“Frantic assembly”
and Peter Brook recap
Peter Brook
“Once
within a theatre an audience cannot whip itself into being 'better' than it
is.”
Ø Performers
must accept the fact that there is nothing that an audience to do to ‘better’
themselves. The audience contribute the amounts of enthusiasm and interest that
they want and it is up to the actor to read this and adapt to the situation.
“The audience had seen itself in action, it had
seen how many layers silence can contain.”
Ø If a piece of theatre is engaging, the audience
can be silent and not react at all. The power of their silence is what speaks
for them.
“Theatre
is always a self-destructive art, and it is always written on the wind.”
Ø Theatre inevitably
self-destructs as what it is and the reactions of people are constantly
changing. What was once a great piece of theatre can never truly be recreated again
as the moment has passed where the audience are ‘right’ and the context and
content of the piece are exactly ‘right’. Theatre is written for the time and
once that time has passed, it loses its initial impact.
“The
theatre has often been called a whore…whores take money and then go short on
the pleasure.”
Ø Theatres
are much like ‘whores’: as in they love taking people’s ‘money’ but ‘go short
on the pleasure’. Theatres charge great deals of money for people to come and their
watch shows, the people come with high expectations from the price they’ve
paid, yet leave without the feeling of being entertained or satisfied.
“If you
just let a play speak, it may not make a sound. If what you want is for the
play to be heard, then you must conjure its sound from it.”
Ø
You can’t
expect to simply read the words of a play for it to speak. It is your job as an
actor, director etc. to bring life to it in order to have the message of the
play heard and understood fully.
“The
theatre has no exact place in society, no clear purpose, it only exists in
fragments: one theatre chases money, another chases glory, another chases
emotion, another chases politics, another chases fun.”
Ø There are
many types of people in society and they all view the theatre in different
ways. For this reason, theatre then aims itself at these different types of
people who chase different things and therefore it fragments itself: making it
less powerful.
So, what is deadly
theatre?
In my opinion, any aspect of theatre has the potential to
become deadly theatre. Deadly theatre is: the critics who don’t speak up, the
young man acting Shakespeare in a way made long before his time, the box office
whores who sell their audiences short and take the money pleasures for
themselves, the attempt to recreate the same impact of theatre once the moment
has passed and many, many more.
Frantic Assembly
What do they do?
Frantic Assembly creates “thrilling,
energetic and unforgettable theatre”.
They create works that reflects contemporary culture. They
do this using a unique physical style that combines movement, design, music
and text.
They have performed/created/collaborated in 30 countries
across the world.
The company was formed
by Artistic director Scott Graham and Artistic Steven Hogget in Swansea,
Wales (1994) where they met at university. They “formed the company with the desire to do something different”.
Recent Productions:
Ø
“Things I know to be true”
Ø
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time”
Ø
“Lovesong”
Useful links…
Frantic Assembly Masterclass: Building Blocks for Devising
Frantic Assembly Masterclass: Learning to Fly
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
No comments:
Post a Comment