Survival is Art to Art is Survival (Nancy Kim)

Transcribed from paper.

College Life:

Originally, Nancy Kim started out as an English literature major at University of Toronto. She did, however, take a class on the introduction to drama that led her to volunteer for Macbeth which was directed by Robert Lepage (a visionary of theatre amongst other things). After this production, she decided to follow her passions and take an undergraduate degree in theatre. At U of T, she had to balance the practical aspects of theatre and the theoretical. Even though she knew she wasn't interested in acting, she had to study breath, voice and movement. Only after trying everything - lighting, publicizing, acting - did she understand that she wanted to pursue a career in managing and producing.


The Berliner Ensemble:

She was exposed to the directing style of Herbert Aulshock. The directing styles of this man is/was completely different from what we are exposed to today. He is not an actor's director. Rather than having different actors come at different times to practice different scenes, he would perfect the first scene before moving on to the next. Even if you weren't in the play till the 6th scene, you would have to attend, absorb how everything comes together, and how the process goes. At the end, you would really go over the play once before finally presenting it to an audience.


Good Soul of Szechuan:

• Takes a while to simultaneously physicalize and vocalize the character.
• Go further than the norm.
• Compare yourself to the best of the best - strive to be the best.
• Wings -> houses = creative idea (multi-purpose set)
• But could have done so much more with the set.
• Reason for everything on the set.
• Wang's shack/Water -> does nothing more than create a look.

General Notes:

• LePage started his career with directing music videos and producing concerts. Because of his previous experiences with technology, he infuses technology with theatre.
• Robert Wilson -> attack and impact
• Focuses on a very minute moment...
• Importance of stillness
• So much movement in stillness.
• Watermill => from 9-5, the actors had to walk across a room the size of the DL.
• This got rid of all unncessary movement.
• Jacques Lecoq taught Nancy Kim's acting instructor
• He is not a nice man. You had to come to rehearsal (if you took one of his classes) ready to be torn apart.
• He forces you to examine yourself and raise your own standards.
• INTENTIONAL Movement
• Line by line => intention is paired with action
• Must have a reason for everything you are doing on stage.
• Purposeful action
• Subtext
• Edit out the unreasoned.

War of Art

*If you saw my notes for this video, you would probably be petrified at how unorganized they are. This blog post will focus on the main aspects that I deemed to be important in the video and will not include copious detail or coherent thought.*

• Meryl Streep on acting - she is the "interpreter of lost songs." She has to discover, feel then translate the information and the writing into a character.
• Mother courage from her experiences learns nothing at all. She gains nothing, but loses everything.  Brecht however wants the audience to learn.
• "We all live off of the war."
• "What they carry on their backs will kill them."
• One of Mother Courage's biggest mistakes and regrets: letting her sorrow and despair interfere and kill the young man's rebellious spirit.
• Brecht's goal wasn't only to get the audience to think. He wanted the audience to respond emotionally AND think.
• Enormous attention to detail in design.
• Interesting moment: Swiss Cheese dies and Mother Courage is silent screaming whilst the set is moving behind her. Such a beautiful moment and conveys so much.
• Fatal virtues. Mother Courage addresses her children's virtues in the beginning of the play and that's what ends up killing them.
• Mother Courage is looking for the war - the money of the war. It's this endless search that results in the death of her children.
• Duality - setting, characters, themes.
• Image: contrast between everyone pulling the wagon at the beginning of the play to only Mother Courage pulling.
• What attracts is to what destroys.
• "These people live by/from the har they do, not by the good."
• "It is not the virtues that get you through in this world, but wickedness."
• Mother Courage if you think about it has a wonderful character and resilient attitude, though a bit rough around her sides. "It's not the characters that have to change, but the context."
• "My personality doesn't matter" 
• Collective action
• A good Brechtian moment: A very sad emotional moment when Kattrin dies, but there's a twist: the soldier is exaggerating his movements in a humorous fashion. Brings it back to the audience's attention for them to think. In this moment, she is only "mother."
• People are malleable enough.
• Brecht put himself in the service of something else - something bigger than himself - Marxism. (2 years of Marxist study before Marx was even famous.) 

BTB: Mr. Black's play response

So as I transfer my rough notes on the interesting parts of Mr. Black's letter, I shall try to put these thoughts into sentences.

