Dialogue with the Process - Ausbildung (emptying.)
Philosophy:
We enter the space with an openness to the process, and with trust.
Dialogue with the process demands a high level of focus and concentration. Not having a set plan can lead to pointlessness. The treating of the space as in a sense sacred, a privilege, helps to keep one focused.
The crossing of the threshold into this space is important. We enter in order to work. We leave normal life at the door - it can be picked back up again, when we cross back over.
It is Live Art, so the artistic senses need to be applied. The look, the feel of a piece. It is about discovery of the work's process, and what the work is about, and that means that it is also a self discovery.
Serious foolishness, and foolish seriousness!
Praxis:
Working on working method - crossing of threshold.
Preparation to work.
Preparation of the actor in training.
- The actors body.
- The actors mind.
- The actors skill set.
How to apply the above - training the artistic eye.
The crossing of threshold. How do we approach the work space, so that it is special, important, different? How do we start our work? What attitude should we bring to this work?
Preparation to work. This is not just warming up the body with exercises that are divorced from the working process. We use exercises that warm up the body, the voice and the attention too.
Preparation for the actor in training: the aim is to bring the actor into an awareness of their own body and mind. This is brought about through training in various movement and focus exercises. For example, this may be through focusing of internal awareness to various parts of the body and to how those parts function. It may be through the frame of the neutral mask, or through a number of kinetic exercises.
From awareness of one’s own body comes awareness of the other. How do we react with movement and vocally to respond to the other - be that another performer, the space itself, or an environment? How do we listen to others - physically and aurally?
An actor in our theatre should acquire skills as an ongoing process. Skill sets - dance, music, movement styles, vocal skills et cetera are the raw material that allows the performer to explore. They are in themselves useful, but as a resource to be called on at appropriate times they become even more so.
After the preparation for this art form comes the artistic eye. Becoming sensitive to that which works. This takes experience and an artistic sensitivity. We use scenes that have an image as the starting point, to put the actor into a frame of mind where they can then use all the above training and start to put the dialogue with the process into practice.