Category Archives: Acting

Grotesque Theatre

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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

Character Development: Block

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Personally I find Block to be the most interesting character in The Trial, mainly because he stands as a haunting vision of what Joseph K’s future could hold but also because he is very enjoyable to play. Block is a strange little man who has been on trial for a long time, he explains that he has ‘taken on five extra lawyers apart from Huld’ (Berkoff 1988, P. 51.) Who is also Joseph K’s lawyer. When Block first enters he jumps onto K’s back as he believes he is an intruder in Huld’s house (where Block lives). He then begins to tell K about his struggles against the judicial system. At the beginning of the rehearsal process I found Block to be very difficult to play. Lucy suggested that he is an agitated and paranoid character due to what he has been through. So upon entering I moved around a lot and was constantly looking over my shoulder into the wings to see if anyone was spying on me. These quick movements actually made my characterization more difficult at first as I felt that my lines had to be said quickly in order to match my physicalisation and since some of my lines were very wordy and had long sentences in, it was difficult to articulate them.But through more rehearsals and line learning I was able to speak in a way that I felt fitted the character and also allowed me to speak clearly, taking pauses only when it was necessary.

When further looking into Blocks physicality I decided that playing him slight hunched over would reflect his scatty nature as well as reinforcing him as a tragic character. This also helped me develop a nasally voice that I felt worked very well with his hunched over movements. Block is a very important character in The Trial, especially in our version, which features many comical characters. Block is different as he represents a change in the bathos. Block’s story is of course very tragic, he is a broken man. By this point in the play we have come to connect with Joseph K and we see in Block elements of him so by extension elements of ourselves. There is no doubt that Block’s crimes are also non existent so he too has be deceived by the law. He was also once a rich businessman but has been betrayed for no reason in the same way that Joseph K has. This was something I thought about very carefully when playing Block. It also occurred to me that he is somewhat similar to the character Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings, both characters have been morphed physically and mentally by the constraints they have been placed under. Despite consciously making this link I did not deliberately base my characterisation on Gollum and it was not until quite late in the rehearsal process that this occurred to me. But this did help me think more about my physicality especially as Block’s character develops throughout Act Two.

When Huld reveals to Block that he has done little to no work on his case, Block begins to have a break down. For me this was the most physical and tragic moment of The Trial. Block becomes more and more worked up as he learns that all his efforts have been a complete waste of time. By this point I was very crouched down, almost crawling on the floor in fact, I wanted to show how Block had changed from when he first came on stage. So I tried to move quicker and quicker pacing up and down until collapsing into a mess at the front of the stage. Despite having no lines in this part I was able to use Huld’s lines to somewhat dictate how I would move, until finally building up and leaping to attack Huld after saying my final line. I found Block to be an immensely enjoyable character to study and play and feel that he is very important character within The Trial.

Thanks for reading, Alex.

Works Cited

Berkoff, Steven (1988) The Trial, Metamorphosis and In The Penal Colony, Amber Lane Press.

Character Development: The Priest

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The Priest is the very last character that Joseph K comes into contact with in the play. He is yet another bizarre character and I for one struggled with coming to terms with characterisations for him. The role of the priest was without doubt the hardest role for me; I found it much easier to be a part of the chorus as various roles than to become the priest. For me he was a character of the unknown, I didn’t know what I wanted from it and I wasn’t sure how to play it. Usually to create a grotesque character I would take influence from stereotypes and exaggerate it, like that of the guard and the ‘cheeky chappy’ police man. However when it came to the Priest I found it difficult to select a stereotype.

In our rendition of The Trial the Priest character had one long speech right at the end of the play. I found this speech very daunting as I didn’t want to end the play on a low note after such high energy levels. In contrast with my other character as Guard two,  the Priest had long winded speeches in contrast to short and snappy sentences, he was a man of the church who seemed to be calm and collected, unlike the hysterical Guard two, who was all over the place.

The clear distinction between characters is important when multi-rolling on stage. To create a different persona from the Priest to the Guard I gave him a hunched over walk, a calmer, older voice, and a different facial expression. With guidance from the Director I eventually found my feet in terms of characterisations. One of the main reasons I struggled with characterisation was due to the fact I found it extremely difficult to learn the big chunk of speech. In all my years of acting I have never had to learn a monologue and I tried various techniques to drill in the lines, and failed several times (though I did eventually get them).

In his writing Richard Jackson Harris comments on Helga and Tony Noice’s theory of learning lines. Harris tells us that the Noice’s discovered actors who make a connection of feeling and movement to a character are more likely to memorize their lines better than someone who does not make this connection. ‘Professional actors and students using these techniques had better verbatim memory for lines than those who tried to explicitly memorize the words’ (Harris, 2009, p. 54). This could be one of the reasons I struggled as the Priest did not get as much time spent on it as the guards did due to the fact it was at the end of the play in contrast to the guard at the beginning.

Works Cited: 

Harris, R. J. (2009). A cognitive psychology of mass communication (fifth ed.). New York: Routledge.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Emma Huggins

Character Development: Miss Burstner and Chorus

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Ms Burstner, a woman who lodges in the same building as Joseph K, is a character I find extremely interesting to play. During the initial stages of rehearsals I began to brainstorm what elements of Ms B’s personality would best suit the grotesque and exaggerated feeling of our performance. Getting used to Grotesque Theatre as a concept was something I found extremely hard, as I have never performed in this style before. However, after extensive rehearsals and workshops with the group I began to slowly get used to this theatrical genre. Exercises and techniques that helped me do so include…

  • Short improvisation exercises where we exaggerated every day situations into ridiculous and artificial physicality – this helped me break the barrier of performing to such a degree like Grotesque Theatre.
  • Performing ‘The Trial’ as if in fast forward – this forced us to push every physicalisation to the maximum. 

