Tag Archives: The Trial

A reflection on the theatre company process

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Looking back at the process it is possible to see where the company has diverted away from their initial ideologies. STAMP’s aim in the beginning was to create a performance that did not rely on aesthetics but on the performer and their relationship with the audience. Reflecting on the final performance of The Trial I feel that we potentially had a striking aesthetic due to the simplicity and intelligence of the set and as such contradicted our initial aims in the manifesto. As is stated, ‘we will play with our source, we will have fun with what we can do with it’ (Watson 2013, online), though the playing and creativity of the set unintentionally broke away from the manifesto’s aims, we as an ensemble were able to explore and play as Brook would have intended. I feel this still made for entertaining theatre.

Post-show comments from audience members suggested that the performances were excellent and the aesthetic of the piece was correct, though it could be argued that with The Trial there is almost a moment of sudden bathos that occurs in the second act with the story of Block, we tried to achieve this change in mood but still maintain the playfulness that occurred in the first half of the play. It was only when K was alone with the audience that we really wanted the mood to be turned on its head- possibly this was too late for the audience to make that distinction. The play itself was enjoyable to perform in and our end product was something to be admired and appreciated as good theatre, even if it had strayed from our initial aims.

Our aim was to create a pure theatre; perhaps we still achieved this but not in the way we envisaged. The entire process has been an eye opening experience into the industry and how it functions. Hopefully STAMP Theatre will revise the ideologies of the manifesto and continue to make interesting and diverse theatre.

Work cited

Watson, A. (2013) STAMP Theatre’s Manifesto, Online: (Accessed 22/05/2013).

Brook, P. (1968) The Empty Space, London: Penguin.

Joseph K – The dog of the law.

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This is a reflection of my experience playing Joseph K. My idea of this man has changed drastically since February (see previous post). Joseph K is the Everyman, he is a business man whose life is stuck in a monotonous rut. The course of the play is about his journey to defend his name. However, post-show, it feels like there is more. There is a depth to Joseph K that I could have never touched on at the start of the process.  Now, The Trial is more about the degradation of Joseph K and his sanity; as opposed to him finding out his crime.

Now, at the close of the show, I see him as an empty shell. A man used to inhabit his body but that man has become so beaten and destroyed by the journey he has taken that he is defeated. I felt the final speech by K in the play summed up the transition that occurs; from man, to dog of the law.

‘There must be some arguments in my favour that have been overlooked. Wait! Where is my judge? Whom I have never seen. Where is the highest court, which I have never entered? Will someone help me? I hold out my hands. Like…a…dog.’

(Berkoff 1988, p. 69)

By the end of the play, K has become this dog of the law. Berkoff implements the transition in those final lines; K starts arguing against his accusers until succumbing to the system. He deteriorates to the point of helplessness. For me I had little pity for K at the start of this process, but over the course of the three months, I began to grow this sense of sympathy for him.  This pity changed the delivery of those last few lines for me. It was no longer a man crying for help. This man needed help or he would reach his destruction.

The loneliness K feels at the close of the play was accentuated by the lack of chorus. For the first time they left the space and left K pleading to the audience. The lines above aren’t the lines I actually spoke, for me what I was saying was what I felt Joseph K would be saying, only on writing this post have I realised that I was incorrect. The holding out of K’s hands was to the audience and only them, for they were the only ones remaining to witness this end. The end of what is implied to be this man’s life.

Work Cited.

Berkoff, S. (1988) The Trial, Metamorphosis, In The Penal Colony, London: Gurnsey Press co. Ltd.

Blackeyed Theatre – The Trial.

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The Trial by Steven Berkoff is an incredibly challenging play to perform. It is a play with dark undertones that arise from the confusion and insanity that K is thrown into. At the beginning of our rehearsals I felt that it would be a good idea to research past productions of the play and discover how other theatre companies have tackled the play.

I came across a company called Blackeyed Theatre. The company is a touring troupe that was established in 2004.On their website they state that ‘The company specialise in reviving modern classics and staging established titles in innovative ways’ (Blackeyed Theatre 2012, p. 2). It was the notion that they are innovative that compelled me to look further into this particular production.

