Sunday, May 15, 2005

THE RETURN OF MICROSOFT HELL ....................................................................................................................................... RERUM # 11   8 hours non-stop in the Theatre working with the GCSE students on their scripted & self-written presentation pieces.  They have to have them performance ready by this Friday morning when the final assessments will be done.  The standardís pretty high ñ maybe not quite comparable with the group whose progress I recorded a year ago, but thereís some very impressive material being prepared.     However, much remains to be done: one or two are far from complete & tomorrow after school I shall have to drive hard.  One of the trailing pieces is a very tough extract from a play called Noise by Terry Johnson.  Itís extremely violent in places & full of four letter words (foul language, in the delightfully pursed & primped phrasing of those morally ambiguous newspapers that regularly publish pictures of tits & arses).  This evening we were working on a scene in which an intruder breaks into a small, run-down apartment by pushing hard against the front door opened by one of the occupants.  Disturbing though the scene already is, we wanted the violence to look as believable as possible so I took them through some basic stage fight techniques. The assailant, moving directly downstage from the doorway, seizes the occupant around the back of the neck with his left hand & with his right arm punches him twice in the stomach.  The actor pumps his arm forward at waist level, arresting its progress forward by driving his elbow into his own side.  This suggests impact & also supplies some sound.  Because the occupant has his back to the audience, the blows are masked.  He indicates impact by grunting & folding forward.  The assailant then pushes his forward-falling body backwards onto the floor, falling forward himself onto one knee.  He throws his other leg across his fallen victim &, sitting across his hips, seizes him around the throat with both hands. The victim actor grabs his attackerís wrists & instantly takes over control of the initiation of movement, bucking & twisting & appearing to be trying to release the attackerís grip but actually holding his hands in place.  Tomorrow we have to work out how the victim will throw him off.   In a sequence shortly after the initial attack, the assailant seizes a pregnant woman from behind & puts a knife to her throat.  This time I took them through a similar technique whereby again the victim actor leads the assailant actor.  M, the assailant, seizes B by her pony tail. Instantly B seizes Mís wrist & then proceeds to direct Mís apparent tugging & wrenching by leading the movement, the ëactorí thus becoming the ëreactorí.  Instead of M pulling the victim back towards him, B pushes her body back into him.  When M releases her, itís actually B who casts his hand away, dropping to her knees as he steps away.   Itís a curious business, analysing the processes of extreme violence in order to render them believable via entirely artificial techniques.  It does have the immediate effect of sanitising the ugliest of human behaviour & reducing it to the properties of choreography.  But, if itís done properly, the full implications of physical brutality are restored in the ultimate execution &, far from glamorising casual violence, it sickens as it should.  As a lesson in capturing the human truth of an action through the application of artifice it has its significance.  The three actors involved are taking the stagework very seriously & these two set pieces have intensified their focus on the meaning & content of the piece greatly.   #       11:08:49 PM    Mmm? [] RERUM 10   A long day.  The usual weekend trip with Reuben to see my mother in her nursing home, the magnificent Victorian mansion Pirton Hall the other side of Hitchin, near the village of Shillington.  She was remarkably cogent this morning, voice no more than a whisper but questions & observations logical & coherent.  So the tide was high this time. Tomorrow she may be back in that small, dark place in which she spends increasing amounts of time.   Then Reuben & I dawdled around Waitrose, the Guardian readerís supermarket, getting the weekly shopping chores wrong ñ as was pointed out with weary phlegmatism on our return.   Then up to school for the parentsí report meeting ñ 4 hours of cheery reassurance or tactful demolition.  My last ever.  Several parents wished me luck for my retirement; a few thanked me for what I may or may not have done for their offspring.  In the intervals between delivering judgement I reflected first on past years: from sitting opposite worried couples twice my age in my first year of teaching, wondering what slender wisdom I might find to share with these worldly South London parents; through having Paul McCartney, Stanley Kubrick & Dave Gilmore hanging on my every child-centred word only a few years later; & then on sessions with angry, confused & increasingly impatient mothers & fathers today (several my juniors by 20 years) demanding to know why the school that they had so carefully selected for its ethos & distinctive modus operandi was being forcibly transformed into the kind of school that their kids had already rejected.   Back home for an hour or two with Reuben & Rosie before a visit from my successor, H, concerned that the post for which he applied & to which he was appointed had now changed its nature. When he accepted the position of Head of Drama it was a department of two. Now, only weeks after the event, R, my colleague & friend, has been made redundant & H will have to teach the entire Drama timetable on his own.  I was very impressed by the guy. Iíd met him briefly before, but now, on deeper acquaintance, itís clear that a.) he knows his stuff, b.) heís on the side of the pedagogic angels, & therefore c.) although it will be a wrench, Iíll be leaving the department in good hands.   Tomorrow solid rehearsals from 10.00 am ñ 6.00pm for the 16+ practical exam on Friday. Again, my last.   # 12:25:33 AM    Mmm? []

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