A noise from the bag

This weekend I got back into the swing of things with my friends... my bag of half finished masks... who shall bounce back to life sometime this year... in the very near future i'm sure. They are a bit disgruntled with being in a bag for so long. The final stages...

1.  Lather stucco
2.  Sand sand sand sand and sand again
3.  Paint
4.  Play

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The bell tolls

Summer in Johannesburg is quite something when you haven't seen it for as long as I haven't. I feel like on every corner I turn there is a tree packed with pink or yellow or red flowers. Avenues of leafy Oak Trees blocking out the sun... a parade of light and shade. It fills my heart. But I shall no doubt long for the breathtaking buildings of Florence that stand majestic around just about every corner. Towering towards the sky. Like this one. The church of Santa Maria Novella. The bell that tolls. The cold air. The cobbled streets.  Like all brilliant art, if there is beauty and substance it will last. For centuries.

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In good company

A conscious kitchen

When man, way back when in Africa, first took a stone and bashed it against another stone breaking it in two... he thought to himself, someone can do that to me.  He looked up to the sky, afraid... The Gods... and tragedy is born.  The idea that there is something much bigger than you that can wipe you out.  It was in this way that Matteo (our mask and movement teacher) described tragedy to us.  The fight with the Gods.  The inevitable.  The hero who knows he is going to die... and bravely sets foot on that journey.  The other way he described it was by asking...  What is the most tragic room in the house?  The answer... The Kitchen.  Imagine if the carrot knew its destiny.  Or the knife knew its job.  Or the hot oil understood what it had to do to the egg.  A conscious kitchen.  Tragedy right there.  Everybody knows... and continues anyway.  The opening title sequence to Dexter.  Mn.

At the same time that we were studying tragedy... the second years were studying the dramatic - and often tragic - silence of full mask.  An interesting parallel because in the end it is all mask... we were just working with a hero and a tragic chorus to amplify emotions and reveal subtext... they were working with a physical mask in a poetic silence that carries exquisite subtext and drama.  How?  I don't really know. It's a miracle.

Puja, Marisol and Vicky in masks made by Matteo Destro
Photo by Stefano Borghi

When words are no longer enough

Peter, Justin and Alenka (with Freya popping in in the background) in their Melodrama 'Orphanage'
The chorus creating the car crash in the background.  Ba.
Photo by Stefano Borghi

The last month or so at Helikos... which feels like long ago now... had us exploring the complex theatrical territories of Melodrama and Tragedy.  Starting with Melodrama... the terrible place where human beings make the worst possible decisions that have massive consequences.  We all remember Sophie's Choice.  What a film.  I still have a physical reaction to it when I think about it.  So... how to create that kind of drama on stage?  That doesn't leave the audience thinking they'd rather watch the film.  The place where the push and pull within a character is so heightened they don't know what to do, until they've done it... 'to be or not to be' type thing... And likely it was the 'wrong' choice, because there is no real 'right' choice.  Is there.

Massive drama... transposed for the stage.  What is the mask?  How can one best say and do these terrible things?  Reach a level of such heightened poetry that the audience will go with you and believe it.  We don't have the cinematic close up, the cut away or a carefully tailored sound design.  But we do have other things... like a chorus, like live music...

Song... for when words are no longer enough.  In class we created scenes that forced the character into an emotional off balance... a place where they can sing... believably.  For example, a desperate woman after a violent fight is left alone with a gun.  She begins to sing.  And we know, by the end of the song that she shot herself.  The pull becomes a push.  And.  Bang.  Of course it is important to earn this scene with the rest of the piece because if you get it wrong you will have the audience trying to hold back laughter... rather than tears!  Ouch.

The chorus... for amplification, subtext, background, space, consequence and so on... realising on stage that which we cannot see...  For example, after a mans fearless fight with cancer he has to submit.  The chorus manipulates him like a puppet.  And we know.  The cancer won.

A chorus.  What a rocking thing.  Such a wonderful tool.  Theatre... the way theatre should be... transposed.

Of course there is much to say about melodrama.  But what I think at the end of the day... for a contemporary audience... it is drama with very high stakes.  And the rules are perhaps the same.  We have to believe it.  And if we do... one can go very far.

