METRICS AND IMAGES IN THE THEATER-EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM "TECHNOLOGY OF FORMATION” AND THEIR APPLICATIONS
Master's thesis'2007 of Anelia Christova Grigorova № 02272
Master Program "Principles of theatrical research”, New Bulgarian University
Supervisor - Prof. Vazkresia Viharova
Advisor - Prof. Arch. Zarko Uzunov
”Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.."
Albert Einstein
TABLE OF CONTENTS
i. Abstract / Résumé
1. Introduction
2. The series of the training courses “Technology of formation”
2.1. Current situation of the courses
2.1.1 Part One (Résumé)
2.1.2 Part Two (Résumé)
2.1.3 Part Three (Résumé)
2.1.4 Part Four (Résumé)
2.1.5 Part Five
2.1.6 Part Six
2.1.7 Part Seven
2.2. About the tasks in reserve, short comparison and about some of the applications
3. Summary and supplements. Final conclusions
ii. Selected Literature
ABSTRACT
Here presented work aims to describe the scientific-research problems and tasks / exercises, provided (laid down) and taught in the four years-cycle of courses "Technology of formation" at the "Theater" program, New Bulgarian University (NBU). Approaches which implicitly take turns in the master’s thesis are: introspection; empirical approach and benchmarking.
"Technology of formation” is analytical-training discipline, which object of study, is the cognition of the human body – of the actor body and his interaction with the environment. The result of this interaction is a form of behavior, viewed as a series of abstract metrics generating concrete images - behavior. Authors of the training system are architect Zarko Uzunov in collaboration with the director Vazkresia Viharova (both from Bulgaria
Examples of the application of technological approach to build final student presentations and performances are also outlined. Possible problems in using metric techniques in the field of theater as a basis for the actor to reach "emotion" (empathy) or as a basis for the actor to reach "distance from emotion" (rationalization, intellectualization and generalization of experience)[1] are also discussed.
The courses, although providing opportunities for individually, sporadic accumulation of skills are also examined in their ability to be chronologically (logically) linked. This allows to the cycle of courses to be viewed as an overall/ comprehensive educational "system", training skills in the future actors in range: from knowledge of its own professional apparatus, throughout skills of the shaping of stage space, to various ways of communicating and interacting with the audience.
In search of evidence of the wide range of tasks for training and the multiple skills effect through the theater-educational system "Technology of formation", examples and comparisons are made primarily with the system of Stanislavski and Meyerhold’s method. Examples from the fields of fine art, cinema, math, linguistics, philosophy and others are also outlined.
Examination of the place of “Technology of formation” in view "to further expansion of the concept of artistic practice" is also made as attempt. The conclusions explicitly focuse on the interdisciplinary and the scientific character of the series of courses "Technology of formation”, on the actuality of its language and on the possibility that it can even be seen as a "metalanguage" and of course, the work is focused on the possible perspectives of the people trained in the system.
[1] The notions are used similarly to those used by W. Worringer in his dissertation " Abstraction and Empathy" and the principle of Brecht described as "defamiliarization / distancing or estrangement effect"
Key words: interdisciplinary - theatre, arts, mathematics, linguistics, philosophy etc.
RÉSUMÉ
Le travail ci-présenté vise à décrire les problèmes de la recherche scientifique, les problèmes des tâches / des exercices, qui sont deposés et enseignés dans le cycle de cours de quatre ans “La technologie de la formation” au programme “Théâtre”, Nouvelle Université Bulgare (NBU). Les approches qui se suivent implicitement à tour de rôle dans la thèse de maîtrise sont: l'introspection; et les approches empirique et comparative.
“La technologie de la formation” est une discipline analytique et de formation, ayant pour objet d'étude la connaissance du corps humain - du corps d’acteur et son interaction avec l'environnement. En conséquence de cette interaction se forme un comportement, considéré comme une série de paramètres abstraits métriques, générant des images spécifiques - générant un comportement. Des auteurs du système de formation sont l'architecte Zarko Ouzounov en collaboration avec la metteur en scène Vazkresia Viharova (les deux en provenant de Bulgarie). Les principaux outils qu’on utilise le long du cycle de cours sont les suivants: exploration de différents domaines de la connaissance, analyse, synthèse, extrapolation, interpolation, et tout cela, résultant en acteur comme de différentes manières de jouer. Objet d'études sont également ces conditions, qui peuvent être décrites comme “des raisons externes (de comportement)”, et qui forme le comportement de sorte que le corps humain, selon types de connexions et interactions avec le partenaire/s, avec l'environnement ou avec un objet/s - peut atteindre ou s'inscrir dans une esthétique ou dans un cadre de l'idée - une idée qui n’est pas encore créé, une idée de style qui ne figure pas encore historiquement comme esthétique.
Des exemples de l'application de l'approche technologique à la construction des présentations finales des étudiants et des spectacles sont également décrits. Les problèmes possibles en utilisant des techniques métriques dans le domaine du théâtre en tant que base pour l'acteur de parvenir à “l'émotion” (empathie) ou comme base pour l'acteur d'atteindre à “la distance de l'émotion” (rationalisation, l'intellectualisation et la généralisation de l'expérience)[1] sont également discutés.
Les cours, étant séparés, malgré qu’ils continuent d’offrir des possibilités d'accumulation de compétences individuelle, quoi que sporadiques, sont également examinés dans leur capacité à être chronologiquement (logiquement) liés. Cela permet au cycle de cours à être considéré comme un ensemble d'éducation complet - comme un “système”, formant dans les futurs acteurs une gamme: de la connaissance de leur propre appareil professionnel, tout au long - des compétences de l'élaboration de l'espace scénique, jusqu’à différentes façons de communication et d'interaction avec le public.
A la recherche des preuves de la vaste gamme de tâches de formation et de l'effet de multiples compétences à travers le système éducatif théâtral “La technologie de la formation”, des exemples et des comparaisons sont faits principalement avec le système de Stanislavski et la méthode de Meyerhold. Exemples tirés des champs des beaux-arts, du cinéma, des mathématiques, de la linguistique, de la philosophie etc. sont également décrits.
Une tentative a été faite pour examiner la place de la “Technologie de la formation” en vue de l'expansion de la notion de “pratique artistique”. Les conclusions se concentrent explicitement sur l'interdisciplinarité et le caractère scientifique de la série de cours “Technologie de la formation”, sur l'actualité de sa langue et sur la possibilité que cette discipline peut même être considérée comme un “métalangage” et bien sûr, le travail est porté sur les perspectives possibles des personnes formées dans le système.
[1] Les notions sont utilisées d’une manière similaire à celles-ci utilisées par W. Worringer dans sa thèse "Abstraction et empathie" et le principe de Brecht décrit comme “défamiliarisation/ ou comme effet de distanciation”
Mots clés: interdisciplinaire - théâtre, arts, mathématiques, linguistique, philosophie etc.
N.B. This is a mechanical translation (not reviewed by “human” English translator), and which is made through “Google-translator” and “SA Dictionary”, so there might be a lot of errors, which could cause wrong understanding/ misunderstanding of the text!
For example:
Instead of “wedge” it must be written “tracksuit/training suit”;
Instead of “pointer” it must be written “forefinger/ index finger)” etc.;
Waiting for the Official translation, I’m very sorry for the inconvenience caused in reading some parts of the text. 1. INTRODUCTION
In the year of 1991/1992, the autumn, at the opening of the New Bulgarian University (NBU), in its educational program and in its catalog is inscribed the “Department of Theatre”. The conceptual framework and the program of Theatre Department are made by a group of “followers”: the director Vazkresia Viharova – Head of Department, the architect Zarko Uzunov and the actor Veselin Mezekliev – all being teachers to the program. The courses leaded by them were: "Acting" - leaded by V. Mezekliev and prof. V. Viharova, "Actor auto-training" - leaded by the same team, “Technology of formation” - leaded by architect. Z. Uzunov and "Stage production" - leaded by prof. V. Viharova.
The workload for the semester - main and supporting disciplines - is 540 hours. Courses are held in "Student house", the square "Hladilnika" and the “122nd school” and the office of the Department of Theatre is in a basement of “Iskar ” Str.
And although many colleagues, the acquaintance of which have to be made (in 1991 the number of students admitted to the program of Acting and Directing are more than 60 people), and despite the huge distances to be ran, what comes to my mind when I look back is the following:
I. the performance at the start of the school year - "We play beyond" by/based on texts of Ivan Hadjiiski: which was made in the open mine; with canvas partitions and huge movie-projectors separating spaces; and bodies and faces of the actors, covered with clay.
II. a "manifesto" from the show "Zeng", which had to be as explanatory for us on the program questions.
III. a phrase from the advertising-educational film on the show "Customs of the people" - namely: "This is my hand ... What it can experience in time and space ...." and cadres with a human body in the framework of a “metal square”, such a scheme of Leonardo da Vinci (pls, see Figure 1[1]), which body, left even without the training facility “metal square”, “remembers” and uses the behavior and the energy, accumulated during the so called training –“work with the training facilities”…
In short, the main programs in which we would go for the four years of study were called "The actor granted to himself" and "Bodies and time".
It would be too difficult to screen out how far the first concept was stretched - the concept of V. Viharova and where began the second one - that one of Z. Uzunov. Whether, by analogy with Stanislavski, the first concept would deal with psychophysical techniques - to explore the own possibilities of the actor, and whether the second one would deal - with how to do role and performance? So if the way of teaching of Vazkresia was more narrative and historical – so she talked with examples of Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Vahtangov, Michael Chekhov, the problems served by Zarko identifies for me with "cleaner"-experimental science: research, measurement of time and space and how those metrics affect the actor.
Anyway, my sense of that time is like for an endless seminar where teachers enter as team in the classes, set problems, tasks, answering questions ... eg. such: "What is the advantage of working with the training facility" before it to accumulate 30 kg , to play a role?”[2] And the answer was approximately as follows: "The effect of feeling after such a short training is no less, and may last longer".
Indeed, the programs, among which we were failed, were written with the idea of “Theatre Laboratory”. A place where, on the given, formulated problems, some solutions could be generated, some of which solutions could be used in performances, productions - even part of them could be used in the distant future. As an illustration, I recall one example cited to us by Zarko, years later: how a laboratory for “space research”, invented “high-isolation coverage” which was released to the general public until after 20 years... Of course, after such of example, the cost of our efforts as it began to rise! ... Yet the manner of teaching was different than expected more rigorous academic relations: Kressi (Vazkresia) and Vesko participated in the courses, playing alongside the students ... Zarko read to all of us the principles from “The Monastery Shao-Lin” ... – and, as they said: “but the though after all is that the actor is not a "nuclear physicist!" Although from time to time, during the student presentations, the halls were really turned into laboratories. Then the students, dressed in black – wedge, jacket and hat-sock on his head, no makeup and jewelry - came out ahead and then for the onlookers becomes important, where and how will deviate the pointer of his right hand - when the visual image of the "threat" with audio-referred image "attention" will move to the visual image "request for silence."
But what is "Technology of formation”? Let me give another example before I explain, and namely - that at the end of the second semester of the academic year 1991-92, for final examination for the students, almost unexpectedly, was given a problem with "postcard" to be solved. The task runs as follows: "After criteria, chosen by you, make the dissection of a postcard on its items. Using the constituted substance and the working concepts and principles of work, learned during the semester as a means – please, do the conversion, do the finalization of the postcard."
Inevitably over the years, the initial reactions to this task can be described as follows: "Postcard!? – Why postcard? - I want to become an actor, director ... – What does this have in common with the postcard?".
Actually, in this framework task, the idea of interdisciplinarity was laid down. The ability to draw issues, principles and approaches from one area, which could be "interpolated", to be applied, as in the laying of the problems, but also in seeking for solutions in another area.
Of course, I remember only my decision making, or rather, my reflection on the task - about whether my postcard might "develop" in the space? – And is that equivalent to develop the degree of the corners between the parties of the multiplied elements? - My postcard was folding one: there was shearing, which could be investigated. Could it be "developed" and over the time? - The decision was: to decompose it in a jar with sand.
"Technology of formation” has developed over the years, but it did not seem to me, as a framework and general direction, but as "swarming" of tasks, such as specifying the "jargon", as a growing approximation to the idea of "seeming-to-experimental-science", and as I think - even as an approximation to the “solfeggio in the music” - to the math, to the science - something like "grammar of fantasy” in the theater. Now, if I try to give the first, the most general definition of what it is "Technology of formation”, I would say the following:
This is analytical-training discipline, which object of study, is the cognition of the human body – of the actor body and his interaction with the environment. The result of this interaction is a form of behavior, viewed as a series of abstract metrics generating concrete images - generating behavior. The main tools that use this cycle of courses are: research from different fields of knowledge, analysis, synthesis, extrapolation, interpolation and transformation, resulting in different actor ways to play. Object of studies are also those conditions, which can be described as “external motives (for behavior)”, and which forms behavior so that the human body, according to types of connections and interactions with partner/s, with the environment/ or with object/s - can reach or fit in an aesthetic or in a frame of idea - an idea of yet uncreated, of yet not listed historically aesthetic.
I will try to expand a little be more the definition, even at the risk to cross the conceptual line in search of V. Viharova set as a program to the cycle of courses "The actor granted to himself. "Technology of formation" also gives a point of view to the human body, described as two subsystems - SOund (SO) and MOvement (MO), the human body, described in reference to an imaginary horizontal line - as the shoulder girdle and pelvic girdle, and in reference to an imaginary vertical - as symmetric and asymmetric, as concave and convex – the human body as situated/ sculptured in the space. The SOund (SO) and the MOvement (MO) subsystems are considered as vehicles/medias of information that can be loaded with different degrees of imagery information. Those degrees can be arranged in a straight line - in a continuum between abstract and concrete or between so called - "abstractive-ness" and "imagery". A series - a succession of “images” and “abstract-metrics” forms a behavior, which in turn fits in the space-time (and it remains also susceptible to the influence of space-time). The various “images”, equal to so called “events”, have their own “Energy values”. According to that what conditions will be imposed or otherwise said, what will be the interaction between the human body with other bodies/objects in space-time, the “human behavior” or the so-called - the “theatrical form”, could fall into one or into other aesthetic or in terms of a space of idea.
Nowadays it is still hard for me to make a strong distinction between the research inventions of Prof. Viharova and those of arch. Uzunov, not least because part of above - mentioned research problems could be reached today in the classes of "Actor auto-training", such as: sound, movement, energy ... graphic records ... It is also hard because in the further exposition of the described tasks from the “Technology of formation”, from time to time it was also necessary to "borrow" from "the pure directorial (internal psychological) guidelines”, if the student fails to open spontaneously (than one) to the "poetics" and the pleasure of the discovery of "mystery" of "pure" metrics ... But the key, which I find relatively assisting to the distinction between the researches of Viharova and those of Uzunov is expressed in the following terms: "the director-driver" and "the architect-agent" - respectively, the idea of internal and external reasons for behavior, where each of them has put its focus as a research perspective.
In the present thesis I will further avoid the comparison between theoretical and practical inventions of Prof. Viharova and arch. Uzunov. The object of this study is the author's program of аrch. Zarko Uzunov - the cycle of courses for actors and directors “Technology of formation” and the knowledge and the skills that are presumed to be sourced through them. The study does not aim to make comparisons with other courses to the program "Theatre". It will not be involved with workshops, and forms of atelier, which are not included in the catalogs of the University such as the workshop of arch. Uzunov "Stick-Man". Despite the "modest scientific" statements of the architect Uzunov, that “Technology of formation” is just a "structural combinatorics, applied in the field of theater”, I will seek for evidences that beyond the metrics can still stand "feelings" and "suggestions "; because behind the flesh/ behind the imagery it is still remains the skeleton/ the scaffold which becomes transparent. In ancient times the Pythagoreans were trying to unravel the mysteries in the numbers. "One step, one inch, one elbow, one human growth - are metrics since the ancient times. In modern times through bitmaps and vectors, with the computers, we recreate images, who "becomes alive" ... But whether the cycle of trainings “Technology of formation” could be also seen as self-sufficient educational system with the potential to become a trend / tendency - on this issue is also discussed as a thesis on.
The pathos for the examination of these problems dates back perhaps since 1991-92, when the basic dispute among the students led around the following: "Why we don’t learn the system of Stanislavski". Then I was still excited by the works of Eisenstein and Bela Balazs, Rudolf Arnhaym...: mute cinema/ talking cinema, black-white/ and colored films; “between-cadres-views” and the "inside-cadre-composition”, editing, rhythm of 18, 24 to 25 frames-cadres in second ... and etc. – all being metrics, from the position of which personal interests, it was hard for me to understand what "fundamental" distinction comes to speech. Once, Vazkresia gave to compare the following examples in order to make distinction between the system of Stanislavski and Meyerhold’s method (the example for the method of Meyerhold by analogy could be thought as the method of Zarko Uzunov – “from outside into inside”). So, in short, the example through which the system of Stanislavski could be presented is through the phrase “I was afraid - then I ran”, and the presentation of the method of Meyerhold was through the phrase "I ran - then I scared". Now, through the present thesis, I’m asking my-self increasingly - is it really so "firm" this distinction-argument is, do the two approaches - that of psychological/ of the spiritual beginning and that of the biomechanical / of the physical searches – is there no point of intersection?
My motive for writing this work lies in the fact that since I have the joy and the difficulty of teaching this discipline, it is not ceased to evolve, or rather it is not ceased to be in a never-ending "dynamics". This was determined both on the dynamics of groups of students and the change of their attitudes, according to which the types of submitted tasks varied. In the same time, the language, the "jargon" of communication becomes increasingly precise, which was due to the change in the international standards of education and to the State Accreditation Committees, to whose requirements as well the New Bulgarian University - as a whole, as the particular disciplines in it – all that had to react to this changes. The reaction of these changes, for example, might be seen as exoneration from main obligatory courses (there aren’t more courses which are obligatory), and another reaction was the reduction of workload of hours of lessons. In turn this affected not only in reducing the number of submitted problems and tasks, but also this affected the accidentally, the no-sequenced selection of the courses by students. Subsequently and unfortunately this reacted in the loss of almost entire part of the "poesy" in the cycle of course “Technology of formation”- at least with certainty into the hours for my service as teacher.
The difficulty in writing this work comes from the fact that there is still no published book-manual on the "Technology of formation”. I.e. there is a problem that the "Technology of formation" couldn’t be presented as primary idea, as citations from the source – so the risk to provide secondary interpretations of developments in the system is entirely possible (even inevitable). Anyway, my desire is that like in a series of "snapshots", in which the dynamics of the curriculum courses could be hardly reflected in, to capture, to foresee "en gros" an "evolving" entity, which would be a kind of personal way of revisiting the past, a way of revisiting the accumulations made through the system... Although it always would be something elusive and always would be something lost.... For example, when I started writing this work, there was doubt if the Fifth part of "Technology of formation – The Surrealism" had to be put in the part of the "missing courses and tasks in reserve”. For the scholar year 2006/2007 the forecast was that this part from the "Technology of formation" had to be moved as "practice-exercises" to other main topic courses...
Behind the choice of the title of thesis stands my desire to focus my attention on the actual description of the sequence of courses “Technology of the formation”. I also assume that the reader of this work has already understood the basic semantic volume, which I put behind the concept of "metrics" - the intentions to accuracy and numbering – the commensurability between the body movement and the sound in the time and the space - not that they would not be discussed further more. As regards the notion of "imagery/images" what I put into it is a sequence-clustering of images which could be read such as meanings - which could be read such as behavior or aesthetics. In naming the cycle of trainings "theater-educational system”, my aspiration is to focus on the possibility of chronological links between the courses in the four years of education. Because then gradually the skills would be built - from working on the acting resources to drafting projects and participation in spectacles. Examples of applications of technological approach have been brought as an argument for the improvement of high quality training skills and knowledge. Knowledge and skills that have served and may serve in the future in solving practical problems. In view of some controversial points highlighted in the system, but also highlighting its advantages, the system is mainly discussed in comparison with the system of Stanislavski and Meyerhold’s method.
The approaches that would implicitly turn in the thesis are:
§ the introspection - insofar as being student I performed technical tasks and still keep the memory of this;
§ the empirical approach - insofar as over the years as a visiting assistant professor I was trying to "explore" and to “describe” experiments and results on given problems and tasks;
§ the benchmarking - insofar as in this work, the actor-director tasks offered by the "Technology of formation" shall be commensurable to the continuum of such means conventionally located between the system of Stanislavski and Meyerhold’s method.
Now in conclusion of that part and as a transition to the next chapter, and in order to get rid of excess apologetic enthusiasm when I’m going to talk about "Technology of formation”, I would like to return to the past for a while. Then, in 1991-92, in a discussion-dispute about the psychological and the spiritual beginning, about the creativity, Vazkresia and Zarko told us the following (I would rephrase): "We can not make you "artists"- that is given from above. But what we can do is to offer you tools/means such you could find also in the other courses and programs within the university" ...
But I also remember a scheme (Fig. 2), traced to us, again by Zarko. Then, on the mirrors of the hall of “Student House” with lipstick was traced: abscissa, ordinate - the coordinate system. To the left is the “striving for distinction”, to the right is the "striving for perfection" and in the vertical is the “spiritual search” - and they all intersect in a point.
[2] There is to preconditioning Robert De Niro for his role in the film by M. Scorsese "Raging Bull".
2. THE SERIES OF THE TRAINING COURSES “TECHNOLOGY OF FORMATION”
2.1. CURRENT SITUATION OF THE COURSES
2.1.1 PART ONE
RÉSUMÉ
Dans cette partie, l'étudiant acquiert des connaissances pour “penser par analogie”, pour “faire une analyse” et “une synthèse paradoxale artistique”. La base dramaturgique est “des histoires vecues” (“des événements quotidiens”), et “les domaines des recherches préliminaires” se sont “le cinéma muet”, “les films comiques” et “le théâtre radiophonique”, en tant que base pour l'atteinte de l'expressivité dans le mouvement du corps et dans le son. Les étudiants acquièrent des compétences pour focaliser leur attention sur un partenaire/s, ainsi que des compétences pour travailler avec “lumière / obscurité” et à être „placé” dans le temps et l'espace.
In what epoch are we now? The Informational? And who are the previous periods? – the industrial, the agricultural?... Could we look on the theater from the point of view of the informational approach? Who are the carriers of information in the theater? - the bodies (the objects)... the human body... So then, for its part, could the human body be considered as two subsystems - a sound and a movement one, which are also carriers of information ...
In such a manner usually start the classes of "Technology of formation" for the first year. This is the beginning of the submission of a "jargon" of communication between the teacher and the student (marked in bold) - a jargon, trough which the problems of the course are largely set. Otherwise said, the lessons/trainings during the first year, first semester, from the position of the informational approach are linked with “reading and writing”, with "the relationship - part / whole”, with elements, relations, sets, with intersections of 2 or more sets, with concentric sets...
