Playback s Place in the Tradition of Popular Theatre

Transcription

1 Playback s Place in the Tradition of Popular Theatre By Heather Robb This material is made publicly available by the Centre for Playback Theatre and remains the intellectual property of its author.

2 Playback's place in the tradition of popular theatre By Heather Robb

3 Playback s Place in the Tradition of Popular Theatre By Heather Robb This material is made publicly available by the Centre for Playback Theatre and remains the intellectual property of its author.

4 Playback's place in the tradition of popular theatre "Playback Theatre has been closely allied to psychodrama since its inception over 2O years ago. Philosophically PBT, like psychodrama, places emphasis on dramatic action, spontaneity/creativity, existential validation,and the healing power of groups. There is also a deep historical connection. Methodologically however, there are some significant differences... Playback, with roots in an aesthetic tradition, is more right brain than psychodrama, relying more on image, movement and music, and less on words. This means that often in Playback there will be no effort at cognitive insight...a very different kind of dialogue takes place, indirect,multi-layered, remaining within the domain of metaphor... an emphasis is placed on the actors' understanding and creativity... (Jonathan Fox oct ) "For some years now, (in our theatre school in Le Havre, Normandy) we have chosen to work with our 'acteur/conteur' adult students using texts which are non theatrical but which carry meaning for our times. Antoine Vitez pointed the way a long time ago. The rule of the game is to make use of all of the popular theatre skills - from pantomime to gibberish to noises, story telling and song - while totally respecting the text as if it were a classic. This year our text is a collection of street interviews. A journalist and a graphic artist asked a number of people - the sort of people who are rarely listened to - to say what their idea of happiness was, then transcribed their brief replies. 'Unlike the world of theatre, these quotations are the expression of real life'. The emotional charge contained in these apparently anodine texts is disturbing..." (Jean Pierre Agazar, Bruyère Robb, Le Havre, 1997) This essay is about our (Heather (Bruyère) Robb and Jean Pierre Agazar) own multi-layered and dialectical meeting with Playback. We are theatre performers and teachers and much of our own work is rooted in this aesthetic tradition of popular theatre. This is the theatre that has always existed alongside official theatre, where someone, using whatever skills he has to make himself heard and seen, has jumped up with something he wants to tell to the rest of his community It probably began with a hunting story: in order to make his story more vivid, the hunter not only tells but shows too, by playing the gazelle as well as himself. Aboriginal dance is still based on animal rhythms and postures. Just about every community we know about, from very ancient to modern times, from the Greek bards to the medieval troubadours from the 16th century Commedia dell Arte to 2

5 the 19th century pantomime of the street fairs and to Dario Fo in Italy today, has invented its own form of 'marginal' theatre for the people Playback itself seems to me clearly situated in this tradition of popular theatre, particularly that of acteur/conteur (actor storyteller), but this seems not to be fully understood in the Playback community and consequently many of the theatrical skills associated with this tradition are under used or non-existant. As teachers of 'acteur/conteur' skills, we have also been influenced by Playback. Students are encouraged now always to search for their personal resonance to someone else's story and to incorporate it into the performance as a very personal offering. It is significant that I first met Jonathan in theatre. I performed in a Greek play with him and in a Shakespeare with Jo Salas back in our university days in the 60's. Jonathan and I later did some street clowning together (Buttercup and Bussy) in the early 80's. But he also took me along to a psychodrama directed by Zerka Moreno in Beacon, and I, after training at the Lecoq Theatre School in Paris, directed a clowning workshop for their 5 year old Playback group. Our dialogue about theatre and community was under way... What is an acteur/conteur? Someone who alternately tells and plays. He is in turn OUT of the play and IN the play. So there is no longer dissociation between author and actor. He or she is both. Perhaps we could say that the acteur/conteur is a development, or variation, of the storyteller, who has only the skeleton of a story to start with. He will give flesh and soul to this skeleton. He is not an actor/interpreter but the INVENTOR of something: of a text, of a new language or style. If someone typed out his text for him, he would be incapable of interpreting it. An ACTOR on the other hand interprets and plays something that he has rehearsed a great deal. Here are some things that define an acteur/conteur : 1) He doesn't perform in theatres. He plays where people are. 2) He remains in close contact with his audience: there is no fourth wall. 3) He usually performs alone and doesn't cost a lot. He doesn't need a grant, and does not depend on an institution. This is why storytelling is back in fashion. 4) In order to tell and show more vividly, he uses every skill and technique he knows : song, gibberish, mime, dance, puppets, music, masks. It is interesting that the art of pantomime developed in France when speech was prohibited in the theatre of street fairs. 5) As an artist, he uses, and can develop, his own talents to the point of becoming an author, even a classic studied in school classes. Raymond Devos is an example in France. 3

