Acting or Non-Acting
One of the first things we looked at when we started the Devising 2 Module was Michael Kirby’s Scale of Acting. It starts right at the bottom of the scale at Non-Acting which is basically every day movement with no heightened emotion almost a blank canvas. We looked at the idea that anything can be a performance. Someone walking down the street can be a performance. All you need is for someone to watch that person and then you have a performance, or at the top of the scale at Complex Acting, where the actor is actively seeking to become that character and to put across a really realistic performance.
We also looked at the matrix of a performance and how this relates to acting and non-acting. The Matrix is the performance and everything around it. When someone is Non-Acting they are on the outside of the matrix and the play and someone when is complex acting they are right in the centre of the play.
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| Michael Kirby's Acting/Not-Acting Continuum |
I found this art of Non-Acting really hard because I was stuck in the conventional way of if I’m on stage I need to be acting. Because of this I found myself constantly fighting for the limelight or the chance to act because I felt uncomfortable just sitting there doing nothing. I also had a problem with blocking out my fellow cast members all because I felt uncomfortable not doing anything.
Forced Entertainment
Next in the module we started looking at forced entertainment and the devising techniques they use to create a performance. At this point I had viewed two of their performances, Bloody Mess and The thrill of it all, and my opinion of them was low. I found them annoying, pointless, and I didn't call what they were doing on stage acting. After coming to the end of the module I have realised that what they create is innovative, clever and ground breaking. This is because they convey an issue to you and you don't even realise they are doing it because you spend so much time hating them and praying it will end.
We first looked at how they generate the material that they use for a performance and then seeing what techniques they use that work best for us. We looked at how they start with a structure and then they look at how they can tear the structure down and start playing with it. Play is one of their biggest techniques they take the material and run with it and change it and see where they can go. They record what they do so that they can watch it back and see what worked well and not so well.
“The work we make is definitely a group creation, made through a combination of free-play improvisation and discussions”
Forced Entertainment Information Pack (PG.4)
We did something similar to this near the beginning of the module. We were given a script ‘Emmanuel enchanted’ as the structure and we were told that we had to come up with a performance using this stimulus. The group I was in created quite a chaotic piece as this is what we thought was the right thing to do. It was really like playing. Our only downfall in this was that we ended up almost completely ignoring the structure and ended up making something that was loud and chaotic but in the end made no actual sense and it had nothing for an audience to grasp onto.
Forced Entertainment are interested in failure and a lot of their performances are failing around them and they spend the whole performance trying to put it back together again. We showed this in our final performance, we had created a party space and we were desperately trying to show we were having fun. We had this juxtaposed against some dark scenes of a story of an attacking/murder and a very uncomfortable game of ‘Put your hand up if’. We also had a strong focus on the end and we kept trying to build up the end as if it was the most amazing thing.
I think our performance worked well, especially in the juxtaposition sections. The only thing that I think let us down was the fact that the ending wasn’t clear enough and it had nothing to do with what we were saying it was going to be. If I was to develop this piece further I think that I would spend some more time developing some of the stories especially the ‘Put your hand up if’ game. I felt that this could have been darker and had it been we would have produced a much more effective.
Now that this section of the module is over I leave with a more detailed and fresher outlook of Forced Entertainment and although I won’t be rushing out to watch a performance I now respect them for the sheer brilliance they create.
Bibliography
KIRBY, M. (1972) Michael Kirby's Acting/Non-Acting Continuum [Diagram]. In: The Drama Review (1972). New York, TDR, Vol.16, No.1, (pp 3-15)
Entertainment, Forced. (2011) Forced Entertainment Information Pack (pp.4-5)
Forced Entertainment. (2008). Forced Entertainment: Making Performance [online video]. Available from: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/page/3010/How-we-work [Accessed 21/11/11]
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