What is it all about....
What was it all about?

By the way, the film is a production of Hotel Medea by Jade and Jorge's company...very eccentric...a rather peculiar taste....I heard they have a six hours long performance that, basically, takes place in many different rooms: the auditorium, inside a lift, on the stairs, in a pool onstage, and the spectators can watch, sleep, eat, watch again, eat, sleep a little more, have a walk, for six hours....during the performance. A totally different concept of theatre. Innovative.

Ok. Best moments: Pulse exercise, which I forgot to mention in the above posts. After the first exercise, of the still-images created with our bodies according to the words given, a sequence of words was said aloud and we had to produce a corresponding sequence of body tableaus. Let's suppose the order was: hate, love, blue, wind and fire. For each word we had to design a position and we had to quickly change it with the sound of a clap. After repeating the sequence numerous times it became mechanical and we had finally learnt the sequence by heart, so we clustered together in a small group and had to maintain this pulse. It was a heavy breathing, a noisy exhalation of the air through the mouth along with a bouncy movement of the body, with the bending and straightening of the knees. It was tense. Tension all over the hall. Everyone was serious, but we had to keep on going, we couldn't stop, the energy couldn’t lack. It had to be strong. Then the sequence of poses, one followed by the other, everyone together, getting closer together, more pulse, breathing, changing the poses. We couldn't hit one another, though, so besides everything we were already doing, we had to be aware of each and every actor beside us. I even drooled at one point. You get so into the exercise that you can't care less about the excess of saliva in your mouth. So you just keep going, pose after pose, breathing heavily, bouncing with your body, that you end up drooling and you couldn't care less about cleaning up the mess you’ve made. You can't care about the audience. You need to be focused at all times and you can't slow down, or miss the clap, or stop breathing or lose the pulse. It's all a rhythm and the whole group needs to be together. If one person slows down the whole image collapses, because it's a performance for the audience, a bouncy image they observe, and it ruins the entire production if one person lacks energy, so it can't happen. You have to keep on going even with the increasing excess of saliva in your mouth.

Points of the exercise? Many. The key points are deconstruction, energy and awareness and they're all connected. Deconstruction of the body, soul, spirit, previous productions you've taken part in, previous characters, speeches, monologues and dialogues. Deconstruct everything. The actor become a doll which has just been fabricated and needs to be programmed. At the moment it's blank, no memory, nothing, just the body.  In the body of the actor, you forget everything and then you start to experiment. Firstly with the 'I-am-stupid exercise' in which you experiment different forms of body, then the witch: squeaky, high-pitched voice, followed by the opera singer: loud and projected and last but not least, the devil: low and grunting. You use your vocal chords to aid you and you experiment new things other than the stereotyped voices we are used to, the almost sore for an old lady, grandmother, and the annoying one for a young child.

Then the lines are introduced. You deconstruct the script. It's just made of words, nothing but words, which have no meaning, no life, and this is what you have to give them. Once this is done it's almost as if the lines were the chip that has to be inserted into the doll so that it can start functioning. So you separate, word by word, and begin to give meaning to them, like 'TOday', the dropping bomb falling and exploding, followed by the dust, foam and smoke flying over the air and spreading all around. Then you deliver the lines, mechanically, without emotions, increasing in volume, but from the inside, you repeat so many times that it becomes involuntary and once you have played around with the order of the words, the sequence, the intonation and volume, it becomes a part of you, as if the chip had been inserted.

Awareness is also a key issue because in a performance you have to be aware of all the actors surrounding you, even though you have a million other things to think about, like in the pulse exercise. We had to breathe, bounce, think of our poses, concentrate but at the same time be careful not to hit anyone. Besides, we need to be aware of what's going on. We can’t never lose track, because if we do, if for a moment we forget what we have to do, if we lose our concentration, it all falls apart: the same way that the image collapses, a performance may collapse. You see, you need to be aware of your character, conscious of the things you have to do but you can never outshine the other actors, for it's not a monologue, it’s not only about you, you're not alone onstage. In the pulse exercise we had to work with one another, be together but we could never hit or touch the other actors, like in a performance in which you have to act along with the others but never 'cover’ them. “The whole has to be greater than the sum of its parts”. Although there are different individual actors, they form one production, one group that functions together. If one person fails, then everything falls down, so everyone needs to be conscious of what he or she is doing, even if it’s just standing at the corner of the stage.

Regarding energy, this is where the dolls is charged so that it doesn't run out of battery. During the exercise we could never lose the rhythm, the breathing heavily, the pulse, the bouncing, the energy, energy, energy. We had to keep on going even if we drooled. We could never stop. Just like in a performance, despite everything that happens you have to keep on going, for “the show must go on" and you can't let your cast down. You form a group, and everyone works together, you can't even for one minute forget the character you’re playing. The energy has to be visible even if you're sweeping the floor (I’m not saying that you should jump around the stage and breathe heavily, because the energy isn't always perceptible to the eye, but it's there).

But what about the exhaustion, you ask me? Well, have you ever noticed that when you're tired you tend to be more spontaneous, authentic, more of yourself? You don't worry about what others might think of you so you let go of that collar that stops you from being ridiculous or stupid and this is when creativity and imagination flows more naturally.

It's all too fascinating. I want to be part of their company.