Which dramaturgical ideas and techniques introduced in the course are you most keen to appropriate, adapt, and explore in your own creative work? Why? What might this work look like? When, where and how will it be realized?
The durational text-based performances of Forced Entertainment create an actor-audience relationship that is described by Tim Etchells as “a struggle against the idea of the audience as a passive consumer of spectacle” (CITATION HERE). The idea of their durational performances is to expose the actor to the audience, and allow them to see the person behind the performance façade. I am highly interested in exploring this concept, as most theatre performances I have seen are a maximum length of 3 hours, and do not show the …show more content…
The idea that a character has no underlying objectives, text has no purpose, and a performance has no goals is fascinating to me, as it is a complete departure from the super-objectives that are an integral part of Stanislavksi’s philosophy of theatre. Absurdism promotes the idea that life has no meaning, except the one that we create for ourselves. This is translated into performances such as Waiting for Godot, in which contradictory speech and actions, minimal context, and ambiguous setting are used to get the audience to construct their own interpretations. The idea of ambiguity in setting and character also go against the Stanislavksi technique of given circumstances, which is another concept I would like to explore in future work. Most people I know that attend the theatre, other than theatre students, expect a performance to ‘make sense’, in one way or another. In future work I would really like to deconstruct these expectations, and create something that challenges modern audiences’ way of thinking about theatre. Since these expectations are based on the forms of realism and naturalism, I would use an absurdist approach to oppose this conditioned way of
The durational text-based performances of Forced Entertainment create an actor-audience relationship that is described by Tim Etchells as “a struggle against the idea of the audience as a passive consumer of spectacle” (CITATION HERE). The idea of their durational performances is to expose the actor to the audience, and allow them to see the person behind the performance façade. I am highly interested in exploring this concept, as most theatre performances I have seen are a maximum length of 3 hours, and do not show the …show more content…
The idea that a character has no underlying objectives, text has no purpose, and a performance has no goals is fascinating to me, as it is a complete departure from the super-objectives that are an integral part of Stanislavksi’s philosophy of theatre. Absurdism promotes the idea that life has no meaning, except the one that we create for ourselves. This is translated into performances such as Waiting for Godot, in which contradictory speech and actions, minimal context, and ambiguous setting are used to get the audience to construct their own interpretations. The idea of ambiguity in setting and character also go against the Stanislavksi technique of given circumstances, which is another concept I would like to explore in future work. Most people I know that attend the theatre, other than theatre students, expect a performance to ‘make sense’, in one way or another. In future work I would really like to deconstruct these expectations, and create something that challenges modern audiences’ way of thinking about theatre. Since these expectations are based on the forms of realism and naturalism, I would use an absurdist approach to oppose this conditioned way of