Playing the playing space
I suggested in an earlier post that the actor’s ‘instrument’ is not her body and not her voice but the space in which she plays. At least, this is the case in live theatre. The actor needs to be sensitive to the nature of any particular playing space and to its intrinsic qualities in order to make the most of these in performance. The best account of this I know of is a short chapter called “Working the Space” at the end of Cicely Berry’s Text in Action. Working and playing have much the same sense here, but naturally Berry’s emphasis is on the acoustic character of playing spaces. She begins, “Every theatre space is acoustically unique, it is therefore vital that time is given to explore the particular sound qualities of that space so that each actor experiences for him/herself how best to fill it” (257). What might be added to this is that the actor needs to develop heightened sensitivity to the acoustic character of spaces to make best use of any time available for exploring a particular space. Still, the actor needs not only to be sensitive to the acoustic qualities of a given space, but also to what I’ll call its ‘kinetic potential’ – and for this reason I prefer to speak of its ‘acoustic potential’ rather than its ‘acoustic character’ as well. The actor has to be able to ‘fill’ the space in movement and presence as well as vocally, and this can only happen if she is able to ‘feel’ it as a kind of extension of her expressive self – an ‘instrument’ to play both acoustically and kinetically.
As a first and basic step in developing sensitivity to the kinetic potential of space, I use the following exercise. The group is told to place a set of chairs (you need a lot) to define a space. The chairs function as a front row all around that space (with no need for any further rows). Participants mustn’t discuss this task as they carry it out because verbalization and its close relative intellectualization need to be suppressed throughout the exercise, not just in this preliminary part. Even so, the group should start with fairly simple, regular shapes such as rectangles and ovals, moving on as the exercise progresses to more complex asymmetrical shapes.
For each shape constructed in this way, a few volunteers are first asked, in turn, to walk fairly slowly around it, getting the feel of it, until they find a place within it where they feel comfortable coming to a standstill. There must be no discussion about this or any of the next steps; it’s crucial that the volunteers rely entirely on their feeling and intuition, and that the observers in the group do the same in the way they watch and ‘assess’ what happens. By the way, the observers mustn’t sit in any of the chairs that define the shape, because this can ‘unbalance’ it. But they’ll do so later.
Next, a few volunteers are asked, in turn, to find the most powerful position within the space. The leader mustn’t define ‘powerful’ in any way. These powerful positions may or may not be the same as those where the initial volunteers felt comfortable stopping.
For the third phase, volunteers are asked to find the best ‘hiding place’ within the space, again one at a time. As before this mustn’t be defined, but it may be necessary to acknowledge the paradoxical nature of the instruction, since everywhere within the space is exposed and it’s not permitted to stand on the perimeter, i.e. between two chairs if there is space there.
Next, a volunteer is first asked to go to a powerful position in the space, then a second volunteer is asked to enter the space and to find a position within it that makes the initial powerful position either more powerful or less powerful.
After this sequence has been run through a few times, for different spaces, it may be a good idea to have a brief discussion (especially if some participants are finding the process difficult or perhaps can’t even see the point of it, which is not uncommon). But not too much. Turning what has been experienced into a kind of preliminary ‘theory’ can come later.
For the next stage of the exercise, you need to start from a strongly asymmetrical shape, so you should have moved on to such shapes during the first phase. Here the group sits in the chairs to form an ‘audience,’ as regularly spaced around the whole ‘front row’ as possible. The leader places a single small object such as a bottle of water, a bunch of keys, a flower, a doll or a book somewhere in the space, then says: ‘If anyone feels that the object is in the wrong place in the space, just get up and move it to a better one’. ‘Wrong place,’ of course, is left undefined, and no discussion is allowed.
When this works, it’s fascinating to watch. A whole ‘drama’ can unfold in the conflict over the ‘right place’ for the object. In such a case the group can be informed that they’ve just performed a play, without realizing it. But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes participants move the object for the sake of moving it, rather than in a true engagement with the dynamics of the space. It’s easy enough to tell the one from the other.
For the third stage, you again start from a strongly asymmetrical space, but it must be different from the one used in the second stage. The group first explores this space by moving around it, feeling its different possibilities, without any discussion. They may need to do so one or two at a time. They are then told to create a short play from and for this space. Here, the space becomes the stimulus for the drama. (I first developed this exercise when I was teaching play writing, in fact. My goal was to get people to write for the stage rather than simply ‘writing life’ and then expecting a director to stage it. It’s a valuable exercise for directors too.)
After this, the following lessons can be drawn out. These are ‘theoretical’. They’re less important in themselves than the intuitive understanding that is the aim of the exercise, but because what’s involved here goes well beyond most people’s common sense understanding of space (which is the understanding they tend to understand they’ve got!), they’re useful for consolidating that intuitive understanding. But only at the end.
Any playing space contains FOCAL POINTS that are more or less strong or more or less weak, along with NATURAL LINES OF MOVEMENT (not necessarily straight) between these focal points. These lines are also more or less strong or weak, or move from weak to strong or strong to weak, depending on the focal points they connect.
The more symmetrical a playing space, the fewer its focal points (both strong and weak) and hence the fewer its natural lines of movement. Conversely, the more asymmetrical a playing space the more focal points and natural lines of movement it contains.
In principle, there is a ‘right space’ for every play, which is also different for each play. This is the corollary of the way a specific (strongly asymmetrical) space can give rise to ‘its own’ play.
Purpose-built theatres are necessarily compromises between the various possible ‘right spaces’ for a wide range of plays. Looking at it this way helps clarify the role of designer in recovering something as close as possible to the ‘right space’ from the compromise space.
However, having said all this, it’s important to realize that something crucial has been left out of the equation: the AUDIENCE.
In line with the principle that the more symmetrical a space, the fewer its focal points and hence the fewer its natural lines of movement, and given the fact that the most symmetrical shape is a circle, then the least dynamic of all possible playing spaces is a circular one. A circle has only one truly strong position at the centre and everywhere else is much of a muchness. It seems therefore like a very difficult space to play in, because there’s no real dynamic in the space to tap into. But this is far from the whole story.
If you visit Epidaurus, you’ll likely see tourists standing at the centre of the circular playing space and saying something to a companion way up near the back row, to test the famous acoustic. Don’t bother. Sound naturally travels uphill! [And a few days after posting, this study was reported.] Instead, try something very different. Starting from the centre, try walking to the left, to the right, towards the audience seats, away from them – but through all this maintain a strong sense of BOTH the circular playing space (called in Greek the orchestra, or ‘place for dancing’) AND the semi-circular raked seating for the audience (called in Greek the theatron, or ‘place for looking from’). It helps in this to imagine that an audience is present. If you are sensitive to the dynamics of spaces (and not everyone is, at least without training), you should experience a strong sense of the symmetrical orchestra being PULLED OUT SHAPE by the theatron. You should feel this pulling, and along with it a kind of secondary pushing, as a ‘tidal force’. No new focal points are established, however, but the space now feels much more dynamic with a much greater energy of its own that you can work with and against.
With the exception of theatre in the round, all the relatively symmetrical compromise spaces of purpose-built theatres are rendered more asymmetrical and, by the same token, more dynamic, by the presence of an audience on one, two or three sides. That’s the major reason why the exercise described above is no more than a starting point for developing the performer’s sensitivity to the kinetic potential of space. Beyond this, performers also need to become sensitized to the various ways in which the materials from which the playing space and auditorium are constructed affect the ‘performance potential’ of a playing space, especially – but not only – its acoustic potential.
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