Porto Voiceover Text

Below is the text from the voiceover. We thought it might be good for you to read it, take it in and consider its depth to further your characters. Feel free to comment on it.

Have you ever felt the urge to travel?

So strong an urge that it didn’t matter where you went as long as you kept going.

Have you ever felt like you don’t quite fit into your skin anymore?

Like you have outgrown its reach in search of things beyond.

Have you ever felt alone in a crowd?

Wondering what you have in common, if anything, with those around you?

Have you ever felt that the present is no longer where you belong?

That you need to make it your past in order to live the future you desire.

Starting to Score Porto - 4th March 2009

Dear All,

Today's was a significant session and one which clearly demonstrated to the ensemble where we are at and how far we have come in 6 weeks. It was also an important session in terms of progressing the ensemble's identity further. New liaisons emerged and bonds were created. Also significant, was the progress of the emotional narrative of the piece.

We would like you then to respond to the following questions:

1. Discuss the importance of the open play section at the beginning of the session before we went on to create new material. What opportunities did this throw up? Was it useful?

2. What was it like to visualise the opening from the audience's perspective? Discuss briefly how your perception of Porto has changed/moved on from your starting perceptions of the concept.

3. Do you see the development of any traces of narrative in Porto through the material we have now? Discuss with reasons for your answer.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Royona

Blog Assessment - Task 2

Deadline: Wednesday, 11^th March 2009, 5 pm

Word Count: 600 words total ( 200 + 200 + 200 )

Task:

• There are 3 questions you need to answer as part of this task.

• The questions relate to the last 5 weeks of Porto’s development through the ‘R’ phase of the RSVP model of devising

• Conduct wider independent reading and use quotes and examples to support your views.

• Present your writing in academic language with Harvard Referencing and a Bibliography presented alphabetically at the end of your post.

Questions:

1. What are the key strategies of devising that have been used through the first 5 weeks of creating Porto? Reflect briefly on how these strategies have enabled the growth and development of both individual characters and the ensemble’s idiosyncrasies. (200 words)

2. Analyse the growth of your own character from the beginning of Porto to where you are at in the process now. State the reasons for its development/change/refinement. (200 words)

3. Identify your character’s physicality through detailed analysis of its body language. (For example describe your character’s use of spine and its relationship to gravity, its shift of weight in the pelvis and even the repetition of a key gesture) (200 words)

If you have any questions please contact me directly and in good time for the deadline. Looking forward to reading your answers on your own blogs.

Royona

Traces of Narratives? - 25th February 2009

Dear All,

For those of you who follow and reply to the blog, an absence of a post last week was deliberate and was designed to help you focus on the blog assessment task at hand. Now that that is completed, here is a post for this week. As always we welcome your thoughts and value reading about your progress.

Today was a big day in a sense.

1. We witnessed all the different range of material we have already created (albeit in rough stages) and became aware of the varied emotional qualities that were running through the sections.

2. We ended the 'R' phase of the RSVP model of devising and although we will continue to generate resource and research movement/gestures and physicality through our bodies, we are soon to move onto the 'S' phase of the model where we start to 'score'.

3. We also extended and refined the opening ensemble section, giving it specific focus at times to emphasise the building of a loose structure/narrative. We re-evaluated certain characters and made one a perpetual part of Porto, while another an outsider, even to the new community that has just entered the space. This necessitated her late entrance.

In the light of the above, address the following questions:

1. Describe your response to witnessing the range of material we have generated and gathered over 5 weeks of the devising process. Did it give you any vision about Porto - even early images?

2. How do you think the 'resource' phase of devising has been beneficial for the company?

3. Has your character developed/changed/intensified emotionally and or physically over the last 5 weeks? Discuss

4. Discuss the potentials/opportunities that are beginning to emerge in Porto as a result of the two characters who don't quite fit into the community for different reasons. What do their presence do to the community?

