PHYSICAL THEATRE

What is 'physical theatre'?
It could be simply defined as a form of theatre that puts emphasis on movement rather than dialogue. Physical theatre is essentially anything that puts the human body at the centre of the storytelling process of a piece. As a result, the piece often becomes quite abstract, using movement in a stylised and representational fashion. With expression mainly coming through movement, little to no dialogue is used. However, physical theatre can still be classed as such with dialogue present, but to express certain emotions and actions, movements often tell the story better than dialogue in physical theatre.

DV8
DV8 are arguably among the most renowned practitioners for physical theatre as a complete art form. They have a focus on looking at the dramatic potential that can be unlocked through movement. Their work is often described as existing at a crossroads where drama, sound and dance meet. DV8 are known for using physical theatre to explore complex aspects of human relationships and social or cultural issues. For example, in their production of 'Can We Talk About This?' (the trailer is shown below) the director and performers used physical theatre to express extremely complicated and delicate social and political issues. The main them of the production looked at multiculturalism, separatism and militant Islam. Words and the use of their bodies were combined to express what is sometimes difficult to discuss merely through speech on its own.

Frantic Assembly
combining dialogue and physical movement
The company's production of Lovesong, by popular playwright and author, Abi Morgan, illustrates another level of physical theatre. There is a substantial amount of dialogue within the script, but much of the impact comes from the movement work representing the relationship of a couple over the years. As a class, we discussed how a story is more moving through movement illustrating an argument in a relationship, over merely having the argument take place, similarly showing the love and relationship of this couple, it would be more engaging to see it with a more visual perspective.

Stylised Movement
We spoke about what it would be like if rather than just hearing of the war at the beginning of Macbeth through the characters dialogue, we saw it, with the witches having some form of control over the whole thing. This would create an alternative, more visual performance of the narrative that occurs before Shakespeare's play truly begins. With the witches being a puppet over the battle, the performance utilises aspects of physical theatre, making the performance a more abstract and interesting piece, especially for those who simply feel that Shakespeare's plays have a focus on dialogue. Kenneth Branagh's (Henry V, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing and more) version of Macbeth was hailed for its physicality, particularly during the battle scene at the beginning of the production.

Physical theatre can also be used in the way director, Steven Berkoff used it in The Trial. It was used so that people would provide the scene, whether it was furniture for a room or a busy street. The use of people to create everything allows great opportunities for dynamic impact. In The Trial, it was the cast, very simple frames and a rope on an empty performance space that created the entire staging of the piece.

Combing Arts Forms
Physical theatre has a focus on movement, but it can be both separated or united with speech to expand and explore its meaning. It could be devised dialogue, ot contain substantial elements of work beyond the printed script. These elements could be other art forms such as music, dance, media use or visual images. A combination of these elements alongside a script allows for a new and interesting piece of theatre than the traditional, naturalist style. The audience could be reached upon in such away that breaks the 'fourth wall', making the audience a collaborator in the action. It isn't entirely unusual for physical theatre to encourage or demand audience participation.

Commedia
Commedia dell'arte began in 16th Century Italy. It was a popular form of street theatre based on improvised scenarios among stock characters. These were universal characters; masters, servants, lovers. Commedia dell'arte is a very physical form as many of the characters wear masks to block facial expressions from the audience. As a result, the performers must rely on their bodies to be understood by the audience.

Techniques of Physical Theatre
MIME - this usually means stylised movement but can be comparatively realistic.
GESTURE - a gesture may be something small but can have emotional impact or it can be a particular movement that defines a character.
STATUS - this may be executed by use of levels or by distance or strength of contact, or a combination of all of these with voice work.
PROXIMITY - how close or far you are from your co-performers can be a source of very powerful impact. For example, the threatening gangster who speaks to his victim from a distance, or from a couple of inches away.
STANCE - this is associated with strength as the body could radiate assertion and authority or weakness by stance, incorporating posture.
HARSHNESS AND TENDERNESS - used here as umbrella terms to focus on the fact that in physical work the gestures and bigger movements come together to express the emotions of the piece.
MOVEMENT - every movement needs to be rehearsed with precision.
NOT MOVING - if the stage is full of characters moving, immobility can have a powerful effect.
MASK WORK - the impact of a mask is visual and without the facial features to show action, movement becomes an even more central performance instrument.
DANCE WORK - this doesn't need to be a 'dance', any movement relative to a dance style is useful in physical theatre.
MOTIF - this is repeated use of a movement pattern which has meaning and reminds us of the central theme of the work.

