Jasen Boko
Theatre
S a znaj : • како је настала позоришна уметност • ко све учествује у раду на представи • шта је то добра глума • какве све пробе постоје • шта је то мизансцен
how a play is made
Јасен Боко
• да напишеш драмску сцену • да научиш да глумиш • да организујеш аудицију • да направиш распоред проба • да изабереш декор и костиме
Theatre
P r o baj :
Series Learn & Try
Theatre idea: Ljiljana Marinković author: Jasen Boko • illustration and design: Dušan Pavlić • editor: Milena Trutin lecteur: Violeta Babić • editor in chief: Dejan Begović publisher: КРЕАТИВНИ ЦЕНТАР, Градиштанска 8, Београд phone: +381 11 / 38 20 483, 38 20 464, 244 06 59 www.kreаtivnicentаr.rs • info@kreаtivnicentаr.rs Copyright©KREATIVNI CENTAR 2012
There is your girlfriend!
Oh, no! Tragedy!
Jasen Boko
THEATRE how a play is made Illustrated by
Dušan Pavlić I can’t believe you opted for a real horse! Boo-hoo!
You’re such a comic character
Hey, who nibbled on the sword?
Yet another moldy script... When will they do something more up to date? Hey, give me back the script!
But he must feel it! Hanging out with those actors again, are you?!
CONTENTS 5 .......... What is theater 6 .......... How it all began 9 .......... How a play is made 14 .......... Theatrical forms and genres 16 .......... How drama is made 16 .......... Write a dramatic scene 19 .......... Write a comical scene 20 .......... Actor 21 .......... Acting exercises 22 .......... Speech 22 .......... Concentration 23 .......... Self-assurance 24 .......... Credibility 25 .......... How not to act 25 .......... Act in two different ways 26 .......... Casts and auditions 27 .......... Write an invitation to audition 27 .......... Set up an audition 28 .......... Rehearsal schedule 28 .......... Create weekly rehearsals schedule
29 .......... Who else is missing 29 .......... Producer and organizer 29 .......... Prop manager 29 .......... Prompter 30 .......... Costume designer 30 .......... Set designer 31 .......... What fits which play 32 .......... Finally rehearsals! 36 .......... Test the mise en scene 37 .......... On the eve of the opening night 37 .......... Advertise the opening night 37 .......... Create the playbill 38 .......... To be or not to be – OPENING NIGHT 40 .......... What next 42 ......... Glossary 44 ......... Index
Hey, we’re playing pirates today!
You're so wrong! Today we play the Wild West!
Voah!
And how about we play theater?
I refuse to be tied up to the totem again!
WHAT
Oops, wrong day again..!
IS THEATRE?
W
hat did we do when we were kids? We played. Through play we learnt about the world around us, and the moment we got caught up in playing with a toy, or a friend or our mother, and started reenacting a particular situation we saw, we actually engaged in a theatrical play. In theatre, puppets or actors imitate real-life situations, things that could or would happen somewhere sometimes. Once upon a time – the beginning of every tale – has never been uttered in the theatre because theatre is the story teller; it creates them, and it presents them by imitation, without any mediation of a narrator. This book will take you through the most important things about theatre. We will look into its little secrets, find out about professions related to the theatre, and perhaps help you understand what it is that makes theatre so wonderful. Once we have learnt a thing or two about theatre, we will try our hand at staging a theatrical play ourselves! This will require a great deal of love, along with understanding and passion. All those involved in theatre know that it is an art form one can fall deeply in love with, and once that happens, as opposed to some other childhood loves and likes, falling out of love is ever so difficult…
Imitation is the basic tool of a very small kid learning how to accomplish the many tasks it comes across in everyday life. We learn by copying our mother’s and our father’s gestures, and those of other older people around us. Later on we imitate the games and situations we saw, and even later on as adults, we don’t refrain from copying things other people do– both good and bad.
You must convince me! Come on make it convincing!
And just as well!
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BOO, BOOO…!
Right, you saw a bear?
HOW
IT ALL BEGAN
T
he earliest known theatre originated alongside first civilizations, in the valleys of great Indian rivers over 3,000 years ago, and puppets had been popular in India and across Asia long before western civilizations even discovered literacy. Ancient Egyptians also held games that involved stage elements.