And please, do not worry! Nothing is as mathematical as it seems. These are just "working concepts" that do not even have to be defined, but they are implicitly understood and they serve the process. Whilst the question concerning the problems-themes, which have to be submitted to the students during the semester, is different. They should become an occasion-task for comparative study-research in several areas simultaneously - e.g. such topics/ themes are the theater and the visual arts:
§ The theatre in general; the form (the shape); the arrangement (the sequence) of the parts in the whole – which form a story; the story development in the space-time;
§ The Visual Arts... the fine art and in particular… the "postcard" - where the important is the correlations, the links between the elements - the relationships of the parts in the whole, in the space.
These themes-problems develop parallel context of the training tasks. For making analogy with the sound and the movement sub-systems, the fields of study are the "radio-theater" and the "mute cinema". The aim is to excite the imagination towards analytical and analogical thinking about different fields of knowledge - which is a basis of attitude towards interdisciplinary research.
In fact, the main phases/stages through which the student has to pass, in order to accumulate the appropriate skills and knowledge, are the following: Preliminary research, Project, Product, or as arch. Uzunov called them as joke - the “three P”. The “Preliminary research”, through the self-preparing, where the personal-moment-involvement, when choosing a subtopic is essential, leads the student towards an activity. The “writing Project” is a form of dynamic analysis and synthesis. The “Product-demonstration” could become the best defense-justification of the “in-process-formulated thesis”, which has to be proved.
Compared to the submitted general topics-problems in the appropriate fields, it follows a division of tasks. For example, in the field of theater they are submitted as follows: "Please, play an “everyday occurrence” (a story). Describe it and inscribe it."Unlike that, in the field of fine art or the so called - "postcard", the task respectively reads: “Please, dismember/segment a postcard on its elements. Arrange the elements within a sheet A-4 and describe them.”
At a closely, successively submitting of the abovementioned training tasks, it is hardly necessary to impose explicitly to the student, the conclusions about the common "laws" and about the common in the approach and about the differences in the results that are determined by differences in the materials. So, usually when the groups of students are smaller (so that there is time for each of them), the tasks from the different areas are rotated/alternated within the classes and in case that there is enough time, it is recommended the personal sharing of the conclusions –of the accumulated experience..
But let's specially return to the tasks in the field of theater. The smallest part-element here is called "event" and it is described by a verb for Movement/Displacement through the space (as opposed to the verbs for state/position as: to think, to sit, to dream...). A sequence of events forms an “everyday occurrence” (a "story"). The main thing, on which the student has to be educated through the tasks, is the "observation" of the nature through the self-observation (the introspection) and the other thing to be learned is the articulation and the concretization of the movements in words when it comes to the "Project description".
Thus, an “everyday occurrence”, as an initial idea for “tabular description of the project”, could look as follows – please, see Table 1.
On this story, we put a title "How one guy smokes?” Even, it is recommended that the title, which includes the idea of the way through the question "how", to be put prior to the commencement of the "invention" of the “story”. Then, through the prism of heading-(title)-criterion, some of the events could be removed from the set (from the multitude) - called "story. "In this case, it could be the events "he enters" and "he sits", which are not directly related to the “smoking” – i.e. these events become non-expedient (inappropriate). However, be attentive, because the language could make strange"jokes" with us, which in turn could build a great "paradoxes"-originality in the actor performance. For example, due to the absence in the description of "the instructions" [1], ”to what level, the box of cigarettes is exported/displayed”, or, e.g. because of the lack of the additional event "he exports / he elevates the box on level of the chest”, it could follows a paradoxical behavior such as this of Mr Bean. Then the "guy" will have “to take out the cigarette very close to his back pocket”, where [2] he will have “to light it”, and “to choke”, and “to put out his cigarette”. The case of the "entry" might be similar to the previous one, if the verb is not prolonged by an explanation of in "how many steps" the event happens. Then, the entrant will have “to sit right by the door”, and because it is not mentioned “a chair”, he has to "sit down" directly on the ground. There is also a paradox in time [3]. Then again, by analogy with Mr. Bean, where “until a person runs, he could drop asleep”, all the durations of the events might be increased in a way to begin to tend towards "infinity", except just the event for the "ignition" and the "breathing", which durations vice versa - could be restricted/reduced as time, so as to tend to zero - like tic... Not less curious is the paradox which arises from the interpretation of the words [4] – e.g. in the event "shrinking cigarette”. When this event, being perceived as "stealing"[1] is played accordingly to exactly this understanding, but amidst a series of events, where the “story” is called "How one girl is drugged", then the paradox/the illogicality attributable to the wedging of this event in another context should be able to become apparent... The fifth type of paradox is obtained by changing the number-position of the events (of the movement-events) in the story [5]. Then the story could sounds in the following manner – please, see Table 2. The sixth paradox is in the exchange / replacement of objects [6], and respectively - the seventh one is in the exchange / replacement of types of sounds [7] - of the voice and of the body...
In an analogous way the tasks with the postcard follow: "Compared to a criterion (attribute/topic), please, describe types of postcards as sets." - what is the common and what the different between the postcards? The common among the described will enter in a set/ multitude, while between two or more sets – a common section will be formed, whilst a part of the different will remain even beyond the set "postcards"- e.g. the "business card" or the "summons". Whether, from the intersection a new postcard could be obtained? But before that: "dissect" the postcard on images ". Then: "Compared to a criterion “geometry”, please, dissect the postcard on items ...
To what extent we could dissect "an image", so that the parts could also be "images" by themselves. If from the visual image "a cap" we cut the “brim”, could we named the parts – would the parts be recognizable as different separateness - a hat and a brim?...
Thus, we gradually introduce the idea of the Formation and of the TransFormation in the range/scope of Image-Expression. But meanwhile, let us examine a sequence of images by Piet Mondrian (see Figure 1[2]). The object is a tree and in the first painting the reflection is "realistic", in the second – it is "stylized", and in the third - "abstract". This is an excellent sight-illustration-example, which describes by analogy a continuum-range between the concrete and the abstract - between the imagery and the expressiveness.
Which might be reflected schematically from minus to plus infinity (∞), as it follows:
Then, what does mean “to form” (according to the appropriate vocabulary of "Technology of formation")- is it equivalent to that to describe entities, taken from the wild-nature? And then what about the conversions/about the transformations?... – concerning the “everyday occurrence” (the story), taking into account the "paradoxes", the steps seem to be clear, but concerning the postcard?... There are several steps: 1. articulation (dissection) 2. connection 3. completion. It is similar, when writing projects and making demonstrations, where the working concepts are: 1. description, 2. control 3. change (transformation) - in other words, this is our "operational" system, our ways of transformation.
So if we copy the "imagery" postcard in monochrome on a sheet A-4 and if we distinguish the black from the gray and the white, so then if we rearrange (transform) the substance on a "geometric" principle – by arranging the elements horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or as checkerboard or as rastering... - with the trend “from the black into the white”, again within the sheet A-4, then we will obtain a "distance" from the "image" – an "abstraction”. Thus the "concrete" will be transformed into "expression". Although not always it might be deciphered, who is the prototype (see Fig. 3[3] - again by Piet Mondrian).
It is similar if we transform a story otherwise performed/played with the right body, if we represent it in a sitting position or if it is performed with supine body. Then again we start to a certain extent (degree) to make distance from the prototype, which is due to the distortions/the deformations in the behavior that are obtained through the contact with the new environment - the "floor", but also it is due to the fact of how the human body is perceived as an "image", compared to/ in relation to the "imagery" of the floor...
But for the first year, first semester, the condition is that "we wouldn't be interested in the viewer (in the perception). So the conclusions - explanations and analogies on the trainings, which are similar to the abovementioned, after the introduction of the terminology and of the problems by the lecturer, are submitted to the students only as discussions-reflections or as a reason for research-study.
In parallel with the training-analytical (the theoretical) part, a training for performing goes. Through the task of “saying and showing” of the series of events in the story, it begins the separation of the sound from the movement subsystem. In the task of “light / dark”, where in the "light" have to be performed/played the "movement", while in the “dark” - it is the "sound" – here, the analytical reference is to the principles in the mute cinema, while from the point of view of the performing, the task trains the sensation for duration of the sound and the movement and for placement of the actor in the space, but also for the expressiveness of the movement and of the sound.
Except for "alone (a solo-actor)", there are “tasks for two” or for “group of partners”. Here, the idea, which is mainly anchored (is underpinned ) is that of the attention which is directed to a partner (or to partners). Even when submitting the tasks, an arithmetic accordance already sets: "Please, form (compose) / describe an "everyday occurence" (a story) “How a boy / girl…(dotted line - to be completed through a verb).” “Let the number of the events is equal to the number of the participants in the group”. Then a sub-condition for the manner of performing follows, where the control of "time" is more precisely introduced:
1. While the first participant “says” and simultaneously “shows” the first event; the second participant counts to 5, all the other participants perform through movement the first event;
2. While the second participant “says” and simultaneously “shows” the second event; the third participant counts to 10, all the other participants perform through movement the second event;
3. While the third participant “says” and simultaneously “shows” the third event; the fourth participant counts to 15, all the other participants perform through movement the third event;
The cycle of durations rotates from the beginning until the depletion (running low) of the story.
This exercise is also proved as a task for "leader", where all the participants follow the coach, even that he is changing. While the attention is mainly distributed between two neighboring "players".
After the “task for time”, the next task-game is related to the place, to the space, because here it is linked to an event-movement. The exercise may initially be done in a circle (in order that everybody sees each other): everybody says and shows his own event. When the story starts again, the group moves on a clockwise direction. Everyone takes the place of his colleague and performs his "movement-event" but the"sound-event" remains the initial one. Actually, in that way it is practically introduced the idea for discrepancies between the sound and the movement subsystems, which is stated explicitly by the teachers hardly in the second semester as a working concept for the students.
...And meanwhile, when the substance-"expression" in the postcard is acheived, could we go back and articulate an "image" and to finish it?...
But let's better summarize through the “everyday occurrence”. Finally, the written as table project, until which it could be achieved as a task, might look in this way:
Where the MO is a movement: a verb, an instruction for direction, an indication for behavior, while the SOS is a sound through the speech - the speech-meanings-generated images, enriched by the timbre and by the scale of intonation of the pronunciation (the tessitura), which is different from the SOB, where, in the table are inscribed the noises emited from our and other bodies (objects) - such as the clapping, the closure zipper and the steps... "it is also something that we talked about in discussing the radio-plays"... And all of them are featured in different (although it is possible to be “in equal”) distinct "durations of times" (∆ t) and are expressed “with pleasure” (+), “with displeasure” (-) – which means “with motivation”, while where there is a movement/displacement in the space (∆ S), it is also marked in the table.
In the above table-project as in a control panel, there are already many opportunities for variability in the conditions - i.e. we have arranged our tools/ toolbox - we have invented "an adze" by which our behavior-form to be articulated. But actually, among the possibilities, it happens just one. Because the small theatrical form is regarded as realized conditions – i.e. our behavior will depend from the values as pledged from us. 2.1.2. PART TWO
(Visualisation and Physicalisation in the Field of Theatre)
RÉSUMÉ
Dans cette partie, il est commenté “le langage théâtral de mouvement”, en particulier “du langage du corps” et par analogie de la “langue gestuelle mimétique”. L'attention de l’étudiant est dirigée sur son expression artistique et sur des moyens pour la construction du comportement. Par le placement d'une série de conditions telles que: de travailler avec motivation, avec le temps, dans l'espace et d'augmenter ou de réduire l'énergie - l'expressivité du son et du mouvement est modélisée, entre le continuum de l'Abstraction-expressivité (comme des exemples sont donnés la danse et les formes de jazz) et le Concret-figuratif - l'Imagerie (ici, les exemples possibles sont le théâtre Expressionniste et la Comedia dell'Arte). Les compétences acquises sont pour le travail structurel (déconstructiviste/structuraliste) avec le texte, mais aussi pour la coordination et la concentration. Ici, la base dramaturgique est faite à partir des phrases déclaratives (des sentences communicatives) des journaux quotidiens. A la fin du cours, l'étudiant doit être capable, dans une certaine mesure, de contrôler son comportement vers la réalisation des effets "comiques" et "dramatiques", à contrôler son comportement dans le sens de la maîtrise du comportement "abstrait" et du comportement "figuratif".
So, after a brief review of the tasks from the previous semester, let’s continue with the alphabet - with our jargon!
Now in the first year, the second semester – also 30 hours as workload, the articulation of the theatrical form becomes more detailed. Here the "dramaturgical basis" is not the "nature" but the "communication texts" from newspapers. For such kind/sort of texts it will be considered a message that directly disclose the events - eg. such as the "narrative sentences", in contrast of the “exclamation” and the “interrogative sentences”, which besides being "more comfortable" for dialoguing, "talk" indirectly for the facts and the phenomena... So let respond to the challenge and accept "the degree of complexity (of difficulty) of the task.
After you have chosen under the criteria “what would be narrative” from a newspaper, ie. you have chosen your dramatic text, let us see what would be the “artistc/the painterly problem” to be worked on it. And it would be the following: how and could we through movement to recreate a narrative text in a way to make a small theatrical form...
At the moment maybe everybody has remembered the children-youth game on “movies”, where for each word / phrase everybody has to invent a sign-movement. Well... then… let’s begin!
But the movement-informational subsystem already has been separated into two kinds of information types – the visual one and the physical one. Under visual movement we will understand that one that in a minimum of time transmits maximum of concrete /specific information eg. such as we "construct" with our fingers the print letter "U" and if we make its exposition (there’re also given another examples from the student demonstrations). But if we’re “spelling” the letter with a finger during the time in the space, in that case through the handwritten letter 'И ' - the movement will now be closer to the physical one because it is abstract: the observer for instance can perceive in it ... a “seagull” or a “wave” – so, in this case the time tends unto "infinity" (+ ∞). Here, the verification could be made in a way that if you imagine that you’re shooting with a camera: then the visual image will be sharp and the physical image would be" fuzzy" - because the movement is incessant, continuous.
Then let start again with the task: "Please, play the narrative text with the whole body - once - visually and another time – physically!"
"With a whole body?" - Yes. It is in that way, maybe because when we usually play, we forget about the pelvis and the legs... But that is why it does refinement in subsequent tasks: "Please, play the narrative text visually (vis.) – first of all – with the shoulder girdle (s.g.) and second time – with the pelvic girdle (p.g.)." After that: "Play the narrative text physically (phys.) - first of all – with (s.g.) and second time – with the (p.g.). Here in short it begins an exercise in combinatorics, an exercise in the change the order - an exercise of permutation:
...And that would be until that moment while the visual and the physical movements become like "second nature" of the actor, as “an impulse / a stimulus for behaviour”. Concerning the text, this kind of exercises is like the "Exercises in style” of Raymond Queneau but on stage, and as an action. Moreover, this book along with the movie of Jim Jarmusch - "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" are the themes-problems to be explored, with requirement for writing essay on: “What are the plots, the stories in these artifacts and how (by what means) they are implemented. What are the elements in the respective art-fields and what are the links/ the correlations between them.”
And meanwhile the attention of the actor was allocated between the shoulders and the pelvis, between the legs and the arms - simultaneously / sequentially.
"Simultaneously" it seems being obvious: coincidence in the starting and in the ending points - between the durations of the sound and the durability of the movement events. Let me illustrate with a “graphic descriptions”:
"Before" (see Fig. 1), the “everyday occurrence” was a whole entity (SO / MO were merged) marked as line segment (1-5) in the coordinate system. With 1 to 5 respectively are marked the events - their number. The coordinate system is taken in the part of the positive values (because the negative ones lay down problems that can be treated directly as conceptual). On the ordinate are marked the degrees of the Energy (∆ E) - from zero to infinity, and on the abscissa are marked the time values (∆ t) - also from zero to infinity. Through them, the story development is measured.
After (in Fig. 2), we have separated the sound from the movement subsystem (as it is noted on the scheme - as two line segments), but making on down the projections of the events (the sequences of events now are two), through a dotted line unto the axis of time, we could see that the durability of the sound and of the movement events – coincide/ run simultaneously.
This in turn - Figure 3 is one of the options for sequentially (continuity) - between the SO, the MOSG. and the MOP.G., because where the sound event (SO) ends over the time, the movement in the shoulder girdle (MOSG) begin, and if it ends, the information of the same event begins to be transmited, but this time from the movement in the pelvic girdle (MOP.G.).
Unlike Figure 4, where within the frame of duration of the sound event, it must be fit it on it – first of all the visual movement in the (s.g), and after that it must be fit it on it the physical movement in the (p.g) - and this is the simultaneity between the SO and MO but this is the sequentiallyof the visual and the physical.
And what will happen if the two subsystems - SO / MO – pass each other - eg. in Fig.5 (but it is similar and in fig.3) – it will derive a “sequence” or the so called “un-correlation”/"mismatch" between the systems in relation to the axis of time. But here - in Figures 1, 2 and 4 we mainly talked about and we worked on the “correlations” / on the "coincidence" between the subsystems.
And now let us "relax a little" with the tasks of “lengths in the space”: "Please, drow with chalk on the floor straight line (∆ S) equal to 5 steps. Then, place your story in the frame of the straight line". Towards this task we impose the requirement "for displacement" in the space, so the actor body could leave a trail - a trace along the floor. Interestingly, if we double the initial distance - ∆ S = 10 steps or if we triple it - ∆ S = 15 steps, the behavior would definitely change. In the final version the demonstration will look like characters from “Comedy Dell Arte”: the steps become huge and the shoulder girdle, which in furthering in the space, balances the "body weight", also enlarges the gesture... Well... then… let’s increase the "pleasure" as motivation: "Please, do the demonstration with extreme motivation of pleasure - with extreme Energy". In the way, the behaviour becomes more concrete (than abstract) measurable as level of Imagery (∆ I), which has emerged as a genre – “Comedy Dell Arte”.
Concerning the tasks “with the time” - here firstly, with a stopwatch, we detect the "optimum" of time in given space for the course/ the developement of the "everyday occurrence". But if we keep the “length in the space” and we reduce twice the durability of the time – shall we reach until tic? And vice versa: if we double, triple, or multiply by... ten the length of the time - the “image” shall it be with external characteristics of a “flegmatik" or of a "stoic". Although, to determine more precisely that, we have to introduce the concept of the Energy (∆ E).
But before that let see the "brain teasers for two”, with a focus on the structural work with text and the “combinatorics’ in the space. Two partners / colleagues operate simultaneously: when the movement-event of the first one is visual – with shoulder girdle, the second partner works - visually with the pelvic girdle and the sound of first participant is a serie of vowels, corresponding to the first event. And vice versa: when the second participant works physically-s.g. on the first movement-event, his partner reacts physically-p.g. and within the duration of the sound of the second partner – a serie of consonants from the first word-event – in the frame of this duration – the movements, but being this time visual ones – have to fit on it. Here we should be reminded of Fig.4, only if we see it as designed for two persons. Of course the possibility of combinatorics between the elements in the context-here is much larger than the tasks for alone participant.
Did you imagine the situation? - Two persons who, like being seen trough the checkerboard, play on diagonals and express themselves - one with the shoulder girdle and the other - with the pelvic girdle, after that they play inversely; then the first participant is with a voice sounding like talking trough exclamations or as being attempting to speak, and the second partner is reacting trough the consonants: "r", "m" “v”- and all that seems like the music in jazz party.
However, be careful, the sounds - being vowels and consonants - are separated during the time of playing, not in advance. This helps the actor to focus himself on the imposed conditions, to be careful on distributing his attention between the partners, so that exercise makes training also for the concentration. For sure it is also fun and it looks like the actor’s training exercise of Lecoq[1], where the onlooker has to watch "non the pelvic girdle but the shoulder one” - something like an exercise in leadership over the perception: what we have to expose to the public. In order to reach to the “images”/ to the “character”, the actor relies on the motivation – on the emotional ornament, which is also due to the movement, but also due to the sound; the participant relies also on the correlation between the bodies in the space: one stands to another, one stands against other, one stands behind another, one stands right - another is sitting / is lying down; one being displacing, while the other participant works “in a point” (without displacement in the space)... Accordingly to that, the “images”-situations vary as: walk, scandal, separation... And all this is implied even if only by the location, by the configuration – by language of the bodies – which makes meanings beyond the words. Then is it possible to transform the everyday occurence into dance and music performance – into expression-abstraction?
Therefore, let me introduce two working concepts: "discontinuity" and "continuity". The "continuity" we have reflected it already in Fig.3, where the end of the event became departure-point for the next event - one non-articulated fusion between neighboring entities. Here the most important is the reflection of/in the transitions-situations: how gradually we could going from the "m" to the "n", hence to the "l" ... Similarly to that problem is that one for the movement: how from straight position of the body, we could move quietly (not sharply) till the sitting and supine posture. In contrast, the "discontinuity" imposes sharp articulation between the elements: distances (∆ D) and pauses / borders.
Does this mean that from the "Comedy Dell Arte" we can reach now till the dance, and till the singsong? And vice versa: could we "move" the performance-form from the abstraction to the concreteness, imposing the last conditions? - Yes. In general the answer is - yes.
But let return to the "discrepancies"/ to the “uncorrelations” – as you could remember – that problem was already reflected in the figures 3 and 5. Those models, even being still uncomplicated, will be called "translation"(from geometry)[2]: the parallel displacement of the one in relation to another subsystem, measured / marked to the axis of time.
With what that helps us in complicating the task? Actually, this is not complicated, because in one or another way we've already done it - eg. in the exercises for group of participants (in the previous semester). But have you noticed that sometimes in life, while we are saying verbally "yes" – trough the movement in the head we may respond negatively – and that might be “imagery” of "understanding, but not quite”? Similarly, we are interested in detecting the crossing points between the displaced subsystems: the coincidence-overlay between the events – which results in "new events"- “congregation of images” between the sound and the movement.
For example let see the sentence: “In a testament, an eccentric man entrusts the construction of a theater”. Here the events could be counted as 7 (following the Bulgarian translation). If we displace the movement subsystem to the sound one with two events (see. fig.6), it will be obtained an "overlay" from the following events marked in the columns below in blue:
These are the places, where the "strange" inconsistencies – the illogical "paradoxes" between the sound and the movement are obtained. But no less challenging remain the events/ the "places", where there’re no such "crossing-points" / "intersections points". And not that here can not be imposed any of the foregoing conditions, but let's introduce also the variable value of the Energy (∆ E).
The Energy ... – let’s try to define it through experiments in its more extreme values: "Please, try to displace with hands a partner who does not want to move", "Please, try also to strike a fistic stroke from Taekwondo in the space". Concerning the sound subsystem: "Let’s liken the Japanese speech" ... Do you feel the effort, the harnessing and the involvement of the entire speech and of the entire movement apparatus? Or if you try to breathe slowly, gently and quietly, and in the movement it is measured and the millimeter traces left in the space - notably then tangibly occur the degrees of the Energy - delta (∆) E: from its maximum (max.) - close to infinity, till its minimum (min.) - round the value of zero.