Contact Improvisation
This is a developed form of improvisation. The interest is in the starting point - a point of contact. The improvisation is the movement that develops from that. Even if you're not a trained dancer, you can experiment with shared movements. The impact of a stage punch depends on the reaction of the recipient. The movements are associated and work together. Contact improvisation helps achieve a successful move such as the 'stage punch'.
There are three basic rules:
- to absorb an impulse by the partner
- to resist or ignore it
- to respond to it

03/03/2015
After discussing all of the above, and formulated them into our own notes, we were given our groups. My group consists of:
- Toby
- Meg
- Ellie
- Dan S
- Carl
- Ashley

As a group, we were tasked with constructing a physical theatre piece based on the idea of a religious argument or viewpoint. We immediately began researching topical religious stories such as the Mohammed Emwazi news story, and the Avijit Roy case. We settled on the Charlie Hebdo shooting news story that was globally known as a terror act that affected not only the families of the victims, but those who belonged to the religion of the extremists, and how they were labelled alongside the killers, even though they were nothing like them.

In my research, I found possible quotes that we could use for dialogue. With physical theatre, dialogue can be taken from reali life quotes from people related to the topic area, such as in DV8's 'Can We Talk About This?'. The dialogue I found was:

"I have neither a wife nor children, not even a dog. But I'm not going to hide." This was a quote from Charbonnier, a french satirical caricaturist and journalist for Charlie Hebdo who had had his offices firebombed in 2012.

"We have avenged the Prophet Muhammed. We have killed Charlie Hebdo." These were the chants heard by witnesses to the horrific crimes committed by the brothers who underwent the shootings, as the killers fled the scene, this is was their chant.

Our discussion soon fell towards the whole idea of being labelled alongside these extremists as a representation of the entire religion. We felt that each individual labelled in this way would have had their own reaction to being labelled in such way. Some may gain strength in their faith, in the knowledge that they know how they should truly go about their religious faith. Others may lose faith in their own religious community. Some may question their own faith, questioning what sort of religion they actually follow. We wanted to show these confused states off, and provide the message that being labelled alongside the extremists just by following the same religion is unfair and unjust.

Toby and I constructed the first physical representation, which was an idea of showing the reputation of the religious faith as the story unfolds. At the start, we would all create a ball in the centre with our bodies, that represents the reputation of the religion. As the narrative progresses, the ball slowly has parts falling away, starting with myself and Ashley, peeling off, illustrating how the reputation is falling. This would lead to a striking ending where we would each have some dialogue saying how labeling other followers of the same religion alongside extremists is wrong.

After creating the first 'reputation ball', we go into creating the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Toby, Ashley and I became office chairs for Meg, Ellie and Carl to be seated on. They each followed a chronological set of movements of drawing the cartoons seen in Charlie Hebdo, As they repeat the movement of drawing, simple yet effective choreography, an image is projected slowly that is the famous image that sparked the brothers destructive mindset, and caused them to commit horrific, planned murders. As this is all going on, a cycle of the word 'Charlie' can be heard, each of us saying it in turn, before it soon overlaps with everyone saying it faster and louder. The sounds are ceased by Dan, who shouts the word 'Muhammed'. The three office workers turn around, and stare at Dan, before the 'reputation ball' is created once again. Ashley and I drift away however, showing that the reputation has started to fall.