A chorus of women in Justins beautiful song in our final performance last year
Photo by Stephano Borghi

During our time in Melodrama I was often reminded of our inchiesta on old people in the previous year.  Where the chorus work reached what I thought was a wonderfully high level both technically and poetically.  Trust.  Time.  What comes first?  The chicken or the egg?  But I do know that you need both.  And with this kind of theatre work you need trust and time.  You can't choreograph it so you have to listen and trust each other... and the time is better spent.  Important lessons.

Us in our final piece... a chorus of autumn

Write that down

As I quietly begin to rearrange the house and get ready for what will be a very full year ahead... 2013.  13.  A lucky number.  I have gathered all my Helikos notebooks... Two and a half years of notes. Of memories. Of learning. Of doodling.  Of remembering... In years to come. X

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A late-night baking bash

As has become a school tradition, each year the Scandinavian students celebrate Santa Lucia... Freya makes the most delicious glug and Vika bakes... and here we are inventing different patterns and shapes with the dough.  A real baking bash in our little kitchen late at night.  The next evening the school studio was plunged into darkness... bar the flickering of so many tea candles... and Freya told us the tragic story of Santa Lucia.  This year Georgia and I were the Lucia brides...  As we are both pursuing other paths and leaving Florence.  We stood, the two of us, holding our single white candle as everyone launched into the Lucia song... doing our very best to sing in Danish, Swedish and Italian... and if there was English I don't remember it.  By then I was trying not to cry.

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A pirates life for me

Tara, Justin, Me and Freya... leaping forward in a sword fight with Jack Sparrow!  Naturally... Aaargh!
Photo by Stefano Borghi

We first did our pantomime version of Pirates of the Caribbean in October... and happily we returned to it for our final performance in December.  Happily because it was a ridiculous amount of fun.  We had a slightly bumpy road getting to the final version... which of course it to be expected with devised work and new theatrical territories.  We went from being way to silent in our original version to being way too loud...  one could call it untreated shouting, with loads of over explanatory dialogue... thus becoming redundant.  Ja.  The stuff of theatrical nightmares.  So basically our explaining was taking more space than our action.  Yes.  A wonderfully important dramatic question posed by Giovanni in our pre-view performance... 'How long do you need to do something until the audience gets it?  Do you need to totally finish something... or rather evoke it and then move on.'  Last night I was watching the Woody Allen documentary and in the edit suite he will not take more of the audiences time than is necessary.  A wonderfully important lesson.  So here's to moving on... when necessary.

With all of this insight... first being too silent, then being too loud... we made brutal edits.  We fully embraced the advise from Matteo... 'be inspired by the movie don't try and recreate it'... and we did.  Finding fun ways to mask the voice... like an actor doing the voice for another character.  Careful choices with dialogue... what does the audience have to know that they can't see.  Being totally clear with our key images... like the reveal of Jack Sparrow.  Ta daaa.  It was so much fun.  The first night of our performance we were quite freaked out as we had made a stack of changes and were hoping like hell we would remember them all... but for the most part we did... and where we didn't somehow our energy was so high that we 'moved on' without giving anyone - even ourselves - time to think about it.  Ho ho ho ho a pirates life for me!  Ha haaa!

Page 56.

It is one thing to be a fun fearless female on-line... But to be in the actual magazine is so very exciting... And here we are on page 56. I'm next to Bridgette Hartly Olympic bronze flat-water sprint kayaker and next to her is Kashveera Chanderjith the first SA deaf chartered accountant. I am wearing a Red Valentino dress. Ah. If I could change an answer it would be career highlight - what is there was edited a lot... as my answer was too long... Doh. But also edited to lose what I meant to say - but who can blame them they're not in my head. On reflection. What I would say now as my career highlights to date... Returning to study a master course in theatre making with genius pedagog Givanni Fusetti in Florence, Italy. Secondly, the success of my most recent play Sunday Morning and working with the brilliant Nick Warren and James Cuningham as writer and actor respectively. May 2013 be as Fun and Fabuolus.

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