Royona

Interactions & Catalysts - Wednesday, 11th February 2009

Dear All,

Thank you for a productive morning and for your patience and discipline in delivering and working with our tasks. It was a different session for many reasons, but one that provided the opportunity for individual growth, reflection and development of your characters. For some of you it meant finding your character for the first time, for others it meant a total new discovery or change to the character you were working with and for other still, perhaps a slow growth and reflection through the work you did today. Regardless of how you developed, it would be worth reflecting on the following below:

1. What did the introductions of catalysts or interactive opportunities do to your characters who have so far been working on individual journeys? How did you respond to this physically and emotionally?

2. How did you go about devising material today? Talk through the stages not just describing them, but also analysing them.

3. What did you learn from the session today about devising processes within Physical Theatre?

4. Discuss the balance you achieved between pedestrian movement patterns and stylised technique work.

Looking forward to your responses.

Royona

Blog Assessment - Task 1

Deadline: Wednesday, 25^th February 2009, 5 pm

Word Count: 500 words total (200 + 150 + 150)

Task:

• There are three inter-related questions you need to answer as part of this task.
• All the questions relate to the quote below which is taken from one of the handouts given to you in Process & Performance.
• Read the quote below and then answer each of the three questions within the word limit stipulated against each.
• Conduct wider independent reading and use supporting quotes and examples to argue your views.
• Present your writing in academic language with Harvard Referencing and a Bibliography at the end of your post.

Quote:

“The term itself – ‘physical theatre’ – denotes a hybrid character and is testimony to its double legacy in both avant-garde theatre and dance. It is precisely this double current of influences which needs to be taken into consideration in any attempt to delineate specific parameters of the new genre.” (Sanchez-Colberg in Keefe & Murray; 2007, p 21)

Ana Sanchez-Colberg

from

Keefe, J & S Murray (2007) Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader London: Routledge

Questions:

1. Discuss the key features of the genre of ‘physical theatre’ as explored in the module content of Process and Performance. (200 words)

2. What does Ana Sanchez-Colberg imply by the ‘hybrid character’ of physical theatre? Is physical theatre a hybrid performance genre? Discuss with reasons for your answer. (150 words)

3. Identify a contemporary British performance company whose practice falls into the remit of ‘physical theatre’ as you have defined in the above two answers. Discuss briefly the key features of their practice that makes them a physical theatre company. (150 words)

If you have any questions please contact me directly and in good time for the deadline. Looking forward to reading your answers on your own blogs.

Royona

Building a Community - Wednesday 4th February 2009

Dear All,

Thank you for a hard working, patient and productive session this morning. We got a lot done, once again in a reasonably short space of time. The pace at which your are working and the discipline and intelligence with which you are completing the tasks we set is commendable. Please keep this up - it has promising implications for the work as we journey on.

Today we moved from notions of the individual to notions of the communal and what drives these moments in a group. We would therefore like you to:

1. Comment on the creative process we undertook today to allow the final coming together of the section we were aiming for.

2. Comment on the function of isolating some members from the larger community. Why were they isolated at first? What makes them move in and out of isolation and conformity?

3. How were gestures used to differentiate between 'anxious waiting' and 'not willing to confront the audience' in the two sub groups?

4. Finally, how was repetition used today as a choreographic strategy achieve today in order to 'construct' and 'deconstruct' the whole?

Looking forward to hearing from you. Your first blog assessment task will be up on this blog by this Friday, 6th February.

Royona

Entering Porto - Wednesday 28th January 2009

Dear All,

What a great start to the new semester and to the creative process we are about to immerse ourselves into! I want to thank you all for your immense focus and discipline today. It enabled us to work quickly, efficiently and professionally. Some tiny amounts of distractions can still, further, be done away with. So let's keep working at it.

What we were really happy to note today was how quickly and clearly you were able to translate our tasks into material, with the minimal of questions asked. Ask yourselves what has brought about this change towards a professional mindset. It was also pleasing to see so many constructive ideas from you to ease us through the process. In almost all cases we took your advice on board and went with it. It worked.

