Rehearsal Process Research Articles

Cross-cultural Theatre Education: Rehearsals and Performance English as Lingua Franca, rewriting process, and poly-glottal text in psycho-physical acting practice

At Copenhagen International School of Performing Arts, English is the Lingua Franca (ELF) of artistic exploration. With a non-conformist approach to the use of ELF, highlighting a body-mind insight into the language over correctness, a latent, expressive potential of ELF is explored through a psycho-physical training. The predominant technique is Movement Psychology (Laban/Malmgren), which examines the interdependence between, on the one hand, text, language, and narrative and, on the other, the embodiment of the Jungian unconscious.The paper analyses the process and the methods of staging the production entitled Re: ORESTES, based on Mee’s play Orestes 2.0, applying the described methodological exploration. The play was rewritten and remoulded by the performers throughout a rehearsal process, which focused on interlacing the performers’ highly diverse cultural horizons (Gadamer) in a common mega-text, in an attempt to fuse the familiar with the alien, the personal with the collective, and to channel, shape and articulate the material within ELF.The paper details two different examples of this transformative remoulding process. One actor wrote a completely new text, which was performed in the heightened style of "the Queen’s English". Another actor performed a part in a poly-glottal combination of Ancient and Modern Greek (her mother tongue) and ELF. In this process, both performers sought to transcend the preconceived limitations of their individual cultural horizons as well as of the English language.

Codex: Embodied communication in Richard Barrett’s scores for improvisation

This paper examines the process of preparing Barrett’s codex V (2007) and codex XV (2015) and their performance on Saturday 18 June, 2016, as part of the Ghent Advanced Master in Contemporary Performance Practice (ManaMa) academy examinations in Brussels, Belgium. This project involved the development of deep collaborative relationships with a number of other performers, the study and interpretation of alternative notational practices, and the invention of a variety of ad hoc solutions to issues of coordination and ensemble unity, with a particular focus on clear physical communication. Reflections on my own process of preparation and rehearsal are supplemented by content from a series of interviews with leading performer­improvisers, many of whom are long­term collaborators with Barrett. These are: Richard Barrett himself, Milana Zaric, Arne Deforce, Sylvia Hinz, and Daryl Buckley. This investigation highlights the variety of strategies employed by improvisers while working within these composed structures. It also asks several questions about the performer’s body in the space of a structured improvisation, including: What is different about the bodily experience of improvisation as compared to ensemble performance of fully notated scores? How is the body a key tool for musical communication when decisions are being made moment­-to­-moment? And finally, in what ways do the musicians’ physical communications develop as they progress through the stages of learning a codex score?

A Structured Space for Reflection

In their dialogue ‘A Structured Space for Reflection: A conversation about The Quiet Volume, a site-specific autoteatro performance for libraries’ the artists Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells discuss their interactive performance collaboration designed for two audience members at a time, which has been presented in libraries all over the world. Touching on the process of making the work and exploring its thematics in relation to language, speech, narrative and comprehension, the dialogue also dissects the kinds of experiences that the work opens for viewers and explores the relation between the work and the diverse architectural and social contexts of its presentation. Drawing on anecdotal material from the rehearsal process and on writings from the Slovenian philosopher Mladen Dollar and the cultural theorist Steven Connor, the dialogue proposes and nuances a concept of porousness as it may reflect the relation between performance and context, work and audience, artistic proposition and audiences’ reception.

The Creative Process of Els Joglars and Teatro de la Abadía. Beyond the Playwright by Simon David Breden

