Elinor expresses her respect to the 1960’s performance artists who defined the start of a new era in performance. I shall go through these practitioners and provide a small analysis of each one in terms of their achievements.
· Peter Brook; He was most famous for In writing about “The Empty Space” he outlines his theories on the theatre by exploring four different meanings of the word theatre - Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate.
- Jerzy Grotowski; They say he revolutionised theatre, and along with his pupil, Eugenio Barba, is considered father of contemporary theatre.
Work in Laboratorium produced Grotowski Technique, a method of education and training for actors. It consisted of many exercises that emphasized control of body and voice.
He was the author of Towards a Poor Theatre (1968), which declared that theatre should not, because it could not, compete against the overwhelming spectacle of film and should instead focus on the very root of the act of theatre: actors in front of spectators. 'Poor' meant the stripping away of all that was unnecessary and leaving a 'stripped' and vulnerable actor take away the props, lighting, make up and this reveals true theatre.
· Julian Beck He was an Avant-Garde character who revelutionised playwrighting in the 50's and 60's. He got alot of his inspiration from LSD a mind altering drug which he self confessed felt it carried a "Certain messianic vision, a certain understanding of the meaning of freedom, of the meaning of the as yet unattainable but nevertheless to be obtained erotic fantasy, political fantasy, social fantasy--a sense of oneness, a sense of goodness, a marvelous return to the Garden of Eden morality...That's why we thought if you could put it into the water system, everybody would wake up and we would be able to realize the changes we were dreaming in terms of societal structures. People wouldn't be able to tolerate things as they were any longer. They'd realize that something is wrong out there, something is wrong inside me, something is too beautiful, too indescribable, too irresistible to put off any longer."
Co founded living theatre in 1947 with his wife.
Co founded living theatre in 1947 with his wife.
· Judith Malina Living theatre a company she co founded with her husband, they felt free to express experimental techniques.Paradise now in 1968 was the 'performance' that got a lot of performers arrested for exposing themselves indecently. Said to be one of the most influential female directors off broadway.
· Joseph Chaikin This man was a director, performer and teacher.Chaikin joined The Living Theatre in 1959 and acted in Brecht and Ionesco plays, earning the first of his six Obies for his portrayal of Galy Gay in Brecht's Man Is Man. In 1963 he founded The Open Theatre, the country's premiere avant garde experimental ensemble theatre. Innovative plays such as broken glass in which he directed, a play about a woman paralysed from her waist down, meant to reflect the jews struggle in the second world war. Shut eye was another performance which i would have loved to have gone to see...
A newlywed couple falls asleep at the dinner table; an insomniac finds herself trapped in a Gilbert and Sullivan musical; a woman visits her brother in the coma ward only to find him absorbed in a business meeting. Poetic and absurd, Shut Eye counterpoints daring physical feats and ecstatic songs with intimate, small-scale revelations
Shut Eye
With Shut Eye, Pig Iron teamed up with legendary American director Joseph Chaikin, founder of the Open Theater, to create an intriguing puzzle of tightly choreographed vignettes, songs, and dances.
Open theatre was Chaikin's own theatre company which he offshooted from Living theatre.
Chaikin emphasized the physical. He did not even care about language. He wanted the actors to
think outside of themselves as opposed to the intense psychological, internal work that Stanislavskyadvocated. He was against “emotion memory” because he believed that it confined the actor,
something he learned from the Living Theater (Chaikin 194). Therefore, he developed a system
or developing plays based on improvisational exercises. He believed that the key to a truly
organic performance was to have actors trained in non-verbal improvisation, because it would
develop an actor’s understanding and response to a situation, which will in turn unconsciously
generate psychological narrative. (Roose-Evans 108).
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