Now, in the “class-minutes” for common training – let see the following tasks: "Please, firstly play / perform the series of acoustic (sound) events from min. to max. and secondly - play the series of movement events from min. to the max.". After that, make the exercises vice-versa: “Please, model the two subsystems separately in relation to the axis of Energy - from max. to min.” See the graphic description in fig. 7А and 7В. In order to be able to "read" these graphics, it is important to know that the dashed lines from the events unto axis ∆ Е detect / measure the degrees of the Energy for each event. Thus, in Fig. 7А the first events (sound and movement) are approximately about the value of zero, and last events (also in the sound and the movement) tend to infinity - the maximum for the individual participant. Contrariwise to that it is the fig. 7В: the first events are in maximum and the last ones are in minimum.
But in the maximum of the sound, please, do not shout, as you could remember the Energy of the Japanese language. Concerning the movement, in its maximum - do not see all as "shock", but recall the energy, the strained tension of the pressure, which you’ve used to the displacement of your partner. And you have to know that even in the minimum more than ever, everything becomes visible, so, please, clear any parasitic motion because it is perceptible/ observable – so the onlooker could "read" it.
Apropos the "readability" – could we read every scheme by "playing"/ by “performing” it? Eg. such the Fig. 8 and 9? Yes, we could do that. Here, in both figures, the energy of the movement is constant and the energy of the sound in the first figure (Fig. 8) is ascending (↑), and in the second figure (Fig. 9) the sound energy is descending (↓). In the first figure - the audio and the movement events - begin simultaneously, but the sound ones end before the movement ones, while in the second figure the sound events start after the movement ones but end simultaneously. Actually, these are the models of "rotation"[3], where one subsystem is displaced from the other under / toward an angle (and there the variations are countless), so the two subsystems are measurable to both the axes of time and energy.
And what about Fig.10С? There, after we have taken an everyday occurence (see Fig. 10А), and after we have "rotated" the one subsystem in relation to the other (see fig.10В), then we have translated the rotated subsystem (marked in red in the fig. 10С) - ie the final model (fig.10С - marked in black) will be called “translation-rotation”.
I couldn’t say that the last playing-models are easy, but the satisfaction of its accomplishment is great. And it may be really fun. Can you imagine if you rotate one subsystem to the other at 90 degrees or at 110 º - what kind of imagery it would be received?
In fact, we got to the final. That what was left to us, it is to get a picture/ a notion of the structure – of the "morphology" of a small theatrical form - that is about the arrangement / the sequence in the conditions of our behavior and also, we have to reason on that what we want to suggest trough it: when to be "daring, cheerful" as an imagery, when to reach to the "Comedy dell Arte" (↑) - a kind of overact - highlighting and enlargement in the movements and in the emotions; when we have to be "infuriated" untill reaching the prolonged consonant "r-r-r”, the "s-s-s"; when we want to be "exhausted" and "desperate" (↓), reaching a cry, a moan – a singsong or a tic and twitch-convulsion... It supposingly has being resulted in a mini-tragedy from newspaper! But if we do reverse to the sequence in the conditions, with which we have reached the above images, would we reach to a "happy end"? Can you imagine if we turn the order in the serie of conditions of figure 10? Actually this could be a serie of conditions that suggest what will be the structure - the nature of our image-character (and therefore we have mentioned the morphology) ...
... And for the exam, do not forget: "In a sheet of paper - format A-4, please, describe your demonstration-project trough table and graphics!
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_(geometry) - Translation (geometry) - A reflection against an axis followed by a reflection against a second axis parallel to the first one results in a total motion which is a translation. / A translation moves every point of a figure or a space by the same amount in a given direction.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation_(mathematics) - Rotation (mathematics) - Rotation of an object in two dimensions around a point O./ A plane rotation around a point followed by another rotation around a different point results in a total motion which is either a rotation (as in this picture), or a translation. / A rotation represented by an Euler axis and angle. / An orthogonal projection onto three-dimensions of a hypercube being rotated in four-dimensional Euclidean space.
2.1.3 PART THREE
RÉSUMÉ
Ici, l'étudiant acquiert une connaissance plus approfondie sur les paramètres spatiaux de son propre corps, qui se rapportent aux paramètres du milieu/d'environnement et en particulier - une connaissance du temps-spatialité de la pose/posture et des compétences pour l'exposition impromptue des extrêmes personnages-images et les compétences pour travailler en détail. Du point de vue dramatique, le problème qui est soumis aux étudiants est liée à la “reconstruction” de l'environnement et du comportement, d'après un texte et les références sont dans le domaine du “Réalisme” au cinéma et au théâtre “Psychologique”, mais aussi à toute forme potentielle, soit qu'elle pourrait être p. ex. une forme théâtrale qui suit les principes “de la bande dessinée”. Un autre sujet qui est aussi soumis aux étudiant – c’est la “reconstruction du comportement et de l'environnement d‘après des photos des statues de la Renaissance ” et le “travail avec le texte-sonnet”, et ici, le potentiel de faire de référence est de la domaine du Théâtre de Shakespeare. Le cours de formation met également l'accent sur le travail avec un (des) objet/s.
Second year, first semester - the workload is 60 hours.
The theme/ the topic is: The pose. The pose in the field of theater. The “everyday occurrence” (the story) as series of poses.
Where we have encountered the term "pose"? - in the photography - as an segment of the space-time; in the sexology, and Kama Sutra, in the fashion - as an “exposing of the parts (of the body)”; in the sculpture, the yoga - as an internal movement, tending to infinity, in Netsuke[1] (please, see Figure 1) – as an self-absorption, as an extreme imagery achieving to a "non-ambiguity", even to the point that the laughter has turned into wrinkles; in the sport, the "judo" - as a referencing/as a correlation and as sensitivity unto the environment-the space; and also in the bodybuilding - as an impromptu exhibiting of an Image - an impromptu extraction of the Energy in its maximum, which tends to zero over the time... I suppose that you have guessed that the above mentioned areas will be the object/topic of your study.
So what is a “pose” in the field of theater as opposed to a “non-pose”? Let’s try temporarily to postulate it: thus, the non-posture is an unsettling/ endless and continuous movement in the zone of the visible, while the pose is a synthesis of time in a body position - a shaped configuration until an extremity, in which a maximum of energy to be retained - an internal movement. An internal movement? Do you remember the game when you were children and when you catch on the edges the trousers legs and you pull it out intensively aside-away while you were counting to 20? Then, when you releases the trousers, your hands seems that by themselves, they fly as to continue the stopped until now movement. Here's why – for a real supercharging in the Energy - we will use a sort of "suit" and it consists in... three ropes (see Fig.2.A) – a type of environment which will configure us, restricting us in an image.
But before that we should observe-research for a little the pose in the video-example in the bodybuilding... A-ha - so there are 3 main phases: 1.) initial (zero) position 2.) reaching the pose 3.) retention in the pose. And also when we have direct passing in continuity to the next pose, the phase will be named a "transition to another pose (4). I said "continuity"? This is because the "discontinuity", such as the pose is, sometimes stands out due to a preceding or a following it "continuity" – thus, this semester we will have such activities when shaping "the story". Actually "the story" is the bigger "largescale" compared to the "everyday occurrence", compared to the "event" – i.e. a series of “events”, we will call it an "everyday occurrence", a sequence of “everyday occurrences”- it will give us a "story" – that means that there we will still talk about the morphology of the whole.
But let’s start with the tasks: "Please, play an “everyday occurrence” as a sequence of non-poses" and then “let’s apply one of the abovementioned principles of the pose - the phases”. Okay - now let’s put the restrictive-blocking soft links – the ropes... "The suit is in two parts, for the shoulder and the pelvic girdle: two ropes-“curves”, which are closed by knots (see Fig.2.B).
In the first part (from the suit) – in that one for the shoulder girdle, we fit in the head and the hands and we form a triangle, while the second triangle – for the pelvic girdle - is between the waist (where the rope is caught with a belt) and the legs. Now, let’s try to displace/to move in the space. Do you notice how, while lifting /elevating the one leg, how the two sides of the triangle in the pelvis become shorter? This, together with the breathing, through which we will measure the time of the phases, is something in which we have to focus our attention - let's call it in jest -”introvertness" as in Netsuke. In the shoulder triangle, except the just stressed, please, note that pulling of the one of the hands drags the other in motion. The ropes configure the body parts and make images, even through distances because it is sufficient to establish the hand around the forehead, and to swung /to turn the head to forward / down, in order to receive up an image of the "despaired", while if we turn the head a little aside, plus the appropriate motivation and the face-expression, the image is already another - e.g. the "suffering from migraines". And note that it isn’t obligatory to touch the "head", on the contrary: "the distance" you could short it internally and the audience will also complete the movement-image in the mind. Actually from this semester the degrees of the Energy are equivalent to the degrees of the Imagery in the coordinate system (∆ E ≡ ∆ I). While concerning the sound, it is still only in the breathing in a controlled-conscious rhythm - e.g. if you count silently to 4 on each of the phases.
Now, after the training, let’s return to the “everyday occurrence”. As you could see here, as a way of describing / inscribing of the sequence of the poses as a project, now we are trying to represent the intentions for a movement as verbal forms which are tending to infinity – e.g. in "the stretching (person)" and in "the laughing (person)". Otherwise, the ordering/ the arrangement is similar to the series in the "everyday occurrence"- i.e. even here, we could apply the graphical and the tabular inscriptions...
...Yes, the work with the ropes is tiring – “remove them for a while and let’s see the work with the memory from the training with the working facilities”... Okay – we will have again to put them because it could be perceived - it could be seen inaccuracies in the configurations and the energy has "expired"... And add a sound-word - let it be descriptive for the posture: it is similar to the task for "saying and showing" from the first semester, first year...
Now, let’s see the "judo"[2], in order to catch from there some principles-laws to be "interpolated"-applied in our study. And concerning the principles, they are “a trace on the floor” – a geometry “square”... But we have already fitted in a “straight line”! Yes, but here, a new figure provides new principles. Besides, you've probably noticed that the volume of the concepts also extends as definition from year to year, as it happened with the notion of the Energy.
So ... – the "judo"-principles... Please, draw a square on the floor. A half from a side is equal to the side of the “equilateral triangle” in the pelvis... Yes, the "equilateral triangle", because when the rope is at the front of the waist, the observation/ the monitoring for keeping the “equilateral triangle” in the "zero position", it helps us to come down, then it will be obtained a "concave body", while when we relocate/move the rope on the back of the waist and if we catch it through the heels, our body becomes “convex”. This is compared to an imaginary vertical which passes through the profile of our body. It is in the same way, if by thinking, if we pass a vertical along our body and if our limbs (the hands and the legs) remain at equal distances from it – then it will become a “symmetrical posture”, but if there are differences in distances "left / right" - it will become an “asymmetrical posture”.
So, therefore: the trace on the floor - a square. And it consists of internal (central geometric) and of external (peripheral geometric) descriptive elements (see Fig. 3). Let’s establish also and rules: on the external elements (on the square itself) we will displace, while, compared to the internal components - the axes and the diagonals – we will correlate the parts of our body - we will perform a movement. Thus, as for the judo practitioner, for us it will be also important the displacement of the foot at an angle, only just from the perspective of the imagery that this shift creates.
In the “judo”, for example, sometimes it is marked into the scheme - "toes" for the one foot, and not a “whole step /foot”. So the first leg will be prepared for movement, and the other will be sustainable / fixed. Thus, we’ll look for “non-equilibrium postures of the body and for ways of extending the road of our parts in their transition/displacement in the space. This will superimpose even more to the energy, respectively, and to the imagery... Concerning to the environment - no matter whether it is a "floor" or an "object", e.g. a chair around us - it is important to reduce the "contact", the touch with it. Thus, our body will be unsustainable and will balance - will compensate by increasing the energy... So, as Zarko says: "Please, seek for initial non-equilibrium position of the body - this will be as our theatrical pre-start reinforcing ...
Well, and do you know what in the theater helps the character-the image to become fixed? – the scepter, the wigs, the hat, the makeup... Then, "Following a criterion, of your choice, please, indicate three objects with different size and make an “everyday occurrence” with them".
Here, someone, on a criterion "office materials", has chosen pushpin, scissors, box, and another student on a criterion "cause and effect link" has chosen pen, notebook, bag... These objects of course start to fix images, e.g. “the cutting with scissors teacher of painting". But that which will help us to exhibit / to emphasize our objects will be called dynamic and static points (see Figure 4).
Respectively, our body parts are dynamic when it happens a sliding on the rope, while our body parts are static when they are "latched" in the space. Even literally! This is the case, for example, if you touch and you don’t shift a hand (the head) from the floor or from the wall and if at the same time you let the other body parts to pass “the way on the rope”. Then, please, consider: in dynamics or in statics it will stand out more the relevant object. See also and the tabular task and try to over-play the two options:
You could apply this table to your "everyday occurrence" in a way if the numbering in the positions of the body corresponds to the numbering of the sequence of the positions from your description. The cycle of the tabular numbering, of course, would rotate again from the beginning until the depletion of the "story", but you may also find other ways of application.
...And the hand, holding a pushpin and resting against the wall, is stretched to a “critical value”, when the other hand guides itself in the direction unto the “floor”… the neck also has became unusually movable; the leg in movement in the same time correlates to an axis or to a diagonal, while the breathing and the movement are completely synchronized – they are harmonized in a single/ uniform rhythm...
Actually we already have "pieces" - many demonstrations according to the training tasks and we have a “short project” – a story with three objects, while concerning your "final project" the proposal is: a reconstruction of a behavior from the Renaissance (following pictures of statues) with text - "sonnet".
Let’s explore/learn ten postures/poses by pictures of Renaissance statues! Let’s learn each of the postures/poses to make it without thinking about of the phases, the “road”... but as an "impulse"- "simply" in the continuity of the repetition "by 3 times". Then "let's take three poses, which also firstly to be repeated "simply" 3 times, and then they have to be repeated with a development / trend". The development, it means to rely on a “variable” – e.g. we will increase or reduce the Energy, or for example we will make an "algorithm" of alternation in the motivations, so, according to what will prevail - the pleasure or the displeasure, to be reached, conditionally told, a comedy or a tragedy. And we could also short or extend the distances – e.g. the pauses, the lengths in the sides of the squares or... the ropes. No, no – I would not give you a hint, neither - submit to you general principles (positions) – each of you or all in group – you will make your own project - arrangement of the conditions. And now, let’s make training with “shortened ropes”.
...And please do not be influenced to the fact that the movements are small, but "bravely" increase the Energy. Add also a text-sound - a "sonnet" – in that way it could appear/rise the image of the "stepmother". But if you reduce the Energy of the sound until whispering - the image would change again - for example: as the "fate". According to the image, you could add also an object – e.g. a "magic wand", and to the suit – a “fate hat”, while if we add a basket-cradle, the scene is complete - the theater has became real...
And as "homework", please, read “The Grammar of Fantasy” by Gianni Rodari. There also as here you'll notice that you could start/depart from the “pure” geometry, abstraction, arithmetic until reaching the imagery or vice versa. Here is a scheme-sets of the newly introduced working concepts: the “geometric definiteness” and the “imagery (semantical) determination”:
As you might guess, between the two sets is the intersection - the space of conditions that should facilitate the description of our “theater project”.
On the morphology and on the possibility for a project in group, please, let’s try a task for three persons, and it consists in translation (as term from the geometry) between the sequences of the poses of the individual players. For example, the first player starts from first event, the second player - from the second event, and the third player - from the third event. We use the first 5 poses from the sequence and we rotate them from the beginning to the end/ to the depletion of the story - a sum/ a total from the three sonnets. We could also use already and the “mirror positions” of the shown poses - their symmetrical ones. It could be also used different kind of conditions – such as: uninterruptedness, alternation, succession (sequence) of the shoulder and of the pelvic girdle but beware: the emphasis is on the discontinuity and on the pose, so that the story to come up for a short in its extreme expression - as in the comics, not as an animation...
And what about the preliminary research? Have you found interesting definitions and descriptions, which could give you an impulse for a free project for your own training apparatus? Thus, for example years ago, a student being asking his self, except for the posture but also for the two-dimensionality – whether it is possible to apply them on the stage – following a task, he proposed for his project instead of the ropes – a wall and door frames, plus - drawings of ancient Greek amphoras... While another student in evidence material, in his essay ran the distance from quantum theory to the ritual and the shamanism in order to propose his own field of research in the future...
...Attention! The “unit of text”: a sound, a syllable, a word, a line or a sentence... – you have to evaluate/ to judge also yourself, when and how to correlate to the “unit of movement”. It means that it comes to question, what kind of "forms" as a way of “segmenting” and “collecting” (as term from math – “addition”) you will choose. Now you may introduce as a condition: the straight, the seated and the recumbent body. The tabular inscription, you also have to judge yourself, what should it be – e.g. as the available below:
or such as:
or any other kind of table... Because the tabular description could be a system of rules, that you could choose to follow. But above all, for the exam, transform the rules in impulse/in drive and enjoy. And all that in order to not be achieved the fact that "the result is just structure or a simple structure" or as architect Uzunov says: "for an author is humiliating to be strictly ordered";
"This for me is connected with the idea of the uninterruptedness of the will for arrangement/order and in the same time with the leading towards destruction of the impulse. The will builds and simultaneously the impulse destroys. The intentionality of the will coexists with the poetics of the impulse."[3]
[3] From the interview of V.Viharova and Z. Uzunov "The new technologies will bring back the body to the theater";
2.1.4 PART FOUR
RÉSUMÉ
La présente partie de la "Technologie de la formation" propose de différentes façons d’analyse et de traitement/ de manutention avec les paramètres de la “forme déjà faite”- comme par exemple le travail avec le système sportif du "lancement du poids”, qui est une sorte d'apprentissage de l'improvisation. Compte tenu de l'idée de l'interdisciplinarité, ici on discute la possibilité d'extraire des outils d'autres domaines de la connaissance, qui pourrait être interpolé, comme dans la mise des problèmes (la problèmatisation), mais également à la recherche de "non-traditionnelles" solutions en cours de la construction des formes théâtrales. En ce qui concerne la dramaturgie, le domaine du théâtre non-littéraire est commenté. Respectivement, des manifestations dans ce sens sont encouragées.
The training course is called "Interdisciplinary Project"; the theme/the topic within the 30 hours is the movement "throwing the shot put", or, as architect Uzunov says, if we seek for "historical markers", part of the object of study during this (second) semester is the discipline "discobolus"[1] or in its modernized version - the discipline is the "putting"[2].
So, what the "interdisciplinarity"[3] means? If you search in "Google" only in Bulgarian - it will appear, alas, no more than 6 pages on the problem, while if you run the same concept through "the search engine", but in English, then the pages are about 90[4]. Although, hardly that fact may be indicative of how this paradigm is popular in Bulgaria (even around the world - in view of what was said in the article indicated as footnote here).
According to certain intellectuals[5] “the interdisciplinarity” originated with the idea of the movement between the exact and the humanitarian sciences, while according to Lyotard[6], "the slogan of the interdisciplinarity" was deployed/spread especially after the crisis of 1968, but raised and previously, it was directed towards the type of knowledge linked/related to the non-simple "transfer of information" but also to "the use of all the procedures, enhancing the ability to link fields that was jealously isolated by the traditional organization of the knowledge". And if we look at one of the first catalogs of NBU, this one from 1992, we will see that among its principles and objectives it was (and still it is) also the interdisciplinarity of the programs, or I would quote:
"In today's world, both the scientific and the practical problems facing the society are complex and require knowledge and skills from different fields, while the traditional education in our country makes a cult of the boundaries between the sciences, therefore the strive is all the programs at NBU to have an interdisciplinary character".
Perhaps now you have something more in mind about what arch. Uzunov has had in view, when sometimes he was talking about "the forms on the frontier"? - "This is the interdisciplinarity or the restoration of the uninterruptedness in the disciplines in the area of the human knowledge", "the idea of the boundaries in the arts and the idea of the “inter-disciplines”, "this is a development of the idea of the synthesis between the arts and between the arts and the sciences"[7].
...I.e. that which could be formulated as a working definition, already more strictly "in a more scientific way", it may be that the interdisciplinarity arises due to the fragmentation of the scientific knowledge and because of the natural shortage of the tools in each particular discipline. Because of this, and today several disciplines could combine their efforts in studying a subject common to all. This is e.g. in the Cognitive science, where the object of study is the intellect, and the purpose, generally told, is the creation of an artificial intelligence - "just" as the natural. Therefore, there were few sciences which were gathered together as: the informatics, the linguistics, the neuroscience and the psychology - and they are all united by the philosophy. So, some “coherent” ("average") new sciences were obtained, e.g. – the psycholinguistics, the neuropsychology, etc.
So, what about our problems during this semester? The "Technology of formation" in these sessions offers you two disciplines as an object of study: besides the "throwing the shot put" and... of course - "the theater". And the problem therefore is: "How and which from the tools from one discipline are environment (conditions) for forming in another discipline". I hope that you remember the scheme with the intersection between the sets of conditions from the previous semester, which does not interfere to see it now in relation to the specific topic:
Then what would you say about the following phrases: "dance theater", "psychodrama", "martial arts", but it might also be... a "track and field - theater" or a "theater-sport" - in fact until some such idea and demonstration on it we could attain at the end of the semester. And until then, your research should primarily focus on the types of throwing, putting and tossing from the track and field athletics and in particular you have to focus on the cannonball. Concerning the field of theater, it will also be required to "specify" the discipline - classicism, expressionism, psychological or dance theater[8]... because there is no “theater in general”. Please, keep also in mind that the more elements and conditions you describe, the more you expand the opportunities to reach, "original invention" as a result of combinatorics between the elements. So - at work! – Let’s look at some video examples, at several slides and let’s start with the three types of shot-put: back/rearward, aside (both of them also called “glide technique”) and "spin" (or "rotational technique").
Now, let's restore the separate phases of the movements, described as well as graphically and in tabular form, but also as a free text in the submitted materials (see Fig. 2). Let’s restore and the trace on the floor because that will guide our movement and the displacement in the pelvis. This time we have a circle in which to fit in, and its diameter is 2.13 m. Please, outline/draw the steps in the circle with the distances between them as it is recommended in the textbooks... Now in the three circles, we have to try to "bind together" the separate phases from the movements until an uninterruptedness-reconstruction of the three types of "throwing the shot put".
Regarding the shoulder girdle, "as a laboratory work", we will use some substitutes from paper for the simulation of "the trace of an object (the cannonball)". But please, test also the cannonballs themselves, because their weight also affects your behavior - from the inducing the groan-scream during the expulsion, but also till the "deformation" in your body and until the arrangement/ the sequence of different phases of the movement, which is determined by the final goal - the expulsion of the cannonball.