My character development underwent a huge change in the late stages of rehearsals, which I believe transformed Ms Burstner into a much more grotesque and surreal representation on stage. Below is a mindmap surrounding this.

miss b

During the early stages of our rehearsal process, our first response to the character of Ms Burstner was…

  • A middle-aged woman, posh, eloquent.
  • Pompous, looks down her nose at Joseph K.
  • Flamboyant and extravagant.

A concept that all of STAMP Theatre agreed on was that we wanted to combine grotesque theatre with extreme characterisation, to the point that not a single element of the character we were playing was reminiscent of our real selves. I felt that my portrayal of Ms B thus far was not exaggerated to this point, as her shocked reactions to Joseph K telling the story of his arrest was too honest and realistic. Because of this, alongside the director’s suggestion, the character of Ms B was then completely changed into a seductive prostitute.

Components of this new characterisation include…

  • Slow, seductive physical expression – I imagine Ms B being extremely unattractive, but believing that she is beautiful.
  • Husky vocal expression.
  • Constantly preening herself – this can be used alongside the element of grotesque theatre within our performance to a comic effect.
  • Seducing Joseph K throughout the scene. What I thought might deem comical to an audience was if Ms B thought Joseph K was there to have sex with her, but was actually just wanting some advice on his upcoming court case.

Although this change in characterisation occurred very late in the rehearsal process, I believe it resulted in a much more dynamic, grotesque, and sometimes comical character.

I also played a part of the chorus throughout our performance, a very challenging role. This is because I have never before played part in a performance like our rendition of The Trial and find it very challenging; the physical demands and extreme concentration required throughout is something I have never experienced to this degree before, and the chorus being on stage throughout added to the focus the performance needed. Our dramatic aim for the chorus was a collective, united group of people embodying grotesque theatre- ugly and distorted physical and facial expression is used throughout to convey the surrealism of our interpretation of The Trial.

An additional component of the chorus’ development was the physical theatre used throughout. Through extensive rehearsal we manage to create numerous images and objects using our bodies, for example a bed, a car, and an elevator. I believe this correlates directly to STAMP Theatre’s mission statement and manifesto of creating intelligent and innovative work through different styles of theatre.

Caitlin Clark

Character Development: Guard Two

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Upon our first read through of The Trial I knew I had never been involved in a play or performance that came across as bizarre as this one. The story and stage directions made little sense to me, leaving me feeling slightly nervous for the first rehearsal. We had discussed what practitioners we wanted to influence our work and it was decided that Brook would play a huge part in our influences, along with various styles of theatre including that of the Commedia dell’arte, and its larger than life characters.

From the offset, the idea of grotesque theatre has been applied to every scene within the play. Edward Braun states that ‘the grotesque mixes opposites, consciously creating harsh incongruity, playing entirely on its own originality’ (Braun, 1998, p. 68). That is true to our production in that the character of Joseph K is the complete opposite to the rest of the characters (such as the guards or Leni), and these characters are each entirely different to one and other, then as an audience you are bombarded with a clash of the chorus who are almost ridiculous. Each member of the chorus is similar, but still the opposite to K, creating this notion of the grotesque.

The chorus within the play carry huge responsibility in terms of keeping the grotesque manner throughout.  I have never been in a play where the invisible network between the ensemble members was so important. We were always working together to create a different environment for Joseph K and our audience, often exploiting synchronised movements or creating still, grotesque tablos and imagary for the audience. Jacques Lecoq, in his writing Theatre of Movement and Gesture speaks about a chorus, and states that ‘a chorus is a body, which moves organically like a living creature’ (Lecoq, 2006, p.109). In saying this he is referring to the invisible network created amongst the chorus members. This network allowed us to work together in synchronisation with one and other throughout the play.

Aside from the chorus, the first two ‘grotesque’ characters that are to interact with K are the Guards. From day one the Guards have been an ongoing project for Alex (Guard one) and I (Guard two), and the characterisation has developed and changed throughout the rehearsal process. The original direction we were heading for in terms of characterisation was the classical comedy double act with the ‘sharp-guy-and-idiot structure’ (Medhurst, 2007, p. 123). However after playing around with the characters and with great directional structure from Lucy, we came to the decision that both Guards needed to seem like they had some kind of authoritative status. Giving the guards a cockney accent and a “cheeky chappy” stance, the characters started to unfold.

Due to the fast paced structure of the Guard scene it was essential that we knew our own and each other’s lines inside out. Lucy (Director) gave us the instruction that it needed to seem like we were finishing off one and others sentences, so learning lines early on was imperative to the development of the guards.

Once we eventually had the right pace it became easier and easier to experiment more with the character of the Guards. Together Alex and I developed a walk for each guard, he swished, and I dipped; contrasting movements that worked well together.

Here is a video of the walk we first came up with together, without the contrasting movements.

We decided to alternate our walks as we weren’t always in sync, which wasn’t a bad thing at times, but often enough it was. With different walks it was much easier to focus on our own character development which then stemmed to the development of a double act.

 

Works Cited

Braun, E. (1998). Meyerhold A Revolution in Theatre. London: Methuen Drama.

Lecoq, J (2006). Theatre of Movement and Gesture. New York: Routledge.

Medhurst, A. (2007). A National Joke: Popular comedy and English cultural identities. New York: Routledge.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Emma Huggins