This week we worked hard on the rehearsals for the play, were not only getting results on the production side, in terms of the puppets which are well under-way, but also in terms of the actin itself. For the first time I think we have almost finished a scene.

While doing scene 9, which is basically Deborah's conscience coming to haunt her, we decided to make a big choreography with 10 actresses which would represent her conscience. At first it was challenging to get the actresses to perform group actions and concentrate. The biggest problem I actually encountered was working with such a large group of people to do the same thing.

Firstly I struggled in terms of what was to be done, i knew the outline of the scene but didnt really have a vision. Would Deborah's conscience be totally against her? would there be a split personality game going on? So the first few sessions were quite disastrous because I just tried incorporating choreographies without any type of coherence to the overall sense of the scene.

Usually when directing people I picked out characters individually and tried to make them explore the possibilities of their characters, be it physical or voice. But when dealing with such a large group things change. When establishing a certain type of movement or a way for them to speak, issues emerge. First of all they cant all do the movements in the same way, some do it faster, some stronger, some use different levels, so its hard to get an even scene.

Once I realized that homogeneous movements just weren't going to work due to the variety of different commitment and energy levels from the actresses, then having each one have her own way of moving inside certain parameters seemed to work much better. So after a few sessions of trying to establish a regular motion for them to work within, the work became much easier to cope with. After that, only small details had to be tweaked in order for the scene to be nearly finished.

Now I realize how in a scene such as this one, where a lot of motion is involved, if it is well coordinated, then the text becomes secondary. The thrill of the scene is on the movement itself, on the differnet levels and the motion of the group as a whole.

In order to establish certain control of the actors on scene, I found that being empathic towards the actors as a director isnt very effective. Yet im unsure whether being totally dominant and not letting the actors have any creative freedom reflects positively towards their motivation. Is there a balance between the two?

This Friday I watched the play "Hebras" for about the third time if im not mistaken. Although this time there were a few changes. As I entered the theatre I noticed the circular formation of the seats for the audience, but this time there were pieces of tape stuck to the ground, which I hadn't seen before, these were put in a random manner throughout the floor, kind of like a game of Mikado 

[A game of "Mikado"]

The actors were standing still at the centre of the stage while the audience arrived, and as the play started, the lights faded and then came up again when the actors were at the starting position. This position, with the two bodies entangled with each other, almost as one unit, seemed to represent a sort of unity, of definite attraction, which is then lost throughout most of the play. 

The losing of this initial symbiosis between the two bodies, allowed for a relationship between them to emerge, one of fluctuation between attraction and repulsion. At times attraction was mutual, as well as the repulsion, but it was when one of the bodies experienced an attraction and the other a repulsion where the most interesting actions happened. I think it is because at that point, subjects such as power, dominance and submission come into play, a game we as audience have all played, and are active participants of in our daily lives when dealing with other people. 

Something that did change this time in terms of my understanding, or at least my perspective towards the play as a whole was the fact that, before, due to the obvious attraction and repulsion (and some symbols like the throwing away of a ring) of the bodies, I assumed they were a couple, a couple with some romantic quality to be precise, regardless of sex [since i have seen the play being performed by a male / female couple as well as male / male like last Friday]. This time, I saw it not as a relationship with a strictly romantic quality to it, but as any human relationship at any scale, because through our eyes, for there to be a relationship between two people, be it good or bad, there has to be a certain animosity between them. We seldom find friends or family members which share the same attraction simultaneously, let alone couples. So by enlarging my scope, I felt that this sort of interaction between the two bodies goes beyond romance and couples, but can apply to any human relationship where there is some sort of emotional response to one another.

The lack of words is something I really enjoyed in the play, specially when all we could hear were breathing sounds. Somehow I felt that more emotions were transmitted to me this way, that pure movement and body language were much more true to feelings than words. Usually words carry meanings by themselves, as well as many different connotations, so they tend to lead the emotions astray from their authenticity, like trying to describe a painting with numbers only, I feel words are not a successful or even accurate way to express emotion. In this sense, I think body expression does a much better job, since it seems to be a more direct medium to what we feel. For example, when you get scared, or are about to cry, body expression and some breathing sounds, or short noises come much before words do. Not only that, but they also seem to come naturally, and some positions like going back to the fetal position when one is scared, or closing ones fists when one is angry are global, they seem to be part of our nature.

Even though I had seen the play a few times before, there has always been an aesthetic beauty to the precision and balance of the movements on stage, regardless of meaning or intention, which still captivated my attention this time. Movements which involve falling or jumping, or a general lack of balance seemed to flow without any impact which hindered or lowered the pace, this to me was the key to the aesthetic value of the movements. Because no matter how strong or hectic a movement was, there was an inner balance of the forces inside the actors body, which manifested itself in an organic, free flowing stream of movements.

In the game "Mikado" when one extracts a stick from the pile, he has to do it in such a way that none of the other sticks move. But it is designed, and is ultimately destined to not only make it increasingly difficult for a player to make a move without affecting other sticks, but to fall apart completely eventually. Human relationships share the same delicacy and tend to fall into imbalances inevitably and eventually chaos, only to put the sticks back together again and start over, from a balance which is imminently destined to be destroyed again.

Is it possible to have a relationship with another human being without any animosity? Only to recognize the other person's existence and live without wanting, wishing or depending on said being?