...And please, do not overplay/overact, but feel the real weight – as you know - in the "Technology of formation" the fundamental is the “reality” in the experience, and that by all means we strive to avoid the imitation of the feelings. For this purpose we will make “a field trials” for “putting” on... the clearing.
...And be careful! - The power in the "whip stroke" on the left leg pushes off the whole body; the twisting moments (the torque) involve the pelvic girdle to intensify the moments in the unfolding of the shoulder girdle; while in order to not “fly” after the cannonball, the locking in the shoulders will help you to direct the cannonball more precisely to the target.
And meanwhile, please, find a "marine story" – it might be a novel, or a short narrative or a story from the screen – e.g. the advertising of "Tayd", from which on a criterion to extract, in a tabular form, instructions for the following: for the movement (a kind of "stage directions/remarks"), for the sound (or otherwise said - "replicas") and for the environment - objects.
During this time, we will also deal for a short with the description of a story by the same criteria, but around an object: a box of cigarettes... Yes, I know that the task looks familiar/known for you, but during this semester you have “the right” to add an environment – a chair, a table and an ashtray - "every object that you need"; while concerning the sound you could basically use the text written on the box of cigarettes... In fact, the other main problem that we will have in mind during this semester is “the distance” - D (minimum or maximum – unlike the optimum[9]) – e.g. such between the imagery of the sound and of the movement. In this direction, for example, it remains a very "successful" demonstration of a student from the first class when he combined the movement of "throwing" with the poem by Botev - "Hadji Dimitar". But hardly now I could fully reproduce the paradox - the epic-tragic impression, resulting from the overlap/ superimposition between the text "He is alive, he is alive – here, on the mountain..." and the movement from the "strengthening" up to the "time before the expulsion of the cannonball". Or perhaps, the pictures below (see Fig. 3) will remind you, how far you could get in the expression and pathos in the bodies?
And in order to try, please, pick up a pen instead of the cannonball and play all phases from some kind of the "throwing the shot put". This task is called "response to/reaction to a change in condition - working with another object"... Or perhaps you are already prepared for casting for the role of "a writer, who has an insight of idea"?... Because the art includes within itself and an "artificiality" - a kind of intentional deformation of the reality - "a plastic/ a painterly problem" and it is not a simply reflection of the life - one to one... While the distance in the sport could lead to the creation of... an invention. Thus, the addition of a metal thread, that connects the hand with the cannonball, creates a new type of facility - "the hammer" and the discipline begins to be named "hammer throwing"[10] and around the circle for the main movement, it is obligatory to be putted a safety net for a cage... And so on about the distance in the sport and in the arts...
Now, it seems to be time to return back to the “everyday occurrence with the cigarettes” – please, let each of you to present by playing his description... Note that in your demonstration is still missing the genre-style-aesthetic through which to express yourself... But even so - even if you are still schematic in the way of expression, you already have the base/the knowledge about which element to which other element to be matched/ to be reconciled - as a means... Actually it comes the principal question that we had put: "How and which from the tools from one discipline are environment (conditions) for forming in another discipline". So, remembering the task with the pen, let's start our "research" on the "problem". Firstly, let’s see your "free trials-demos"... then we will impose some restrictions. E.g. such: without missing an event of your story, please, limit your movements and your displacements in the frame of a chair or in a minimum distance from it (up to 2 steps) – that, in the case, will be our S... And what would it happen if you should fit in alone/your self in the space of a stadium? (In the Theater of Sliven for example it exist "a stage for one actor")... Please, try also to fit in the time - try firstly to read it/ to render an account of it... Of course, from the general technological tasks, you could even apply the condition for straight, sitting and supine body, and the conditions for discontinuity and continuity (interruptdness / uninterruptdness). The funny in the case is the combination of elements which you alone pre-construct/ pre-plan. Can you imagine if you apply the abovementioned conditions (e.g. from straight to lying body) within a module[11] of "putting"? And if you apply the same condition but this time to another "format" – e.g. towards the same module of "putting", but repeated three times? When it will be obtained more dramatic, more "powerful" image – e.g., "just as for an opera genre": "the coughing from smoke, who was declared to be a cancer patient" - in the first case: when in one spin we will have "quickly" to get to the floor, or in the second case: when in three spins, "gradually", we will have to attain a supine position?... We could not skip and the tasks with the sound and the motivation. Please, dissected your story into 3 parts and try to apply 3 times, without interruption, the conditions described in the tabular form below:
With numbers it is marked the order of the parts-events. As you could see - with the motivation "pleasure", with decreasing the energy and with reducing the angle or the length-distance, you will have to play backwards your story as you alternate its parts with the parts of the "straight story", on which are imposed the opposite of the first conditions... But that could become a condition/a task for two persons and for a group... But the end of the semester again approaches...
I hope that in the meantime you have searched / you have rummaged the libraries and the internet about the submitted topics for research and that you are ready with your essay: "Theatre and sport as a basis for interdisciplinarity". And please, relax-"unleash" your imagination! I also suppose that some of you have already reached even to the textbooks on biomechanics or to the training facilities and to the measuring instruments of the National Sport Academy. While if someone of you gets to the "triple" video-recordings-measurements (to the filmed kinematic-analysis) from the competitions – then you could have the reason/the basis to make a multimedia performance or to "create" a "theatrical tricks" – like the film-trick from the film "The Matrix", where the actor was filmed in motion, placed in a circle of 120 cameras ...
Concerning the demonstration on your projects – please stay calm! We expect that they will be like "summary" of your future study or of your future performance! Although, in short-finalized forms you could also perfectly expresse yourself. Thus, over the years we have had many "sympathetic" experiments. For example, a student, playing with the words "throwing, calculating, overturning, tossing up...", which verbs she was using as remarks/stage directions, and being playing with bottle of mineral water, she made a great demonstration for "minimum distance between the sound and the movement". While a group of girls even came to a performance on maritime story: with costumes, scenography - "a fishnet" on the stage and "material" - "water" and they were using overhead projector, light and sound environment... - shrieks of seagulls... So that is just part from the scope in which you could dispose yourself. But no less important is that - to realize whether and to what extent we have “entered” into the interdisciplinarity. For this purpose, perhaps, it will help us the following criterion: if a product-invention is interdisciplinary, it couldn’t be defined as belonging neither to the one nor to the other discipline, from which it is derived – e.g. it is "neither architectural, nor – artistic/ painterly".... Therefore, compared to the classes during the semester - the "discovery" really is forthcoming...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_put - Putting styles - Two putting styles are in current general use by shot put competitors: the glide and the spin. With all putting styles, the goal is to release the shot with maximum forward velocity at an angle of approximately forty degrees.
Glide - The origin of the glide dates to 1951, when Parry O'Brien of the United States invented a technique that involved the putter facing backwards, rotating 180 degrees across the circle, and then tossing the shot.
With this technique, a right-hand thrower would begin facing the rear of the circle, and then kick to the front with the left leg, while pushing off forcefully with the right. As the thrower crosses the circle, the hips twist toward the front, the left arm is swung out then pulled back tight, followed by the shoulders, and they then strike in a putting motion with their right arm. The key is to move quickly across the circle with as little air under the feet as possible, hence the name "glide".
Spin - With this technique, a right-hand thrower faces the rear, and begins to spin on the ball of the left foot. The thrower comes around and faces the front of the circle and drives the right foot into the middle of the circle. Finally, the thrower reaches for the front of the circle with the left foot, twisting the hips and shoulders like in the glide, and puts the shot.
When the athlete executes the spin, the upper body is twisted hard to the right, so the imaginary lines created by the shoulders and hips are no longer parallel. This action builds up torque (въртящ момент,), and stretches the muscles, creating an involuntary elasticity in the muscles, providing extra power and momentum инерция.. When the athlete prepares to release, the left foot is firmly planted, causing the momentum and energy generated to be conserved, pushing the shot in an upward and outward нагоре и навън direction.
Another purpose of the spin is to build up a high rotational speed, by swinging the right leg initially, then to bring all the limbs in tightly плътно прилепнало, similar to a figure skater bringing in their arms while spinning to increase their speed. Once this fast speed is achieved the shot is released, transferring the energy into the shot put. http://trackandfield.about.com/od/shotput/ss/shottechnique.htm,http://trackandfield.about.com/od/techni3/ss/Shot-Put-Rotational-Technique.htm
[4] The information is from December 2005.
[7] Vazkresia Viharova, Zarko Uzunov, "The new technologies will bring back the body of the theater," magazine "Homo Ludens", issue. 2 / 3, Sofia, 2001
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh - theatre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionist_theatre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(theatre), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Stanislavski, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_theatre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanztheater, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedia_del_arte
[9] Terms, used by “Technology of formation” by analogy of the mathematical ones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_optimization
2.1.5 PART FIVE
RÉSUMÉ
Ici, à travers le “Surréalisme” on approfondit l'idée de la recherche interdisciplinaire, à travers laquelle recherche, une forme théâtrale peut être faite “dans l'espace des conditions" d'une esthétique donnée. Technologiquement, les problèmes suivants sont inclus: le travail avec “mobile plan vertical”, avec “la géométrie” et “le poids de l'objet” et le travail avec le “centre de la gravité (dans le corps humain)”, ainsi que le travail avec de différentes “structures linguistiques”. La relation entre “substantiel - géométrique - conceptuel - et morphologique déterminants de la forme" est aussi discutée. L'accent est également sur les “sens / les capteurs” et la “sensibilité” lorsqu'on travaille avec “du matériel” sur scène. Les étudiants acquièrent des compétences, en plus de précision, pour un travail avec le mouvement du corps, avec le son et l'objet/s, mais aussi ils accumulent des compétences nécessaires pour "faire des analogies" avec d'autres domaines de la connaissance, d’où ils peuvent extraire des principes, qui s'appliquent comme conditions pour la construction d'une petite forme théâtrale. Le cours de formation aussi aborde le sujet “du travail avec la lumière” - comme une condition de comportement. L'accent est aussi mis sur la perception de point de vue de spectateur.
What about the phrase "Beat your mother while she is young!"? It seems "immoral"? Or maybe more like a teaser or as a paraphrase of a proverb such as: “The iron forges while it's hot”? And what about the picture from figure 1? Does it not remind you of something else – e.g. for the next figure 2, which probably you have encountered in the textbooks of Psychology?
In fact, during this semester, within 90 hours, we will be dealing with the Surrealism, or the course is called “Dynamics of the theatrical form in the space of an aesthetic. The Surrealism”. Why it was choosen namely this aesthetic as an object of study? Because it occurs in many fields of art: in the literature, the fine art and the cinema, and because it may be reached even in the psychology, in the medical science and in the mechanisms of dreams – so all these fields, of course, are the fields for your research.
But why - "dynamics"? Because with what we will mainly deal, it will be to look for different ways to “form” and “transform” the theatrical form, so at the end it can be truly called "surreal." What does so much? Nothing special – except, that you must be very observant and descriptive, because not everything could be found without any effort in the reading. For example, in “The History of the Surrealism” by Maurice Nadeau, you will see when and by whom were the manifests declared as an art stream, while in the past issues of the magazine "Ah, Maria"- you will find, yourself, even parts from the manifests, and from there you will have to extract the principles, laws and criteria of morphology in the aesthetics, which are manifested in artifacts... It looks complicated? Let's try an example - on page 292 of "Ah, Maria" in the second manifesto it is stated:
"... the surrealism does not seek nothing else except to cause, from intellectual and moral point of view, deep crisis of consciousness ... "
To this quote, you could guess that we have already found an application in the above pseudo-proverb since then. But taking the advantage from the quoted above and from the figures above, this is the place to say that during this semester you will deal with the “perception” – i.e. that at least we will have like “one in mind” that question: what could happen in the mind of the viewer ...
And now, let’s continue with the citations:
"... to know at any price the artificial character of the old antinomies .... This make us to believe that there is one point of consciousness where the life and the death, the real and imaginary, the past and the future, the announceable and the non-announceable (the informational and the non-informational), the high and the low cease to be perceived in conflict... "
Let’s try to find an application of the above mentioned "instructions", but this time in the paintings:
But the biggest challenge still remains: you have to find subsequently a way, how does that apply to your behavior and in your stage design. So, let us see also the movie "Andalusian Dog” of Bunuel, while concerning the decoupage and other information, I hope that you’ll “dig” in the volumes of”The History of Cinema”...
…Now, it's time to look at the french film "The History of Surrealism" and "to steal" also from there some tasks... For example, that one, which is like child's play, and with which, there’s no way that you have not enjoyed, but with "writing", although you could see in the movie - there the task is with "painting". So, please, separate up into groups, and everyone have to fold a sheet A-4 on such parts, as the number of participants in the group. Then, start painting, everyone in his segment, as on the border with the segment of your colleague, you should leave a trace, so far as where you've done the drawing (and fold the sheet), so that the next participant should continue from there (from the traces left by you)… And now let us "unfold" the strokes painted. The task for everyone is: please, describe with words the new hybrid, which was obtained... So, when we get to the words - we can already "transform" the speech in action...
But if the action is "done", then what would be the sound? - maybe we must do the other task, for which we have already mentioned – that one with the "writing". Please, fold (again) a sheet A-4, on as many parts as the number of the words that could form a sentence. For example, let each group choose their ranking among the following questions (trough which the sentence is formed):
Then, by analogy with the previous task, everyone writes - answers the question, folds the sheet and transmit it in a clockwise direction to his colleague...
So, we have already images in "sound" and "movement", with which to make a "story". Thanks to the work in a group, where each "associatively" has been included in the "story" to another participant, maybe we could say that we tried to touch to the principle of the "automatic writing", for which we have also read in the manifests.
I.e. after these brief examples of the use of the research, that which is expected from you is at the end of the semester to be writen an essay: "The space of conditions "The Surrealism".
But how to create a "dramaturgy" in which an object also could be included? (As we see, the surreal paintings abound with objects.) It’s simple - the easiest way is if in the above mentioned table (Table 1), if we replace the question "who" with "what" or if we replace “(with / to ...) who (whom)” with the question “(with / of ...) what”, as a priori we have crowded the stage “with multitudes/sets of objects” with different size... so in the way, your “dramaturgy”, your “stage directions” or in other words said - "the movements with the objects" would be already indicated. But what else we could do with the sound, so as to come upon even more close to the "surreal"? We see that the Surrealism handles with extreme images-realities, but linked in an unusual way. So, whether we could find imagery also in the sound? Yes, we could – even when we were in the first year, first semester, along the task about the "radio theater", when we have talked about the sound "z" we have indicated that with a characteristic intonation, once we could liken a "bell" while another time you could liken - "a mosquito"... So, what would be the case now?... Have you ever heard the following phrase "Pips, please, piiips!" or "Attention!" but also "f o u r t e e n... t w e n t y – f i v e... t h i r t y..." - conceptually-sound-intonation patterns/images, which couldn’t mistaken identified, concerning the question: who pronounce them. And if we extrapolate the intonation patterns of such phrases and if we apply them to another phrases - how the image would be perceived in the mind of the viewers and the listeners?...
Maybe we should try also with the “verbal adverb”, as far as it express simultaneity in the movements - simultaneity of the images (here, we will have again in mind the perception of the spectators): “whistling, he is jumping”, “running, he is spitting”, "singing, he is coughing" - hybrids between incompatibilities. No, no - do not strain to invent hybrids at the moment – we will directly play the task on a sheet in pairs among you, before the demonstration...
As regards for the objects, after having in the previous semester emphasized on its exposure/exposition in a whole, now, we have to focus on the sensation when working with some of them. For example, let’s work with a sheet of paper, with an apple, or with an egg... - okay it could be also with... a wafer. So, I hope, that in the meantime you have managed to read at least the series of articles of BBC (BG) for the senses[2] – for the touch, the sight, the taste and the olfaction, for the hearing and the balance... What is important here? – the important is to be able to highlight at least one (distinguishing in comparison to the other objects) characteristic and to be able to engage at least one of the senses, with the hope to involve in this process also the associative sensations in the viewer. No less important is that each object must cause/provoke our concentration... But let's proceed to the task-training: "Please, fold a sheet A-4 until you reach the smallest segment, possible for folding... as you carefully intercept a side with a side and an angle with an angle"... So, well: by the friction/ rubbing between the fingers and the sheet a sound/ а noise is heard – so we have reached the second after the touch sense - the hearing ...
And now let's “exhaust/deplete” the sheet through the fragmentation of its possible tight strips. Please, choose uncomfortable position, e.g. - yes, on toes! - in order to insert energy in your body, while moving away the sheet from your sight (e.g. – directing it unto the ears), the visual focus also will stay on the touch and the sound... And please,... breathe! - because compared to the breathing, you count/ you measure the time! - otherwise the other variables might also be the energy, the motivation etc... For example, over here a student has chosen as a condition the “continuity (uninterruptedness) in the strip” and “its spreading on the stage”, so his behavior is different from the preceding one: from squatting to the right body, while the movement/the displacement is back… And the stage has strewn with material, with a quantity of shredded sheets - kind of multiplicity... so we bring up the object to a substance... Similarly to that it is when we work with an apple: splitting it even to the smallest particles, please, try despite the effort to observe about its ordering/arrangement on the ground; please try also to feel the juice, because that is important for the taste, but also for the touch, because the apple is sticky and you could sense it... Regarding the sound, that which we could recommend to you - it is the game of associations - a series of words: definitions-specified-characteristics for apple.
I hope that most of the principles are understood: we choose a movement through which to "exhaust the material" and we open our senses, but also we open our thought in order to comprehend analytically, and consequently – in order to feel the peculiarities of the object. We must also monitor for the space around us, as well as for the placement of the substance (of the material) in it. For all this it is necessary time - in order to experience more of the characteristics of the object and in order to expose them ...
O.K - yes! - the waffle. What is the characteristic that you have chosen? - crispy, volatile? And what about the main motion? - "I take a bite", but it could also be - "I bite-champ" (without doing bits) and “I exhale the crumble (in order that it flies). Here the duration in the breathing is measured / counted - even while we are lifting up our hand in order to bite the wafer ...
So, if we dare to summarize - there are two “border conditions/ states”, when from the object it could be reached till a substance. Or as architect Uzunov says - the one way is when the object is put (is seen) as a multiplicity - ton of apples, lemons or wafers - something like the quantity of tires in the poster of Ivan Stanev or as the huge amount of sheets, with which, as we have said, we could strew/ scatter the stage. Then our body could even more react in a whole and not in its parts... And the other way is when we bring the object to its component elements - for example: nuts, chocolate and wafer peels ... and butter cream ... - bringing them finally to a substance - a type of homogeneous and it is not necessarily to be an uniform / blended mixture of components..
This manner - to make a summary - allows us to look at from another perspective, eg. on the Fig. 1, but also to recall another picture of Salvador Dali, in which the cranium was composed from naked human bodies... Which is the substance and could we thereof and through it to reach to new images (e.g. as a cranium ")?... You could get the idea about the task with the set of objects, which you have inscribed when constructing the sentences! Because such reasoning could bring you to the idea of a new figurative arrangement of objects on the scene - for example at the end or at the beginning of your presentation.
And now let’s proceed to the task with the door - kind of a rectangular weighing plane which is placed vertically up to the wall. This training facility is called “fixed door”. But it is also a door as we have often seen in the paintings of Magritte (see fig.7), with different figurative (semantic) overlays. Through it, we will deal with a series of tasks through which to learn to work with the geometric determination of the objects. But, all in an orderly ...
Please, list/enumerate in a column "sub-objects" of the door, and in the column next to it, list “the movements unto them”. In the next column, please, list/enumerate adjectives like "characteristics" of the door (e.g. “from chipboard”..., “rougher” and “white”...), while in the next column - enumerate “the movements by which to be described and highlighted-exposed all these qualities”. For example, against “from chipboard”, it is possible to enter/to write "knocks" - a movement through which to highlight the sound that could be derived from the material. Against the "rugged" you can try with "scratches on the door" - and respectively - we all know about the "prickle", which evokes this noise in the listeners. But what about against the "white"...?
Relating to the sub-objects (we call them “sub-objects” because they are included in the framework of the object "door") – concerning to them, that we could suggest, it is to "transform" the movement to a "posture", juxtaposing the parts of your body to the geometry of the plane "door" (axes, diagonals, descriptive elements, relating to which the sub-objects are arranged)... And all this is because - the movement and the form, then (at that time), becomes distinct and expressive. And while dealing with the characteristics of the door, the sound could be the pronunciation of the "characteristic"- itself, then while you are dealing with the “sub-objects”, that which is recommend to you, is to try with the pronunciation of the "sound-consequence" from the interaction with the sub-object. (The consequence could be in the form of a noun.) Here it is good to recall the paintings of Magritte, which we were trying to describe as principles of correlation between movement and sound, or rather between the IMAGE / TEXT. I suppose – you will also remember that under the image "ladies dress shoes", that the text was stating that it was “night”, but also that the text under "the candle" was designating the "ceiling ".... So, even only up here, we already have enough material to create a little story-presentation...
That what is forthcoming now - it is to try the way back to reach to the images, starting from the geometry of the contact between the two bodies - the human one and that one of the door, but this time not proceeding directly from our imagination, but from the geometry. (It was similar, when we “walked” our behavior between the Imagery and the Expression or vice versa.) Here is the "alphabet": point, line and plane in the shoulder and in the pelvic girdle - together or separately. The point - this is the minimum contact between your body and that of the door; in order to have a line – it is important to find 2 points that are connected anatomically and which to lay down as a whole-connectedness in relation to the door; the plane, respectively, requires "3 points" or “a point with a line” or otherwise said "2 (anatomically) intersecting straight lines" in our body - an angle, with which to touch the door... Here, the task is the following: Please, find 3-images, through the geometry of the contact with the door: point, line and plane. Firstly in the shoulder girdle, then - in the pelvic one, and finally - with both girdles - again - images in 3-positions.
Whilst you are looking for – whilst you are exploring the training facility, but also - the images, it is important to expose (to the viewers) the contact. So, when you work with the contact in the shoulder girdle – please, move away your legs from the door. And vice versa - when you work with the pelvic girdle, please, move away from the plane from your waist and up. In the way, “the grips” in your hands and in your feets, which are not in contact with the plane, they will also be exposed, would be highlighted...
Which reminds me to the next task - with the “semi-dynamic door”. I.e. if you try to push back the door to the wall, after the stroke with it, it will still fall unto you, because it is heavy, and as architect Uzunov says – it yields / succumbs to the "gravitation"... So, let’s draw the projection of the door on the floor. Let us note the vertical axis. Because what should happen it is to navigate through it (see fig. 8). At each step, by taking the door, you will have to reach an image, while respectively, the rhythm in pushing back the door, and the thought about where and how you will take the door, and the thought about who is the image... all these would help your concentration.
