fosse and hyper-reality

This is not a blog which intends to be an act of literary criticism, so forgive me if the thoughts expressed here are haphazard.

Firstly, we need to address what it meant by 'realism'. (There are dozens of definitions, this is a stab at my own.)

Realism is the portrayal of the world "as it is actually perceived". Photography has obvious "realist' tendencies, as does its stepbrother, cinema and stepsister, television. Music does not have "realist" tendencies, although Cage's 4'33, for example, could be perceived as a realist piece of music, and I am sure there are others of which I am ignorant.

Theatre was never innately realist, but since the late c19th and the decline of verse it has been moving steadily in what I would term a "realist" direction. To explain this further. In the "real" world, people don't tend to talk in verse, as, say Shakespeare or Lope De Vega's characters do. But within the medium it was understood that this was a valid way of presenting the world. As theatre has become caught up in the slipstreams of its realist cousins, cinema and tv, it has, certainly in my country, taken on a more and more "realist" hue. Characters express themselves on stage using language which could be described as 'everyday' or 'cotidian'. The notion that there are other ways for a playwright to employ language has been severely eroded. Every writer is allowed to unfurl what we might call a "purple passage" - a speech which forces the boundaries of naturalism with hints of poeticism or a heightened use of rhetorical devices (cf many of the most successful contemporary British playwrights, inc most notably Butterworth's use of language in Jerusalem) - but this style of writing will be firmly anchored within a "realist" universe.

I realise there are arguable exceptions to this theory (Kane; Howard Barker) and it's also established on an Anglo-centric basis. Nevertheless, in order to understand the use of the phrase 'hyper-realism' with relation to Fosse, you need to define your terms.

Fosse's dramatic writing is similarly cotidian. I've so far struggled to find anything resembling a "purple passage" in any of his plays, although there are many I have yet to read. The language is made up of a simple vocabulary and short, clipped phrases.

When you read it on the page, it feels dense, repetitive, tricky. It's only when you start to enact it that you begin to realise that the speech patterns his characters use are far closer to the "reality" of speech patterns than most conventional "realist" dialogue.

To explain. A realist dialogue might have someone say:

I'm going to put the kettle on.

With Fosse, this could be written, (depending on the character's state of mind):

I'm going.
To.
I think I'll -
Yes.
OK.
Hang on a -
I'll put it on.
I'll put the kettle on.
I will.
I'll go and do it.
I'll go and do it now.

I hope the writer doesn't object to this mild pastiche. The point is to show that, for all that we as humans might intend to, and even believe that we do, use language as a firm, sharp implement; the truth is, in the "real" world, that we don't. The simplicity of conventional naturalistic writing is gross deceit. It's as though everyone else is looking at a phrase as though it's a bug sitting on a table; whilst Fosse gets the miscroscope out and reveals it to be a network of atoms located upon another network of atoms.

This language, (for what else is a play - hang on don't answer that), is challenging for the actor. Because the actor has been trained to distort 'reality' through the prism of a supposed naturalistic or realist writing which in practice is just another code.

However, this language is also remarkably informative, instructive and precise. It is also, in a bizarre development, extremely 'poetic' (almost as the bug seen through the lens might start to resemble a piece of abstract art).

It's for this reason that I use the phrase 'hyper-realistic' when discussing the dramatic language of Fosse. (I haven't read his verse or his novels.)

This hyper-naturalism was the challenge Carlos and Margarita faced. The more traditional Stanislavsky-based approach which dominates Western theatre direction (of actors) was not going to be enough to bring the text to life. We were going to have to employ new techniques in order to approach the language and discover its rhythm and designs.


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SUA grafitti

winter - rehearsal 2 - SUA

I have written briefly about SUA here. We had always been due to give the Montevideo presentation there, but rehearsing there as well was a fortuitous accident, made possible by the support of Sergio Mautone.

We rehearsed in the basement. SUA is in the process of being upgraded as a rehearsal space. As a result it has a slightly scrappy unfinished feel, with graffiti on the walls which have yet to be re-plastered. From our point of view, this was perfect. I already felt as though the play needed an unvarnished, home-made feel. My thinking is that, within this play, if you try to elevate these two characters into something too serious or tragic, the characters run the risk of not being ridiculous, and therefore are all the more ridiculous.

To explain. The protagonists of Winter are both, to a certain extent, damaged. Their flaws are completely apparent, from early on. Some of the things they do, including their repetitive tropes are  needy, even ridiculous. I wanted to embrace this ridiculousness, so that the actors would have no fear of it. Hence, for example, when the Woman collapses in the opening scene, this is not so much a Victorian swoon as a self-conscious, Chaplinesque pratfall.

We will return to Chaplin in a while. But before that we needed as a company to embrace the notion of gesture and repetition.