Whilst exploring their work I came across a short clip of their performance on YouTube:

What is interesting about their performance is that they have explored The Trial in a similar way to us. They have opted to use a minimal set and chose frames for the actors to look through and move around on stage during the show. In this way the world of the play becomes mutated as frames are used to create the course Joseph K takes on his journey to the law. The actors’ physicalisation is exaggerated and which coincides with the grotesqueness of the chorus.

In another clip we can observe an interview between Blackeyed Theatre’s artistic director Adrien McDougall and Simon Wegrzyn, the company’s Joseph K:

Wegrzyn highlights how the company tried to keep the performance ‘as universal as possible’, which allowed the show to be accessible to people from all different backgrounds. In our own company we want to reach out to people who do not visit the theatre and bring them to our performance. Having Joseph K being presented as a normal person amongst the chaos of the other exaggerated characters will allow the audience to instantly connect with him. In the interview Wegrzyn goes on to discuss how Blackeyed Theatre used their set that shares some similarity with our own ideas.
The Director of the performance, Ella Vale, comments regarding the play that ‘the hardest thing about it, and also the most interesting thing, is that we as an audience must make up our own minds about what The Trial actually means’ (Blackeyed Theatre 2008, p. 12). The play opens up many possibilities regarding its meaning but what is perhaps most interesting is the fact that it is a different experience for every individual. The intention of the piece could be to question the law; or question our own lives and the trials we have to face daily. I hope that our audience can make meaning from our performance and appreciate it for a show as well as a potentially thought provoking experience.
Overall Blackeyed Theatre’s production of The Trial is a really interesting piece to explore in detail. Many of their show elements parallel our own. I feel our production can be inspired by them.

 

Work Cited

Blackeyed Theatre (2008) The Trial Education Pack, http://www.tomneill.co.uk/blackeyed/The%20Trial%20Education%20Pack.pdf (acessed: 22/03/2013)

My reaction to the manifesto and The Trial

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‘I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre’ (Brook 1968, p. 11).

If we take this idea that the relationship between spectator and the actor is the necessary catalyst for theatre to occur, then we must also consider what it takes to fuel the performance from the actor to a relatable state for the spectator. For STAMP we want the characters and the story to drive our performances, which ultimately derives from the work of the actor. We believe that we do not need grand aesthetic features because in our eyes the actor and the work he/she is doing is the only spectacle that is necessary.

Theatre has, as Brook suggests, become deadly (Brook 1968); what STAMP aim to do is break the boundaries of theatre and use all that is old to create something new. We are going to be drawing from all aspects of theatre and making it better and breath new life in to it. For us no practitioner is wrong, no style is incorrect. We want to stamp our own mark on the theatrical scene, taking what is already present and overused and making it into something that feel fresh.

The Trial seems to be an excellent starting point for the company to begin expressing these ideologies through, as it is a diverse and absurd play which can incorporate the playing of Brook, the bio-mechanical elements of Meyerhold and even the naturalism of Stanislavski. Berkoff’s play offers STAMP the option of freedom and will allow us to further explore theatrical convenitons and ourselves as a singular and as a collective company.

Brook, P. (1968) The Empty Space, London: Penguin.

Joseph K – The naturalistic man in the surreal world

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So, I am to play the role of Joseph K in STAMP Theatre’s upcoming production of Steven Berkoff’s The Trial. Having just read through the script I am concerned as to how I will portray such a naturalistic character in what is such  a surreal world. It will be a difficult process and I worry that he may become lost in the fray of flamboyance that will be occurring on stage. But then maybe that is Berkoff’s intention; that K becomes lost within the law itself as he aims to find out what he is accused of. On the surface it is difficult to find any form of beginning for K. He seems like a man who is stuck in an empty life which consists of sleep, work and the occasional fling with Elsa. Joseph K seems to me to be an everyman who has no ego, and in the end does not succeed in his quest, ‘Man cannot live without a lasting trust of something indestructible within himself’ (Berkoff 988, p. 11). Joseph K does not have this belief and in my first reading, I perceived this to be the reason why the play unfolds in such a manner.

Berkoff states in the preface to the play that ‘The Trial is my life. It is anyone’s trial. It is the trial of actually creating the production‘ (1998, p. 5). Perhaps I will be able to understand the character of Joseph K as this process develops and I begin my own trial of morphing Joseph K into a real character.

Work Cited.

Berkoff, S. (1988) The Trial, Metamorphosis, In The Penal Colony, London: Guernsey Press Co. Ltd.