Reviewed by: The Creative Process of Els Joglars and Teatro de la Abadía. Beyond the Playwright by Simon David Breden David Rodríguez-Solas Breden, Simon David. The Creative Process of Els Joglars and Teatro de la Abadía. Beyond the Playwright. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2014. 267 pp. ISBN: 978-185566-278-0. Breden's book ushers us literally to the rehearsal room of two of the most prominent theater troupes in Spain. Els Joglars, established in 1962, is the longest running company in Spain. Teatro de la Abadía, founded in 1995, transformed and renovated the deteriorated Madrid stage in the late twentieth century. Breden's book is evocative and relevant for the field of Spanish theater studies in which the research of the staging process is often compromised by a focus on plays and productions. In recognizing the advantages of researching performance as a process that gains momentum in rehearsals, this book continues a line of inquiry that studies theater as a collective practice that requires analytical tools beyond the textual interpretation. The first part of the book studies Els Joglars' history, work ethos, rehearsal practices and staging procedures. Breden offers a well-researched account of each area, which he illustrates through landmark stagings by the troupe. Since its beginnings, Els Joglars has embraced a rehearsal practice that places the body at the center of everything. The company's early work with mime serves as an example of this, exploring ideas physically ever since Boadella experimented with a "devised spontaneous occurrence" (68) in El Joc (1970), which subsequently became routine. This approach consists in using improvisation games to elicit scenes that are later incorporated into the play. It was in the company's early years that both the body and devising were adopted as methodology; in due course, the play is given its definitive shape in the rehearsal room. Their infamous banned production, La torna, marked the adoption of a work ethos that involves, first, a period of research and a set of improvisations to work out ideas that will be developed in order to set the dramaturgy of the play. The final step is usually more conventional and is aimed at fine-tuning the play before opening night. Els Joglars aims at educating the audience in the crafting of a show and, therefore, they share details in this regard in the production programs. Breden studies the methodology of Els Joglars' theatrical practice in chapter 2, in which he perceptively describes the company as a "devising collective, with Boa-della highlighted as the 'front man'" (88). Devising was initially a tactic to avoid censorship and ultimately became a defining trait of the company. The author offers a detailed analysis of the rehearsal process for which he uses the show En un lugar [End Page 203] de Manhattan (2005) as a case study. In this respect, Breden's approach is singular and offers a model for future research projects. He interviewed members of the troupe and used notes and video recordings of rehearsals, some of which he attended. The greatest strength of this book is its focus on the process of theater-making and how the elusive material produced out of rehearsal becomes relevant and useful. Breden walks us through the games that facilitate devise theater. On the other hand, he asserts that Els Joglars' rehearsal process is free but structured, devised but researched and, finally, actor-centered but also director-guided. Indeed, the author notes that while Boadella's planned plotlines are recognizable in the final product, they also assume and incorporate the relative autonomy of actors in the creative process. Part two takes a different approach. Teatro de la Abadía is one of the most renowned venues in Madrid. Upon its inception, a group of actors were trained inhouse and cast in the first two productions. Admittedly, the methodology employed in part one is not the same as in part two. Breden acknowledges the challenges presented when analyzing the creative process of a venue that commissions most of the productions it programs. Thus, his approach here shifts to a first-person account for a case study of a Teatro de la Abadía production that he...

Electronic imitation of behavioral and psychological synaptic activities using TiOx/Al2O3-based memristor devices.

Seeking an effective electronic synapse to emulate biological synaptic behavior is fundamental for building brain-inspired computers. An emerging two-terminal memristor, in which the conductance can be gradually modulated by external electrical stimuli, is widely considered as the strongest competitor of the electronic synapse. Here, we show the capability of TiOx/Al2O3-based memristor devices to imitate synaptic behaviors. Along with analog resistive switching performances, the devices replicate the bio-synapse behaviors of potentiation/depression, short-term-plasticity, and long-term-potentiation, which show that TiOx/Al2O3-based memristors may be useful as electronic synapses. The essential memorizing capabilities of the brain are dependent on the connection strength between neurons, and the memory types change from short-term memory to long-term memory. In the TiOx/Al2O3-based electronic synaptic junction, the memorizing levels can change their state via a standard rehearsal process and also via newly introduced process called "impact of event" i.e. the impact of pulse amplitude, and the width of the input pulse. The devices show a short-term to long-term memory effect with the introduction of intermediate mezzanine memory. The experimental achievements using the TiOx/Al2O3 electronic synapses are finally psychologically modeled by considering the mezzanine level. It is highly recommended that similar phenomena should be investigated for other memristor systems to check the authenticity of this model.

El director de teatro y el suceso escénico: el caso de Lloyd Richards / The theater director and the scenic event: Lloyd Richards’ case

<p>Este artículo analiza el proceso de ensayo del gran director afro-americano Lloyd Richards (1919-2006), basado en entrevistas originales conducidas con colegas artísticos de Richards de todos los períodos de su trayectoria profesional, para mostrar la importancia de la dirección de Richards en transformar los sucesos narrativos de las obras de August Wilson en sucesos escénicos vitales mediante el uso magistral de tropos de la Significación afro-americana. Entre los artistas entrevistados se encuentran: Dwight Andrews, Stephen Henderson, Thomas Richards, Charles S. Dutton, Courtney B. Vance, Michele Shay, y otros.</p>