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One of the attractions of this project was that, initially, the intention was clear it was a process of investigation, or research. What tools does the actor possess in order to communicate the status of his or her character?

We live in a stage world, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, within which naturalism is paramount. Even Shakespeare seems to be treated on the whole as a naturalistic, psychologically determined text.

I have been lucky enough to have seen a little bit of German theatre of late, in the work of Nubling's Three Kingdoms. The tension in that production between a British naturalism and a more stylised, "European" form of acting was beautifully explored. In addition I came across this clip from Ostermeier's Hedda Gabler, which opened a door.

In the clip, we see the actor leave the stage and perform a curious, mannered movement, before returning to the stage. I don't think this is signalled by Ibsen in his text. Yet it opens up and reveals so much about the actor's state of mind, in a way that strict naturalism could never do. This was the direction in which I wanted to head with our version of Winter. To use the text as a stepping stone towards an exploration of the interior world of the actor.

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In order to achieve this, the first thing we needed to do was develop a vocabulary of gestures for the actors, something they supplied themselves.

I am not sure how large this vocabulary or lexicon ever was, because when the actors found things that worked for them, they swiftly integrated them. I have a list here:


gesto vocabulario

falling backwards
wink/ gignada
1 forward diagonal 1 across 1 back 1 back
bailerina

princesa - brazos extendidos y 'ting'
officia - hand across chest
wife - hand over mouth

However the truth is that this was amended rapidly. The other point to note before going on to discuss the use of gesture in more detail is that for each gesture, we also sought to integrate a sound. 

None of this is particularly sophisticated. It is also worth noting the connection of this work with Boal's machine of Sound & Rhythm. However, the aspect that was challenging and (perhaps) innovative was the integration of a strong, hyper-naturalistic text with these architectural non-textual additions.

Subsequently I'll try and explain what is meant by the glib-sounding phrase 'hyper-naturalistic" and then comment in more depth on the gestures themselves.

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winter rehearsal 1 - the dance studio - early approach

We began rehearsing Winter in a dance rehearsal space. Which consisted of a large room above a dance studio, containing pastel coloured bean bags and not much else.

My intention was to address the text without taking a text based approach. Rather the objective was to look for patterns constructed by the repetitions and themes within the language of the text.

The play itself deals with an unlikely couple who meet in a park. The woman, who has problems staying on her feet, attaches herself to a depressed businessman. Over the course of four acts, two of which take place in the park, two in a hotel room, the drama traces the development of their relationship. This is not radical material, in many ways it is the stuff of the Euro art-movie. What is radical, or difficult,  is the apparently dense, highly poeticised language the play adopts. These have a logic which is, perhaps, more instinctive than rational. The standard (British) text based approach only works up to a certain point. At which point one becomes lost in a thicket of signifiers.

So an alternative approach was required. At first, working in the dark, this involved running the scenes before we really knew what they meant. Text in hand, searching for what essentially, are patterns of behaviour.

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After a fortnight it became increasingly clear that it was going to be impossible to continue in the dance studio. Initially we had been advised that once a week there was a likelihood that our rehearsals would coincide with a dance rehearsal below. This figure soon proved wildly optimistic. The work we were doing was precise and refined. It was hard for the Man and Woman, as the characters are named, to compete with Katy Perry and Michael Jackson operating at full blast and it was clear we needed to find another space.

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introduction

In September 2012 I started working on Jon Fosse's play Winter, (Invierno), in Montevideo. The play was suggested as a project by Margarita Musto. She would act in it and I would direct. At the time the only thing I knew about the work of Jon Fosse was his name and that he came from Norway. Some minimal research indicated that his plays have not gone down well where I come from, in the UK.

In 2011 I went to see a version of I Am The Wind at the Young Vic. I wrote my account of it here. I was not entirely sure what to make of it. On the one hand the director, Patrice Chéreau, displayed an ingenious stagecraft. On the other it felt slightly stately.

Winter was billed as a process of investigation, with funding from the Montevideo version of the Arts Council. For six weeks,  the actors Margarita and Carlos Rodriguez and the designer Claudia Sanchez worked on developing not just an understanding of the text but also an aesthetic approach in both the design and the acting styles. These will be outlined in future posts, along with accounts of rehearsals and performances.

After completing the first part of the Winter project, with the next stage to be fulfilled in 2013, I have since given workshops on Winter in Lima and another of Fosse's plays, A Summer's Day, in the Galpon, Montevideo.

This blog is an account of this work. It will also document future Fosse-related projects which may or may not happen here in South America.


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Fosse workshop in the Galpon on text from A Summer's Day

(note the white chair in the middle which is a survivor from the production of Betrayal/ Traicion, staged in Sala Atahualpa in El Galpon in 2010)