Paula Palomino Theatre Experiences: agosto 2012

sábado, 11 de agosto de 2012

Close Analysis into Mary Tyrone!!!! Life performance and interview

Drama Journals – Extra curricular activity –
Watching “Long Days Journey into Night” By Eugene O’ Neill

Today, June 7^th 2012, I went to Londons west end to watch the theatrical performance of Eugene O’Neills famous play of “Long Days Journey Into Night”.

Bibliography:
Born in 1888, Eugene O’Neill was perhaps America’s greatest playwrights.
He was born in a hotel room overlooking Times Square, and he was a child of a touring Irish actor James O’Neill and Mary Elle. Similar to the story of the play, his father had given up a promising Shakespearean career, and his mother disliked theatre. He attended a Catholic school at the age of 7, and was later expelled from Princeton university as he was said to “lead a restless, wandering life for several years”. He went to Spanish Honduras in 1909 to go prospecting for gold but was back after six months with malarial fever. Subsequent jobs included office work at a mail- order firm, stage managing a touring theater company and dock work in ports in Buenos Aires, New York and Liverpool. He also spent a lot of time at sea, where he suffered from depression and descends into alcoholism. He then contracted tuberculosis and was confined to a sanatorium for six months.

Watching Eugene O’Neills play was a fantastic experience. Although I had already read the play a couple of times, I loved how the actors really made use of its morbid humor, to make the audience laugh to tears, as well as cry when the actors exposed their characters vulnerability and pain.

I specially really enjoyed the characters of Mary Tyrone (Laurie Metcalf) and Edmund Tyrone (Kyle Soller), for different reasons.

In the case of Mary, I was really drawn into the suspense that her character created. I was really impressed with her ability of successfully creating a character who was dependent on her addiction to morphine, to alleviate her pain, and this she showed both emotionally and physically. The thing I most enjoyed about her character was the visible journey from the start of the play, when Mary was sober and seemingly healthy, to her transformation into a mad woman, doped with morphine and having completely lot her mind.

v I liked her physicality’s- how she stitched her hands as that made me understand her addiction, her pain. It was a recurring symbol of pain, as she used it as an excuse to dig back into the past and to have a prescription for her pain.

I had a short interview with her after the performance, as I was curious about the way she managed to achieve this emotional truth in her performance, and wanted to know if she followed a particular method or technique of acting that helped her create her role: HER ANSWER:
“Mary started off as sober, and then, at the end, she was completely drunk and doped up. So because I knew how she ended, I worked backwards make my way to the beginning, and understand how she got there, and what were the reasons”.

I thought this was an effective technique to find her character’s before and after time, as she had an objective of how she wanted to end.

“I had to research into morphine addiction and used that as my base”

“In the last monologue, what I wanted to show was that Mary was looking for something. As the monologue says “with out it there is no hope”. I wanted to show that Mary was looking for something, and that she believed, that if she found it, she would find hope, the will she needed. It was through her recurring theme of faith, looking back into the past, her pain, that she wanted to find it…..”

Laurie Metcalf

At the time of this interview, I was looking closely as part of my own personal research as an actress into Stanislavski’s theories and methods, as becausce this play stems from the theatre type of realism, I approached it using Stanislavski’s methods of obtaining “Scenic truth”. However, it was very interesting to find out that when asking her if she had used any of his methods when preparing for her role, she said “ I haven’t really studied them”. It was interesting for me as she was very realistic with her character when acting, however I learned that an actor can many times be motivated simply by its faith of their characters situation and their comprehension and empathy of their emotional state, as well as by their own instincts.

If I had to act it out differently, the only thing I could think of would be to exaggerate more her changes of topic and to bring out more that double personality she has, that she let us see in the part where she talks to herself when she is alone “You are glad they left, they only bother you” “but why do I feel do damn alone?”

Another play it reminded me of was that by Arthur Miller of “Death of a Salesman”. I remember the first time I read that play, was one of the first time I read a drama, and I was amazed about how easily the emotions and feeling of the characters where transmitted to the reader by the word choices of the play writers. I loved the play “Death of a Salesman”, as in personal level, it reminded me to my family and our own problems, and I think that was also one of the reasons why I found myself strongly connected to the play, as they are domestic drama’s and the scripts are therefore used as a means of really exploring the families secrets, defaults and problems. Both plays were similar in themes, as their members are unable to forget their pasts and their glorious days, and therefore their presents are unattended and decaying.

Me and super star Laurie Metcalf!!!!!

Billy Elliot and Long Days Journey into night journal - London Summer 2012

Me and my brothers, after the Billy Elliot show!!

Me in Billy Elliot The Musical!!

Billy Elliot and Long Days Journey into night Journals

In my stay in London, I used my time to watch all the fabulous musicals and plays I could, as part of my individual research and learning, including hits such as Billy Elliot and the play of “Long days Journey into night” by Eugene O’Neill.