Analysing body centre weight use by dancers in ArtsCross/Danscross

Abstract Using Laban Movement Analysis1 (LMA) methodologies, in particular the application of the two Weight Efforts, this article provides a comparative analysis of dancers from Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA), where the researcher is based, and dancers from the Beijing Dance Academy (BDA). The article focuses on the use of ‘body centre’ as conceived in LMA’s Effort Element, which is related to gravitational mechanisms. Through observation, it appeared that the training processes within each of these dance groups utilized different centres of weight and unique conceptions of individual space within the movement, despite both groups having a Chinese ethnic background and similar dance training styles in Contemporary Dance and traditional Chinese Dance. This insight is based on sustained observations of the rehearsal processes of these groups in the 2011 and 2012 editions of ArtsCross, as well as visits to classes at BDA during the three-week ArtsCross project held in Beijing, China in October and November of 2012. As a Certified Movement Analyst, with extensive experience in dance in both East Asia and in the United States, the researcher utilized LMA to understand how dancers from each country responded to the requests of choreographers through the intensive rehearsals and through to the final performance. The data provide significant pedagogical information relevant to the development of new programmes to be implemented within TNUA’s dance training regimen.

‘Let What Happens Happen’: The Whitelaw Archive

This article examines the archival material donated by the estate of Billie Whitelaw to the University of Reading, after the actor's death. The material sheds light on the actress' approach to Beckett's plays, and illuminates the nature of the working relationship between Whitelaw and Beckett. However, the material is also of interest because it sheds light on a series of questions raised by Jonathan Heron and Nicholas Johnson in the recent performance edition of Journal of Beckett Studies (JOBS 23.1). These questions concern the nature of genetic labour in the archive, as related to performance. In other parts of the archive, genetic labour aims to uncover the stages through which a piece of writing attained its published (or abandoned) form. In the theatre, the process of rehearsal is itself a process of genetic labour, which aims to interrogate, not the author's preferred version of the text, but the version agreed by a number of artists working in collaboration. In the theatre, the question of the actor's performative intention, and the labour through which that intention is realised, is an important part of any archival exploration. The Whitelaw archive is valuable, this article argues, because it enables us to trace the formation of a particular approach to Beckett's texts, undertaken through a process of genetic labour on the texts themselves, rather than on the character or situation that the texts suggest.

The “vowels in hand” system: a time-out with five quite contrary letters

This article introduces the Vowels in Hand (VH) method. Developed for choral directors, the VH method communicates vowel preferences to choral singers in rehearsal in order to speed up the rehearsal process and create vowel clarity, instead of more traditional methods like written IPA symbols or singing demonstrations. The article first discusses the need for the method within the choral field and investigates various choir rehearsal challenges that arise when attempting to unify vowels. The author enumerates the method and strategies for successfully using it with choirs. With this method in place, the author argues that conductors can quickly communicate desired vowel shapes to singers who can use them in performance. The VH strives to take the mystique out of vowel unification by making it a straightforward and attainable process.

Understanding the creative process in the shaping of an interpretation by expert musicians: Two case studies

This article presents the methodology and partial results of a study on the creative processes underlying nine performers’ interpretations of a single musical work. Data were collected by videotaping rehearsals and soliciting musicians’ verbalizations of the rehearsal process. Musicians also completed a reflexive questionnaire, and an independent third party observed and described the musicians’ actions. The data were first assessed through content analysis. Subsequently, interview techniques borrowed from phenomenology were used: self-confrontation interviews, which enable the verbalization of the action a posteriori; and explicitation interviews, which facilitate access to the preconscious processes and enable a detailed description of the action. Preliminary results for two performers demonstrate the varied strategies that musicians use to create original interpretations. The strategies observed were congruent with the existing literature and include alternation between divergent and convergent thinking and creative associations. Nevertheless, our results also suggest the existence of a phase step of artistic appropriation specific to each musician.

Creative layers and continuities: A case study of Nicole Lizée and the Kronos Quartet

This study examines the creative layers and continuities evident within the composition and rehearsal processes of Nicole Lizée’s Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop (Fibre-Optic Flowers), written for the Kronos Quartet in 2012. Lizée’s compositional approach to the historic and the new, and the mechanical and the human, are interpreted through Simon Emmerson’s three themes of combination, transformation, and control, and his three “impulses within composition” that combine live and acousmatic soundworlds – integration, antithesis, and co-existence. These concepts also help to articulate the way the players engage with the physical, psychological, and expressive demands of the piece. Discussions arising from the Kronos Quartet rehearsing the piece with the composer reveal how extensions are made to the performers’ mind and body experiences when they are required both to initiate and integrate sounds emanating from unfamiliar, analogue machines into their acoustic, yet amplified soundworld. Creative layers and continuities are seen to evolve from compositional experimentation and from composer–performer and co-performer dialogues in rehearsal in the BBC Maida Vale studio prior to the world premiere at a BBC Prom concert on 24 July 2012.

