INDULTO IASAS 2012

             Indulto

Being part of the play Indulto has been a life changing experience for me as an inspiring actress, student and person. It was a 45 minute play that captured its audience with a an explosion of vivid emotions, such as laughter, love, pain and passion, and as the lead role, I found myself as a person captured in he body and mind of Lidia, and with the help of acting techniques, my team and my inner passion that drove me forwards, I think I managed to bring myself as an actor somewhere where I hadn’t been before.

Some interesting facts about the play that made it unique:

·      The play showed influences of he Spanish culture through its staging teqniques and elements such as dance and music, both diegetic and non diegetic, as “Sevillanas” were incorporated, by me and Nacho to convey a sense of similarity and complicity by the sinquinct movements, intimate look and proxemics.

Stanislavski once said that “The inner motives and real emotions were the key to successful acting”. For the “Sevillanas” scene as well as the kissing scene between Lidia (me) and Miguelito, I found that the “blocking instructions” that my teacher gave to me were just a structure e.g. the steps, the positions/ the hand placement in the face when kissing, the motion of the kiss…. used, as Tortsov (Building a character) said: “Without an external form, neither your inner characterization nor the spirit of your image will reach the public”. Those steps were given to us to look good I thought, however if I just based my feelings on those moves it would have been false, as they are unthinking.

For these scenes, I used techniques from the book of Uta Hagen “Respect for Acting” such as “substitution”  and “Emotional  memory” (relying on past experiences to convey feeling) as well as own instinct to take my position and move from the heart, which I think is the most essential part when acting, and so did my partners.

Memories: I can still recall the last time I did the kissing scene in Bangkok, where after he kissed me and when he looked at me with surprise (as he just realized what he had done) I felt a very powerful cathartic moment, as the kiss made me forget that we were actually in a scene as it was so real and truthful, and there was one second in which I didn’t know what to do, as I was overwhelmed by the emotions we transmitted, and I finally understood how Lidia felt, and what it was like to “Be in the moment” which was what the nature of the kiss and the Toreros was about, lining the present.

‘Emotional memory’ and ‘Sense memory’ used in Indulto

This is a method designed to help actors present truthful and more realistic emotions for me, and I believe it’s the same for the audience, as its as if they can understand whet you are feeling because they have also felt it, and it is a recognizable situation or response.

Memories: In the play, in the scene called “Hands”, ToNo and Lidia lives a very moving scene, as it was when he, for the first time opened himself to her by telling her how his mother was beaten to death by his father. Every time I act, I do it coming from my own instincts and emotions at the time, however at some points, help from some techniques are useful. I remembered a very similar situation to that story that happened to me, and how I reacted to comfort my friend. I remember I was young, but still I wanted to act strong and helpful, so that she would feel safer, and so although the emotions going though me at that time where driving me to the border of tears, I tried my best to control myself, which was also a strategic move to make the audience sympathize with both of us, and as my teacher said” to give attention to him”!

                         

Sense memory is an alternative used by Uta Hagen, which I learned from her book “Respect for Acting”, a method of realistically portraying physical senses  and states of being in a scene or moment. For example:

§  Being cold = when you got locked out of your house in a winter night

§  Being dizzy = when I played quash one morning intensely without having breakfast before

Applications and Memories: When Lidia was hit by the horns of the bull, it was a feeling it was nearly impossible to portray, as I had never been infron of a huge bull before, therefore I didn’t know what that “fear” felt like. I remember my dad, when he use to watch bullfights said “when you go to see a big bullfight, you will know what fear really is”. I used this quote as it made an impact on me coming from him, to imagine something so scary that has frightened him as well. To make the acting truthfull I :

 

Ø  Used “emotional memory” to remember the situation when I was tackled in rugby by a friend, and how she hit me in the esophagus and I stoped breathing for a while, to help portray the movement of “momentum” of the hit

Ø  I used “sense memory” to reflect the pain it had caused on me, and how my contraction looked like

Ø  I used the quote of my dad to reflect the fear in my face when facing it, however I also relied on my own instincts as I thought “As a Torera, I have to be used to facing a bull, however Miura, was established in the play that was a fear to all toreros, and under the pressure of the audience in the plaza, that didn’t want me there and the nervous feeling I felt as it was a decisive fight”, I managed to portray a beast in my head that frightened me.

Ø  The atmosphere and feelings of energy flowing and admiration I sensed when I watched a small bullfight

Ø  I also used hard noises from my voice such as “ahhh, vamos, venga, toro!” to suggest that im trying to call a big, heavy and tempting animal, and by following him with my eves as I move, I made the audience see how it moves quickly and fiercely.