If we think about how the prehistoric people used to communicate with each other, how they sought to explain the ever more complex word outside their shelter, we can only assume that they used voice and gestures. Most probably, just like indicated by the cave painting, they must have resorted to certain ritualistic scenes to tell their tribesmen about what happened in the hunt.
It is the ancient Greeks that we have to thank for the birth of theatre as a fine art form we know and love today. The Greeks celebrated Dionysius, a god of fertility, grape and wine. Joyful processions extolled his glory, singing funny songs performed by a chorus in goat masks. Greek word for goat is tragos, and oda is a song, so the two words (tragos + oda) combined to form the term tragedy, ‘the goat-song’.
And maybe that would still be so to this day, had not coryphaeus, the leader of the chorus, stepped out one day, and started a dialogue, engaged in a conversation with the choir. And that is how sometime in the 6th century BC a joyous song broke ground for – the Greek tragedy.
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Whatever dialogue is this?! He’s been talking to himself for hours… In the ancient Greece, theatrical plays were held at festivities, with theatres as large as the football stadiums of today. The authors –winners of the theatrical contests – were awarded a divine status and celebrated. The people experienced those tragedies profoundly, being as troubled as the protagonists on the stage. Unfortunately, already in the ancient Rome the events on the stage lost their artistic significance, and the theatre was transformed into a place of entertainment. Occasionally, plays were even used for brutal real-life enemy executions on the stage, the enemy being primarily the Christians. Actors ceased being reputable. Most often, actors were criminals or slaves, never respectable citizens. In the medieval times, when the church took over significant control over the social life, theatre completely disappeared as an organized activity.
Are you Christian?
Names of these drama champions are familiar to us to this day. The dramatic pieces by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides are still present on the stages all over the world.
No, an actor.
7
Yup, they changed the actor. I thought the slave was better…
Look at him! He became an actor!
Theatre also has its unwritten history, a story about smalltime traveling actors. Mimes and puppeteers – often it was a family tradition, like a craft of some sort – existed as early as in the ancient Greece. They used mimes, short sketches and plays to attract the audiences traveling to see a big-time play. There were no theatres in the middle ages. Instead there were histrions, traveling actors, who performed at fairs and public squares, wherever there was an audience willing to award them by slipping a few coins or a piece of bread into the hat. Today their descendents are the street artists we sometimes see performing in our streets.
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And just look at the coins trickling into the old hat there..!
However, later on church came to recognize an important advantage of the theatre. In times of widespread illiteracy, with no newspapers or television, theatre represented an ideal platform to advertise religion. Medieval theatre dealt with stage presentations of Biblical themes and tales. Those theatre plays were often grand spectacles, pageants, with whole towns taking part in them. The first ever theatrical building since the ancient times was built in Vicenza, the Renaissance Italy, in 1584. And through to the 20th century, theatre had remained the most popular form of art and everyone’s favorite pastime. But throughout the long history of theatre, there was an ongoing debate as to whether theatre is mere entertainment or a sublime fine art form. Naturally, a quality stage performance need not be boring, same as piece of entertainment need not be void of art. Only with the appearance of the cinematic art, the television and the assorted light entertainment, has the theatre stopped being the most popular pastime – but it hasn’t stopped being an art form.
HOW
A PLAY IS MADE
Is this what you call a partner?
W
here and when does the process of producing a play begin? Probably it’s the moment that the dramatist shows up at the theatre manager’s office with the new script tucked under his arm. Once the decision is made about which script to produce for the stage, the first step towards a new play is finding the director. The dramatist and the director will further polish the lines of the script, cutting something out, adding something in, and perhaps, as the author would absolutely insist later on at the opening night, completely ruining it! Imam genijalan tekst! Doma}i autor, malo lica, savremeni problemi, suze, smeh, strast, sve! Publika }e poludeti!
Uh! ^etvrta genijalna drama ove nedeqe!
If Hamlet were to be played exactly how Shakespeare wrote it, the play would last six hours. This dramatic piece, arguably the most performed play in the world, has been staged in a myriad variations - there is even a Hamlet with only two actors and neither of them has any lines!
Poor bugger! Yet another supporting role…
And then one day the casting call will emerge on the theatre bulletin board: a notice to the actors about who is playing which part. The casting call will cause both satisfaction and protests. Most actors are convinced that they are exceptional and placed on Earth for the sole purpose of playing lead roles.
