The ‘present’ situation in Zimbabwe was researched by looking at newspaper articles and by searching the web. From this research we decided to include the fact that the black people were now in charge and the white people were being ‘terrorised’ by them. We wanted to include a white farmer being evicted by black people under the orders of a very racist, black leader. We also wanted to show the aftermath, i.e. that the black people that took over form the evicted white farmers had no idea how to work on a farm or what to do and so the whole country would eventually experience a famine. The main point we want to get across in the ‘present’ act is the fact that the black people are in control of the white people, as it were, and that this is very similar to the ‘past’ act but with the roles of black and white people reversed.
The ‘future’ was difficult to research but we drew a lot of our ideas from stories of gang crime in America and Britain, as this was the closest we could get to two communities completely separate from each other. We wanted to get across the idea that if a person from one community crossed the boundary line of the two communities, there would be severe consequences for that person, child or adult, most likely in the form of execution on the spot. We also wanted to get across the idea that the two communities were completely separate and very hateful towards each other by choice, not by any laws, and that each community was run by their government as well as the fact that there was no interaction between the two communities at all, for example, completely unprovoked attacks on people and property could be carried out based purely on racial hatred.
Aims and Objectives
The aims and objectives for the group as a whole and for myself are mainly with regards to the audience and ourselves.
My own, personal aim is to learn more about prejudice and racism so that I can apply it to life situations.
The aims with regards to the audience are: to disturb them mentally, i.e. make them feel uncomfortable about what is going on around them; to break down the traditional actor – audience relationship so that we, as actors, surround the audience as much as possible; to make them think about their own values to do with racism and prejudice; to show that racism goes both ways, black and white people can both be as racist as each other; and finally, we want to shock them and completely change the way they view their own ideals about racism.
Our main aims as a group are to make the audience think about themselves in relation to racism after they’ve seen the piece and to break down the traditional actor – audience relationship, as well as make them feel the essence of the piece through their senses rather than through thoughts and thought processes as they sit and watch the piece. We also want to incorporate Artaud’s idea that theatre has the ability to act physically upon a crowd of spectators without actually hurting them, as this would make for interesting theatre and would keep the audience engrossed in the piece.
Chosen Skill and Research on it
The skill I chose to work on was acting and I chose acting because I have always enjoyed going to the theatre and watching how actors completely come out of themselves and become someone else and act someone else’s situation, including specific emotions, gestures and sounds, and I have always been interested in how they do this and have always wanted to give it a good go. Acting can bring many opportunities, such as, help make you less shy and more confidant as a person as well as bringing in acting jobs in plays or on television, etc.
I looked into different ways actors can prepare themselves for a role, for example, method acting, i.e. if the character is a shop assistant. Also how an actor can prepare for rehearsals, such as, breathing exercises and breathing techniques. All in all I chose acting as my skill because it has interested me from quite early on.
Development
From the start of the developing process we continued to think about where each scene was set and in what time period and how we could incorporate some of Artaud’s ideas. I also thought about the Shared Experience Theatre Company’s rehearsal techniques and how I could apply them to each character, for example, a belief line asking a question such as ‘do you believe in mixed race marriages’ and then answering the question as my character would.
As we set about devising our piece I encountered many challenges in terms of acting, theatrical presentation and resources. For example, I found it quite challenging to act as a man in one scene as I am quite a feminine person but to overcome this I tried to think like a man and show my thoughts through body posture by thinking of the stereotypical man and putting the mental image into practice which then goes back to show how the issue of stereotyping is being explored.
It was also quite difficult to switch instantaneously to another, completely different role, such as, from being a white, American, twenty-year old girl, in the 1950’s to being a black, American, twenty-year old girl in the 1950’s as the former has to have quite a rigid body posture and not show too much emotion and be quite ‘hard’ with her friends and not entirely friendly. The latter has to be quite relaxed and friendly and comfortable around other people and the transition from one to the other was quite difficult for me at first but it got easier with practice and the more I did it the better the transition became.
In terms of theatrical presentation, there weren’t too many challenges. We did find that as a group we tended to always have something happening at the front of the space and this sometimes blocked out any action that was happening behind; this was easily overcome by switching places so that the action that was at the front was moved to the back and the action at the back was moved to the front of the space.
We managed to work well with the resources we had, however, we had to improvise at the beginning because we needed a coffin for the first and last scenes but we didn’t have one so we had to use a cardboard box to practice with, so that we could get an idea of how it would be with a real coffin.
In this piece I play many different roles, but the most significant thing about each of them is that they all have a specific accent. The English accent presented no problems for the obvious reason that it is my natural accent. The southern American accent was not too difficult either but to ensure that I was doing it properly I watched a video in which all the characters had southern American accents and tried to copy it. I had to make sure that my jaw was quite flexible to drawl the vowels in the way southern Americans do. The Zimbabwe accent, however, did present a problem for me as well as the rest of the group. We tried to copy the accent from a video but it was just too difficult, so in the end we invited a teacher, who is very good at many different accents, into our rehearsal to teach us how to do a Zimbabwe accent. He told us to have a tense jaw and to try and spit the words out for a white Zimbabwean but to make the jaw less tense and to make the speech more singsong for a black Zimbabwean. After this we could all manage to do the accents but just needed to practice them. We decided to try doing these accents to emphasize that we were in a specific country and to help show which country we were in to ensure that the audience would not be too confused but would feel quite unsettled with the constant scene changes and, therefore, bringing in an Artaudian idea and putting it into practice.