A note on the use of music. Music is chosen with care and considered reasons. They are not random choices on our part. The track we used today is by an Icelandic group called Sigur Ross and is called Gobbledygook. The choreographed chaos of the stage movements, reflect the choreographed chaos of the sound that supports it. The effect is a bit like bits of jigsaws that at times come together and then melt away towards discord. That is exactly what a space like Porto would initially inspire. A chaotic environment of charged nerves and calm artificial silences. So, just as we did today, we will rarely put the music aside if it becomes an awkard track to work with initially. Instead we will devise strategies to make it work. Our approach won't be defeatist but constructive-ist. You all did well to cope and be patient. And it worked. So, remember this lesson for future reference.

So questions for this week:

1. What, if any, in your view is different about this method of devising to your previous experiences of the devising process? Discuss with examples.

2. As we continued to repeat the sequences it appeared that the characters' urgencies to communicate through the body was growing visibily. Comment on your connection between the gestures/movements you chose and the emotional commitment behind them.

3. As an aesthetic, what can repetition achieve in a performance, apart from perfecting a routine, which is usually how it is used in conventional movement practice?

Start reading up and using some quotes as you answer these questions, so you can get a trial run for your blog assessments which start soon and which will be introduced in the next session to you all.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Royona

Jasmin Vardimon Workshop Photos

Dear All,

I have tried to capture the best I can the excitement and vibrancy of the workshop from last Friday. I hope you will all enjoy them. Feel free to comment.

Royona

Workshop 1 - Warm Up

Workshop 1 - Tim Demonstrates Technique

Workshop 1 - Warm Up

Workshop 1 - Song Demonstrates Repertoire

Workshop 1 - Developing Solos

Workshop 2 - Warm Up

Workshop 2 - Warm Up

Workshop 2 - Warm Up & Repertoire

Workshop 2 - Repertoire

Experiencing the Jasmin Vardimon Repertoire - Friday 16th January 2009

Dear All,

Apologies for the delay in this week's post. Here it is now anyway.

What a truly exciting and enriching session this was! Paul and I felt how valuable it was to have a professional company's contribution to our palette; so much of the material was a re-evaluation or an extension of much of the material we have explored in our own work and yet so much of it was new and refreshing. Particularly valuable was the insight into the creative process of JVC and the importance of 'layering' within choreography and composition. The work of characterisation will be very significant as we prepare to move into our own exploration of Porto.

What is important for all of us to remember is as a company we must explore and establish our own creative process and while this may borrow from others', it would be wrong to assume that our own process will become a complete emulation of another company's processes. Each company has its own needs, its own priorities and it's own vision and the approach it takes reflects all these unique circumstances.

This week we would like you to answer the following questions:

1. What elements of the workshop made you re-evaluate or extend your own experience/understanding of specific skills/techniques already learnt on the module?

2. Discuss what you took away about the working methodology of JVC towards creating material and comment on how this can be used in the making of Porto.

3. Did you find anything difficult about the workshop? If so, reflect on what it was and why you found it difficult. Can you think of ways to overcome it?

4. Discuss the importance of 'layering' as a creative and choreographic strategy.

Looking forward to your responses.

Royona

"I've been here and, I've been there and, I've been in between" - 9th January 2009

Thank you all for your mature and controlled attitude to this morning’s rather disrupted session.

We now have a starting point, a concept and an idea of how the work may develop within that. The notion of liminality ran through the entire morning’s work. Think about the connections made and the journeys travelled.

Firstly in the Gardzienice workshop. The space between you and your partner, the transference or journey of the energy and the responses to the impulses all had an element of existing in an undefined and inexplicable space. There were starting points and end points but what happened in between was personal, unpredictable and intangible. You were liminal subjects in a liminal space. You are in this work transformed and it is what happens in this transformation that happens in the liminal state.

The visualisation exercise took you from a comfortable but totally imagined space, with you, as a liminal subject, at its very centre to another imagined, less comfortable space. You made a journey through the liminal space from a concrete albeit imaginary space to………well, only you know where, and it is the exploration of such a space we embarked upon today.

Reflect on your experiences of:

1. The Gardzienice warm up. How did it affect you as both the manipulator and the manipulated?

2. How did the visualisation exercise affect you and in what way did it help you to make connections with the introduction of the concept or indeed with past exercises and workshops?

3. Comment on your understanding of the concept and the potential for a way forward for you as an individual.

Thank you,

Paul & Royona