I had watched the movie of Billy Eliot before, but I was mostly impressed by how enjoyable the musical was, with all the dancing and singing, the lights, the props, such as his bedroom which went up and down the stage, the colorful costumes and the changes in scenery, specially the quick ones, from the ballet studio to the dark mines, all this accompanied with music. This made me want to research on the history of the musicals!

What I loved about the musical was the clever fusion on both worlds, the dancing (with all the ballerina girls, the happy and energetic dances, the youth of the dancers with pink tights; the creation of the world that Billy loved and lived for AND the aggressive, tough world of the men in the village, including Billy’s dad, which showed the reality of the situation they lived in, the hard life the men where destined to live and the stereotypical men’s job at the time. This combination was what gave great strength to the show, as it these two opposite and contrasting themes, dreams and aspirations was what Billy had to go through every day in his life and it helped the audience understand better his situation. I specially enjoyed it when the girls and the men danced beside each other, the men lifting the girls of the girls dancing in partners with them, as it really emphasized my point above, and for me, my interpretation of this was that although both worlds are very different and impossible to work at the same time, there is always a way to make things work, and this was a dramatic way to show this, through dance and music and drama.

Although it was very complicated to take pictures, as it was prohibited, I wish I had some photos of the setting of some of my favorite moments, such as when the two boys were trying on girl outfits, and gigantic, brightly colored mannequins appeared onstage and dance with them. The use of props here was outstanding and unexpected, and I believe they symbolize the greatness of a dream that is still two big for them, and how they wish to grow up to be able to wear them.

Another of my favorite moments was in the dance between Billy and the older him, which was an illusion of him when he was a grown up dancer. The artistic interpretation of this in the musical was different to the movie, as there the dance was at the end, and it was Billy alone, while in the musical they made beautiful ballet duet. The allusion was created by the dark blue lighting and the smoke machine, which made it seem, at least to me, that they were dancing in the clouds which helped create the allusion of the fantasy he was living. Their choreography was exact, and the timing of their movements worked beautifully in unison, explaining that Billy had already gained the confidence and talent needed to be an excelling dancer. Because it was only them onstage, and there was no public as in the movie’s version, the dance was much more intimate and magical. I remember that they finished of when Billy was lifted by a string from the ground, and could fly around the stage, with the help of the “older him”, who would push him around and swing him epitomizing freedom. It made me think of the musical I watched in January in Manila, of Peter Pan, in which they used the same instrument for a similar dramatic effect when the children (Wendy, John and Peter) flew to the second star with Tinkerbelle and Peter Pan. I thought it was a great choice to use it as it meant that Billy had over passed his barriers and his goals, and was now aspiring higher. It was a very emotional moment, followed by then there was a ‘split scene’ and we find out that his dad had been watching him. This is when we all open up, our intimate scene, to another character, and we as the audience know that he is ready.

Long days journey into night was a very different experience from the musical of Billy Elliot, as the genres of drama where completely diverse. I had read the play and admire it for its heroic honesty and strength, to which I relate as it talks about the problems that a family goes through. In my research I found out that it is an autobiographical play, and that he said he wrote “in tears and blood”. Author of other plays such as “Days without End” and “Beyond the Horizon”, this play was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature, and it gains emotional strength as it springs from his personal tragedies, compounded by his own emerging illnesses.

The play followed the guidelines of a realistic drama. The theatrical movement of Realism originated in the 19^th centaury, with the aim was to bringing out a greater sense of fidelity of real life from literary texts, plays and performances, concentrating on the ills of society at the time, familial conflicts and the nature of relationships.

The stage was made very homey as all the furniture was wooden and it was fully equipped with the furniture of a home (table, library, chairs, armchair, rigs, lamps, cushions), and the lighting was a soft yellowish- orange organized by the lighting designer Mark Henderson (similar to what I used in the Kabuki show to symbolize that they were inside the “Aburaya”), represented the sunlight glows on the naturalistic, solid, wooden set. Given the literal and metaphorical darkness to come, the sheer heat of the image seems to herald a dramatic range sometimes denied by productions too easily addicted to O'Neill's pain-filled.

I mainly focused on the character of Mary Tyrone for this project, as the actress, Laurie Metcalf, is very inspiring and I have always been a fan of her work. Analyzing her acting and her character, she was a very passionate woman, full of inspirations and dreams, faith, but that had been covered by the pain that the present brought to her life. For this, she became a morphine addict, and obsessive about her appearance. She managed to keep the audience intrigued y the representation of the split personality her character went trough, when she changed from being a lovable mother with her soft looks and actions towards her husband and sons, to change to an neurotic woman, confronted by childhood memories and pain, shaking and always looking and acting frenetically like a distracted ghost, escaping her pain with the use of drugs. Her performance indicated clearly the rooted solitude of her as acts and her being and the delusional nature of the addiction.

Other characters, such as the anguished, tight-fisted father, David Suchet gives a performance of high-definition intensity, suddenly seeming physically diminished as expansive hope gives way to a bitter despair. His eyes glow with love at one moment for Mary and his family, and spark with fury the next. And the passage in which he describes his dirt-poor childhood, which in part, at least, explains the meanness with money that possibly caused his wife's addiction, and certainly explains his sell-out career, is overpoweringly moving.