...And increase the Energy or decrease it – please, for "extreme images"- for "critical values"! In the way, you a priori draw/ you beforehand draw the character development - the development of the “story”. It is interesting to try also with the combinatorics of the conditions which you set: one movement and again the same with pleasure / with displeasure, in a minimum of or in the maximum of the Energy, when (and how many times) the text should be spoken - "before", "at the end" or "during" the movement. Such a training would help you to filter out the conditions for your final demonstration.
....Then, why not to try, when you are lying on the floor? - to push back the door with legs until you reach an image-posture on the ground with the shoulder girdle, and to displace with legs (your pelvic girdle) on the plane...
No, no – I do not say that is easy but I think the effort worths, otherwise there would be no DV8 (EN) - the suspended/the pendant for the legs who were writhing in the air... Otherwise there would be no the choreographies of Pina Bausch - a woman with a long dress-trail, which displaces alone a sofa, or there would be no the walking woman-Play Boy on a field with high heeled shoes, or there would be no the walking man with a wardrobe on his shoulders… And do you remember "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam: the dummy props, the flying... the size of the decor and the mother, who was regressing to youth... But also, could you recall the movie "Microcosm", where through cadres, but also through the sounds - the fields were seeing / were seeming as an airport, while the dung-beetle in our minds has evolved till Sisyphus.
So - back to work! We will now work with a door in the space or the so-called “dynamic door”. Please, let two persons to stand on each side of the door - and to pass it each other. When there is a signal, given from one of you – please, change your locations (the side of the door)... then repeat that again... and again... Now try “alone- by yourself” to work with a door – to take it (to pass it) on its both sides... When you get used to interact with weight of it - without let it dropped or without let elude it from you - you can try to work with the memory of it... And after this - we can replace the door with the gravity of a partner – we could try “to pass” him each other... Because the substitution is allowed to us by the Surreal as criteria ...
Now it seems to be time to return again at the beginning, when Zarko has outlined to you the following scheme - see Fig. 9, and after this, he did drawn and this graphic - see Fig. 10.
I believe that you have already understood, how we have tried to implement the first "drawing" in the process - and that you remember how we have tried to derive/ to extract principles, relationships and interactions from different areas of knowledge and to apply them in the behavior, but also in the stage design. I also believe that you have "tested" practically, the following determinations of the form (according to Heidegger): substantial, topological (geometric) and typological (semantic, figurative) definiteness... So now, regarding your final projects, let's continue on the morphological distinctness – it is something like to do little "scenarios"-schemes... For that, I'm sure it will help the above graphic (Fig. 10) - compared to which, you could keep asking yourself: the SOund in relation to the MOvement and to the Object – what kind of image gives that to us; compared to that image, what would be the next one; in the dark it could be a sound (a speach/a noise), but in the light – whether it could be an object?...
...And, please, alternate enough frequently the different conditions in order to enable the viewer to be “surprised”. In order that you could be “surprised”, you could let a colleague to put, to unexpectedly place for you, the door, an object, or a sub-object on the door. For this, it would help you the work with the “light/dark”. So, in the dark – you could expose the sound - and let it be a contrasting to the previous one (in the light) or further develop the previous as "hybrid". For example, if the event is "sniffling" (you’re playing "The smelling a flower on the door), then in the dark you could complete/finalize the sound e.g. with а vacuum cleaner... Through the ”light/dark” - for a short interval in the enlightenment - you could also do a "movement-figuratively hybrid”, where in briefly to be seen an image of a girl – from the shoulders and up to head, and paradoxically, after that, you could demonstrate - how she stands on... the legs of a man (if he would be even in a ballet position)... Actually, contemporary trends in the theater - such as. "Object-theatre" are sometimes on the edge/on the border with the legerdemain, with the illusionism / the illusionist art... with the show of David Copperfield...
I hope that while you are writing (and while you are doing) your project, that you will recall for the examples from the semester: for Robert Wilson and “Alice in Wonderland”- about that, whilst she was becoming tiny, how the bottle was increasing in her hands...; or for the company of Philippe Genty, when the scene has turned up/has changed in sea or in the skies, strewn with a clouds...; or for the movie "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and “The Phantom of Liberty” of Buñuel [3]...
But above all, please, look once again at the original sources such as in the following table[4]…
....
http://www.lafim.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=208, http://www.lafim.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=211,
[3] The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie - Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie - Luis Buñuel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discreet_Charm_of_the_Bourgeoisie
1974 — Le fantome de la liberte - The Phantom of Liberty (French: Le Fantôme de la liberté) is a 1974 Luis Buñuel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_fant%C3%B4me_de_la_libert%C3%A9
2.1.6 PART SIX
RÉSUMÉ
Dans le cours de formation on soulève la question, s’il est possible, que par la séquence de stimuli sonores et visuels (qui sont points de référence), de former un comportement d'acteur complèt – respectivement, le titre du cours de formation est “La phono-optique-forme”. Parmi “les domaines de la recherche” sont “la performance” (“the happenings”) et ”les éléments de la biographie”. Conceptuellement et pratiquement, on discute: “le code” et “ le cycle”, “le module” et “l’hiérarchie”, et ce que peut être décrit comme “une tendance” en vue de “la petite forme théâtrale”... Les étudiants acquièrent en profondeur et en plus grand degré des compétences pour réagir et pour interagir avec l'environnement et avec un partenaire/s. On stimule la creation de son propre script et le travail systémiquement structurel dans l'élaboration du texte dramaturgique. En ce qui concerne les projets finals, les places pour la présentation des performances biographiques sont discutées partiellement, comme une opportunité d'influencer/d'interagir avec le public.
Do you remember, from the school years, for the Pavlov’s experiment with the dog? About how, when there is a "stimulus" - there is a “reaction”. And from the previous semester - I suppose, you could remember for the articles of BBC (EN), for the senses, and for... the "irritants"... I.e. that are the facts, on which we have to look through this semester, within 90 academic hours, i.e. the problem is: Is it possible trough a sequence made only by Acoustic (Sound) and Visual stimuli / reference points to form/ to make an overall actor behavior. Or the training course is called “Morphology of the theatrical form – Phono-optical form”. "Phono", perceived as sound and "optical" - perceived as light, as an optical ray. Hence you will have to explore the sound and the light as properties, as sources, as a way to direct it, as well as the opportunities that they could participate in the formation of a space... Concerning the dramaturgy, it would be good to seek and to explore the "performance" and the “happening”, and to make research on the "biography"- on the "autobiographical performance" as ways of interaction between the actor and the spectator, as a means of referencing to - as a means of development of the theatrical form in the space-time.
And while you are making a "tabular" analyze (as "homework") on the submitted text for the "art performance" (e.g. the text of Roselee Goldberg from the journal "The Art" - "The art-performance - the art of live performance[1]), I propose you to "start" directly with the training for the light so... let’s pull out the candles and let's see the hall - if it is well tight/isolated from the outside influences - whether it is enough dark, because only in the way it will become “apparent” the properties of the light, respectively further, it will become “audible/hearing” the characteristics of the sound ......
So ... sound and light! No, no - formulas and calculations here will hardly help. But if you begin to "surf" via Internet you will see that the light can be defined as “a subjective sensation caused by the perception of the electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength that is visible to the human eye”. You'll also read about the "brightness" and the "polarization", but also about phenomena such as the “diffraction” and the “interference”. You will be also able to scroll through the "eyesight" and the "color", through the "visible spectrum" and "the rainbow" from the photography over the holography until the microscopes and the telescopes... until the lasers... Concerning the sound – you will have to "plunge in "the acoustics"- if that could be even for a while. Because there you will find information about what it is the "volume of the sound", what it is the "level" and the "loudness", the "altitude", the "timbre" and many more... Otherwise, in Wikipedia it is written, that the "sound is the oscillation of matter perceived through the hearing."
Why are all these definitions? - maybe because it is through similar "formulations" that such of productions are raised, e.g. that of a woman which put a sensory glove on her hand, and that in turn she responses with different sounds following the differences in the temperature of the body parts - something like music and dance produced from our body ... Anyway - I'm sure it would be fun if you reach to the infra-sounds, but also to the ultrasound, becouse they also could impact on our emotions. But if you want to experiment with these "hidden" meanings, please, make first "consult" to the story for "Frankenstein"[2], in order that you think sufficiently about that before you start the experiment. Moreover that, some of the experiments are on the border with the cognitive science and the medicine, but not on the border with the aesthetic.[3] And in order to make sure that this (the work with the sound and the light) is enough "historical", please, let us see two films about Bauhaus[4] performances - the one film is with the displacement from people of colored panels in the frame of a square drawn on the floor, and the other film is about a light-figures in the darkness… And now, let’s return to the trainings ...
... So, after we have put a candle on the middle of the stage, we have lighted it. Please, observe/explore for a while, how the light spreads, and until where it dissipates in the darkness (therefore it would be really important that you come in the class in black clothes). Then, walk on the stage and see how the light reflects on your body. If we impose a condition: the light to be reflected evenly along the whole face/front part of your body? – then, yes, our body will be deformed – it will be “curved”-"convulsed", like the drawn man in the Figure 1... So if we elevate the source of above the ground, we will see furthermore that the light of the candle forms a "sphere"... And as you have already felt yourself, the observation following the above condition, plus the breathing are the sufficient conditions for the concentration. So after we have achieved the "attention", let’s further develop the task!
So, to summarize, we have started with the case, when the candle was near to the ground, that the light described a circle, which dispersed on the surface of the stage - in the direction of moving away from the center of source. And you have already worked with a “circle” and a “square” as conditions for DISPLacement-movement in the space. If you think about that: how in the previous student years you have react with MOvement, but also - with SOund to the light / dark, then, I believe - you will be able to finish yourself the task... Yes – in relation to the concentrically inscribed circles in the squares (see Figure 2[5]), in the center of which is affixed the candle, the conditions of the task could therefore be reflected in the following table - see. Fig. 3. Consequently when you displace yourself along the circles, the sound and the movement will be steady regular, or otherwise said – it will be "constant" as energy. I.e., in this case, the energy of the sound and of the movement will depend on the fact: along the smaller or along the bigger circle you will displace yourself. But if you move along the axes and the diagonals, along the radius, the degrees and the values of the energy of the sound and of the movement will change quite sharply - according to the direction of the movement: from the center out, or vice versa. Of course, "most complicated" is when you move along the sides of the squares ... And as you can see, the space and the light in itself have submitted to us "its-own" rules and we have only "read" it....
Then, what to do with the text, with the sound? ... While you compose from newspapers a sort of a new - a sort of “your own dramaturgy” - you can use already learned/memorized etudes-texts (an already "done" verbal and nonverbal behavior). And because of that, let us start urgently with the dramaturgy! For this purpose, please, take out your newspapers and check them in relation to the defined by you criteria! And the criteria you will formulate it, when you take in account - what is the "biography" as opposed to the "autobiography"... So... the "biography" it is "life-list”, presented in the third person singular. And what are the phases in human life – the "events" if it is possible to make a summary ... It might be such as in Figure 4, in relation to which it is possible to be associated – to be acceded and to be arranged the multitude/the set[6] of newspapers... But you could also start and "vice versa"- for instance, from looking into the “formal principles” (such as linguistic, stylistic and design principles) of a newspaper that you have selected... For example, there was a student who has started with these criteria: "whole announcements", "subtitles" (bold sentences from articles), “words-advertisements” and “dates and images from obituaries”... Another student has chosen these criteria: psychological problems, their solving, and advertising. But it may be experimented with simpler „binary-antinomy” constructions-criteria, which in a given moment to be countered one to another, although subsequently, it is possible to overflow it - from one to another… Thus for example another student has began from the two "thematic multitudes"- "personality" and "society" ... Other student – from the "personal dramas" and from "community/public" and "natural disasters". Unlike them, the next student..., has started from personal "drama" - articles about Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino and Jean-Paul Belmondo, and subsequently he has summarized, reaching the following criteria: "love-family " (adventures, separations and anguish, success), "family-birth" (relationships with children, parental care) and “disease-friendship-family” (diseases and medicine, psychology)... The student himself has "concluded" that he will "alternate" different elements from the multitudes in order to achieve a "character", tracing its development from "youth years", over the "maturity" until the "old age"... All that, because in general, the task was: "Using newspapers and following the criteria "nature of relations - "biography", to be reached to an order/arrangement (formation) of (a literary – not a dramaturgy) text “biography” ... But no less important is to answer to the question: What personage, what kind of characteristics of the characters will be formed as a result of the arrangement and of the rearrangement of the elements – a celebrity? a theater maker? ... or an hysterical person - and because of the last characteristic, it is possible to search in the field of the “psychiatry”, in order to find additional detailed instructions for behavior ...
... And, please, be “careful” in the alternation of the “elements-events”, because if you alternate e.g. "childhood" with the “professional scientific manifestation”, and then - still the same ("childhood"/”professional scientific manifestation”), it is possible to be achieved the image-personage "the prodigy child"... Not that it wouldn’t be interesting... - on the contrary, you have to play with the combinatorics... And for the most curious among you, the "hidden task" was about the means of visualizing the “sets”/the “multitudes” – “in the tabular format” “in the tree structure” and "as a diagram" and the basis was - "The Set theory"[7] ... By the way – after a while you have to do and "transformation" - from the “literary basis” until the “dramaturgical text”.
But maybe we have stagnated in more... Let’s move in the space! - "runs, jumps, sits, lies" are the additional conditions in order that you move following the geometry on the floor. I hope this will move forward your image/"fiction" that if you are concentrated, that it means that you have to be "slow". And using an "already made" etude/form that you have learned in another course and also using the new conditions, I am convinced that you will reach a new explanation-interpretation of the image through the new dynamic of conditions...
And what it could be said on the question - is it possible to a geometrical figure, once it has been drawn on the floor, whether it could be translated and rotated... Then, let’s do it with the squares (see Figures: 5, 6 and 7) ...
And respectively from now, you will formulate yourself - what is "decoding" and before that - "coding"... But that seems still complicated... Let's open the theatrical dictionary of Patrice Pavis, where you will see that the "code" in the gesture exists when we speak about "aesthetic gestures" - those who have been treated in order to create products of art (dance, pantomime, drama, etc.). But “codes” we will also find when we are talking about the "conditional gestures" – you could remember how we were playing in the first year of your education “on films” making up our own "jargon". Then, according to Patrice Pavis, the gesture becomes "hieroglyph", requiring "decoding"...
Regarding the “code” it isn’t possible that you have not played on the children's game where it was required: in one continuous movement, without repeating lines to be drawn a house - as an exemplary "way"- you could see Figure 9 ... Maybe here it will help you, if you have such a question in mind as: what is a "module". So “module” is randomly selected unit of length, which defines all dimensions of a given... (area) as a whole, multiples or as fractional of it." That is also something similar to the child song: "Hey, there is a boat. In the boat – there is a cat. At the cat – there is a mouse. At the mouse – there is a book. In the booklet it is said: "Hey, there is a boat..." etc. But that actually leads you to the problems of what is "cycle" and what is "infinity". So "the cycle" is a sequence of phenomena and actions which are in a certain order and which are linked together in the way that it results in something whole and completed, a finalized circle", it is “a period of time, after which it is repeated the same... phenomena”. But here the task was just the following: "Find a “common code” about displacement on the figures that you have drawn on the floor...
... Yes, all the three examples about “code” are interesting (see Figures 10, 11 and 12), but what to do when two and more than two squares are “knotted” as in Figure 7? Then in fact we are seeking for a “common code” – for a “section of the codes” on which we could displace through the squares, through which we can pass "without hindrance”, from a figure to another figure...
So, the displacement trough a “code” will help you to think about/ to make links to the "ritual", but also to the “rhythm” in the movement, which is leading us unto the "dance"... I.e. here you’ll be also able to "express yourself" in different styles and aesthetics... And, please, do not think that the “code” requires necessarily “mechanical movement” - on the contrary - you could reach the "empathy"/ the “trance”... Concerning the variations in the modules and the cycles e.g. in the music and in the choreography it have led to the stream/ to the trend of "minimalism".
....So, the next problem to be solved is: from the “literary basis” towards a “dramaturgical text”... So, you have already ensured the “chronology of the events” as you have obtained/ incised within the newspapers the "connecting" elements - dates, hours... as well – even the minutes... Since, you have reached to a "biography” in the framework of an hour! But all this is still a literature. So the question remains: how we could pass to the next level – that one before the "game"? Okay – please, determine indications /indicium (criteria) which are inherent for "dramaturgy"- "replicas" (monologues, dialogues), "stage-directions" (instructions for behavior), and descriptions for time and for environment-objects. But here, in no small part of the dramas, there's a story-plot, where the sequence "draws" the following trend: introduction, nodus, development, denouement (climax), and end. So even now you have formulated the task yourself: Please, transform/convert the literary text "biography" as instructions for word-speech, as instructions for behavior and as instructions for space-time and for objects - see Table 1.
Concerning the tables, that helps you to do more and easily different links between the elements in a column and between the elements from different columns... But as regards to abide by the trend, by the development of the form in the space-time - to abide by the plastic/ painterly problems and by the aesthetic parameters, let us return to the possible variables when dealing with the "optic ray"... And because of the fact that however the light is most visible during the day – let extinguish the candles and let's take away the blinds!...
…The "optical ray" we will describe it as a "straightedge" between our eyes and a point for which our eyes observe. Therefore we have to deepen in the stereometry ... I’m just kidding! – because we have already worked with a sphere, and now we have to imagine a "cube" in the space. So the foundations are already drawn, and in its middle a tripod is placed, with which we could over-simulate /construct in the space a vertical axis of a cube (see fig.12). When you navigate / displace on the geometry on the floor - circles and squares, please, keep an eye toward the center, toward the stand - now only trough the “eye contact” the form will be "modeled", so trough the “eye contact” your behavior will be "modeled" (and therefore please, do not turn with back to the stand) ... We will have to make also and points in the space. First of all, note three optical points on a different height on the stand: the one is when we are on toes - then at the eye level (horizontally, in parallel with the floor), please, mark with duct tape a point on the stand; the other point is when we are bent or semi-squatting, and the third is when we are "lying"(in lower position) - still at eye level, mark your points on stand, but also and its projections on the wall (for example – see the noted ones with blue crosses on the back wall of the cube). It is important to note that when we put benchmarks (reference points) in the space, that we have to choose "legal positions" - e.g. the middle of the sides of the squares (for example – see the blue dot from fig.12, from which viewpoint are marked the projections). But for similar "legal positions" it can be selected also the angles in basis of the cube... So the "apparatus"- the "experimental set" is already finished ... - and we should proceed to the training-task...
Please, navigate/displace on the sides of the squares from the right, over the intermediate until the low position as you continuously monitor for the optical points and its projections in the space. This is like you targets with a rifle: the optical point on the stand is the "hindsight" and the projection respectively is the "front sight" ("foresight"). Okay! Well! – you have guessed yourself that it is possible to the "optical ray" to descend obliquely-on diagonal to the ground, respectively, from the bottom - to reach diagonally – obliquely - up to the ceiling… So it is time to replace the points-projections with the eyes of a partner – the tasks for two persons with a leader in the game... And now, let us displace the "hindsight" from the center, while in the same time you continue to observe the old projections. But what would happen if we return the stand in the center, while in the same time we continue to displace on the translated or on the rotated square? This will help you to reach to the extreme values in the energy - through the deformation in the behavior you’ll be also able to shape/to model and the aesthetics in which to express yourself...
And most of all, do not forget for the "grips" and for the "stage directions" but also for the objects, because that together with the sound will over-give to the system of rules and even more for the imagery.
So, until where have you came in the search for the tabular analysis, in your studies about the performance? Let's look at your tables:
Well... I can see that not a small part among you have noticed definitions for genres in performance. Here for example it is listed in the following order:
1. the conceptual art - or art in which the material are the ideas and which arises as opposed to the idea of economic valuation of the artifacts;
2. the autobiographical performance, which highlights in the foreground the personality of the painter and elements from his personal life story;
3. the ritual performance, where "as opposed to live performances, which have as their object the formal properties and the manifestations of the body in the space and the time, here, it is recreating ancient rites and actions (even - with blood!) in pursuit of the Aristotelian notion of catharsis through fear and horror - compassion ... and in particular of the abovementioned – the “art as therapy”, which is based on the theories of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich (e.g. - by recreating gestures of mentally ill persons) until... the paradox for this category – the research of the self-mutilation and for the ritual pain "in order to be achieved - the purification of the performer and in studying the aggression/ excesses, which appear to the spectator;
respectively, fourth and fifth points - are the "parody-entertainment” and the “audio-visual” performance ...
But anyway – what it could be said about the relationship between the actor and the spectator?... Thus... you have noticed the big spacing (elongations)/distances "in the reconstruction-restoration of an Indian ritual... and over here were granted even the “instructions/questions” unto the audience, in a way that it can be incorporated into the action... until performances in which through the “sound shifts” and through the “subconscious visual and audio techniques”, as well as through the “speech and bodily gestures” – the aim is to influence emotionally and mentally on the audience ...
So, here's a possible multitude of instructions to be interpolated/deployed, to your up to date "dramaturgy" - an opportunity to grade relationship between you and the spectator… But since I have mentioned the "sound shift" let’s go to trainings with the sound ...
… So, you have already learned perfectly to navigate/to displace on the geometric trace on the floor... Then for one of you we will put a blindfold on the eyes, in a way that his body, unless to displace on the squares, he has to deviates in the direction of the signal-sound ... And all the others, we will pick up our whistles and we will position ourselves on the points of the surrounding square...
For what does helps us all this? With certainty, you have gained a further "sensitivity" to an almost invisible environment-oscillations that is constantly with us and that also shapes/models our behavior... And I believe that this could assist both – as your stage performance in the future, but also for some "innovation" and non-theatrical presentations-performances...
For example, a Spanish group has made a performance “The lies of the media”. On it, there had been invited many pairs of people - husbands, brothers and sisters... The spectators were separated individually in cabins with monitor in their sight and a "blue screen" behind them. Due to the continued shooting of the reactions in cabins during the performance, at the end, the audience reacted with horror when seeing that it is impinged with a knife or e.g. with a gun to someone from their families...
Although after such/ after similar analysis it can be even questioned the ethical views of some of the performance makers (not only of the film makers), mentioned as footnote trough the lecture of Brigitte Lederer.
But can you imagine if the audience is arranged in a circle around you (around the stage) and if we put it among it a series of loudspeakers that will reproduce spatially the sound, in order that the audience together with the actors could react simultaneously - in-one?... of course only if the themes/the dramaturgy is different – if it prompts/invites to responsibility, to harmony and to nonviolence?
And among the modern art-trends there are arranged also the site-specifics-performance the action ... and the installation...
So, it is your right to judge where within the university to situate your final presentations ... Yes – it is possible to place it on the lawn, in the cafeteria and down the stairs, but please, with certainty, at least for the laboratory experiments - do not harm yourself and please, prevent the aggression from you to the audience and vice versa ...
