Frantic assembly use stylised pedestrian movement. These movements are simple, clean and precise in their delivery. They may appear naturalistic but are carefully choreographed to communicate specific emotions through gesture. When they begin devising a show they feel its very important the initial ideas originate from themselves, even when working with a writer they rely on their own instincts. Ideas are not always straight to stage however, some ideas sit on the shelf until the company feels that the social climate is appropriate for the show.
When curating the show beautiful burnout, 75% of the devising time was spent on movement and this usually came first. This is because "The moves had to be secure otherwise there will be a hesitancy to the text. This makes the movement extremely easy to incorporate into the final performance but it does mean that you might spend most of a week without saying a word of text." They put text in after movement because they believe if you implement it too early then it will feel forced and make both the text and movements redundant.
Frantic Assembly use warm ups to build trust and confidence within the cast. One way they do this is by progressively building the actors ability, on Monday they may have them doing 7 push ups and by Friday they will do 11. This gives the participant a sense of accomplishment and makes them more confident. This kind of warm up is similar to Grotowski in the way that he would have his cast participate in physical exercises to exhaust them. However this was not be to build confidence but rather to bring their instinctual emotions to the surface, as he believed that physical exercise and exhaustion made the actors more in touch with their emotions and more able to channel them while performing.
Another exercise Frantic Assembly use to warm up before a rehearsal is called clear, centre, favourite, door, hug, Ill just call it clear. This exercise begins with all participants walking around the space, the director will then call out any one of these words and all the participants have to react as swiftly as possible.
Clear: all participants must clear the space and hug the walls.
Centre: all participants travel to the centre of the space in slow motion, once they get there they must rest their head on another participants shoulder.
Favourite: each participant must pick an object in the room, whenever "favourite" is called, each participant must point to their object.
Door: each participant must act like they are peeking underneath a door.
Person: hug the nearest person too you, make sure its air tight and intimate.
This exercise is a very effective warm up because it wakes you up. To play the game well you have be completely on the ball. Favourite forces you to be spatially aware, Door makes you use levels and loosens your body. This exercise however has no emotional connection and is purely building a physical awareness. This is where Frantic Assembly and Grotowski differ, Grotowski creates his warm ups with the purpose of bringing the actors emotions to the surface and using this to drive the performance.
I personally enjoyed this exercise as it was a very engaging warm up and definitely woke me up. Once it was over I felt more flexible and prepared to create theatre. However because it was very psychologically disengaged it was easy to lose focus and start to joke around. This may get you into the wrong mindset and find it harder to concentrate on devising. Then again it encourages playing and helps to build an atmosphere that allows actors to play freely.
Grotowski believed that physical exhaustion helped expose emotions that we bury underneath the surface, these can then be channelled into the actors character. He believed acting was a physiological experience. He believed that physicality could be used to portray emotions and feelings like Frantic assembly do, but he thought that the process starts from the inside and then works its way out into physicalization. Where as Frantic assembly start with the movement first.
The physical Grotowski exercise was unpleasant because I was wearing very heavy boots at the time. Apart from that I found it interesting exploring such a radical practitioner. His extreme view of theatre is slightly inspiring and I found it entertaining taking part in one of his exercises. I did feel slightly more in touch with my raw emotions after the exercise but the fact I was in school created barriers preventing me from getting fully immersed. Like being really sweaty, smelly and uncomfortable. However I feel that this is something I will come back to to explore deeper, where as Frantic Assembly exercises are often offer very shallow exploration space.
Grotowski also used exercises to bring out these instinctual emotions. After having his actors were physically exhausted he would get them to remember a moment from their past where they were barefoot. They would have to try and experience the sensation through their feet and then explore the emotions they were feeling in their memory. They would embody their past selves slowly, at first through the feet and then slowly throughout the rest of their body. This exercise helps you become connected with your emotions, preventing you from your vocals sounding like their disconnected. This kind of exercise may help when doing both naturalism and experimental if used correctly, making its application to the devising process flexible.
He would also have his actors work in complete silence, he did this as he believed it would build focus and concentration. He would have his actors run through the forest naked together, he did this to get them physically exhausted but to also build a connection between the actors. He believed actors should experience theatre as a life style, he would usually take as long as two years to devise a theatre show. He wanted his actors to live theatre. This is slightly similar to frantic assembly as they may take a long period of time to curate a show.
Grotowski works from the inside out, asking actors to think psychologically about their characters. Grotowski focuses on bringing emotion to the suraface, one way he does this is through physically exhausting his actors
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