Final

Context of the Theatre Theorist.

Theorist: Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud

Dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, theater director

Type of theater: Theater of Cruelty

Avant-garde theater 

A skeptic of old traditions and standards

Author of: “Theater and its double”

ORGANIZED ANARCHY

Goal was to draw audience in and wake up their nerves and heart

Irrational, feeling that life is meaningless or a man that's a puppet control by invisible outside forces

Aspect of the Theory.

What I will be pulling from Artaud

Throughout my creative process, I kept in mind some of the philosophies of Artaud:

1. The Plague: Artaud believed that theater should be like a plague that takes over the actor(s) and spreads to the entire audience. There is no way of escaping the plague. This idea was explored in the workshop I led for my IB theater class.
2. Cruelty: “Without an element of cruelty at the root of ever spectacle, the theater is not possible. In our present state of degradation it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made t re-enter our minds.”- Artaud Theater and Its Double page 99

The Aspect: 

Artaud implemented overload on sensory to the point where the audience feels panicked, uncomfortable, and overwhelmed.

For my performance, I will be using overload on sensory as well. This will be done by:

• Contrast of bright and dim light
• Flickering light
• Crescendo and decrescendo of audio
• High frequency noises
• Verbal incantations

• Groans and screams
• Pulsating listing effects

Artaud’s notes on Light, Lighting. Theater and Its Double, page 95

Artaud’s notes on basics of audibility. Theater and Its Double, page 93

Explorations & Intentions.

My Play of Choice

Title of Play: The Glass Menagerie

Playright: Tennessee WIlliams

Characters:

Tom: Son of Amanda, Brother of Laura. Tom provides means of stability to AManda and Laura, who do not make income. He despises his life of working endless hours to make money for the house and wants out of it. Tom looks out for Laura and throughout the play and struggles with deciding whether or not he should leave his mother and sister to fend for themselves with no money to take care of themselves and for Laura, no support system. 

Amanda: Mother to Tom and Laura. Amanda spends her time speaking to gentlemen callers. Her role throughout the play is t urge Laura to get out into the world and do something. This means either finding a job or finding a gentlemen of her own.

Laura: Laura is a quiet, shy, and intimate character. Her insecurities stem from her leg which disables her from doing many activities. Throughout the play Laura keeps to herself, almost hidden, but when she is around her glass menagerie she is more content with herself and a much happier. Her glass menagerie are her friends and her comfort. 

Why I chose this play: The Glass menagerie tells the story of family Tom, Amanasa, and Laura. Tom was forced to take the role of “man of the house” after his father left the family and never returned. The role of “man of the house” caused Tom to b the only one working and only stable source of income. At the end of the play Tom decides to be like his father, and leave the family as well, which leaves Amanda and Laura to fend for themselves.

The scene I created and performed takes place right after Tom’s final monologue, when he leaves Amanda and Laura and says goodbye to the idea of protecting Laura.

The stage directions motion Laura to blow out the candles and then the play ends. What I wanted to explore after reading this play were these thoughts that I had:

“What happens to Laura after Tom leaves? What happens once the candles are blown out.”

I found that creating a scene The Glass Menagerie, specifically the moments after Laura blows out the candles, would be great paired with Theater of Cruelty. This is because Artaud found his theater to be a good fit for addressing, “the people’s feeling of abandon and panic”(99 Double, Artaud). To be able to see Laura after she blows out the candles would be to see the panicked and abandoned woman left with nothing but her friends, the glass menagerie. Of Course the fact that candles are involved also play with Raynaud's infatuation with the power of conflagration (302 Selected Writings, Sontag). More figuratively thinking, Laura blowing out the fire is extremely powerful. Fireworks as the symbol of extreme violence and destruction. For Laura to be able to put out the fire means that she is more powerful than fire, and for this reason even more violent.

Workshop

Evaluation of the solo theatre piece and my personal reflection 

I think that my performance went poorly. The track that i wanted to use was actually for some reason the wrong one, so it felt like it was missing something. I also watched my performance and I found it very boring to watch at the end. I feel as though Artaud would not be very impressed. The performance seems to be lacking the main thing I wanted, which was overload of sensory. Instead, the comments my classmates made was more on my acting itself, as in the my facial features. That is important of course, but I think I need to work on overwhelming the audience more. It seems as though the audience today was drawn in, but still trying to sympathize with me. My goal is to just have them extremely overwhelmed.

The rough draft of my solo project was well executed. I spent a lot of time last year on truly emphasizing how to create sensory overload. I think the lighting of my project was great in terms of what colors I decided to use (green, red, yellow, white). I also believe that I executed the audio track really well. When reflecting with the class, I realized that my audio was very overwhelming for people to hear and I believe that that was the positive feedback I needed. One of the most overwhelming parts of the audio was the faint high frequency sound when the lights were blown out. 

