Bibliography

Books and Journals:

Bicât, T; Baldwin, C. (2002) Devised and Collaborative Theatre: A Practical Guide. Ramsbury: Crowood Press
Hauser, F; Reich, R. (2003) Notes on Directing RCR Creative Press
Kirby. M. (1972) On Acting and Not Acting The MIT Press, Vol 16 (1), pp 3-15

Pinter, H. (1991) The Birthday Party. London: Faber and Faber.

Reza, Y. (2008) The God of Carnage. London: Faber and Faber
Schechner, R (1988) Performance Theory London: Routledge
Skinner, P. (2011) The Sound of Heavy Rain London: Faber and Faber
Stevenson, R. (1883) Treasure Island. London: Cassell and Company
White, G. (2012) On Immersive Theatre Theatre Research International, Vol 37 (3), pp 221-235

Websites:

Beaven, K. (2012) Performance Art 101: Painting and Performance [Online] Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/performance-art-101-painting-and-performance [Accessed 18/01/2017]
Frantic Assembly (N.D.) About [Online] Available from: https://www.franticassembly.co.uk/about [Accessed 21/11/2016]

Lost in Heavy Rain Performance

"Lost in Heavy Rain" was the second performance by DMU students, which focused on post-dramatic performance and its characteristics. It makes numerous references to "The Sound of Heavy Rain", having scenes that represents different emotions, whilst including new scenes created by the students. Love and betrayal are two examples of these "new scenes".

Producing the play revolved around a simple process. The idea was to split into small groups, identifying various features that represented each character (from the Sound of Heavy Rain) and extract them. Other scenes emphasised the power of "being a certain identity", for example a man, explaining the benefits of such in a humorous light. It also pointed out negatives, providing the audience characters for relation-building processes.

Another feature was the inclusion of poems, which offered another form of representing different identities. They, similar to the extracted pieces, emphasised the powers of being a certain identity; whilst making other identities appear "less valued" or unappreciated.

https://vimeo.com/195809836
Here is a video to the post-dramatic performance produced by DMU first-years. It shows the important parts of the performance, alongside notable features to post-dramatic performance.

"What is Acting?" by Michael Kirby

This article represents the definition of acting by Michael Kirby. He states that "not all performance is acting", as happenings show that performers often played themselves or nobody. They failed to represent anything relevant to their characters or story, remaining as themselves within a play. "Pretending" was a missing action amongst the performers, as time and place never changed from that of the spectator. Although they performed a variety of gestures relative to the performance, there was little evidence of them feigning or impersonating.



Spectators, along with their audiences alike, have the ability to recognise and identify acting and non-acting. In other words, viewer sees when one or multiple performers act and "not act." However, past performers and practitioners created a behaviour continuum where variations in acting and non-acting shrank. As a result, the ability to categorise increased in difficulty. Acting and non-acting appear on different sides of the continuum, as non-acting represents limited effort in feigning or impersonating a character and entity. Those characteristics reside on the left-hand side of this continuum, since acting and its personality remain on the far right. There is no concern for "the degree of reality", but considers "the amount of acting" instead.



Not all performances use acting in their material. A large number of dance pieces match this statement, such as those featured in Far-East theatre. Instead, some stage attendants divert relevant props into and from their desired locations, alongside costume changes and producing tea for the actors. Unlike the onstage performers, stage attendants never appear in the narrative informational structure. Stage attendants have attire that differs from the performers, but their presence within a performance remains onstage. Despite the stage attendants not acting on stage, they exist as part of the visual representation.

   

A true performer produces realistic feigning and simulation; but other qualities that determine acting, such as representation and simulation apply to the performer.

This is an image of Obi Wan Kenobi, portrayed by Alec Guinness. He uses realism in the feigning and simulation, two qualities that define a "true performer".

"When the performer, like the stage attendants of Kabuki and Noh, is merely himself and is not embedded, as it were, in matrices of pretended or represented character, situation, place and time, I refer to him as being "non-matrixed."" (Michael Kirby, 1972)

This quote suggests that, there is a firm line between what is acting and "not acting". It shows performing as a medium requiring  pretended or represented characters, alongside an understanding in situation, place and time. As a result, it indicates that the performer needs to have a good understanding of these features, in order to appear as a realistic character for audiences.

Post-Dramatic Performance

Hans-Thies Lehmann  produced a book in 1999 that "covers a wide range of contemporary theatrical forms" alongside visual art and devised work. As a result. this led to the publication of post-dramatic performance.


Post-dramatic relates to performances that do not rely on dramatic texts; but include the deconstruction of created characters, settings, backgrounds and how the system of thought represents itself. This even has the possibility of disappearing altogether. A performance of post-dramatic nature eliminates the play, alongside characters and understandable settings.

http://www.ista.co.uk/downloads/POSTDRAMATICTHEATREbyJoScott_1.pdf

"a performance state where unified character, plot and setting is ruptured and 'even relinquished altogether'" (Lehmann 2006: 30-31).

This quote suggests that post-dramatic performance deconstructs characters, plots, settings and emotion. As a result, we see the emotion of specific characters; alongside fragments of settings and props, but the full structure and understanding of a play disappears entirely. An example was the post-dramatic performance produced by DMU first years, which extracted the emotions, settings and characters from the first play; but deconstructed them to make them less obvious. The process is an act of producing post-dramatic performance.

The Sound of Heavy Rain Performance

'The Sound of Heavy Rain' was a performance by DMU Students, but originally written by Penelope Skinner. It contributed to the Dramatic Performance module, which I was a student on. The performance took place in the Campus Centre at De Montfort University, an institute in Leicester.


Reading the play and producing individual scenes was the pre-production process, in which small groups developed. Other scenes existed where the whole group took part, with an example being the Dabrowski scene. Dabrowski is a character who makes numerous appearances through the play; more specifically, a personal investigator. Various people played this character, creating different aspects of him and his personality. There was a creative process in creating these scenes, taking inspiration from the book and using original ideas.


The process was different for me, because I took the smaller role of a specific character, mostly appearing on stage with the ensemble. As a result, it offered me a more relaxed approach to performing this play, due to the reduced number of lines for rehearsal. However, there were numerous gestures required to progress the play, alongside offer a clear meaning to the audience.

Overall, I thought the performance went well as a whole, especially the Lady Gaga-related scene, involving music and physical theatre. I received positive feedback from the performance, showing many strengths and a few areas for improvement.

 Here is a link to the performance.

https://vimeo.com/190989292