Firstly, I would like to thank Mr. Black for spending the time to write us this letter. He took his own time to help us from the inception of the play to the very last bit of it. And this letter definitely looks like it would have taken hours to write. The things that caught my attention from reading Mr. Black's letter was not the specifics of the production elements because his feedback was parallel to what I was thinking. The bamboo gobos, for example, just did not work. The motif was not present in the video and there was no purpose for them. I loved what Mr. Black said about the darkness of the set as the audience started to filter into their seats. It was something that perhaps we hadn't thought about before, but thankfully did. When we put this play together, I agree with Mr. Black on the issue of sightlines. I think it completely escaped our attention as we were frantically trying to put the final touches on the play that we forgot that some people may not have been able to see everything. I also agree that we didn't break the fourth wall as much. In the setting we had - the blackbox - there was so much potential to continuously break the fourth wall and though we did, I believe that we could have done more. As for the grunginess of the set and the costumes, I am in full accordance. It would have given a more of an umph to the eyes of the viewers.

BTB: Growth (GSOS)

This BTB will focus on my growth as an actor and as a designer (This BTB is a bit late as I was off at APAC)

So firstly, as an actor, I'm greatly improving with my quite pivotal roles of 1) random man walking on the street, 2) brother and 3) priest. There is just so much depth to lines such as "I have to go" and "Don't mind us smoking the odd one do ya?" They're lines that really get the audience to think of really deep questions such as "why does the priest have to leave so early?" and "the way his hand just jerked back to get that cigarette, is that a subtle statement of the complexity and powerful messages this play conveys about the world around us?" Obviously, I am being sarcastic, and for the record, I am not bitter about my characters and am in no way trying to passively stab at the director's decision of casting (I am the one that asked for a smaller characters). But in all honesty, I don't think I improved that much as an actor. There is only so much emotion that you can portray with exactly 8 lines (3 for the random man, 3 for the brother and 2 for the priest) in a two hour play. Because I change characters so often moreover, it is really hard to delve into the personalities of these individuals that I am supposed to be portraying. Let's take a look at the backstories for example, which can be found on the bulletin. You see the backstories of characters such as Wang and Shui Ta, and you will see so much content all supported by the text. You see the backstory of the priest and you will see that everything is not supported by the text. The backstory did help in understanding my character though and I can only think how much it helped for actors such as Christian and Emma. But despite, my small character, I did improve in other elements of acting such as shifting to different characters and finding what gestures and movements they would do individually. It has also helped me understand the importance of smaller characters to the play as a whole. They might not seem like they are important, but when looking at the big picture, it would be awkward to have a few holes here and there. In terms of growth, I feel like I can still improve on really distinguishing these individuals from each other and having a more firm grasp on who these characters are.

And now as a designer. So, I am currently missing SO much whilst I am away on APAC. Reca, Andrew and I are really missing the most important week of the IBTA play - the week where all the design elements come together and the coherence of the play is finalized. So, as I write this blog, I can only think "wow, even though I am trying to work from several hundred miles away, I am not putting in as much effort as the others are into this project." With lighting and I'm sure every other design element, it is so hard to work on something like a cue sheet or a lighting plot without your peers around you. We all have different minds and we all have different opinions on how we want the lighting to look so it is extremely difficult to position for example whether light 51 - a frenel - should be positioned to the stage for a general wash or directly down to light the audience. In this sense, I think I am not doing as much as I could be as there is a set of minds working together back in Korea while the sole mind is trying to piece everything together and is confused on what the set of minds is up to. But, hearing from Kevin, we are all on the right track and the lighting concept sheet greatly helped the making of the cue sheet. He has ensured me that I am not missing that much except the physical side of lighting design - fiddling with the lights and programming - so I should be able to sleep soundly as I trust the mormon. The two most important things I learned from the lighting design team are 1) that working together is very hard when so many people are sick, missing or away and 2) that the concept, the pitch, the overarching ideas that are first drafted onto the paper are integral for the fruition of the entire design. Kevin tells me how easy everything was after the concept sheet. This was because we had a clear understanding and vision of how everything would look. I feel like because we spent such a long time on the overarching themes and ideas for how the play would look, we were able to get this crystal clear image that made everything in the long run much more facile. My lesson here is to not take those perhaps more tedious and seemingly unimportant aspects of design for granted and to really appreciate how easy that will make work for future Justin.

Right now, everything looks and sounds (from what I hear from the lighting team and my occasional glances on the Facebook page) like it's headed the right direction and moving in a hastened pace. The only struggle and worry I have right now is that I'm not doing enough work for the team and that I should fly over there and help. SO much is going on right now, and I feel as if one more hand or brain would aid the entire team greatly. Timing!! Timing!! Timing!! Finding the right time is so important for a project like this, and though we couldn't do anything about it this year (because of exams and APAC) it is a lesson to be learned to have priorities and have thing evenly placed out for the future. Anyways, I'm out. I will see you all tomorrow to catch up on what I missed and learn the more tangible aspects of lighting (eg. the table).

Ciao!