The plays that make it into the regular repertoire include a deal more supporting roles than the leading ones, and those need to be performed as well. This is often the cause of great disappointment.
9
The production begins by reading the script in the read through, the reading rehearsals. Their duration will depend on the director: there are those who spend only two days in the reading room, and then there are those who stay there for as long as three weeks. Next, they will move to the rehearsal room, to have a walkthrough and start exercising the mise en scène, the stage setting and movement. Rehearsal room sessions are scheduled by scenes, therefore all actors rarely meet at this stage. Each theater has a good genie – albeit the hallways will sometimes lend the impression that devils themselves inhabit the place – and all the disputes are brought to resolution. Everybody is perfectly aware that leaving one’s ego at the door, the crucial thing about being involved in a team project, is often the most difficult.
Once the stage rehearsals finally start, the production is joined by the rest of the theatre crew, and the actor rehearsals are joined by the tech rehearsals: the lighting, sound and props used in the stage production are tested. The actors will slowly start getting their costumes, bits of scenery start appearing on the stage, and soon the first night is upon us. It is only in the last few weeks of stage work that the scenes that had been rehearsed separately, slowly get glued together, and the whole cast would start appearing for the rehearsals.
This conceptual model of interpretation shall facilitate a pseudo-modernistic performance of…
And here I am..!
What is he talking about?
10
On the eve of the opening night, there is an air of insecurity, of anxiety, with everyone believing that all the hard work would end in some sort of disaster. Theatre assembles numerous artists, all prominent individualists, and each one of them has their own, the best and the most original vision of what exactly it’s all about. The director has the last word in a theatre, and in the end he gets almost everything his way. On the opening night, the door of the theatre will open wide, and the opening night audience, all brimming with excitement, will stock-fill the house to the last seat. And than the curtain will rise, the voices and noises will die down, lights will go out, and the grand premier will start, bringing about yet another theatrical miracle. All the first night fears and jitters that had accumulated right to the moment before the curtain-up, will transform into a surge of positive energy, and the artists will be receive a loud applause for yet another successful performance.
Never say GOOD LUCK to an actor, director, or any member of a theatre crew on the premiere night! There is a strange theater superstition that the best way to wish someone a successful opening night is to say, "Break a leg!" This expression is universal in all theaters – American or Chinese – and it suits all purposes: tragedy and comedy, private or state owned theater.
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6 2 13
3
10
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18 1
1 4
9
17
15
5
4 22
12
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Before we embark on making our own play, let’s briefly peek into a professional theater and see how a play is produced.
19 16 12 7 7
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8
21
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1 ACTOR 2 DIRECTOR 3 PROPS ASSISTANT 4 SET PAINTER 5 COSTUME DESIGNER 6 DRAMATIST 7 EXTRA 8 STAGEHAND 9 PROPERTY MAN 10 PROMPTER 11 SET DESIGNER 12 SOUND TECHNICIAN 13 ONLOOKER 14 HAIRDRESSER 15 CARPENTER 16 CHOREOGRAPHER 17 DRESSER 18 STAGE MANAGER 19 PYROTECHNICIAN 20 LIGHTING TECHNICIAN 21 THEATRE MANAGER 22 MAKEUP ARTIST
13
Don’t play games, Romeo oh Romeo – act, oh act!
THEATRICAL
FORMS AND GENRES
J
ust as a writer tells a story using verse or fiction, so too a theatrical artist can tell the same story in several different ways, thus creating different forms of theater. Drama is one of these theatrical forms, and there the story is told in form of a dialogue. But since music and stage movement are also of vital importance for theatre, other theatrical forms have developed throughout history, primarily the opera and ballet. All three theatrical forms are based on some sort of dramatic plot. They differ in the way the drama is presented in them.
The families of two young lovers are in long-standing enmity and oppose their love, so the young lovers of Verona chose death over separation. This legend became immortal owing to Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The same story, only without a single word, is the subject of a successful ballet, set to music by Sergei Prokofiev. If, however, music is composed and set to Shakespeare's verses so his lovers sing their sad story, we have the opera, a musical and theatrical form that requires a rich theater that can afford to produce it on the stage. The opera calls for an orchestra, assorted historical costumes, skilled singers and – a patient audience.