... And ever, within the educational course there was made "masks" and "glasses"... Please, see below how it was presented in the program of the Summer Academy of Performing Arts - Sofiya'2000:
BODIES AND TIME (SONOPTICAFORMA)
The presented course is a part from the cycle “Bodies and time” in its continuation - "Sonopticaforma". This training module is offered for the first time in the program on the Summer Academy
A single space with its rules can be read only if a person is in it, not around. The actor has the privilege while he works in one particular space to interact with it. This means that the actor is able to describe a space (a set of points, lines, planes, surfaces). It is necessary to describe this space, in order that the actor could read it again. While reading the space as points, lines, planes, surfaces the actor perform legitimate motions and movements/displacements (standing, runs, jumps, falls). This set of actions enables him to generate images in the space.
In this training the eyes have special role. They fix and direct the impulse for movement and displacement in the space. The differentiation of the eyes (of the sight as perception) and its integration into the whole psycho-physical action of the human body is the object of research as a main tool for accomplishment of actions in the space. During the training the participants will have an opportunity to elaborate a sort of optical training facility (goggles).
In the final phase of the work, while using the acquired in the work - imagery-fixations: image-solo, image-duet and image-group, an attempt will be made to read/ to interpret some of the texts from Shakespeare and Chekhov.
[2] The Myth of Frankenstein (Mary Shelley's novel) is often discussed in the scientific circles as a moral dilemma to any impending scientific endeavor. It is interesting that in 1996. Prof. Viharova organize a course conducted by Austrian lecturer Brigitte Lederer "The tragic and the violence from the Greek tragedy till the realistic TV movie", where similarly to the above dilemma was criticized the moral reference point in the media as opposed to theatrical theories in the basis of the theatrical practice throughout the centuries.
[3] For the English version – it might be made comparison between the two examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGvsDD50cb8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEuwmzvWSp4
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory Теория на множествата Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics.Elementary facts about sets and set membership can be introduced in primary school, along with Venn and Euler diagrams, to study collections of commonplace physical objects. Elementary operations such as set union and intersection can be studied in this context. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_diagrams Euler diagram
2.1.7 PART SEVEN
RÉSUMÉ
Ici, dans le centre sont les définitions possibles “du theater”, de “l'acteur” et “du spectateur”, de sorte que les définitions sont considérées par le biais du prisme de recherche sur “la performance” (the happenings) et sur “le ritual”, à travers le prisme de recherche sur “le theater” et sur “les installations artistiques” - sur “le jeu” Les étudiants acquièrent des connaissances et habiletés pour construire une forme "finissante" et "infinie" et pour expérimenter de différentes façons sur la réaction/ l’interaction avec le spectateur. Des possibilités pour l'élaboration des spectacles de nouveaux genres - p.ex. une sorte de “Théâtre domicile”, ou “Multi-média formes de théâtre” ou "Formes théâtrales basées sur les (internet-)jeux multi-joueurs", et le travail à la limite avec le Playback-théâtre et la Psychodrame - sont aussi discutées.
So we are already in the second semester in the last part of “Technology of formation”, also 90 hours, which part is called "THE 413 In the space of an idea: theater without actor, without spectator”. I am convinced that it sounds amazing: how is it possible to have still "theater" when it lacks its two main components? Yes... you have to get back to studies by which to be defined the following problems: what is "theater", what is an "actor" and what is a "viewer"... And the fields respectively are: theater, ritual, performance and installation[1] ...
Meanwhile, let's look at the film “Run, Lola, run” which you have to describe "structurally" as well as “framing of cadres”... Yes, it looks like a "computer game", where three times it is enacted differently the relationships between the characters. Respectively – it is enacted differently the outputs in the different situations… And whether anyone among you has participated in the tabletop games? Maybe you have took part also in the ”books games”? But if you want, we could go also to Pancherevo in order that you participate in the game “PaintBall”: with protective helmets and vests, with guns - to participate in a game-reality[2].
Because this semester "the space", it will be defined not only as "everything between the sky and the earth"- i.e. as an “infinite set/multitude of points”, but also "the space", it will be considered as “the rules of the game”. A game even in the social space, and if you’d like we could reach even until the statutes and the legislation, because through them, it is submited to us - instructions.
So let’s get start to make a work apparatus - "space-points", as we attach on the ceiling with cords some "cones-plumb-rules", on a different heights from the floor.
Here, we have also an alphabet - a set from conditions that will guide us in the construction of our behavior. And they are prolongation of those conditions from the previous semester. I.e. – we will talk again about the "optical ray" as a motive for behavior, but this time it will be correlated to the cones in the space. Or this time, through the cones, it will be possible to observe its projections – straight, wavy and closed lines, which were in advance marked on the walls of the hall. Here are the new definitions:
a.) in the case that your eyes – “the optical ray” focuses through the cone and describes a closed line, for example - on the wall, the figure is called "body", but when instead for a loop on the wall, you look out for the eyes of a partner, here your freedom to move in the space are almost unlimited;
b.) but if the “optical ray”, by passing through a cone, it follows a curve – on the floor, on the wall or on the ceiling - the “optical ray” describes a "surface"; here the degree of the freedom is relatively large - you can move also enough unrestrictedly in the space ;
c.) but if your “visual ray’ passes through cord / cord - it describes a "plane"; here, in a greater degree it appears the restriction to move of left / right, but that is why, there are enough opportunities to move "forward / backward” and “vertically”;
d.) unlike the above, if the "visual ray" targets through a cone - another a cone, it describes a "line", so here follows besides the restriction ”left / right”, but also such, but in "vertical";
e.) and of course, you will be the most limited if your eyes in the minimum of shift – if they must see simultaneously or almost simultaneously two lines - this is called work in "point", ie the "visual ray" will need to crawls four cones in the space, then your head is almost fixed and the freedoms in your movements are from the shoulders and down (see. Fig. 1).
Consequently we can already proceed to the trainings, and it is: "Find how many and what kinds of motives of behavior exist in the space: surfaces, planes, lines and points. What opportunities are there for Movement/Displacement, according to the fact – how the “optical ray” is directed."
After this training it comes the next one, which is again for a solo-person: "Within the framework of 5 minutes for the related/ corresponding configuration, please, research, as well, the images until which you have achieved, when relating the optic ray to the cones, but also, please, research the dynamics of the behavior in the spatial frontiers "from wall to wall". Please, note that the configurations are in the following order: body, surface, plane, line and point; concerning the “transition between the items”- or so called "zero position", we will submit to you 10 seconds, during which time (for free movement in the space), the “optical ray” is still active - in search of the next configuration."
Respectively, the task in result of the trainings is: to arrange (each of you - individually) such a sequence of configurations, which could form a continuous figurative/ imagery behavior...
...So... Now let tamable the energies and let’s sit down because we will deal with the theory. Since through that, it is built not only “Run, Lola, run” and the computer games, but also e.g. a program for generating scenarios, which is called “Dramatica” [3]. In it, according to the fact - what features/ properties of a character (physical and psychological ones) will be assigned it will be formed a "hero" – a "protagonist" and after him – an "antagonist" - the one which can counteract. Then you will put an "environment" - a world in which the heros – the acting persons become alive. And if you arrange the obstacles, and respectively - the decisions taken from the personages - the scenario is ready... Through this program it could be played, it could be simulated e.g. the series of “Star Wars”. The scenarios could be even used in the psychology - for treatment. For further information, please, see "Games People Play" by Eric Berne. Respectively for your final trials/ attempts, you will be able to borrow from there your schemes for games-scenarios. Then, the theater becomes on the border with the Playback-theatre, on the border with the Psychodrama...
But actually we have spoke about the so called "flowchart"[4], which is a sort of "block-diagram"... What is that? - I suppose that this will startle you, but this is a way of… description of “algorithm”. Or it is simply "a system of instructions that specifies the order of the implementation of elementary operations in order to be obtained a specific result”. Then respectively, the "flowchart” is a "two-dimensional language” for describing algorithms using geometric figures and links between them, which are indicated by arrows. Here except that the "the ellipse" is a sign of "beginning" and a sign of "end", with a "rectangular" is marked "an arithmetic block " - an indication for an action; while with a “rhombus” is marked "a logic block" – a question about "decision making", in consequence of which in the script is obtained ramifications - even until cycle-repetition or parallelism of topics (see Fig. 3). So here the task is as follow: "Describe the dramatic (literary) artwork as an algorithm through a "flowchart” - a series of arithmetic blocks." Here follow and the tasks for "detailisation / fragmentation" and for "consolidation" of arithmetic blocks; for “transformation of arithmetic blocks” in a “logical” ones - sort of cycle, as well as tasks for the “cycle in a cycle” and for “parallel plots”, for “multi-ends” or for “infinite form” ...
No, no, please – don’t panic! You'll see that it is fun. Thus, for example once a student has described “Romeo and Juliet” in the following arithmetic blocks:
1. masked ball 2. meeting 3. balcony scene - a declaration of love 4. secret marriage, 5. murder of Mercutio and Tybalt 6. false suicide - Juliet 7. suicide - Romeo 8. suicide - Juliet 9. Peace - Montague / Capulet;
After this description, the student has transformed the flowchart in several scenarios versions - eg.:
a). if the answer to the logical block “balcony scene - a declaration of love”? is "no" it could follow: 1. murder of Tybalt and Mercutio 2. feud - Montague / Capulet 3. exile of Romeo, 4. marriage - Juliet / Paris;
b). or if "the assassination of Mercutio? "do not" happen, the plot could continue with: 1. second balcony love scene; 2. Notification of the Montague and Capulet for the wedding 3. Peace - Montague / Capulet 4. splendid wedding ceremony;
c.) but if on the "logic block"- "false suicide of Juliet?", the answer is "no" - we could go until the next "logic block"- "Wedding Juliet / Paris?"; here if the answer is “yes”, we are going to the"end", but if the answer is “no”, it is possible the following sequence: 1. chasing of Juliet from her home - Kapuleti 2. meeting with the exiled Romeo 3. life together, and 4. end.
I suppose that you could see Juliet as a widow, but now it is time again to return on the training.
Up here, through the environment – “points in the space” and through the “optical ray”, we putted in motion mainly the shoulder girdle or as arch. Uzunov called it, this was the working apparatus "geometry of the trace of the eyes - the shoulder girdle”. I.e. now you have to reach - you have to add a "geometry of the trace of the body on the floor - geometry of the pelvic girdle”… Then let us draw a random set/multitude of lines on the floor... Here part of the lines fall directly under (coincide with) two and more than two cones - then if we displace on a "plane" or – on a "line"- our body will still be quite trivial. But if you detect parallel to the previous lines (i.e. - translated lines) or intersecting them (as we know - rotated lines – see Fig.2), then for sure it will become fun. Because the pelvic girdle will differ from the shoulder one and on a certain point on the rotated line, our body will be on the border with equilibrium, in a critical value - just before the fall...
And now would you like to adapt the task in a way that it "becomes more usefull" for your future practice?
“Through an optical assessment, please, define 2 tables and 8 chairs as a set/as a multitude of points, as a common geometric environment, mainly for the shoulder girdle - a sequence for two persons, from points, lines, planes, surfaces and objects. Towards the above mentioned, please, apply an "allready made" verbal and nonverbal behavior or create a story and make a small theatrical form”.
Please... these students among you, who have a prepared etude following a play, let start their work with the “working apparatus”, while the other part have to start immediately to invent a story for two persons...
Here, there have been also a lot of interesting presentations. For example, two students played a passage from "The Government Inspector" by Gogol, where thanks to the geometry of the trace of the eyes, a series of new situations has resulted: stalking, opposition, separation, one person “with” a chair and two persons “with” a chair; one person “in” a chair and two persons “in” a chair, while the free motion in the space was replaced by a “contact” – “whisper - in the ear”...
Unlike them two other students invented their story with the following conditions: while the sound of the first student was like a ticking clock, his partner was counting down the seconds - from 1 to 60; both the students have passed through right, sitting and supine posture, but while the one person was “working in a point” (without displacement), the other student was increasing the distance on each new configuration - skipping over a chair among the others, and while the energy of the first student was constant, the other student has increased it to a maximum – until the image “ringing of the alarm clock”...
So how far have you attained in your studies/researches?... Well - because there is no time let’s try to define the explored notions - right here – on place, by discussing examples and with a focus on your reflections and experience... So... what is theater? - Presentation of dramaturgical work from actors to spectators. And where normally that happens and what are the activities of the parties? - In the theater, in the amphitheater, but it might be in the street and also - with or without a specific fencing; the audience enters, sits down, comments, applauds ... observes and listens or interprets or - "releases" their imagination, while the actors - play, entertain, recreate relationships, destinies... Then - what is a ritual? - This happens usually on a sacred place or in a holy day; some people are more enlightened – they connect with the divine and reproduce with acts or verbally recall a sacred event; the other part - the less initiated are educated and on a certain moments-phases they include in the action... Well... but if you try to summarize, what performance/live art is? – maybe that could be described as artistic events which are focused on the study of the artistic means and/or that it intends to emphasis, to direct the public opinion or the opinion of a number of people on a problem; these events rather occur/ happen on a selected conceptually (according to the wishes for impact) places... So maybe it remains only to see what an installation is? For the purpose it would be good to recall an example from the exhibition of Shipka 6, where I hope you remember, we saw a picture on which various musical instruments were represented: when a person puts on his head the headphones with a sound sensor in front, wherever he looks, sometimes - even with a movement-displacement in the space, in his hearing a sound from a relevant instrument was sounding , because behind it (behind the painted instrument) an acoustic sensor was placed... So, as conclusions - an installation is... an arrangement of objects-wiles, through which the behavior of the audience to be driven in a certain direction... But for sure, we would not pass without examine the question - what a game is. So in it, the players observe for the compliance of certain rules and usually they alternate in their gaits, but also they follow the strategy of the opponent, because the aim is to "win".
Now maybe even more you could guess why Zarko has included in the tables-projects the notions: “with displeasure – with” and “with pleasure – against” – or "friend" and “adversary”? Okay – then it is time to define by playing the relationships between actor and spectator, so let’s go out on the meadow and let’s fix three sticks into the ground and let’s draw three squares; then we have to put points/projections in the space?... and I hope you would recall the codes from the previous semester?
... Because now a game will be submited: in the main square is the "actor" - he moves and says a text from some dramatic work; in the translated square - there is the “semi-actor” - he just moves-displaces, besides on the code, but also by using grips from a future (imaginary) character from a dramatic work, and in the third square – in the rotated one - there is the so called gamer – the "spectator" - he moves besides on the code, but also by using some specific gestures of an imaginary spectator: "yawning", he does a “discontent comment”, or such, but of "admiration"... and he "claps" at the completion of the code, but also he is "booing" (he is hissing the actor), when there is an error of the "actor", which is a sign for the change of the positions of the gamers: then the "actor" becomes a "spectator", the "semi-actor" becomes "an actor", whilst thereby, the spectator becomes a "semi-actor". The game can end while the longest text is said, but if there are some equal lengths of texts – the "winner" will be that one who had been of at least times in the position of the "spectator"...
Okay – it remains to over-train a little more the different gaits-displacements in the space e.g. - G-figurative movement - "the horse’s step" or - to make such a corridor amongst the cones... But it is also possible for your final presentation to combine the two apparatus – the one with cones and the other with the squares, and with the light sources. And all this depends on the fact on what problem would you like to answer in the project, and in the demonstration. For example, you ccould tell that you will make a "home theater". Then, in order to get closer to the idea of “theater without an actor, without spectator”, you will need to describe a behavior of a “guest/of guests” as an algorithm, and also you have to describe the space-environment, in which he/they (the guests) reside, and also - in what kind of situations they are included. But you could also decide your theater form to tend to “a multimedia performance”. Then you will need even more to explore the cinema means – e.g. the means of Peter Greenaway, but also of Lars von Trier, dispite that I think that only through the phono-optical means there was not a few cases, when the students succeeded to engage the audience in a level of activity... For example, there was a student who made a performance “for an actor and two spectators” with "apparatus" - a light source - a candle. When she was lighted – she was "an actor", but if she was illuminating a spectator - she and the other (unlit/rayless) "participant" imperceptibly were passing in a position of “viewers”/"spectators" ...
But if we take advantage of what Zarko says – that we are in the "information age", which implies different types of material - different types of vehicles/media to be explored - and if we upload some of the sound instructions, but in another medium, e.g .- on paper but it can also be done as a phonogram - on tape, as MP3, while respectively, that which could be deciphered optically - if we upload it on video or - why not - on slide-plaque? - what would happen from that?
And can you imagine if for your own performance - eg. for “Cherry Sisters” by Michael Green – if you "borrow " conditions from the multi-players book-game "Bloody Sword" and if Veruka – becomes a "warrior"; Basha - "wise guy "; Gnasha - "a monk", while Mayasul - “wizard” - what forthcoming to result? ... And if in the hall it is host an artificial labyrinth from number of walls? ...
Moreover, I expect that you would be inspired from idea. For the aim - you can see the movie "The Game" with Michael Douglas in which he received as a gift "a game-reality" from his brother and where the circumstances in which he was placed profoundly shook him up untill purifying him - untill releasing him...
Otherwise, over the years we have had a lot and very good - interesting results. One student. e.g. has played with the snake and with a text from “The Cherry Sisters”, in the framework of squares on the floor and a tripod through which to pass visual rays, and by which to describe the projections in the space... so his attempt was on the border with the “shamanism”... A group of students have played both between themselves, but also with the spectators and the choice of logical blocks – who of them have to continue - were based on the game “rock, scissors, paper”. Parallelly to that, the audience, otherwise sat down in a circle around the actors, had to make decision and simultaneously the spectators had to displace in a clockwise direction and change their point of view...
I.e. it is important to decide how you will placed the actors and the spectators, and who and how will do in the case the "jury" ...
For example the student, about which I have mentioned on the occasion of “Romeo and Juliet” have described his project approximately as follows (I will paraphrase him):
1. Specification/ refining of the spatial setting - he worked with the apparatus - cones in a way that the “seats” for the spectators were situated "under the cones", and “aside from them”;
2. Refining/ adjustment of the "the roles" of the spectators:
a) some of the spectators were “with candles” in their hands - which was equivalent for the actor – that he works with an optical point – a cone, and respectively - for the spectators – they had to be brought atleast into a minimum degree of activity;
b) three persons among the audience were “defined” as a "jury" - in order to "vote" on the logical blocks with "yes / no"; they were supposed to be in a higher degree of activity when setting the course in the flowchart;
c) one among the spectators (dedicated one, a knowledgeable one) was defined as "coordinator ", so, he had to count the "multitude" in the votes and respectively he have to submit to the actor – a behavior - "branches" in the ”flowchart”;
3. Refining/adjustment of the technology of the demonstration:
a) in the logic blocks the actor was playing "visually" - 1 min, and in the arithmetic blocks - "physically" - 2 min, by using an "endless flowchart”;
b) his sound was a text from Shakespeare, which was distributed in 31 events, but besides that in "the performance" there was a phonogram - 10 musical extracts about 2 min, which were interrupted on every one minute, respectively the phonogram was also recorded as infinitely repeatable;
c) the “coordination” was supposed to be done on every two or one minutes in a way that on a signal from the phonogram, it had to be submitted arithmetic blocks to the actor, while if there were logical blocks, and after counting the votes of the "jury" - to the actor was submited an appropriate course/ gait;
But sometimes, in order to not distort the "sense/meaning", it was waited for "the final replica" of the actor, so the paradox of the theatrical form was as a result of translation between the behavior and the phonogram ...
So... have a pleasant work until the exam and please, describe possibly more freely - in narrative form your project... If you want to try - you could add also a budget, while concerning the examples – please, do not hesitate to ask us about it...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-garde, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happening, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installation_art, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busking, : http://www.bright.net/~dapoets/performa.htm и http://www.retropunkx.com/environmental.htm,.: http://atieq.blogspot.com/2006/06/sightseeing-performance-art-photo.html, http://www.lebazar.net/sfear/index.htm, http://www.lebazar.net/softchair/index.htm, http://www.lebazar.net/arttrap/ARTTRAP.htm, http://www.albertverges.com/I_instalacion.htm, http://www.albertverges.com/I_instalacion.htm,
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_games-Tabletop games, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranium_(game) – Cranium, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_game, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart - A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents an algorithm or process, showing the steps as boxes of various kinds, and their order by connecting these with arrows. This diagrammatic representation can give a step-by-step solution to a given problem. Process operations are represented in these boxes, and arrows connecting them represent flow of control; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm - In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (pronounced /ˈælɡəɹɪðm/ (listen)) is an effective method expressed as a finite list[1] of well-defined instructions[2] for calculating a function[3]. Logical: An algorithm may be viewed as controlled logical deduction. This notion may be expressed as: Algorithm = logic + control.[58] The logic component expresses the axioms that may be used in the computation and the control component determines the way in which deduction is applied to the axioms. This is the basis for the logic programming paradigm. In pure logic programming languages the control component is fixed and algorithms are specified by supplying only the logic component. The appeal of this approach is the elegant semantics: a change in the axioms has a well defined change in the algorithm.
2.2 ABOUT THE TASKS IN RESERVE, SHORT COMPARISON AND ABOUT SOME OF THE APPLICATIONS
So, there have been already made a series of "snapshots" of the tasks - a sort of panoramic view of the theater-educational system “Technology of formation” - on its parts. Now, if we try to summarize, what are the results - what are the presumed knowledge and skills that a student should have gained over the years, we could “describe” it as a "conclusions, inferences" on the training courses and we could look for examples of the practical-stage applications thereto.
For example, the inferences of the First part might look as following:
"In this part, the student acquires knowledge for “thinking by analogy”, for “making analysis” and “paradoxical artistic synthesis”. The dramaturgical basis is the "life stories" (“the “everyday occurrences”), and the “field of preliminary research” is the "mute cinema", the "comedy films" and the "radio-theater", as a basis for training achievement of expressiveness in the body-movement and the sound. The students develop skills for focussing their attention on a partner/s, as well as skills for working with “light / dark” and to “fit on”/to be “placed” in the time and space."
Here, a part of the applications of this training course could be found in the performance "The English Lover" by Marguerite Duras, which was directed by Vazkresia Viharova. E.g. in the moments of radio-theater and within the work with the sound to a microphone; but also in the cinema-principles - a kind of a "double exposition" and the allusions to the Bergman’s works were that the characters walked like ghosts and that they mixed the realities - homes, prison, interrogation room... and Atanas Atanasov has made an indelible impression with his expressiveness and paradoxicality – so, concerning the “cinema-comedy” and the “grotesque”, I think that even Jim Carrey would appreciated it.... But it was neither a comedy, nor a student work... then, what could be said for "The Dumb Waiter" by Harold Pinter, directed by Svetoslav Nikolov? There such of principles from David Lynch were used to reach the effect of "slowness" and “back-reverse” in the movement and the sound on the stage, till that the cyclical repetition into the infinity - turned over in an unexpected end...
