, which effects your mental health in long term. There are so many different types severe psychological symptoms. Health professionals describe schizophrenia as a type of psychosis, this often means that the person suffering may not be able to tell the difference between their own thoughts to reality. There are also no blood tests or scans that can prove you have schizophrenia, the only way you can be diagnosed is by a psychiatrist after a full psychiatric assessment. This is supported by NHS UK (2016) who discusses

'Doctors often describe schizophrenia as a type of psychosis. This means the person may not always be able to distinguish their own thoughts and ideas from reality.'

This proves that schizophrenia is an illness that effects the brain severely and is psychotic and only a psychiatrist can diagnose it.  There is no cure for schizophrenia as of yet, the most probable reason being because the causes of the illness are not fully understood. Up to 3 in 10 people with the illness nay have a lasting recovery, and 1 in 5 show significant improvements.

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Artaud - who was he? What were his influences?
mental asylum - what are they? What happens inside?
inside the head of a schizophrenic - what is schizphrenia? What are the symptoms? Causes?
Start calm and normal, soothing music, asleep, warm lighting.
quiet noises - tap dripping, talking, laughing

research Artaud and his influences, theatre cruelty schizophrenia and mental asylums