Kabuki workshop 1

The Kabuki walk. This is the way kabuki actors walk in the plays, with their arms at the sides in stiff, strong muscular tensions and wide steps, to show greatness and strength.

Here, I was observing Daniel (choreographers) work with Grace ,on there attitude for her character. We were asking her to exaggerate her anger in the scene, with the help of her stanza.

Monday 7^th April 2012

Today, I helped out as a dramaturge to the class along with Natalia (The director). We decided, that in order to remain authentic to the our theatre form, we had to concentrate greatly on the formalization of the actions of the characters ALONG with their voice and expression.

For this, we thought of a basic acting workshop, were we made the cast perform simple exercises such as

o For VOICE = ENUCIATION e.g. “The Big Black Bug Bled Black Blood”. By this we wanted to get the cast used to using their mouth muscles to really open their mother widely not only to support the whole intend of exaggeration of self, but also to adapt lines to their voices (personal character voices e.g. Tony is playing Onnagata, so his voice was at a higher pitch).

o Kabuki WALK = MOVEMENT e.g. with the help of the choreographer, we made the cast combine the voice exercises they previously learned with the Kabuki standard “WALK”.  We did this with the aim of making their character voices, previously established, to accompany the way their characters moved on stage, to make them used to the way feminine and masculine characters must walk. Also, the way characters in Kabuki plays walk, either masculine of feminine I learned, are very opened and big, meaning that their walk are heavy and their legs open more that a normal walk. I guessed it might be because of the extravagant dresses they wore, so they had to have that in mind to make the characters “Bigger” than their costume.

o Kabuki “TALK” = SUBTEXT, OBJECTIVE AND SUPEROBJECTIVE e.g. choose a line from the script and deliver it with purpose. I thought of this exercise, as what I notices about each person was that they said their lines without really thinking of what they were saying. They had to choose a line and underline its “Subtext”, as well as their objective of the line and the Superobjective of the piece. An example was the line of Tone “Yeeess Maaaa’aaam”. He said that the subtext of the line was to “agree” to helping his master, and that his intended objective was to “Please” his master. However, we asked him that his objective had to be more specific, e.g. if all he wanted was to “Please” his master, then in what way? “did he say “Yes maa’am” to just make his master shut up and get the order over with? Did he say it in a mocking way? Did he want to please her with eagerness? Did he want to please her because he was scared of her?

I thought that by these exercises we got basics of acting out from them which was important. I reminded them that the audience was young, and therefore exaggeration and comedy was vital to make them really enjoy the essence of Kabuki…. Ye will se how it develops in the next weeks!!!!

Aesthetics of Kabuki:

The unifying aesthetic principal for all elements of Kabuki is formalization!

In the course of the development of Kabuki, even when trying to originally produce a realistic representation of parts of the performance, has been very highly formalized and have become symbolical. I have realized that there are specific parts of the play in which the actions of the actors transform into very symbolical procedures, or even dances, such as sharpening a knife or the action of killing.

My teacher talked today about something i became really interested in, which was how an actress, in another play we read, in order to prove her patience, she performed the 60 steps of achieving "The perfect cup of tea".

Me, Juls and Katy tried this, but with the steps of putting on make up. I was the make up artist that put the make up on Juls, and Katy was the narrator that explained our actions. We divided the actions into 4 separate sections.

For each action, which could be as simple as “Putting on the eye liner”, I exaggerated every single gesture, starting with the hands by spreading the fingers out and wrapping an “imaginary pencil”, then creating a line that would stretch over her eyes. Juls, to make it more formalized, created a sequence of steps that I would perform on her, and she would give back a “reaction” to the movement.

For example, when I would pat her face with foundation, she would make her body vibrate along when/as she “thought” she felt the patting. Or when I would put on the eye liner, she would follow the direction I was moving the pencil from with her head, to represent how the tip of the pencil had actually “touched” her eye lid and was moved by the direction of the line.

I explained her this by making her use Sensory memory=  when the actress uses past experiences to recall what it felt like, however making the gestures exaggerated and formalized. We used slow steps (slow motion) and movements to symbolize the “care” put into every action, which is a convection that Kabuki performances normally utilize to show the virtue of Patience.

Other EXPERIENCES

*This exercise made me think of a similar one we did in IASAS, where we worked in partners. One person had to close his evyes, and imagine that they were a sea weed in the ocean. The other person acted as the “wave/water flow” and was incharge of making the other person move and react to the changes in the water flow. When the water was calm, the “water person” would make the other move using soft noices from side to site towards them in different directions, or would gently raise their hands or legs or slightly bend their backs or move their sholders in a sort of “swing”. When there was a storm, the noices would get harsher and more brutal, and the movements a=upon the seeweed were stronger, such as making them turn rapidly, or pinching them at specific parts of the body to make them bend over.

After this, I understood that the aim of the exercise was that of trust, and the ability to let your body react from impulses. This in a way, is the contrary of Kabuki, as the movements for it are normally much more synchronized and controlled, however its about learning to really appreciate each and every movement as part of a dance, and memorizing it to represent dominance and accuracy.

EVALUATION OF OTHERS

The video below shows Betina’s groups attempt to emphasize and put notion into the steps of what they called “Taking an exam”. Even though the walk was a bit monotonous and I personally thought didn’t have much aim as the facial expressions that accompanied it didn’t show much emotion (either fear or nervousness by frowning or looking around nervously) then that transition for me, although it was exaggerated in terms of the physicality of the body and the movements of the walk, had not much aim. It was later, when they made up a series of steps of flipping pages, taking out the pencils and the rubbers that was interesting to watch, as they really turned it into a procedure. I really likes the over exaggerated choice of ending of the facial expression of “HORROR” at the end, as it was a nice finally that worked well with the repetitiveness of the steps, to give it a sharp, climatic ending, and reminding the audience that the actors are actually taking a test.

The video bellow is that of Katy and Ali. I personally really enjoyed the way they put the piece together, as they played around with the technique of REPETITION to break down the steps of their “Waking up”. Although the steps were the same each time (alarm sound goes on= wakes up= turns it off= goes back to sleep= alarm sound goes on again……), what I noticed was that although there was no variation, it was still clearly shown by the structure of repetition that it was actually a procedure. It was also entertaining to look at, because the procedure reflected an actual, naturalistic procedure that we all go though (most of us) every morning to “wake up”, and therefore seeing it being exaggerated really made me realize how Kabuki is so effective, as it focuses on the little things to make them really “BIG”.

This exercises really made me be conscious of the necessity of actually exaggerating the moves, as because Kabuki theatre gives great importance to aesthetical beauty, that is primarily what makes kabuki Authentic and beautiful.