The arsenal
An overview of feeling, listening and dynamising.
Feeling what we touch
Activity
In groups, explore the exercise of The cross and the circle (Boal, 2002, p.50).
Draw a circle in the air using their right hand and then draw a cross using their left.
Then try to do both simultaneously (this is very hard to achieve).
An extension to this exercise is to try it with your feet.
Reflect on the exercise above and answer in your logbook the questions below.
Why is this so difficult to achieve?
What are the physical problems?
What are the psychological problems?
Why is this acting exercise classified under Feeling what we touch?
Complete a few more Feeling what we touch exercises and consider this bodily apporach to acting.
In pairs:
read the activity Pushing against each other (Boal, 2002, p.58) and/or Sticky paper (p.81).
work out how to do it whilst discussing how it relates to being an actor in a Boal workshop.
The philosophical concept of Feeling what we touch
Boal's games and exercises 'deal with the expressivity of the body as emitter and receiver of messages' (Boal, 1992, p.60). Boal; they are an overlapping dialogue of the human condition. Boal suggests that within this principle 'A bodily movement is a thought and a thought expresses itself in a corporeal form' (p.61).
Listening to what we hear
The philosophical concept
The philosophical concept of Listening to what we hear is for the actors to begin to understand the rhythms and melodies of their bodies, and groups of bodies, working together. This can be explored in Carnival in Rio (Boal, 1992, p.98) by listening to the rhythms of the music as well as the rhythms of all the people in the group.
Activity
In groups of three with your teacher supervising, complete the steps below.
The groups (A, B, C) stand side by side anywhere in the room and lively upbeat music is played.
A begins a physical response to the music and B and C follow.
At any moment the teacher asks B or C to become the leader who in turn creates their own rhythmic response to the music.
Eventually the teacher asks the class to unify and they have to find a way to do this using their bodily instincts.
Reflect on the exercise above and answer in your logbook the questions below.
Why only three students per group?
What happens when a new leader takes over?
How did your bodies feel as the leader and as the follower?
Why unify?
How does this relate to Boal's approach to acting?
Dynamising the senses
The philosophical concept
Dynamising helps the actor to discover the breadth and depth of a theatrical idea that is being improvised. The dynamising of the idea occurs on three levels: movement, sound and action (Babbage, 2004, p. 122). The blind series (Boal, 2002, p.115) is a good starting point to initially explore the concept of dynamisation. You can workshop how the series can be dynamised through:
movement
sound, and
action.
Dynamising the sense of sight
Boal claims that this type of exercise helps the actor to gain a better knowledge, or recognition, of his or her body, its muscles, its nerves, and its relationship to other bodies.
Summary task
'In the fourth category, to try to see what we look at. Finally, the senses also have a memory – in the fifth category, we try to awaken it.' (Boal, 2002, p.48).
Read through and experiment with some games in the fouth and fifth catefory of:
Seeing what we look at
The memory of the senses.
Consider Boal's statement above and write a reflection in your logbook explaining whether how his games allow this process.