As regards to the conclusion to the Second part, it might “also sounds” as following:
"In this part, it is commented the “theatrical language”, as a part of the “body language” and by analogy of the “gesture-mimetic language”. The student’s attention is drawn to his artistic expression means for building behavior. By setting a series of conditions such as: to work with motivation, with time, in the space and to increase or to reduce the Energy – the expressiveness of the sound and of the movement is modeled, between the continuum of the abstractness-expressiveness (as examples are given the dance and the jazz forms) and concreteness-figurativeness (here, possible examples are the Expressionistic theater and the Comedia dell’Arte). The acquired skills are for “structural work” with text, but also for coordination and concentration. Here, the dramaturgical basis is made from the narrative (communications) sentences from newspapers. At the end of the course, the student should be able, to some extent, to control his behavior towards achieving "comicality" and "drama" effects, to control his behavior in the direction of the mastery of the "abstract" and "figurative" behavior."
In relation to this part, as examples it might be seen the following performances: "The House of Bernarda Alba" by Federico Garcia Lorca, directed by V. Viharova - so far as here it was used the finger alphabet (the sign language) of the deaf-and-dumb people, but it could be also seen and other students' performance – “Lateral Effects” written by and after the direction of Kamen Donev, where the “sign language” was “improvisational invented”. And while in the first performance - the movement / the gesture in relation to the speech have assisted to the concentration – it has lifted up the "fourth wall" (according to Stanislavski), but it has also served for expressiveness until the tragedy, thus in the second case, the gestures were of neurosis, light-soft - without reaching the "empathy" and the effect of the arrangement of the extracts of pieces in the play - was a dance-melodramatic-tragicomedy... Among these performances ranks "The Blind" by Meterlink – because its "choral" scenes are among the most expressive-abstract... and ever in the “Technology of formation” it was talked about “the smallest simple physical movement”, which leads to the abstractness...
And if we make a conclusion on the Third part - it could be following:
"Here, the student acquires further in-depth knowledge about the dimensional parameters of his own body, which are relevant to the environment and in particular - knowledge of the time-spatiality of the pose/posture, and skills for impromptu exhibition of the extreme characters-images and skills for work in detail. From dramatic point of view, the problem that is submitted to the students is related to the “reconstruction” of the environment and of the behavior, according to a text and the references are into the "Realism in the cinema" and to the “Psychological theater”, but also to any potential form, whatsoever could be the "comics theater” for example. Another topic which is submitted is also the “reconstruction of the behavior and of the environment by pictures” of the Renaissance statues and the “work with sonnet”, and here, the potential reference is to the Shakespeare’s Theatre. The training course focuses also on the work with object/s."
Respectively, among the performances here is "The Alpine Radiance" by Peter Turrini, directed by V. Viharova and with the participation of the teacher at Theatre Department, NBU - Asya Ivanova... but also - do you remember the postures/ the poses with the umbrellas from “The Cherry Sisters” by Michael Green?... In this group is also the spectacle of Elena Panayotova “The House of Bernarda Alba”, if you could recall the slowness and the spatiality in the gesture - its relevance to the chairs and to the space on the stage... With regard to the "mask" and the extreme face-expression, I will remind you of "A Doll House” by Ibsen, directed by Dejan Damjanovski, where and even more, on the above mentioned topics, the playing scenes were alternated with "comics" – something like a trial how to make Ibsen "understandable" or as ... a “story about children”...
Here I should afford to merge the two of the following thematic representations of the conclusions on the educational courses into one:
For example - the conclusions of the Fourth part:
"The present part of “Technology of formation” offers different ways of the analyzing and handling with the parameters of the "already-made form" – such as e.g. the work with the sport-scheme of the “putting” (the “impulsion of shot”), which is a kind of learning of the improvisation. In view of the idea of the interdisciplinarity, here is discussed the possibility to extract tools from other fields of knowledge, which could be interpolated, as in the laying of problems, but also in search of "non-traditional" solutions in the construction of theatrical forms. Regarding the dramaturgy, the field of the non-literary theater is commented. Accordingly to that, demonstrations in this direction are encouraged. "
.. And here are the conclusions and the inferences of the Fifth part:
"Here, through the "Surrealism" deepens the idea of the interdisciplinary research, through which a theatrical form can be made “in the space of conditions” of a given type of aesthetics. Technologically, the following problems are included: work with “mobile vertical plane”, with the "geometry" and the “weight of the object” and the work with the "center of the gravity” (in the human body), as well as the work with different "linguistic structures". The interrelationship between “substantial - geometric - conceptual - and morphological determinations of the form” is discussed. When working with "material" on stage, the emphasis is on the "senses /sensors" and on the “sensitivity”. The students develop skills, besides to precision when working with body-movement, with sound and object/s, but also they build skills to “make analogies” into other fields of knowledge from which to extract principles, which to apply as conditions for the construction of a small theatrical form. The training includes the “work with light” as a condition of behavior. The accent is on the perception."
Why did I "linked" these two parts? - Maybe it is in a way, because I want to emphasize on the fact that the actor often had to run the distance between the conceptual and the psycho-physiological beginning. This for example, can be seen in the overall surrealistic program “The athletics of the affect”: from the Actions in front of the Court, on the Eagle Bridge in Sofia
But where remain the unpredictability, the spontaneity, the imagination and the improvisational skills in the “Technology of formation”? – maybe that could be seen in the Playback sessions on the scenes from the life of Cocteau, where on a given moment from thence, read "by probability" from somebody from the spectators in the hall, the actors had to perform impromptu or had to depict in sculpture for example a life-scene?... Until the spectacle itself – “The Mad of the house” (from the overall surrealistic program “The athletics of the affect”), where it was obvious the accuracy, the precision and the expressivity of the body-movement, while the work with the French phonetic structures interpolated on the Bulgarian text gave a strange musicality of the show. Even so in the performance – there was enough possibilities for improvisation in the scheme – as in a jazz-session. But I wouldn’t pass also and the work on the overall vision of the spectacle, because besides to the sound-timer-signals, the actors had to relate to the slides behind them, or they had to relate to the photos of the personages, to the clippings-figures on the paintings of Magritte, or to the stage-directions from the play, or to a film of Alain Resnais... While on the scene the actors were worked with apple, with ketchup… the fires have flashed in different parts from the stage, and the objects stood out in its scale... And through the means of the multiplication of the characters - from “ordinary” drama it was reached to the "epic" spectacle... Concerning to the "improvisation in the already made form" - here I would indicated for examples the series under the program "Customs of people", where it was worked with Bulgarian folk dance, with tempo-rhythmic structures in the movement and the sound, as a basis for building an image/ character and in the approximation to the archetypes...
But let’s return again to the summarization of the training-courses - to the conclusions of the Sixth part:
"In the educational course raises the problem about, whether it is possible, only through the sequence of acoustic and visual stimuli / reference points, to form an overall actor behavior - respectively the title of the training-course is “Phono-optical-form”. Among the “fields of research” are “the happenings” and “the components of the biography”. Conceptually and practically it is discussed: "code" and "cycle", "module" and "hierarchy", and "trend"... The students gain to a greater extent and on-depth skills for reaction and interaction with the environment and partner/s. The authorship and the structural-systemic work in elaborating dramaturgical text are stimulated. Concerning the final projects, partially, the place for the presentation of the biographical happenings is discussed, as an opportunity to influence / to interact with the audience."
The application of this part might be found e.g. in the performance "Egasimus, the actresses” of the group MiStMa. Here the graduate students - Milena Stanojevic, Stela Krasteva and Margarita Petrova had made themselves a drama-play from a collection of documentary material of their personal biographies. Not less technological was also their “work with quantity of shoes”: eg. such as “the work with material”, when a person was taking all of them to be worn across the space, but also as an obstacle-"training facility"-terrain, when one from the actresses had to pass as trough a "path" littered with many shoes... Applications could be also found and in the performance directed by Delyana Maneva - "The Hothouse" by Harold Pinter, where the actors were worked with candles - with light / dark, but also where it was curious the way of use of the still unrepaired then building of the Red House. Here, the actors were climbing the walls, they were flying on a rope to the audience and they were able to maintain equilibrium... being in/ reaching to a character, when by passing on the beams of the ceiling - above the audience...
Now, let’s proceed to the conclusions of the last - Seventh part:
"Here, in the center are the possible definitions of the theater, of the actor and of the spectator, so they are considered by the means of the prism-research on the happenings and on the ritual, trough the prism-research on the theater and on the installations, on the game. The students acquire knowledge and skills to build an "ending" and an "endless" form and to experiment with different ways of action / interaction with the spectator. The possibilities for the elaboration of spectacles – a kind of "Home Theater", "Multi-media form" or “Multi-players game”, and the work on the border with the Playback theatre and with the Psychodrama are discussed."
Then, whether you could remember “'Indje” by Y.Yovkov and the computer multimedia in the back of the stage? - it was a flow chart, which was relevant to the stage performance. Concerning the incision of the scene with a real bridge in the audience, I believe that you would guess of what reason that was due. Then, what about the actor’s work with the weight of the stage-panels? - for sure the actors’ sensations for the weight and the desire to push out the panels had been real... Here we should mention “The Presidents” by Werner Schwab, where 15 actresses were "in close proximity" to 15 spectators: the actresses were sitting around a long table, and to a meter behind them, in a checkerboard principle, was situated the audience... And there comes a moment when the girls’ chairs equalizing with these of the audience, in order to be whispered in its ears for the toilets… for the cleaning the tilets with gloves… - something like strong audio-movement technique to impact or to a close interaction to the audience?... As regards the final spectacle of the art-expedition "Thorna" in the Rhodope Mountains, besides that the texts of the actors were collected from the local settlements, the final presentations were situated in different “corners of memory” in the center of the village Shiroka Luka and its vicinities. And the audience was moving on the itinerary, stared in the colors, in listening to the Rhodope sounds, in touching the natural – chestnuts, flowers... and in tasting the specialties of the local people... Meanwhile in Levochevo, artists from NBU – Stenographers’ program have transformed the village in installations... And what about the Action with the traditional dance “kuda” – resulting in the happening "The Passer" in Sofia , and about the Action-happening in Vienna
Well… the review on the applications has been made – but whether I did not missed the part of the tasks in the cycle of courses "Technology of formation”? Yes, for sure I have missed it, because before, a separate educational course titled "Mono-spectacle” has been led, where we worked with “portable walls”, in relation to which, the space was constructed, but also - a behavior towards it. We were also worked with the “structural transformation” of the “literary text” into the “mono-performance”, with the extraction of "direct" and "indirect" instructions for behavior. The walls were even used in the Fifth and in the Sixth part. So, in one of the final demonstrations of a group of students, the wall was situated in the middle of the corridor, in the first corpus, on the fifth floor of the NBU, and it was "interrupted" in four places. The students were playing on "hiding" and on "detecting by sight" between them, while they were run on both of the sides of it... Once, still in the first year Arch. Uzunov even suggested a task of analysis of the stage, by analogy with a drum - a task for extracting a sound from material / object. Also in the first year there was a task for impromptu analysis of the environment and for work with the “meanings” (with the significations) of the "context". So the girls have had to play an “everyday occurrence” in the men's toilet-bath, correlating their bodies to the objects in it, while the boys respectively have had to play their “everyday occurrence” - in the female toilet-bath... While the "training facility" in the Sixth part was an angle, built between a white door and a black screen, above of which it was hung up on rails a light bulb, besides that in the "training apparatus" was included a candle with tripod. It was then "measured" that 40% from 75-watt bulb provides illumination equivalent to that of a candle. The freedoms of the students varied from playing by exposing parts from their bodies on a white and on a black background, through a game with "reflecting light" on the cover of the book ... until this - until where the students will stretch their imagination in order to include other elements from the "environment" so as to complete their own “experimental apparatus”…. And do you know how it was “sounded”, in the beginning, the task of the interdisciplinary project? - "The time portrait of a man is “the story”; the spatial portrait of a man is “the place”. Please, make a small theatrical form, researching the interaction with an object"... There was also a task with “animal postures”, and with searching for “right angles” in the human bodies... Alas, from the year of 2003, the tasks with the "postcard" were dropped from the curriculum of the First part... but other tasks, for the period from 1991 until 2007, were successfully systematized - and structured up to brilliance - e.g. as these with the types of paradoxes, or from the Fifth part - these with the types of “hybrids”; in the Second part – these ones with the alternation of the types of “training facilities”, with dynamics on the applied texts, and hence - with dynamics on the references to the future or to the possible applications in the “theatre making”... Everywhere it was established a rhythm of alternation of the theory with the practice, it was established even more attention to the dynamics of the students in the groups - more attention to student's attitudes......
And yet, where we are - where is the "Technology of formation” among the set/the multitude of the theater-training systems.
Let us first to recall, what was a "system" - and such one, according to Arch. Uzunov, could be laid on if the elements, which belong to a set/a multitude, if they are supported each other in order to function together in some way - as a whole. I.e. if we could see the parts of the educational courses with the associated to it tasks, as “elements of skill”, as “knowledge-elements”, whether they will support each other so that at the end of the cycle of lectures and practices “Technology of formation”, the student would be "sufficiently" prepared for his own future practice?
But before responding to that question, let’s return to the beginning - somewhere at the end of the last century and in the early twentieth century when, by analogy with the sciences, some of the first theatre-practical systematics have appeared. Here it would be good to examine one of the smallest, but even so - a cardinal shift in the approach to the actor. This shift is situated in the continuum between the System of Stanislavski[1] and the Method of his student - Meyerhold[2]. Because if the first one at the beginning of his practice has postulated the approach "from the inside to the outside", the second one has differentiated the method as soon – “from the outside to the inside”. How is performing this? For example, in the System of Stanislavski – besides trough the availability of the physical tasks, but also trough the availability of the elementary psychological tasks when working on a text, on a role - e.g.:
But does indeed the “psychological actions” do not have "external" physiological-efficient (operative) manifestations? Moreover, when by learning, we have tried to do a reconstruction on the System of Stanislavski, alas, we have needed "to translate" the psychological actions, trough the question of "how"- in physical ones. Whether this doesn’t remind you of the work in the first course of "Technology of formation" - when we have “to form” a story (an everyday occurence)?
At Stanislavski, it is following the tasks for "(musical) score of the role", for work with "the grain of the feeling"- for work with "spiritual motivation" - e.g. the actor to play: 1. in a tone of enamored, 2. in a tone of a patriot, and 3. in a tone of a free man.
While, the “motivational systems”, according to the “Technology of formation”, described in its extreme values are two - that of the "encouragement", where it is important the "pleasure" and that one of the "avoidance", where, when there is an inevitable meeting with the "not good" facts, the "displeasure" follows. But have you ever heard about “descriptions of images” as "the stepmother", "the malevolent" or "the reticent" and "hardtack" - "teacher of painting", especially in the Third part? Probably you could remember also to the combinatorics in the “conditions”, offered in the Seventh part – “with a pleasure – against” and “with a displeasure – with” or "a friend and an opponent"... And perhaps you will remember the detailed psychological combinations, when we have talked about the program to generate scenarios - Dramatica...
But it is fact – in the classes of "Technology of formation", you wouldn’t meet (for at least not) frequently the question: Why? - What do you feel? When did that happened to you?...", but you will be obligatory asked: "In relation to what on the stage, you are making correlations? Who is the character (the image)? What kind is the morphology / the logic of building of a whole and how is it interrupted - e.g. such by probability effect… till ... paradoxicality? “What are the parameters for changing your behavior?”… - and here it appears a possibility for making reference to the method of Vahtangov[3], because he also has spoken about "the improvisation in an already made form"...
Compared to the mentioned above, and according to the tasks from the First to the Fourth part, in the “Technology of formation”, it wouldn’t be bad to look for analogies in the same way and with the method of Meyerhold: "... The approach to the non-household role by first mastering the rhythm of the language and the rhythm of the movement is equally correct approach” - he says, but he says also that "the actor governs thousands of different intonations, but he doesn’t imitate within their help certain persons, but he uses it only as a decoration and as an addition to his various gestures and movements.. The actor could speak quickly when playing role of trickster and he could speak slowly, cantabile when portraying a pedant, he knows how to draw a geometric figures with his body, and sometimes he jumps freely and happily, as if he flies through the air... "
At Meyerhold, you will also find that when working on "The Government Inspector" by Gogol, that it was important to reveal the principles of phonetics and that "a plop of hands gives plausibility of the hardest interjection "ah"... Naturally, I’m trying to steer you to the work with "correlations" and "inconsistencies" at Arch. Uzunov’s training - to work with the two subsystems - with that one of the sound and that – of the movement... Because even the first year, for the first graduates of the Theatre Department, Vazkresia and Zarko have recommended to be read “The Order of Things” ("Words and Things) by Michel Foucault.
But what did Meyerhold said about the work with an object? - "The movement generates the exclamations and the speech. These elements create a position, and the sum of the positions - a scenario, which is rested on the objects- instruments of action. So the lost handkerchief leads to the script of Othello" and the bracelet - to the Masquerade ... and in the Theatre Department, a long time ago it was recommended “The Grammar of Fantasy” of Gianni Rodari and the “Morphology of the Folktale” of Vladimir Propp...
But where remains the feelings and the empathy - the embodiment (the incarnation)? Let’s return again to Stanislavski, because ever he spoke of that how the logic of "the physical behavior" draws to a "logic of the thoughts”, and they in turn involve the "logic of the feelings". Because in his last works, the System has differentiated as the "Method of the physical actions"…
And whether for someone from both - Stanislavski / Meyerhold we can find an analogy for “the work with training facility” – as it is according to arch. Uzunov[4]? - Yes - for Meyerhold, during his work on "The Government Inspector" for example: "On the stage there is just a big, a very large sofa on which to be accommodated nine people... They have sited being cramped... But the main thing is that the small playground, which we will build on the stage will be sloping - even quite sloping. It would be difficult to walk on it. And the furniture will be situated sideward - with a slope towards the audience. In front of the sofa it would have a mahogany table with a polished surface - on it, there will be nothing but it will be so near to the sofa so that it wouldn’t be possible to pass between it and the sofa” and … "we shear the seated till to the waist - under the table it will be seen only their legs and above the table - their faces and the hands (as in Durer’s picture ...)"... "while he (Chaplin) plays on three meters, sometimes on two, sometimes just on a chair... In fact, our diapason is expanding"
Analogies between arch. Uzunov and Meyerhold can be found even in the terminology that both of them use. Please, see the following (in the Meyerhold’s works): “direction of the movement”, “production of force and ... energy”, “(line segment) road length” and “quantity of the speed”, “non-accustomed to the eye deformation"... Because Meyerhold has spoken about the "signaling" and the "orientation in the time", about the fact that "the time helps to the coordination of the body movements and the voice, and about that if the actor doesn’t note in his diary - not only the space-displacement from the table till the window, but also and the time, that it would be better, the “diary on the role” to be discarded... While, arch. Uzunov furthermore will steer you to the "Probability Theory"and to the Stephen Hawking’s “Theory about black holes”, where you will even encounter the notion "horizon of events"... Why happens this? - maybe because when you are drawing from the infinite, new perspectives could be set up...
In fact, at Stanislavski, it could be found not a few "links", related to the Fifth and Sixth part (from the "Technology of Formation") - concerning his work about the senses / about the sensors. About these exercises you might read in a synthesized form, for example, in the book "Twentieth Century Actor Training" edited by Alison Hodge. And compared to the Sixth and Seventh part, at Meyerhold’s works you’ll be able to find that you have to reach to "the most complex study of the body as a reaction of the nervous system" and that "the imagination of the spectator operates under the influence of two impressions: the visual one and the auditory one"…
But whether the above mentioned theorists and practitioners have talked about the "aesthetics" – definitely - yes, but also they have talked about the "laws in the arts". For example Stanislavski has written about "all-embracing analysis" which have to be made on the play, about the study of the "historical situation/context", about the types of analysis on the “aesthetic” and on the “psychological plane”, and on the "plane of the physical life of the role”, until the analysis on the "personal sensations"... In relation to that, do you remember the part of the tabular analysis at Arch. Uzunov?… While at Meyerhold, the "grotesque" is a “strictly synthetic method – it is looking for the supernatural through a synthesis of extracted opposites, it creates a picture of the phenomenal, it leads the spectator to unravel the unachievable”... And I suppose that you have already returned for a while to the Fifth part ... but also to the First part, when we talked that through the “visual” it might be reflected a "fact", while trough the "physical"- it might be reflected a "phenomena" ...
Concerning the "final", "extreme values" according to Arch. Uzunov, Meyerhold has seen a link between the theater and the circus...
Actually both of them - and Stanislavski, and Meyerhold - have been without-naming- unspeakably - “interdisciplinarists”: the first one has steered his efforts to the “psycho-physiology” and the second one has justifyied his works through the “biomechanics”... But also, for example Meyerhold has said: "It is necessary to talk about the right to interpret the theatre composition by making analogy with the music... (1/18, 1/16, 1/32)"... But while the goal of the first one was the reconstruction of the nature - a preference for "the illusion of the reality", the second one was striving to the “conditional” – to the “dancing-musical”, to the “decorative” - so to the “stylization” in the theatre.
And all that in the name of the diversification of the products, in the name of the impact on the audience… Because, for example, for Meyerhold it is good at least "75 percent" of the spectators to be mastered by the theatre effect... How? - According to arch. Uzunov, in his creative and stage quests, his preferences are e.g. in that, where the form strains in the continuum between “abstractness and figurativeness” - in its alternation, and through the dynamic in the "distances" from the "Nature". Although, in his training courses, you will be able to scroll through many kinds of shifts from "the illusion of the reality’, without difference - if it was made trough the search for "the extreme and the extremity”, but also without difference - if it was made trough the also extreme search for "abstractness" in the theater - for the dynamics of bodies in the space-time... Because, according to Meyerhold e.g. the principle of the accurate reproduction of the nature precludes the “game” - the game with hints, which urge the viewer’s imagination, requiring the allusion to be over-painted/ over-drowned. Or, as he has quoted Voltaire: "Le secret d'etre ennuyeux - c'est de tout dire" - "The secret of being boring is to say everything” ...
... And in that way, let’s finalize the present part.
[4] Arch. Uzunov during the workshop”Stick-man” and picture from the performance ”Indje”. Възстановената непрекъснатост - Разговор с арх. Зарко Узунов - http://lib.nbu.bg/index.php?page=bg_spis1.htm
Well - we reached the end. Compared to the previous chapter, I believe you've found that not a few parallels, analogies could be made between the "Тechnology of formation" and other theater-training systems. And I think this is the place to answer the question raised therein, and namely:
"... if we could see the parts of the courses and the tasks associated with them as “elements of skill”, as "knowledge-elements”, whether they will support each other, so that at the end of the cycle of lectures and trainings “Technology of formation”, the student would be "sufficiently" prepared for his future practice?"...
