Rough Thoughts

Rough Thoughts.

Firstly, its brilliant to be in this environment. (Did I mention that?) I wake up around 8, shower, get my room tidy (its nice to come back to a tidy room after a day's work. Read the newspaper in a room whose purpose - i think - is only to have newspapers read. Head down to have breakfast at 9.30 (either idilis or dosas) with the students, who have finished thier 7am to 9am class and have showered and got ready for breakfast by now.

We assemble on stage in the main procenium arch theatre for a start at 10. The first few days I tried the various spaces availiable at Ninsasam, the intimate space, with a pit stage in the center, you can either seat audiences in traverse... actually you can configure audiences in any direction there. But the centre of the space is the lowest area. With two steps running the length of the room down to it. I should take pictures shouldn't I? There's also the studio, a flat long space in which they do most of thier morning work. I'm using the proscenium space now.. I love it, 19 actors in space is just.. goregeous to play with. And i'm tryin gto take full advantage of. Its not every play that you get an opportunity to spend the entire time rehearsing on the stage upon which we will inevitably be performing.

Rehearsals run till 1.30 - if I'm reminded that its 1.30. We have a way of getting involved in what we're doing and then having the mess staff get quite annoyed at me showing up with a batch of students for food at 2. IF we break at 1.30 we re-commence at 3. (By which time I have napped, and dealt with digesting the tonnes of rice, and have had a coffee). We then work from 3 till 5.30-6 then tea, then the students pop off to a study session where they do written work from 6.30 till 9. Dinner at 9.30 and then sleep. In a few days, I'll be getting more time with them. Still working on pushing that.

A visitor today to ninasam said to be, so basically you wake up, eat, direct, eat, sleep, direct, eat, relax, eat, sleep and then do it all over again. To which I said. Yep. Isn't that just brilliant!

Its a directing/teaching gig for sure. While we forge ahead and plot through the scenes of this story of Gunadhaya, I have to remind myself sometimes that I'm not working with finely tuned and trained actors.. quite just yet. They have all the skills, but they're still working out how to use them. So time is spent getting through to them, getting a sense of how to get each of them to achieve thier potential, and giving them a few pointers in ways *I think* will help improve thier performance.

The language is turning out to be a total non-issue. I work in Hindi, most get it, for the few that don't, they get a simultaneous translation as I speak... to kannada. Once a scene's 'route-map' is charted out, with who says what to whom and who wants what from whom.. they just go at it. And I check that there's a logical progression to the thought, and then it all seems to naturally fall into place.

Dialogue is being thus devised, and looked after by the students - in particular one who puts down everyone's thought sequences - and a very careful faculty member who later-on with fastidiousness and deliberation, helps them polish it to final performance level. (I'm trying hard not to worry about the fact that I'm on scene 7 in devising and final version dialogue is on scene 1 - though i think it will hit stride at correct times).

The thing that is difficult, and its the problem I knew I would have to consistently contend with from the time I first set foot here. Is working in the regional performance idiom. I'm working with a very western head on my shoulders. My training is directly traceable back to stanislavskian methods and other western methods -brecht for example. To get them to play for realisim or heightened realism on stage, with real motivation, awareness of given circumstances, constant engagment with relationships with other charachters, and keeping the fourth wall intact (for the most part). Its where I"m coming from. I know i don't want to stay in that space. Yakshagana, Kuddiattam, other performance forms here in which there are conventions for representation ... and physical movement and breathing techniques that evoke heightened emotion, all appeal to me.

(There's as much conventional symbolisim in the west, they just don't document them, that a drop of the shoulders means dissapointment, a hand to the mouth could mean hesitation, silencing)

The problem is, how do i invoke these forms - of which my familiarity is minimal - in any informed manner into a play i'm directing. The audience here is a kannadiga one, it understnads these conventions, expects them. So now what?

Possible solutions.

Direct as is, work at it from the realist standpoint. As long as my play is - in my mind - watchable, and has truth in its story telling, and between the actors, it will work. But then, step back and let instructors from ninasam who have been following the process, step in, and heighten what we have. So the actor works from a real impulses. Engage with each charachter and thier own character using the work i've done, but then push the impulse to a more heightened sense of drama.

Direct as is. Once the structural logic is in place (based on what i've provided) relinquish it entirely to a more melodramatic (for lack of a better word - for now) style. Indian theatre has key moments which are severely punctuated. Music, dance, movement, look, pose, all come togehter in intense point forms in order to push a point across.I'm being a bit vague here, but its late, and I'm exhausted, and these are ... rough notes.

I think we'll try to push thier performances within the structure i have provided, with the Ninasam teachers doing a bit of that for me.

I recall a system where the visiting director at a drama school would do the main notes, and then students went off to thier usual instructors for a set of subsidiary notes. Provided the director and teachers stick to set areas of commentary, I think this would be a good way at run - through stage to achieve a more unified performance, suited to audiences here, yet with the structure that i have brought to the table.

In the meanwhile...

We've finished the defeat of gunadhaya in the court. I now have to do a scene which portrays how his inability so speak any of the court languages - renders him invisible.

I've been stumped about this.. but as i write.. i think i'm going to have a second actor who plays gunadhaya as well provide 'gestus' while gunadhaya plays the dumb mute..

He can't speak, people chat about things, he's left out.. and it all comes to a head when the queen cancels his discussion sessions with her... she tries one.. but it doesn't work... obviously.. second one.. she talks of her dissapointment with the king not talking more than a few sanskrit things at anytime.. the third one.. she cancels...

he leaves...

i think he refinds motivation in the forest .. to bring these stories to the queen... - ala somadeva in the KSS - and when he returns ... she's gone, dead..

thus prompting the burning... oh.. but i haven't told you that bit yet... ;-)