So we think you can learn: how student perceptions affect learning

Recent experiences in rehearsals have led us to question how student dancers perceive the culture of rehearsal. We are interested in how the influence of shows like So You Think You Can Dance affects student expectations. How do students from competitive dance studio backgrounds approach learning in a rehearsal setting? Are there specific ways to ensure optimal learning in a rehearsal process? A qualitative evaluation is used for this research, utilizing interviews, and surveys to collect data from students enrolled in a ‘Rehearsal and Performance’ course at three separate institutions, to broaden the scope of the data collection. Our research outcomes will add to the current knowledge of the field, by analyzing the learning opportunities in a rehearsal culture and the intersection of student perceptions and experience.

Bricolage: re-discovering history through intermediality and performance

ABSTRACTA Day, Across, performed by the CityVarsity School of Creative Arts at the Cape Town Fringe 2014, was a student production that investigated the link between the youth of South Africa and the centennial of the start of World War I. This paper presents a brief analysis of the rehearsal process as well as certain performance sequences in order to unpack the dual application of bricolage and intermediality within a theatrical and pedagogical context. It proposes a learning environment where the embodiment and exchange of images allows the students/performers to enter into a dialogue with history through their bodies.

On creating a climate of attention: the composition of our work

ABSTRACTThis article explores how two performance makers – Karen Christopher and Sophie Grodin of the company Haranczak/Navarre – approach the rehearsal process as an ecological practice in and by itself. Drawing attention to such things as listening, openness and patience, Karen and Sophie explore how their devising strategy transcends the studio and becomes a form of relating to the world in general. Karen and Sophie illustrate their ideas by drawing on generative metaphors and by grounding their insights on their empirical experience of making Control Signal (2013) and miles & miles (2016). In the article there is an attempt to extend the dialogic nature of Haranczak/Navarre’s work into the editing process, to create, that is, an extended climate of attention.

‘Next you’re Franklin Shepard Inc.?’: Composing the Broadway musical, a study of Kurt Weill’s working practices

Abstract This article contextualizes the working processes of musical theatre composers, revealing their work to be profoundly immersed in collaborative practices. Several recent publications have destabilized the authority of the author figure, by addressing the practicalities of referring to Broadway musicals as the work of one or two creative figures: Dominic McHugh’s recent exploration of the work that post-World War II Broadway musical theatre composers do reveals a network of interactions between the composers and amanuenses, orchestrators, and vocal arrangers. Even within this framework Weill is seen to be unlike other Broadway composers, since he does much of this work himself. This article proposes that the term ‘Broadway composer’ is unhelpful in fully understanding what Weill and others like him actually do, beyond putting notes on a page. The article lays out Weill’s actual working practices; collaboration in proposing new projects, the pre-production and rehearsal process, utilizing music after publication across different mediums, and his careful management of his own public reputation. Having done this, it calls for McHugh’s paradigm to be extended much further in order to acknowledge what composition in Broadway musical theatre involves – writing Broadway musicals means necessarily being a composer-as-collaborator.

Rehearsing Detachment: Refugee Theatre and Dialectical Fiction

This article responds to Nicolas Bourriaud’s account of the poetic function of relational art, which for him “consists in re-forming worlds of subjectivization” (2002 [1998]: 104). I challenge and complement his account of how such reforming takes place in relational art by providing an ethnographic description of what I term ‘dialectical fiction’. This notion describes actors’ cultivation of detachment and reappropriation of subjectivity during theatre rehearsals by building up fictional characters. The ethnographic source for this analysis is a long-term study of the rehearsal processes for a site-specific and participatory refugee theatre and art project in an abandoned post-industrial refugee camp in the German Ruhr valley. By inviting refugee actors to introduce abstract and fictitious characters into their reflections on acting and cultivation of an acting conduct, this project aspired to what its director called theatre’s “impossible political utopia”: a situation in which refugees are not framed as vulnerable victims “acting themselves”, but as creative agents capable of playfully negotiating their political subjectivities.

