Tanushka Marah
Accessing Tagedy - in chorus and solo work
'Marah is a powerhouse
of emotions' The Stage.
I concur to this, after
two days workshop with Marah I'm feeling invigorated to begin work on
a performance piece I've been raring to bring to life for several
years now!
The workshop took place
in a lovely studio, a top floor of an old mill, now empty, two long
walls of windows made the space light and open.
As a group of 7
performers from different backgrounds, we worked together
exceptionally well as a group. Marah commented several times how well
we worked in complicite exercises, joking she has seen companies who
had worked together for several weeks not as in tune as we were with
one another. We were led through warm up exercises in devising
ensemble work and per formative exercises and several Butoh training
techniques, very intense and emotionally evocative work.
Below are my notes from
the two days.
Circle intro of people,
why they were attracted to workshop on tragedy. Great mix of
theatrical people.
Step into circle,
making commitment to the day.
Standing in circle,
breathing in waking up body, patting face, arms, body.
Breathing in, arms
circle up, breathe out arms down. Repeated.
Walking space, clapping
into dead space.
Touching hands of other
actors, eye contact, playing passing one another, holding hands,
holding hands and counter balance of weight and finally counter
balance and launch to next partner. Playing with passing one another.
Building up energy, using launch to get to next partner.
Finding partner,
together, finding pattern of walking, breathing. Into single, into
group. Group movement and breathing. Felt like Ailon improv.
Stomping, dancing breathing, building and depleting in energy.
Body undulations,
watching bug crawl across floor towards self, up feet, legs, knees,
hips, chest and head follow back to centre of room. Extremely slow,
gaining speed. As speed increases movement becomes smaller, we were
internalising the energy of movement. Thinking of it as galaxy within
stomach. Same on vertical axis, feet up and round, body swaying
opposite direction. This energy in still body is something we aimed
to keep as a constant force within ourselves.
Suzuki Techniques.
“STAT” exercises. Sitting and stood, these were about timing and
strength, using images of falling and drowning. Abcde... in 3
positions, crunches on floor, Stat, changing position “STAT” then
sinking down. Exploring this ourselves. Sinking 10 to 0. 30 to 0.
over a minute and half to music. This was a physical challenge, Marah
made emphasis on relaxed hands as strained hands were very
distracting and open necks this opened up the body dramatically.
Bang Bang, shoe on
floor. To Nancy Sinatra's song of same title. Straight back. Where
you come back up to is position you travel forward, or back.
Walking in two lines of
four. Bending knees, presenting hand as core, foot to audience lift
first, together walking across space, crossing, walking to opposite
side, turning and crossing again, allll in time. Tanushka said
possible for someone to walk down middle.
Bitter lemon, baby,
cold water. Changing between in stat style to find best position.
Some times swapping one to another, sometimes from one to neutral in
countdowns of 10 to 0, 30 to 0. Then walking from back of room to
audience playing with these, variation on timing. Moving back.
Choral type music,
movments given narrative, became very emotive. Amazing performance.
Use partner exercises
preparing for being led, string exercise, make contact with body
part, pull imaginary string partner responds to this. Take in turns,
led into a dance.
Butoh, red planet on
head,
Planet of gas on head,
swords broken glass beneath feet. Duty to be power between planets
keeping them apart. Walking towards audience.
Second day the
thousands and thousands of bugs eating away at skin. Begin in a tomb,
the tomb is empty, all alone in there. See a Beatles scurry towards
you, enters your ear, then the other ear, mouth, 6 Beatles enter
mouth, more Beatles fall on head, devour the body. Your body falls to
the floor, Beatles are eating away at the flesh, the bones, nothing
is left. Nothing is left at all. The air is full of ash, where you
lay is covered in a layer of ash, a year passes, a years worth of ash
covers you, a decades worth of ash, a century. A red light shines on
a part of your body, after centuries of oblivion you become conscious
of the warmth, responding to it, gradually standing. A red ball of
light balances on your head, move through the space, eyes open, ash
underfoot, weight of the world pushing down,
Paint brush feet,
flying, lotus, flying.
Improv moving towards
audience.
Improvisation in space,
using different movement scores we had worked on that day a free
improvisation. Taking in turns to enter space when we felt the
impulse to.
Second day began with
mutuality exercises, bending partner over, I stood behind her, leg in
a supporting position behind her. One hand placed on her hip other
pushing shoulder to shoulder to create a pendulum swinging motion,
encouraging them to totally relax their neck and back. After a few
moments of allowing them to gain totally relaxed state, too their arm
over my head, and led them into leaning on my back as I bent forward.
Partner totally relaxing into this position.
Taking back to first
step and repeating pendulum motion. This time sitting on partners
supporting knee, spinning out dance type move I thought, breathing
coming back. Then taking partners wrists, turning back to back,
shelf but and lifting partner over. Relaxing over partners back.
Running in the space,
touching partners, holding hands, exchange weight, propel one another
through space. Finding shared breathing pattern in group. As group
travelled space sharing stamping pattern and breathe, into circle.
This developed into music, some keeping rhythm some adding melody,
Denise taken into centre of circle improvisation got very free, Marah
opening Denise up, encouraging her to hold notes longer than natural.
Voices breaking in attacking.
Yoshi Oida inspired
exercises, 'Jo hi Q.' Beginning of an action is Jo, the doing of the
action is the hi and Q is a full stop on movement. We bagan moving in
space, perhaps to touch an opposite wall. Begin 'Jo' the walking
saying 'Hiiiii' and Q to punctuate finish. This led into group
improvisation, interacting with items in room with one another. Led
into Denise telling us a story and us watching.
Marah split us into two
groups. Two leaders of Amazon tribes using Joh Hi Q to tell us their
stories gain our support. Turned into musical piece. We complemented
the other groups wailing with our rhythim Jo Hi Q's. Was qutie
powerful.
Led into scene
improvisation. Two chairs, table, coffee pot, mug and spoon.
Performer one, would perform an action followed by Performer 2. This
was performed in neutral quite strictly, making performer repeatedly
enter space in a neutral state. We were then encouraged to play with
rhythm and find an ending. Which was rather difficult to do!
Weapon to go kill.
Metal bar on chair. We discovered its a natural stage placement to
have negatice action lead to off stage left.
Voice work
Working through
resonators in body.
Opening selves up
Belly – Zoo
Cor Shaww
Heart Gaa (mm-ah)
Hard Pallat Fa Fa Fa
Cheeks Da Da Da
Nose Neeee
Cheeks Dee Dee
Fod Ooooooh
Sky Frrrrrr
Zip Zap game but with
Frrrrr point to sky and Ho from hips, hand on stomach pelvic thrust.
Ahhh sky
Ehh each other
ee ground
Ohhh horizon.
Attempting again,
making choral not leaving gaps, when run out of breathe onto next
note. Good for focusing a group listening to one another
“Ella a you” Greek
sounds. We performed them to the Gods, Room and Ourselves. One
participant brought into group performed it, playing with emphasis
and rhythm, quite emotive performance.
Asking question to
gods, no answer.
Speeches, our memorised
scripts. We played with performing them in space, performing it to
the gods, room and ourselves. As neutral as possible, minimum
movement but a lot of emphasis where in performance space stood.
Power of stage presence.