What I do need to work on and think about are these following questions:

What is Laura going to be wearing?

At first I had Laura wearing a creme/ white dress that almost looked ritualistic from its simplicity. I did this because Artuad believed that costumes should look ritualistic in order to play on and highlight other aspects such as sensory overload. After seeing my rough draft performance I think I might not have Laura wear something as ritualistic. I'm thinking I will play on Laura’s outfits that she wore in other performances. Something more realistic like a light blue dress. I could also keep the ritualistic look because I believe it creates more fear, but I’d have to really think more about how I want to create this ritualistic look more.

How can I change my lighting grid to make the lights more blinding or overwhelming for my audience?

In my rough draft performance, the lighting grid had all the lights facing towards me. I would like some of the lights facing the audience so that they could feel almost like they are in a trance, just like Laura is feeling. This will create the feeling of the audience having no control of what is going on, and reflect what laura is feeling.

Do I want to isolate the audience or entice them?

Artuad used sensory overload to isolate the audience. I agree with doing this for the reason of isolation as well, but I also think that sensory overload can create an isolation effect from the audience’s own personal thoughts and force them to have to experience the craziness and more that Laura is feeling and thinking. I also think that more of an alienating effect can happen once Laura eats the glass so I am not very concerned with finding ways to alienate the audience through light and audio sensory. 

EVALUATION & REFLECTION & FEEDBACK

I ended up changing a lot of aspects of my performance. The things that I have changed are the following:

• Costume for Laura

• Lighting
• Audio track
• Glass prop

Costuming for Laura:

For Laura, I originally that that she should be wearing a plain cream dress, as it is seen as more “ritualistic” which was another philosophy of Artaud. I decided to change this because I realized I don't have to focus on every aspect of Artaud. To make it more authentic to what I believed Laura would be like, I put her in a light blue ruffled dress. The light blue color was pastel enough to not take away from the lighting, but also show that Laura could be in modern times.

• Audience viewpoints: The audience was able to feel for Laura more as she seemed more like a realistic person in everyday life. 

Lighting:

The lighting was originally very simplistic. I did not want much light on Laura. This was to emphasize that Laura really did blow out the candles and had to live her life in darkness. While watching my rough draft, I realized that it was very hard to see Laura’s face. As a director, I found it important for the audience to be able to see kaura’s facial expressions. It needed to be conveyed through body language that she was distraught just as much as audio conveyed that. After reflecting about this importance with my peers, I decided to add simplistic spotlight on Laura. The spotlights were the same color as the lamps so it did not take away from how color could affect the audience. Instead, it enhanced it. The ending remained the same for the lighting, only using the floor light. I was happy about this because the original “darkness” that I put Laura in remained a prominent point as it was the audience's final thought.

• Audience Viewpoints: The lighting affected the audience a lot. It made the audience want to look away. Any said that the strobing effects hurt their eyes and made them feel very uncomfortable which was my goal. I was very content with how the lighting turned out and how it affected the audience.

Audio track:

The audio track stayed relatively the same except in the end when Laura is having convulsions. At this part I added high hat and bass drum to emphasis the convulsions that Laura was having after eating the glass. 

• Audience viewpoints: the audience found the audio effective. Some thought that the audio could have been even louder. One comment that I got from the audience was that some of the audio sounds did not sync up well with the sounds on stage made by Laura. To this I say that that was not a thing I found necessary to do. The audio worked as what Laura was thinking or hearing i her head. Anything that the audience heard from Lara on stage was what was actually going on in real life. That was Director's idea for this audio track.

Glass prop:

Instead of ice for glass, I decided to use sugar. Sugar seemed like the better choice. When doing the rough draft, i realize the ice was melting away too quickly on stage. Sugar eliminated this problem. I had candles lit on stage so the ice would have melted even faster if I had decided to use it. The sugar also looked more abstract.

• Audience viewpoints:  This allowed the audience to focus more on the fact that Laura was eating sharp pieces of glass rather than glass animals. As the director of this piece, I’m glad it was taken this way. The audience also said that even though they didn’t know that Laura was with menagerie, they understood that Laura felt betrayed by the glass. Therefore, the point I wanted to convey was successfully conveyed.

Learning & Implications.

I'm very happy about how my solo project was executed. I got my message across. The interesting thing I found was that a lot of the audience felt for Luara They didn’t feel as isolated. It made me wonder if Artaud’s theory is reverse psychology? By doing things that would maybe isolate the audience, you can bring them into the performance more. I think I have grown as a director for this reason. I very much enjoyed exploring Araud’s theory.