When trying to define the use of Grotesque and Abusurd theatre in the works of Berkoff, it is first essential to understand the meaning of what Abusurd theatre is. Esslin states that ;

    “Aburd is that which is devoid of purpose.. Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost ; all his actions become senseless, abusurd, useless!”. ( Esslin 1983, p23).

Within The Trial one of the most important things we needed to portray was how different the rest of the characters were to Joeseph K, and one of the most creative ways to intepret this was through facial expreissions and movement. The movement around the frames was a very intresting and grotresque concept that we each had to make our own. For example:

Within the scene where the city comes to life, we all had to portray a movement and sound that created a bustling city waking up. I chose the conseience deicison to brush my hair whilst singing in differnt tones ‘Brush brush brush’. Throughout the rehearsals the soundscapes became more and more exaggerated and physicalised , which we had to maintain throughout the rest of the production.

As an actress performing as a part of the chorus, it was first difficult for me to remain in this characterisation throughout the whole of the production, as when others were in the spot light, we assumed we were not longer able to be seen. On the day of the perfomance it was clear from the blackouts placed on us that we were still in a slight amount of light, so remaing a neutral facial expression towards the audience is something we all decieded to agree on.

Through several excerisises within rehearsals we worked on extending facial expression in the eyes and mouths, to which begin with a found a challenge. Once we got use to being confortable with doing these expressions in front of one another, this was then taken to another level with the physicallity in each of our movements. As the character of Leni, my facial expressions throughout the scene were to be very wide eyed and childlike. One of the most difficult challenges for me was to keep this facial expression throughout the scene even if i was not speaking for a long perioid of time ,  as it was still vital for me to stay in character.

A decision was made for our hair and makeup to all be very similar, with girls having tights buns on their heads and boys scraping theirs back with gel. This gave a sense of union, and repeating the image of how we are stripped back to core acting and simplistic use of costume and hair.

Our makeup however reiterates that of  stereotypical groteque theatre in some aspects, with the justification that we wanted a theatre of 400 seats to all clearly see our expressions throughout. We foucsed on developing the eyes and lips, with thick eyebrows and bright red lipstick for the girls, which also subconciousley made me feel as though i was wearing a mask, and this assisted in me exaggerating  even further my facial expressions for the audience to see.

‘The Chorus’ with our exaggerated faces ready to perform

Works Cited

Esslin M- (1983) The Theatre of the Absurd (Third Edition)- Pelican Books, Doubleday and Company, Inc