·      The position of the actors on stage mimiqued the arrangements of a Flamenco dance performance, having all the actors remain on stage and involved for the whole durance of the play and sitting in a semicircle.

Uta Hagen also uses Stanislavski’s “inner motives” approach as she explains in a resource I used of  “A Challenge for an Actor” where she proposes a set of questions high in psychological and analytical nature to establish a “backbone” to a character, to help know my character better in depth, know her passions, her dreams, her aspirations, her fears, her objectives to find truth from within:

1.     WHO AM I?

I am Lidia, a young Spanish female

I perceive myself as strong, boy like, daring, girl, that is able to over take any situation, alike any boy.

2.     WHAT ARE MY CIRCUMBSTANCES?

It is 1930, before the war, In Andalucia. Spain was very religious, conservative and the citizens where very cautious, following strict rules of discipline and status. The immediate landscape in the “pueblo” I loved in, and the immediate circumstances how I want to become a “Torera” with all my heart.

3.     WHAT ARE MY RELATIONSHIPS?

                           I start by only having my mother, as my father died in a bull fight

                           I meet new people, lovers, advisors and idols as I go along

4.     WHAT DO I WANT?

I want to become a torera

5.     WHAT IS MY OBSTACLE?

I am a woman
I am young and poor
I am inexperienced

6.     WHAT DO I DO TO GET WHAT I WANT?

I will sneak into a bullfight to impress and win an audience, and make my way up, with out letting anything get in between

The play of Indulto is about the journey of Lidia, and therefore there has to be a sense of time passing by. This was a tricky aspect of the play for me, as I start of as being young and childish to later on become a woman. For this, I had to show a changing my personal and individual characterization of Lidia, and for that I had to master to change things about myself, as an actress:

o   My voice is of  a high pitch, however I wanted Lidia to have traits of a boy. I had to learn how to control my pitch as she was young, in order to show the audience that she spent a lot of time with boys and thus her boy like character and physicality traits. As she grew older, I also had to master her voice in order to not shout or loose it, as she is meant to be confident and trained.

o   Lidia’s physicality changes in the play from being playful and juvenile, as we can see in the way she runs to call for the toro, her happy, young facial expressions, her dance movements (gentle hand and arm gestures) and her smile, to later being more stiff, to show how she has mastered her body due to the intense training, how she is faster and her movements are more controlled to make justice to the”6 years, 6 days a week, 6 hours a day” training.

As time passes by, so does Lidias objectives change as she grows older, and therefore I had to construct a paradigm of priorities, to reflect the impact that people, such as ToNo had had on her, and how new experiences such as love and pain had changed her. I also wanted to show with physicality choices as mentioned above and attitudes, how Lidia, aspiring to be a man, grew into a true woman.

My favorite moment: For me, the decisive moment of the play was at the end, where Lidia kills ToNo. Its in the “dance of death” where Lidia I think show s the audience what she has become, and what her actual state of being, after her “journey” is. I like to think of her as someone that has grown up, and I wanted to make it apparent for the audience that she is divided between two world, and how she truggles when she sees ToNo coming in as she thinks, for the first time that she is unable to kill a bull, making. This for me was an intimate moment between myself and the audience as I confess to them how I have learned to love, and how something has been able to penetrate me and make me decide about what my new objective really is. For the first time, when I cry for him, I demonstrate my weakness to the audience, and they see me as vulnerable, as human, and are therefore able to sympathize with me.

For me to see members of the audience crying and sobbing helped me believe “wow, her story is actually sad” and I myself fell for Lidia so strongly that it affected me as a person. However I new that Lidia couldn’t change her nature, and that I had to stay truthful to her, and that is why I killed the bull, however, a part of her had died with it.


Indulto is a play about paying the price, living the moment and letting go. The character of Lidia has changed me profoundly, and has been a wonderful and amazing experience to get to meet her like I did, as I am proud of how I acted and how I made the audience feel.

After the show evaluations

Coming into the “criteria session” in Bangkok was amazing, as everyone clapped and cheered for us, and a lot of the people congratulated us, saying that they were mind blown by the play, the characters and the feelings. For me, one of the things that I appreciated the most as a student of drama was to be given the opportunity to perform a story that is so close to us, in front of a mature and welcoming audience that knows how to appreciated and share the same passions. Having people write you letters, and really express with their hearts and soul all those nice things about our talents was amazing, and it really made me want to act again and again. These are memories that I will cherish forever and I am so great full to have been part of this.