Dance Joint Honour student. Choreographer to the Leonce and Lena section in the piece. And also playing the roles of Minna (Buchner’s wife) Lena of Leonce and Lena, Marie of Woyzeck and a guard in Dantons Death.
‘ I like to find different way to approach each assessment taken and when it comes to the process of making a production. Even though I am a joint student I like to find connections between both dance and drama in order to achieve my full potential. Using information from practitioners in both subjects to be able to use in movement possibilities and staging. This piece was a challenge in hand when it came to researching in more depth and our group hit a few challenges, but luckily we kept strong and worked through the tough parts and managed to come up with a different but hopefully effective production.’
In the past week our group has produced a massive amount of work in order to make sure our piece is complete by the end of the week. Having to think about getting our props ready, which included getting in touch with a local firm to hire out a small gas fire, and making sure that costume and make-up is going to plan in co-ordance with the characters outfits. This meant we had to have several meetings to practice with the use of face paints to make sure they were as Laura had imagined when designing the make-up sketches. And that the make-up and costume combine together. As well as that our lines are near enough learnt and the blocking of the scenes have been successful in rehearsal on Tuesday evening. It is now putting the scenes together and making the transitions between the scenes flow. This is now what we need to achieve and focus on in rehearsal on Thursday ready for the tech rehearsal on Monday on the stage for the first time!
From when finding out that Joint students would not be going on to do the Theatre Company this was a disappointment as our group would not be able to go on any further with our production. But on the other hand it was an interesting challenge to be taking. As there was only four Joint students in the class this meant we had an all girl group. Which could of been thought to be difficult, but was more of an opportunity to be able to show that not all performance need both sex groups to be able to include male roles. With the other groups having the opportunity to carry on their short extract of a Buchner play into a full production this meant they could choose out of several play texts. Where as our small ensemble has to make an inspiring decision in which we put forward our idea of using a bibliography of Georg Buchner’s life to our tutor, Mark O’Thomas, who agreed this was an idea he really like. In which his approval meant we began to start our research into Georg Buchner’s short, but fulfilling life.
When it came to the beginning of discussing the possibilities of using Buchner’s life it become clear in our group that we all have ideas that interlink in order for us to make our piece how we can imagine it. With our group being formed from Dance Joint student and Film & Tv Production we thought we could put elements of these into our pieces. This could give our piece a little more depth and volume by making it a more interesting and thoughtful piece to watch from the audiences point of view. It was my area to research Leonce & Lena, which left Danton’s Death to Naomi and Woyzeck to Laura. In which I read and research this play thoroughly in order to come to terms with what the message was behind the language used. However I decided I did not want to show the information I received from my research through a set script. So I decided to use my dance technique to come up with a piece of choreography to remake the story line that is created from when reading the play text. Knowing that the choreography had to be approximately two minutes long as the whole piece had to be within fifteen minutes in total. This was where we split each section of Buchner’s life into two to three minute sections.
With a time scale of only 6 week and our group having no set script or through line of where we wanted or piece to arrive at, in the beginning, we spent hours of research to enable our facts and research were correct. Choosing the life of Buchner meant that we had a broader spectrum of availability to use across his short life span, and making sure all his achievements could be fitted and put into our possible piece. This was where the decision came to give each one of us out of the group a specific area to research to make this process quicker enabling us to be able to get onto producing the piece leaving us with more rehearsal time. But before that we had the stressful task of writing the script. This was where the first experience of the dramaturg came into action. It was after this first experience of writing the script, as a group, that we kept coming to terms with the all the different aspects of what a dramaturg’s roles actually are in the production process. However I have come to a decision that there is no specific role as to what the dramaturg’s position is. This decision came to me when I was reading Dramaturgy and Performance. In small groups we each studied different chapters in the book to come to terms with all the different areas a dramaturg served. This being fed back to class through presentations and activities.
All of this extra research about the dramaturg and the role in which they play lead to the group decision that there would not be an appointed dramaturg in our group, due to the fact of us being a small group. And also the questionings of what is a dramaturg and their role? “The Dramaturg is someone who ‘keeps the whole in mind’.” (Turner. C, 2008, pg 103) This was when a mutual decision was made and one which did benefit the group as we all then contributed to each different aspect of the production. When it came to the deciding of parts throughout the play, we came to the decision that my part would stay as a female as it was easier when it came to costume changes and not to confuse and distance the audience. This was not what we wanted to achieve as our objective was to educate the audience with a production that was enjoyable and engaging.
Our initial idea was to have our performance in black and white scale, however this was unachievable due to the fact of having too many difficulties and props to purchase and not enough budget to cover all the expenses. We wanted to try and create this as in the 1800’s there would of been no colour and we wanted to project all the different play texts and happenings in his life as a dream sequence. With smoke and a blurry atmosphere to show Buchner may have been drifting in and out of sleep. But with the play developing more as we rehearsed and learnt the script and staging this idea drifted away and we came to a new idea of having the staging and props as naturalistic as possible but paint faces onto the different characters to show that they were in the dreams. However we did not want to rely on the fact that we had painted face and could not show facial expression in order to create different personalities for each of the characters we were playing. Even though i did not have a lot of face paint on i needed to make sure that i was keeping very lady like in my actions and movement. When playing the role of Buchnerswife, Minna, I wanted to keep my body quite open but still not opening up too much as women in the 1800’s were very much their husbands and nobody else’s. But in contrast when i was in the role of Lena i wanted to be very much a shy young lady who was happy but still not knowing what she wanted from Leonce.
Overall I believe this subject of finding the role of a dramturgy to be very interesting and helpful in the drama World. It shows that they are needed in larger productions and from the research I have done play a large role in ensuring that the pieces are ready in time for curtain call! However I believe if the Joints students had of been given the opportunity to continue through to the Theatre Company then we would of been able to capture the full feeling for a dramturg as we only got the chance to use a part of all the roles they take. We could of driven our performance into more directions and developed our piece into something bigger and elaborated.
References
Turner, C. and Behrndt, S. (2008) Dramaturgy and Performance, Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Bibliography
Price, Victor (1971) Georg Buchner: Danton’s Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck, Oxford University Press, New York.