“High and Low”—Popular Music in Portuguese Cinema and Pedro Costa’s Ne Change Rien (2009)

Abstract Fado, the Portuguese guitar, and jazz and folk music have been major musical references in the first decades of the Portuguese national cinema. From its first recorded-sound film to the musical comedies in the ’40s, the Fado films of the ’50s, and the Novo Cinema productions in the ’60s and ’70s, this type of music has been featured prominently. Music itself became a topic or served as a major element in films by the country’s most renowned filmmakers: Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro. Contemporary filmmakers such as Miguel Gomes, João Canijo, Edgar Pêra, and Pedro Costa have lately emphasized the importance of music in their production. My aim in this article is to offer a brief introductory survey on the role of music in Portuguese film history, before focusing on a contemporary film, Ne Change Rien (2009), by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Pedro Costa. Within the context of Portuguese cinema, the film demonstrates indeed a revitalized interest in the relation between music and the moving image. This recent production, which features French actress and singer Jeanne Balibar and explores her rehearsal and recording process and on stage performances, challenges our ideas on art production with its representation of music in film. I will use the concept of the “indisciplinary film” in order to grasp the complex political and aesthetic implications of Ne Change Rien’s way of engaging with the different aspects and the mystery involved in the creation of music and filmmaking.

Distraction in verbal short-term memory: Insights from developmental differences

The contribution of two mechanisms of auditory distraction in verbal serial short-term memory—interference with the serial rehearsal processes used to support short-term recall and general attentional diversion—was investigated by exploiting differences in auditory distraction in children and adults. Experiment 1 showed that serial rehearsal plays a role in children’s as well as adults’ distractibility: Auditory distraction from irrelevant speech was greater for both children and adults as the burden on rehearsal increased. This pattern was particularly pronounced in children, suggesting that underdeveloped rehearsal skill in this population may increase their distractibility. Experiment 2 showed that both groups were more susceptible to changing- than steady-state speech when the task involved serial rehearsal—indicating that both groups suffer interference-by-process—but that children, but not adults, were also susceptible to any sort of sound (steady or changing) in a task thought to be devoid of serial rehearsal. The overall pattern of results suggests that children’s increased susceptibility to auditory distraction during verbal short-term memory performance is due to a greater susceptibility to attentional diversion; in this view, under-developed rehearsal-skill increases children’s distractibility by exacerbating their under-developed attentional control rather than by increasing interference-by-process.

Stanislavski’s best student directs: Maria Lilina’s first and last production

Stanislavski’s wife Maria Lilina (1866-1943) was his ideal student (by his own admittance) and his faithful artistic follower. Lilina was the only actor who worked with the master throughout all the stages of the System in its 30-year formation, hence Stanislavski charged her with a special project at the Opera-Dramatic Studio. As a director, Lilina was to base the rehearsals of The Cherry Orchard on his most recent ideas, and to seek the artistic proof of his theory. Stanislavski asked Lilina to work on the play, having categorically forbidden the students to use the text or even to read the play. Lilina would give the detailed descriptions of the act or the scene in the beginning of the rehearsal, after which students would improvise. Every time Lilina carefully guided them toward the true meaning of the scene, as she and Stanislavski had discussed it prior to every rehearsal. After months of successful rehearsals, one of the other pedagogues of the Opera-Dramatic Studio was permitted to read the act to the students out loud. Stanislavski’s death in 1938 and Hitler’s invasion of the USSR in 1941, then Lilina’s death in 1943 did not allow these rehearsals to reach fruition in a theatre production; however, the rehearsal diaries and the memoirs of the participants shed light upon the unique rehearsal process and Lilina’s use of the method of active analysis. The study also allows us to see the further alienation of Stanislavski’s acting theories from the work on the text of the play, and the play itself as the foundation of a theatre production.

OUP accepted manuscript

This article looks at contemporary artworks that utilise re-enactment as scenes of learning to engage with feminism’s histories. Virginia Woolf’s call for ‘a room of one’s own’ is re-imagined for today, when we might have a room, but often not the time to use it. Re-enactment is seen as creating ‘a time of one’s own’, made up out of disparate historical moments which, when brought together, become alive and vital for the present and the future. By using Bertolt Brecht’s concept of the learning-play, the process of rehearsal is foregrounded to conceptualise what is happening when historical material is re-enacted. In the examples explored, this rehearsal is also motivated by an affective charge, a desire to know whilst accepting and celebrating that this knowledge will always be partial. The learning-play was also devised a method for forming new communities, something that is discussed here as occurring across history as well as in the present moment. The artworks discussed are Salomania by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz (2009), Allyson Mitchell’s Killjoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House (2013), Kajsa Dahlberg’s A Room of One’s Own / A Thousand Libraries (2006) and Faye Green’s NOT TO DISCOU[RAGE] YOU (2013).