But what we could call "elements of skill” and where to find them? - At first, we could find them in the way of dealing with the Sound and the Movement system. And there, through the years of training, the skills should have been piling in the following order-trend: from “training for observation” and “for accurate reproduction of nature”, till training for “coordination between the two subsystems” – these of the sound and of the movement – which is a kind of self-control over the formation of meanings in the continuum "compliance / mismatch" between the word-speech towards the gesture-movement till the displacements in the space. All this handling with the two subsystems, made trough "discontinuity" or "continuity", “simultaneously” or “sequentially”, as well as measuring the actor-body in relation to the environment/ object/s or partner/s, has absorbed the students to search the concentration, but also it has fascinated them in “permanent search-examination” of meanings, images, reaching by chaining the elements together or by overlapping them – each to other, to reach to the paradoxicality, deformities – an aestheticism of expression ...
And ever, as students, Zarko spoke to us that in the Academy of Fine Arts, as clay it should be worn, when making molds of sculptures, and that the students have to start from the reproduction of nature, then by a series-application of principles, laws and logic or/and in researching and becoming aware of a number of random distortions they have to reach to the artistry, they have to reach to the individuality in the style...
So, over the years, the actor-student has also learned to analyze and interact with the "environment": from the smallest approximation to his body – the “work with material”, e.g. with the dried clay on the actor’s face, on his hands, till the dealing with “constraint-suit” - till being fit on /being displaced across different types of terrain, combined or not with the types of interactions with partner/s, with the object/s and the "environment". The actor has also learned to “render an account” and to “read” the environment, to react to it – in its statics or in its dynamics, trough different types of referencing and interactions to it - variations and a variety of behaviors. And what about “the environment as text” – as context of meanings, images, about the environment as "rules" or "conditions" and "instructions"?... Over the years, a self-reflection on one's own body has being developed, but also – it has being developed a reflection unto the bodies in the space-time... The striving in accumulating skills has always been located in the perspective: from the "reality in the emotion/ in the experience"; towards “distance/ estrangement from the feelings” and "comment" to what is happening; until the playing and the game... That's why, the training-problems were gradually introduced: work with Energy; fit on in the space-time; work with the "resistance" of the “environment” and work with the senses, till ... that part of “Technology of formation”, where only through two of the senses - through the eyesight and the hearing - can be driven a behavior... Behavior that, on the one hand are both for the actor, but also for the audience, on the border with the bringing-feeling, on the border with the empathy and the impressive-implying, and on the other hand - a behavior, that is on the border with the symbolic and the expressive - on the border with the behavior that might be read.
Here, I would remember that, once, when discussing "Indje" and "Customs of people ", arch. Uzunov has mention to us, that not a few spectators in the audience have reported / have became aware the direct impact of vibration in the sound of the bagpipes and of the drum.
Compared to the mentioned above and concerning the acting-dramatic techniques, I think, now it would be good to look in short the Lev Vygotsky's article "On the Problem of the Psychology of the Actor’s Creative Work"[1]. In that article in an interesting way, the following continuum-range is described: from Aristotle's "Poetics", which define-differentiate the ”mimesis”[2] as a basis for empathy and the embodying/ /embodiment till reaching the "catharsis" til it reach "The paradox of the actor" by Denis Diderot[3], where it is already “talked” about the ”rationalization” and the "control" over the emotion. Alongside the range of these philosophical theories and relevantly to them, the article draws a parallel with a continuum of theories of acting-game - between Stanislavsky and Vahtangov and by analogy with Vahtangov in the case, in his work on "Princess Turandot", I think it could be thought and Breht’s effect of "estrangement". And accordingly to the mentioned above, I think that "Technology of formation" sets the possibility in this scope to be included / discussed and theories such as those of Lee Strasberg and Antonin Artaud till the Situationism and the Live-art forms, till the artistic activities on the border with the socio-psychological activities... I believe also that "Technology of formation" suggests opportunities to the actor, in his future practice, to express himself in the literary and the non-literary theater, to expeess himself in the cinema, in the radio-theater and the doubling/sound recording, but also - to express himself in the research-critical and the methodological areas. It is also supposed that the actors and the directors have gained skills and knowledge in the way that borrowing principles, laws and problems from other fields of knowledge, they could distinguish/ discern, vary, and enrich the genre multiformity of their expression.
By which I hope I've adduced enough arguments about the interlinkages / the upgrade of the "elements" of knowledge and of skills in the different parts of "Technology of formation”, which in turn bring for the trainees in the system - a perspective and a broad horizon in their future practice.
Although if you are a student of arch. Uzunov, you will often hear that on his courses there is neither binding nor a strict sequence alignment. Whether it is dictated by the principle "pars pro toto" -”the part “speaks” about the whole entity”? Or are there also influences from the book of Paul Feyerabend – “For and against method”? Or just - it's kind of “trust” that the man himself is "making connections" between the “elements” in the course, between the “parts” of a system, between the “parts” of different systems? - I do not know... Anyway, there was a period, when in the position of "supervisor", arch. Uzunov has advised us (the fellow teachers) that the “freedoms” of the students should be gradually increased as a trend: “from the beginning into the end of each part”, "from the beginning into the end of the whole education". Thus, as young assistant-teachers, and even now, it has often happened to us that we should going to "run off a draw" with the fellow students and to respond to them: "I do not know but would ask ... I'll try it ... I will look for the problem"... And yet, but surely - at least for now - and although the predominant cases of "situational conducting of the classes”, I stay rather a supporter of the systemic character and of the methodical way of solving problems... Maybe because, this is the way for "catching up" from the missing training time, and there is no need to "weary" someone through repetition of already acquired knowledge from previous semesters... and certainly trough that, we could see the integrity in the development... Although I think "Technology of formation" remains for me from the type, on the one hand - "research" and on the other hand - "pragmatic" - "open" or "dynamic system".
But yet, there were and there are a "resistance" and doubts, and criticism till ... "accusations" to “the system”. From time to time, among the students it can be heard: "I want to become an actor, not - director or theorist", "Why we should study the Renaissance and the Surrealism, the sport?", "That's from the math and it’s complicated... - could we simplify it", "In addition, our classes are small – there’s no enough time for practical training"... And not it that sometimes those crises are not resolved by its-self, and sometimes -"by doing/by practice" the students do not find their own answers, their own way of understanding… But here I want to present a series of quotes from the interview with one of the co-founders of the Theatre Department at NBU - quotes from the interview with Veselin Mezekliev from the book of Miroslava Kortenska – “Cultural vertical “, and namely:
"(Firstly) the choice was emotional. Later in the team of NBU that choice we have defined it more specifically and more purposefully, limiting it in order to create new multitudes, which unleash new territories"... "What we have worked over the years is a wonderful program for professionals, qualification training course, something that would provoke the artists to look for another way to work ... "I mean that when you practice the profession of artist, you're perceived as a performer. Step forward in terms of the authorship is of qualitative importance"... “Or to reach that super-marionette which was spoken by Gordon Craig, or to aspire to that type of theater which was spoken by Antonin Artaud – the Cruel theater”...
I.e. - maybe it is not "bad" that sometimes the actor is on the border with the authorship, with "the self-directing/ the self-staging"... And by the way, in the University of Architecture
"But where and how it could be applied these principles, these laws?"
Over the years, not a few problems have being arisen from author-team - Vazkresia Viharova and Zarko Uzunov: problems, that are not only thematic – these ones that seek answers to the questions "what" and "why" (but they, for good or bad remained a little hidden), but also painterly problems - where on the foreground the question of "how" is coming out... That is maybe because - lest accidentally in their performances the "comedian" could not give way to the "intelligent reader", or similarly to what Meyerhold has said, in the posters wouldn’t be needed to be writen: ”The play will be read with costumes and makeup”... Because among the elaborations of Viharova and Uzunov it could be found such as from the "fragmented"- the "atomic" examination of an element and “the work in detail”, through the "structurally" building of a comprehensive system-performance till the situational, the impulsive reaction unto the environment, with elements of post-factum "retrospective" analysis... And of course among their common works - of Viharova and Uzunov - you will see the “intuitive approach”. That is because hardly always in their work on a performance, they could justify to the end, why exactly here - eg. in the new edition of the "Terrible parents" they have used the French phonetic structures in the Bulgarian speech. Whether it is a derivative of Dadaism or a reference to Chaplin’s dictator which is likeness of German speech, or maybe it is because they have laughed to the officer in the film-series "Hello, hello”, or just, this is a consequence of a conversation with a kognitivist? ...
Because despite it has looking for the logic, "Technology of formation” has also lodged/ suggested, that it must be sought for ways to avoid and to “break” the sequentiality... And that might happen through the "Probability Theory", but also by reading the principles of "Monastery Shao-Lin ", because "it not less important” to be as a "passer" on the beach, who just as kicking the can, could reach the insight... and because it is nice if you might be able to "have fun", to be able to "imagine", because only in that way, for example, trough the "wrapped cord around your ankles". It might be seen the imagery of the “overthrown panties of a little child” ...
"And will we reach till the "Theory of the accidents" and till the "Double Bing Theory”? ...But why some of the parts from the results of Viharova and Uzunov are so beautiful, but so abstract?
Regarding the last question it might be better to go again in the year of 1988-1990 and to see what the actor Veselin Mezekliev says:
"Now when I watch our first attempt (the performance "Zeng" by Eugene Haritonov) on video, it is very beautiful... Similarly to that is the attempt of Teddy Moskov. In his show "The Street" he introduced actors-images of an artistic reality in a social environment. I think that our experience/attempt is more extreme, because the images from the performance "The Street" remain still more understandable, familiar. They are social types – a drunk-man, an old woman, a clerk - while our aesthetic characters were significantly more abstract ... Until that, our efforts led us. The initial desire was to get out of the familiar tools, but it turned out, that it was formed a new trend in the theater”...
Yet, I would like to emphasize again that in not a few of the cases, the creative preferences and the performances of the team Viharova-Uzunov have been distinguished - have been in distinction from the scope of educational systematics, whose authors were again they ... And this is not, that through the separated performances-"fragments", the whole integrity/entity can not be connected/ covered... So, I would like to emphasize that ”Technology of formation” is a specific theater system, which has started from the “laboratory studies” of the same team... And that, for many years, there have had sufficient reasons to recommend it as a basic rather than a random-selective, supporting discipline in the Program Theatre at NBU... Although today there are tendencies, tilting the balances to be rather unto the last direction... On what is that due? - it is due maybe on one of the main current World trends, whereby, if refering to Jean-François Lyotard, the science and the education mostly see themselves as subsystems of the social system, which makes admissible the questions like the following: "What does this serve for?... Whether it can be sold?... Is this efficient? "... And not, that the “Technology of formation” does not offer "operational competences", but "the market for theater-products in Bulgaria, as it is currently, does not include in particularly the use of such competences, and it does not emphasis on the economic on the criterial-genre mechanisms, it does not emphasis on the diversification of the cultural product, unlike of the global market in this area. Consequently, the artists have had mostly to comply with "mechanisms" of the "easier-staging", with the "traditionally-knowable", with the "being recognizable”, and maybe because of that they do not gambled on the "different", on the question of how to "differ". Therefore, the leading-teachers of “Technology of formation” "have had to look for ways to "simplify"- have had to make the educational product more popular – as "mass production" or, on the other hand and for good, they have had to "promote" at least a part of the research-laboratory inventions, and if you will they have had to make references to the world-theatrical, but also - to the current research trends... Beyond the difficulties for me, to follow these trends, but mostly - for my joy, in "Technology of formation", there is still an investigation "in progress", which implies for the students a probable continuation to the next level of education - in the “Master’s" or in "PhD" Programs. That is because it's good to have innovation, inventions, and if it is needed that as their implementation is delayed, alas, until more distant future.
Concerning the "operational competence" in the field of theatre, I believe, their basis could be seen also in the metric techniques (without neglecting their imagery, the psychological value / compliance). What was that - the metric techniques, according to the “Technology of formation”? - something like a striving to accuracy and to numbering - the correlation into the time-space of the images/ of the character...? If you look on the Dictionary of foreign words, you will see that its definition includes terms like: size and rhythm, structure and metrum, proportion (interrelation) and duration... Why do we have to seek for that, in the field of theater? - the answer is not unequivocal, but I am convinced that in the Dictionary of theatre by Patrice Pavis, it could be found article on the mathematical methods in the drama, if you turn over the drawings of Durer (see Figure 1 [4]) – you will enjoy how the character of face-expression changes with the changes in the interval-distances, with the changes in the proportions of the face, if you encounter the "Structural combinatorics" of Rumen Raychev, it would be revealed the role of edges for the oval shapes (see Fig.2), because since it is achieved a greater accuracy to the study, and by the combinatorics (see Fig. 3) and the geometry it could be investigated - it could be achieved an illusion (see Fig. 4)... If you’d like to look in depth, you have to reach to Voringer’s book ”Abstraction and empathy”, you have to reach to Kandinsky ”Point and line to plane” (see Fig.5) and "Concerning the spiritual in the art” , and you have to reach to the study-case of Vladimir Stoychev, where you will see idias about the link between the “Artistic image and the social order /magnitude"... And I believe that you will be also curious to search for "Modulor" of Le Corbusier[5], and you will read in short about the Ergonomics...
And yet, whether through the "mathematical", through the "physical" terminology in the theatre, the individuality and the uniqueness are not trampled, are not suppressed? - I do not think so or rather - I do not want to believe in it. At least because each of the student has his own CV - his own background and imagination, and because among the apparatus – the working propulsion which were set and are set by the "Technology of formation”, there has always been a dynamic. But also, I think there is no risk of unification because of the serie-sequence of Expression (Abstraction) / Image and because in the classes it has been always looked for "differentness", for "competitiveness"... And concerning the “operationality”, in the procured competences, through the “metrics” in the techniques, through the combinatorics and the interdisciplinarity, and in connection with the applicability of "Technology of the formation” in the practice, I wish to return back to Lyotard[6], because he has wrote the following:
"The searched effect is the optimal contribution of higher education to better performaty of the social system. Then it have to be created competencies necessary for the social system. These (competencies) are two types... to oppose to the global rivalry... to be sold at the world market... If our overall hypothesis is correct... for the coming years, all disciplines related to the "telematic" education (computer scientists, cybernetitions, mathematicians, logicians ...) should receive priority in the field of teaching... In so far as the knowledge can be translated into the informatic language... A perspective for a large market to operational competencies is opened... From this viewpoint, not the end of the knowledge is declared, but right the contrary. The data banks - these are the tomorrow's "Encyclopedia"...
And whether the "Technology of formation" as scientific discipline "is linked in some way with the social system? - maybe to some extent - yes, and this paradoxically could be achieved just by the "formal" and the "abstract" as far as we can assume the vision set out by Vladimir Stoychev. According to it, during the XVIII and XIX century, due to the industrial revolution, a new division of labor is made. Then to the fore comes the dichotomy of "arts-technology", in a position of private aspect of one much more general process, that ultimately implies about to artistic practice, to fully differentiate from the scientific practice, and that in the artistic practice, there is a "reduction or diminishing in value and a rejection in social marginality”... Until 1910 - 1925, when after the carried out by the Impressionism, "formal revolution ", the Avangard sets against the opposition between the arts and the labor and plead for their reintegration, plead for "a new active entry of the arts in the technical society (and at the present - in the Information Society) as a real aspect of social labor." And probably, it will even cross in your mind, how in the previous chapter we talked about the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, when again it became a link between the more "exact" sciences with theater-practical systematics. I suppose also that you remember how in this chapter we ran the continuum from the stage-aesthetic through live-art and site-specific forms until the popular in our days, ”psychosocial artistic practices”. And of course, because of that, we still can not skip the role of the "interdisciplinarity" ...
But actually, it seems to me, that I did not define, what is the techniques and the technology. Or maybe even, it will be curious to directly reveal, what is its relationship to the arts. Here is what Vladimir Stoychev wrote again on the question:
"Both the notions "arts" and "technique" are respectively derived from Latin and Greek. Moreover, their use in order to differentiate them, and even – to place them in mutual opposition is somewhat paradoxical. In both languages “ars” and [techne] actually have the same meaning. They identify in the most common way the exercise of a profession: namely, skills acquired through training and knowledge needed for this and finally – themselves-the products of all different kinds of labor, physical and intellectual.”... "Where the Greek and the Roman had the same sense, the culture of the Modern West borrowed equivalent terms from both languages in order to divide, to specify and then to oppose the two aspects... On the one hand, these are practical (or hand) aspects and on the other hand - intellectual aspects... The history of these two concepts... the differentiatin and the opposition of art and technology to a certain extent are homologous and related to the differentiatin and the opposition of the science and the technology... From this perspective, the technique has considerable volume of intellectuality, but it was placed in another drawer, as the result of the medieval dichotomy of arts - to "mechanical" and "free" ...
...Or maybe it is again time and to rediscover the connection between freedom and rules, the relationships – between the freedom and the metrics, and the techniques, and the technology? ... Then, let’s try to determine the last! And according to the accepted "fair use" in the English language, their brief definitions are as follows (translation from Bulgarian):
technology - technical knowledge or techniques as a knowledge-like structure;
techniques – the technical actions (skills) or the techniques as an operational structure and
technics – the technical objects or the technics as an object structure.
Then on the "freedoms" (and furthure in relation to the improvsation), whether we could identify them not only as the "right of choice" with its corresponding responsibility, but as the every minute sequence of the "making decisions" with the corresponding estimations of the probable consequences?
...While probably you have return to the analogy of arch. Uzunov - between Robinson Crusoe and construction of a tool, when he spoke to you, how sometimes while preparing for distant sailing, it is nice to start with working out on “an adze” or on a more complex equipment, in order to achieve to build a raft, a boat or... a ship... Otherwise and anyway, how without techniques we would make sense and we could achieve to the mastery/ the artistry – to the virtuosity?
Yet, to what extent the "Technology of formation" is a “scientific discipline"? In the case and directly I would prefer to set out the two extreme positions in the continuum of thoughts about it. The first is of Noam Chomsky, where defying the deconstructivist and postmodern critiques of science, he writes:
"I spent most of my life working on issues such as those using the only methods that I know - stigmatized here as "science", "rationality", "logic", etc. So, I was reading scientific papers with some hope that it will help me to "soar" over these limits or that they will offer me a completely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed ... "
While the second position could be expressed by Lyotard's description about the "Postmodern science":
"By directing the interest towards the irresolvable riddles on the border to the exact control, the quanta, the conflicts, due to incomplete information, the "fractional objects", the catastrophes and the pragmatic paradoxes, the Postmodern science constructs its own theory of evolution, which is discontinued, irreparable and catastrophically paradoxical... It... creates not the known, but the unknown. And it suggests a model of legitimation, which in no case is a model of the best performativity, but rather a model of the diversity, seen as paralogy... Rightly a specialist in the Game theory notes...: "But what then is the usefulness of this theory? We believe that the Game theory, like any other developed theory is useful in the sense that it generates ideas." In turn P.B. Midauar says that having ideas is the biggest success for a scientist, and that there is no "scientific method" and that the scientist is a storyteller, who, however, is obliged to verify the authenticity of the stories."
No, I do not know where between the two speeches I can "fit in" the “Technology of formation”. Rather, I'd like to believe that they both bring together in one in this discipline. And whether it is on the border with a “metalanguage“? - I do not know ... Actually - its author Arch. Zarko Uzunov and its first "test pilots" who had worked with him in the team – the director Vazkresia Viharova and the actor Veselin Mezekliev, they never claimed that it was "finished" and "comprehensive"( exhaustive)... But I think that according to the definitions, and the criteria, mentioned above, this discipline could certainly be described as “science -seeming” ...
Although it always remains non-less important and the reaction of students. And that, what basically has supported us over the years – has supported the teachers in the system, have been the statements of the sort of that one, made recently by a former student: "Technology of formation" remains for me one of my most inspiring educational subjects ...
Maybe because, me too, I have often assimilated the "Technology of formation" with “The Grammar of Fantasy” of Gianni Rodari, but also with the “generative grammar” of Noam Chomsky ... and I have always named it "secretly" my-self, as a “generative grammar of the fantasy in the field of theater”.
... Which is a convenient manner – for the end to return at the very beginning, where it was referred to an idea of Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
And whether to the "Technology of formation” will be given a "move" in a way that it could be accepted as equivalent to other scientific systems? - What do I mean? - For more information, you could see again Lyotard ... [7]
[1] Выготский Л.С. ”К вопросу о психологии творчества актера” http://www.psychiatry.ru/library/ill/lsv.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, http://www.culturedialogue.org/drupal/en/node/704 Lev Vygodsky On the Problem of the Psychology of the Actor’s Creative Work.
[5] http://www.groovemanifesto.net/personae/corbusier/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulor - The Modulor is an anthropometric scale of proportions devised by the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965).It was developed as a visual bridge between two incompatible scales, the Imperial system and the Metric system. It is based on the height of an English man with his arm raised.
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard - Jean-François Lyotard -12. Образованието и неговата легитимация чрез перформативността – analogical material - http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~mhalber/Research/Paper/pci-lyotard.html - The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge - Jean François Lyotard
[7] "... If we address to the scientific pragmatics, it reveals that such identification is impossible: no scientist in principle embodies the knowledge and does not ignore the "needs" for research and the aspirations of a researcher under the pretext that they aren’t performative for the science as a whole. When addressing to him, the normal answer of the researcher is more like: “we shall see”, “tell me your story”. Also, in principle he does not prejudge that the case is already solved, nor that the power of science will suffer to revise the case. Just the opposite ... Of course, in reality not always it happen so. Countless numbers are the scientists whose "move" has been ignored or rejected, sometimes for decades, because it has quite strongly destabilized the positions not only in the academic and the scientific hierarchy, but also in the problematic. As much as a "gait" is stronger, the more comfortable it is to renounce its minimum consensus, and it precisely because it changes the rules of the game on which there was consensus."
SELECTED LITERATURE
1. Aristotle, "On poetic art", Science and Art, Sofia, 1975
2. Viharova, V., Uzunov, Z., "The new technologies will return the body of the theater”, magazine "Homo Ludens ", n. 2 / 3, Sofia, 2001
3. Diderot, D., "Aesthetics and Theory of Art", "The paradox of the actor", Science and Art, Sofia, 1981
4. Kortenska, M., "Cultural vertical”, Epsilon, Sofia, 1998
5. Lyotard, Jean-Francois, "Postmodern condition"
6. Meyerhold, Vsevolod E., "Articles, letters and speeches", Science and Art, Sofia, 1984
7. Stanislavsky, K. S., "Work on the role of actor", Science and Art, Sofia, 1977
8. Stoychev Vl., "Six Essays on the Philosophy of Technology", Angoboy, Sofia, 1998
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