A park scene is then created, again using our bodies to construct the set. Meg and Carl form a bench, Ellie creates a tree, Dan becomes a public bin and Toby is a man placing some rubbish in the bin. The scene is frozen with myself and Ashley to the side of the stage. Ashley then enters, and some contact improvisation takes place, as he dismisses Toby, the civilian placing rubbish in the bin, with a push to the shoulder. Toby responds, and retreats to becoming another part of the tree behind Ellie. I then enter, and more contact improvisation occurs, as I enter placing my shoulder on Ashley's frozen, still reaching hand. He turns around, and as he does so I push his right shoulder, and he reacts by turning over his other shoulder, and then looking at my eyes, stating the word 'Charlie'. I then reply with the same word, and on this note, we both say it at the same time. We represent the brothers, and their discovery of the drawing of Muhammed in the Charlie Hebdo magazine.

Thursday 5th March 2015
Today we managed to completely choreograph the rest of the piece. This was my own personal aim, as on Monday we only had the first period to finalise what we had before we were performing them. Toby introduced us to our music that would supplement the piece itself, which was a song by the band Good Charlotte, called 'Once Upon A Time: The Battle of Life and Death'. It had a strange, eerie beat to it, with what sounded like a French choir slowly vocalising to the beat, which soon crescendo'd into a more intense sound, allowing a juxtaposition within the sound, which allowed us to formulate our piece based on the movement of the sound.

We also finished the piece similar to how we began it, with the 'reputation ball' slowly depleting in numbers to illustrate the lowering reputation of the Muslim faith. We also featured another layering of quotes from the real life event, which crescendo'd until Toby screamed 'JE SUIS CHARLIE'. This was the final moment of our piece, a hard-hitting insight into the reaction to the event from the views of the brothers, the general public, and other followers of the same religion.

The Projections

I had been given the task of creating the PowerPoint to supplement our performance. We begin with the image that Charlie Hebdo magazine released that sparked the brother’s rampage. As our piece progresses, myself and Ashley, who play the brothers, graffiti on the projection of the first image, which fades into the second image that I created, shown here:

The French line at the bottom of the image is what I graffiti onto the projection. Primarily I wanted to write “combattre les jusqu'à ce qu'il ne est plus Fitnah” which stands for “fight them until there is no more Fitnah” which is a line from the Qur’an (2:191 – 193). ‘Fitnah’ stands for disbelief or unrest, and I translated it into French to relate to the setting of the piece. However, I was unsuccessful in removing the white background of the graffiti, taken from Dafont.com, and chose to stick with just ‘Fitnah’, placed on the white shirt in the image to avoid a less professional look to the image. (http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm)

As the brothers are killed, there is a newspaper headline with an exert explaining the death of the Kouachi brothers. This shows the national effect that this event had on the world. The newspaper is a real newspaper creator in France, but the article and headline I generated myself. The date of the paper is the day after the brothers had been announced to be deceased.

To finish the piece, we do a crescendo of vocal sounds relating to the subject matter, for example as my character I shout “We avenged the Prophet Muhammed” which is a quote from the brothers as they fled the scene of the crime. The words “Je Suis Charlie” appears at the background as Toby shouts those words, which is the social hashtag for Twitter that swarmed the world, and the magazine also released that on the cover of their magazine post-attack, with an ‘All is forgiven’ slogan. 

EVALUATION

Firstly we watched the other group perform their piece. It was a solid movement performance however the comment was made that it was dance based and not completely focused on being a physical theatre piece.

When performing ours, we ensured that we had dialogue to prevent the idea of it being a dance piece. We also used stillness in movement as we found that it was a more effective illustration of the narrative for the audience than showing it through movement.

I enjoyed performing the physical theatre piece, as it allowed me to branch away from the formal naturalistic styles of acting, and I would very much like to adapt and continue our piece to create a solid physical theatre performance. I would like to perform this piece again to a larger audience, to raise awareness of the message that we based our piece on, that those that follow a religion shouldn't be linked with extremists, it isn't fair.