6 What does he tell? He can tell traditional stories, stories about 'Man', stories shared by the audience present (the weather, the Church, politicians), or the news of the day, like a sort of living newspaper. We could imagine that one day, the acteur/conteur can't find a story. So he asks someone in his audience for one. Maybe a well known tale, maybe something that has just happened to someone...but an acteur/conteur would then play it back by himself... or (like the performer in front of the Beaubourg museum in Paris) would invite people present to take on a role in the tale In Playback of course, the multiple roles taken on board by one acteur/conteur become separated out. The MC, (the one who "works" the audience), becomes the conductor, the teller only tells, the players only play, and the musician only plays music. One acteur/conteur is transformed into a team. This is the great originality of Playback but its roots in the acteur/conteur tradition are clear. Its other originality, that of involving the audience deeply in their own stories and thereby (as tellers) co-creating the theatre with those already on stage, derives more from the psychodramatic tradition, but this too has its roots in a very old European tradition of Aristotelian theatre. In a good Playback performance, both the roots and the originality are maintained. When the aesthetics (form and beauty) get lost and pathos and realism take over, the performance goes up a blind alley. The actors merely resay, without rhythm or invention, what the teller has already said better. The Playback actor must situate him/herself as an ARTIST and find the metaphor which will reveal something that the teller has not been conscious of. This is right brain work. The improvisational aspect of Playback needs to be as rigorous and skilled as it is in jazz. Charlie Parker "improvises" in jazz, but is a Master musician. His skill has led to a new way of playing. We find the same rigour in skilled improvisational dance. This rigour in no way contradicts with the equally important SOCIAL aspects of Playback but this is not the subject of this essay. The old Commedia dell'arte players, who also worked from a "canevas" ( the bare outline of a story), were cultivated intellectuals. Their bodies and voices were trained (dance, acrobatics and song), and so were their memories: they knew by heart hundreds of lazzi (routines) which they were able to place appropriately in a performance. The Dottore's erudition was real, even if the player knew how to make fun of it. It used to be said that it took 10 years to train a Commedia player. The parallels for a Playback actor are obvious. He/she needs a culture in oral history: myths, fairy tales, songs, symbols and archetypes, as well as physical and vocal and spatial skills. Training aside,it is also true that we sometimes see PB actors who have not been formally trained in theatre (though often in psychology), who are remarkably effective in finding and playing the metaphor, as if they have an intuitive understanding of the necessity of metaphor. I think these are the shamanistic 4

7 actors: they 'feel and know' things and are able to communicate them to the audience in a riveting way, as sometimes an orator or trade unionist or acrobat knows how to do. The audience receives it as a gift. Coming back now to the ways in which Playback has influenced our own acteur/conteur theatre work : In 1995 we made a performance about the Inuits. In exploring the Inuit values, the students also explored their own relationship to the cold, to the dark, to animals and to their own names. One woman told about her dog not wanting the sexual partner who had been selected for her. When she told, she was uninteresting as a storyteller, and listening to her was embarassing because she was embarassed. When she PLAYED her dog and told the same story from the dog's point of view, she became authentic, inventive, happy, hilarious and completely moving. She had taken on the spirit of the dog, just as the Inuits believe they take on the spirit of an animal after they die. This actor had found the metaphor and through her playing gave us new understanding. In 1996 we did a performance based on a publicity poster of Barclay's Bank that appeared in the streets of Le Havre. The poster showed the head of a woman weeping, with mascara running down her cheeks. The text read: "Elle ne pleure pas parce qu'elle perd de l'argent mais elle en perd quand même" ("She's not crying because she's losing money but she's losing it all the same"). Together with the students we explored the subject of money and banks, and also of crying and losing. The actors told the audience what they had lost that mattered. One had lost his hair very young, another had lost his job at the age of 50. He told the audience about it. Some people found this uncomfortable. In 1997 we performed 'La Tragédie du Bonheur' mentioned at the beginning of this essay. The students chose the texts that resonated the most with them personally. The men often chose women's texts. Some of them were transformed into song. The rule was that not one word of the text could be changed. In 2001 we worked with the adults in our weekly local class at Les Combelles on the theme of transhumance. This is the tradition (which still exists in the Pyrenees and elsewhere) of leading sheep in the Springtime from the barren plains up into the lush pastures of the mountains where they grow fat and healthy and have their wool washed by the rain, and then leading them down again in the Autumn. I had come across a recently published book of photos taken by Robert Doisneau back in 1958; he once left his grim job in the Paris Renault factory to accompany the shepherds on such a journey and made notes about it and took photos en route. He had a dream about the south of France. This theme clearly had strong personal resonances for everyone. Half the group (like us) had come to the south from elsewhere. All subsequently told about their own 'transhumance', which did not always include a journey back down to the plain (and abattoir). Several students subsequently wrote their account down and revealed a talent for writing. 5

8 The work involved searching for theatrical ways of conveying impressions of travel, of vast spaces, of playing sheep and finding their connection with us humans and all this in a space the size of a pocket handkerchief. Playback actors are familiar with all of these challenges; the space, the metaphor, and making the personal public. So Playback Theatre has informed our acteur/conteur work and we have brought our acteur/conteur training to Playback. Both have their roots in a very old tradition of popular theatre and I believe mutually enrich each other. 6