It is a family racked by addiction, despair and festering guilt, but in the opening act O'Neill offers a heart- wrenching glimpse at hope. After years addicted to morphine, first prescribed to her when she gave birth to Edmund - O'Neill's portrait of himself as a young man - the mother, Mary, appears to have undergone a successful cure. Her actor husband James is palpably proud of her, and the two sons are less juiced up than usual. The production brilliantly captures the tension of characters walking on eggshells around each other, fearful that this brief moment of happiness will be short lived.

The play, a single day in the life of the Tyrone family in their summer home in 1912 I thought it was quite a brilliant masterpiece, that made me laugh more than with the book as the comedic elements were beautifully acted out, specially the irony of the characters that laughed at their depressing situation. It also made me cry however, as although the scenes were sometime static and there was no change in setting, the emotional tension between the characters and their incapability of helping themselves and each other and fixing something that is so broken shows their characters human souls in their purest form, and it is extraordinarily moving.

Extracurricular activity -London 2012 Environmental theatre

Today, Tuesday 6^th of June, 2012, I went for lunch to the “Covent Garden” in London with some family friends. There, I encountered a very popular form of theatre, and what I think is one of the most entertaining, brave and accessible forms of theatre there are; what I like calling “Street Theatre”. This form of theatre (the ones I saw) consisted of :

1. Mime

2. Clowns

3. Jugglers

They are all forms of environmental theatre in a way, as they use the spaces they have as their stage, however they rely more on the open spaced/ public venues to perform and therefore these places become characteristic to these forms of theatre.

What I noticed they all had in common was that their performances had to be:
1. Short (normally little skits and “episode” of different stories/excercises (e.g. Clowns rode unicycles in one skit and then told some jokes in another)

2. They had to be funny- as the people where walking by and it was a form of attracting the public

3. It had to show some kind of “wow factor” something unusual or that had some feeling of thrill to the audience- to keep the audience engaged. E.g. Balancing acts

As further research, I looked into Comedy theatre. Interesting enough, traditional western theatre is divided into 2 categories, Drama and Comedy:

A drama ended typically with the tragic death of the fictional (or even sometimes historical) liked character or hero of the story, where as comedy plays normally evolved around more middle class problems, and family/daily stories, and ended with happy endings.
According to Thomas Hobbes, he speaks of laughter as a “sudden glory” and is correlated with the feeling of superiority, which is an essential factor produced by the comedy, and which makes this type of acting/theatre sometimes more enjoyable and likeable!

Voice projection was very important to make everyone hear, and most of them added some musical elements to accompany their skits, normally music that the audience recognized “expected music”. The music was normally fast paced to accompany the tension and the climatic moments of the skits e.g. when they were up in one wheel and it seemed as if they were falling off) and aswell as to help the anticlimax of the scenes.

It was responsibility of the actors/performance to engage the audience, sometimes by getting members to help out or clap for them, to create a more involved performance, that worked with elements of teamwork. I thought that this was a clever way of engaging the audience and its theory was based in psychology!! I personally, when seeing groups of people gathered around someone and laughing, want to join in as I am in the need of a laugh. When people are taken as “helpers” by the performers, I , (as part of the audience) mentally divide the two groups of people (the performer and the “human”) and because the performer is carrying tasks that take years to master, I straight away know that the episode of watching a “normal/human” person trying to fulfill the tasks will be curious/funny/embarrassing and intense, and therefore I watch. If other people seem to have fun and the task seems interesting, I will want to stay and hope they take me next time! Hehe!

As show in the video I took, the Jugglers have used a little boy to help create the tension and illusion of the object getting very close to him, but not touching him! This thrill effect is what kept the audience around me so interested!

Pantomime and Sir Charlie Chaplin!

Pantomime originates from the Ancient Greece, and although they were comedic performances that were not necessarily silent, they evolved into mime and dumb shows starting in Medieval Europe.

Charlie Chaplin, born long ago on the 16^th of April 1889, was the most famous English comic actor, composer and film director of the silent film era, and was excellent at slapstick, visual comedy and mime. He died on the 25^th of December 1977.
It was amazing to think that his parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition, and this summer in London, about 50 years later, Charlie Chaplin has left such a great influence in comedian performers today, as I saw someone mimicking his style!

This mummer, as shown in the video, was dressed in black and white costume and makeup to imitate the feel of the old Chaplin, and used this theatrical medium for the acting of a story through his body motions, facial expressions and gestures, with out using speech.

Recommendation!!!!: This summer, I watched the movie of “The Artist” by Michel Hazanavicius, which is a modern representation of the old and loved Silent, black and white films. It is not only a very touching love story, but it made me feel as if I had been transported back in time to another era, where although the wording was simple and strictly minimalistic, the emotions were still portrayed with intensity by the ensemble of music, body expressions, laughter, tears, genuine gestures, hugs and dance moves of the characters! I loves it and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in something different!

Bibliography: