Acting: Antonin Artaud/Universal language of Theatre Lesson 9

28/4/15

We got on with our script work. We are using sound scaping for some of our piece but it’s quite hard to devise our scene because it is relying on audience participation and we can’t anticipate what they’ll do. In one section we will have candles that we’ll blow out to represent how the character is annoyed and confused at someone’s age. We are trying to devise the scene but it’s quite hard to make sense of the text which is actually what Artaud wants. He doesn’t want the audience to be trying to make sense of it or follow a story, he wants the audience to feel emotions and have a strong reaction.

We’re planning to use audience participation a lot – for example wrapping them round with cling film to make an incubator feel for them. We want the audience to feel uncomfortable watching our scene because it’s about a woman being born too early and being abandoned by her parents. We’re going to use sound scapes to unnerve the audience by making awkward noises, during the birth scene the noises will be sexual to represent both making a baby and having a baby.

The strength of our work is that we have a lot of ideas for how to stage the text and how to include Artaud’s ideas. But it is also difficult to predict how the audience will react so we can’t devise everything in detail.

Another strength is that we do work well as a group and together we bounce off each others ideas.