14
When you start working on your own play, you will need to decide what it is you do best: talking, dancing or singing. I would not recommend opera; opera singers take years of hard work to train their voice and singing techniques. Truth be told, the arts of acting and dancing are hardly any easier to master. They too take years of studying and practice, besides talent, but still – speaking and a bit of acting all of us can muster. Therefore, in our theatrical exercise we will opt for a drama. It’s the best to opt for a play about modern life, about something from your everyday experience. That would automatically take care of the problem of costumes and set design. Stories like those of Shakespeare's take place around us every day, fortunately with less tragic consequences, so a stage play using several scenes to tell us about love between Vlada from the class 8B and Ivana from the class 7C may be both interesting to an audience and doable for the stage. Especially if Marko from the class 8A thickens the plot...
The outcome of Vladan’s and Ivana’s love and Marko’s intervention would determine the dramatic type of the play.
Is this supposed to be a tragedy..?
The dramatic types, which are sometimes also called the genres, stemming from the French word genre – gender, are tragedy, comedy and the drama (proper). Tragedy is characterized by the unhappy ending, a sublime style and the sufferings of the hero who carries a tragic quilt. It was characteristic for the theatre of the antique times, the Shakespearean era and the French classicism. In the modern times it’s slowly disappearing and being replaced by drama. Comedy is a humorous form which presents funny situations or people, has happy ending and a general style that is easily understandable and - funny. If tears are a reaction to tragedy, then laughter is the reaction to comedy. And in the theatre of today laughing tears are far more frequent than those shed for tragic suffering. Drama has a serious style, it uses everyday language, it aims at neither tears nor laughter, and it deals with a serious subject. As opposed to tragedy, it does not necessarily end tragically, in the death of the hero – although that is also an option – but rather in a resolution, denouement, of the situation which isn’t exactly tragic but still is dramatic enough. In fact, drama combines the elements of tragedy and comedy.
We are staging a drama! Why are you laughing?
Oh you’re such a laugh…
A comedy, that’s it!
There is also a non-verbal drama, which uses pantomime instead of words. Therefore no speech whatsoever.
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INDEX Aeschylus 7 academy of drama 40 41 actor 13, 20, 24, 27, 32, 34, 41 acting exercises 21-25, 32 Agatha Christie 39 applause 11, 39 auditions 26 27 audience 11, 14, 24, 34, 36, 39 ballet 14 casting call 9, 26 Cats 38 characterization 16, 19 Chekhov 21 choreographer 13 collective direction 26 Comedy 11, 15, 19, 38 concentration 21, 22 confidence 21, 23 Costume 10, 14, 30, 32, 33, Costume Designer 13, 30, 31, 40 credibility 21, 24 dialogue 6, 18, 24, 27, 34 Dionis 6 director 9, 11, 13, 26, 30, 32, 34, 35, 41 drama types of drama 15 dress rehearsal 38 dramatist 9, 13, 32 Euripides 7 genre, 15, 38 Greece 7 Hamlet 9, 18, 24, 26, 41 Handbook of Stage Poses, A 25 histrion 8 Ibsen, Henrik 31 Improvisation 23, 24, 29 stage manager 13, 33, 35 Italy 8 Iphigenia 20 Les MisĂŠrables 38 language 18, 19 puppeteers 8 Macbeth 18 makeup artist 13 Midsummer Night's Dream 18
44
mise en scene, stage setting 10, 34, 35, 36 Mousetrap, The 39 monologue 27 opera 14 opening night 9, 11.37, 38, 39 organizer 29 pantomime 15 rehearsals 26, 27, 32, 36 persecution 33 Phantom of the Opera 38 prompter 13, 29, 33 walk-through 10 produced 29, 38 property man 13, 29, 40 props 33 interpersonal relations 17 reading rehearsal 10, 28, 32, 33, rehearsal room, see walk-through rehearsal Rome 7 rhythm 35 Romeo and Juliet 14, 18, 20, 29, 31 Sarah Bernhardt 24 schedule 28 Sergei Prokofiev 14 set designer 13, 30, 31, 40 set design 10, 14, 32, 33 situation 17 stage 10, 33, 34 Stanislavsky, Konstantin Sergeyevich 21 Sophocles 7 speech, 21, 22 stage directions 16 St. Martin, the theater 39 Stage 6 dolls traveling actors 8 tempo 35 theatrical marketing 37 theatrical forms 14 Tragedy 6, 11, 15 tech rehearsal 10 writing 16-19 theatrical form 14 walk-through rehearsal 10, 33