During rehearsals we would spend the whole time speaking in southern American and Zimbabwe accents to make sure that we could do them and to help make them more realistic, unless we were rehearsing the scene in England, then, of course, we spoke with English accents. This didn’t always work well as it sometimes stopped us from thinking seriously about the piece as we became caught up with speaking in an accent and not concentrating on how to improve the piece.
As we continued to rehearse the piece and add in new ideas where appropriate, we discovered that the groups aims and objectives shifted slightly away from shocking and disturbing the audience, to making them think more about what they were seeing, meaning we started to move away from Artaudian ideas and more towards more naturalistic ideas. There were still moments in the piece that would shock an audience, but the majority of it would make them think more, for example, when the actors playing thoughts whisper menacing things and walk and jump around the space would unsettle the audience. My own personal aim has remained the same and as we continued to rehearse I feel that my aim has been met. However, we did tend to move away from trying to break the actor-audience relationship as more ideas got put in and as it wasn’t very practical for this particular piece as a lot of action happens in the middle of the space as well as the fact that the piece turned out to be quite political and in need of some order and barriers, but I do believe that the piece will make an audience think about racism more deeply rather than just skim the surface, meaning they will actually think about racism rather than just be ‘taught’ about it.
As a group we all kept putting in ideas, thinking about them, discarding or keeping them, but personally I contributed the idea for the layout of the set in the England scene, i.e. a block on either side of a line, the nature of the line was to be discussed later with the member in charge of lighting. This was to show that the two societies of the blacks and the whites had become completely separated from each other and hated each other immensely, this also came out through scripting and movement as well as set and lighting. I also contributed the title of the piece: ‘Race Against Time’ as I thought that was what we were showing, racism, or race, throughout time, but also that unless we try and do something soon about racism then we’ll end up like the families in the England scene, so it could also mean, literally, a race against time to stop the separation of blacks and whites as is shown in the England scene.
Whilst I was developing my characters I would think back to the Shared Experience Theatre Company workshop I attended and put some of the rehearsal techniques into practice, such as taking a simple action and then magnifying it to a hundred percent so that the whole body was centred on doing the action. For example, I took the action of fiddling with a small bit of my hair for one of my characters showing nervousness and magnified it to a hundred percent and then brought it back to the original action. This helped think about the inner emotions of the character even if the exterior was calm.
As a group we all worked very well together and all our acting skills engaged well together, for example, in some scenes, those playing representative characters are incorporated into the scene by the those playing realistic characters, such as in Zimbabwe where the representative characters are the thoughts of the realistic characters and when the ‘thoughts’ speak, the other actors respond. This showed a good sense of each member of the group working well together as a whole as well as individually to form a well thought out and rehearsed piece.
Health and safety
In our production we had to think carefully about health and safety with regards to the audience and ourselves, the actors. We made sure that all the lighting and sound equipment was safe to use before switching it on and we made sure that there were no wires dangling around or lying on the floor for people to trip over. We also made sure that all the electrical points were safe and that they weren’t overloaded. In addition we made sure there were no sharp objects on the floor by sweeping it before the performance.
At one point in the piece we need three flames and we started off thinking about using matches, however, we realised that they would be too dangerous as they can easily set fire to other objects and could, potentially, be difficult to put out, so we decided to use disposable lighters as these are far easier to put out and are not as dangerous as matches in the sense that if they start heating your hand and you drop it, the flame goes out, whereas a match flame would stay lit.
The general health of the actors remained reasonably well throughout the devising process, however, one actor had an accident in which she hurt her leg and so could not do anything too physical. We also made sure that, in rehearsals, we put something soft, for example, a coat, on top of the wooden blocks so that when an actor had to drop onto her knees, she didn’t damage them or hurt herself.
The rehearsals in general weren’t very physical, and, in cases where they were, we took off shoes and socks to avoid slipping on the floor and falling over.
Analysis
In conclusion I think that the final piece is a good piece of theatre. It conveys clearly the theme of racism and the fact that racism occurs all over the world. However, I don’t think it is very clear that it is set in the past, present and future and if this could be changed, I would change it so that at the start of each period of time an actor would state the place and the date just to clarify the situation a little more. I do believe that it did convey our desired message and that it fulfilled our initial aims and objectives, i.e. making the audience feel the emotions whilst watching and then going away and thinking about what they’ve seen and felt. I think that the overall piece could have a few more Artaudian elements incorporated into the piece, such as, integrating the audience more with the action, however, there are Artaudian elements incorporated into the piece, for example, the spirits being the thoughts of the characters that are on stage, and the sense of incantation and crescendo if sound in the funeral scene. We also show our influence from the Shared Experience Theatre Company by including the themes of stereotyping and racism and exploring some of the reasoning behind that racism.
I believe that I developed my acting skills adequately for the roles I had to play and tat I was relatively good at adopting a new role quickly, however, I also think that I could have thought more about specific postures and movements for one or two of the roles which, I think, is where my acting skills fell down.
From devising a piece of theatre, I have learnt that it can be quite stressful at times when people strongly disagree about an aspect of the piece, and that an enormous amount of effort goes in to produce a play, not just with regards to acting but lighting and sound, costume and set as well. I learnt that every little thing needs to be thought about carefully and precisely whether that is what set to have or what movement to do at a specific time for a specific character. I also learnt that devising a piece of theatre could also be a very enjoyable experience as you spend a lot of time working with other people to produce something that conveys a complex message through a series of actions, sounds and lights.
All in all I think that our piece turned out to be a very successful piece of theatre.
Bibliography
An Actor Prepares – Constantin Stanislavski
The Internet ⇒ BBC News
⇒ Robert Mugabe’s Official Homepage
⇒ Yahoo News
Encarta 98
History Revision Guide
Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry