London Living: An Actor's Journey : Week 5: A sequence of shows

I really am horrible at blog titles. *cringes*

In any case, this week, the LDA students had the opportunity to see three shows in succession-the first was Macbeth at The Vaults, How to Hold Your Breath at the Royal Court Theatre, and La Traviata at the London Coliseum for the English National Opera. Three vastly different shows. And I wanted to touch on all of them because I realize I haven't really talked about theatre shows on this blog in depth-and I should! These shows we are seeing is an extension of the classroom.

For Macbeth-we had to walk from a station to an underground tunnel-the space they performed in is underneath the tube system, in a mysterious, cave-like, graffiti covered atmosphere. I thought it was refreshingly nice...something different than the usual, indoor proscenium stage. Although, I must say-there is a specific audience that come to the Vaults for art galleries and shows produced by the hottest independent theatre company of the time...namely 20/30 somethings milling about in man-buns, high-waisted jeans, white, casually posh-that sort. We kind of stood out, but I was inspired by the space-it was unconventional, which is what I crave. The show itself was very conceptually driven-they weren't trying to present Shakespeare's Macbeth but rather, a show of their own that takes place inside of Macbeth's "heat-oppresed" brain. They had some moments of brilliance, but failed to set up their ideas in a holistic way, I thought they could have repeated some sequences to fully flesh out certain ideas. I also disliked the actor playing Macbeth. He sped through most of his lines and swallowed the rest of them. But the fact that they used their own concept to drive a production is inspiring. I will give them that.

The show at the Royal Court is by Zinnie Harris, and starred Maxine Peake. She is excellent. It was a lesson to watch her work. Again, I thought this play brought forth a flurry of good ideas, what happens when you fall into hopeless poverty, the consequences of a one night stand, ideas from opposite ends of the spectrum-all crammed in there. Besides the lead actor's work, I was not much moved by anything else. The set was interesting-a huge space that they covered pretty well. The writing is good, of course, but the plot itself-I didn't care for it. Perhaps a play that needs to be taken back to the rehearsal room, reworked, and then presented to an audience.

The opera, however, blew me away. Whoa. We talked about it in my Dramatic Criticism class, and our teacher (Christopher Cook) waxed poetical about the German director, Peter Konwitschny. Apt, and of good credit. Because I thought his vision for the opera was...mind blowing and "original." This was my first opera and I don't have a "traditional" La Traviata to keep in mind, also I do not know anything about the traditions of opera-so I guess I can't really speak with authority. In any case, the set consisted of a series of blood red curtains and one wooden chair. It was done in modern dress, and performed in English. I loved his concept-how we really got to focus on Violetta's character, her struggles, and her arc. I think if I saw a "traditional production" of this, I would be less touched-because it is so contrived-a beautiful woman who died for love. Instead, we followed the story of a less perfect love story-a beautiful woman, yes, who is dying from her exuberant party girl lifestyle, finds a man who claims to love her for who she is-but maybe just loves the idea of her. She decides to love and depend on him, and ends up meeting her death because of it. The curtains corresponded to her psyche, and they would open and close based on the characters present, and the scenes-there were some instances where she would mime closing curtains and opening them, but she pulled at air. In the end, for her death scene, she is left alone on stage in a pool of light with no curtains, her wig cast away, her hair undone, her dress disheveled-I got the sense that we the audience was in a way-responsible for her death too, we willed her death, watched her and slowly poisoned her as well as the other characters on stage. It was invigorating to see one strong idea drive an entire show-the idea of this woman and the curtains that she holds inside of her and that truly adorn her life-having to be the life of the party and perform for her peers 24/7. Brilliant. Could have sounded totally campy when it was first proposed, I think, but then again-he is a respected director-and he definitely followed this idea to the end. Favorite piece of theatre I've seen thus far. A great lesson.

In terms of my actual classes, a lot of internalizing is being done, I think. What I mean is-my teachers for Acting and Shakespeare talk alot about physical gestures, and then internalizing them, and speaking with the same force and conviction as we did when we said the words with the gestures. As well as looking at animals for our characters, and internalizing their characteristics. Then there is another aspect of the word, we now have the raw knowledge of how to speak well, how to warm up our voices and bodies to perform, the dances for Period Dance, the choreography for Stage Combat, the phonetics for our Speech & Dialect class and RP accents...now our task is to apply ourselves to the concepts so that we may perform effortlessly. Let us see this coming week, shall we?

Managed to haul my camera to school and take a couple of pictures of the space...