Some opinions : I really like good drama like Shakespeare it's really magic. Eugenio Barba method is a style suited to international street circus, but it's not great drama. It could form part of a performance, like when it's appropriate to clown, but for me the idea of a whole performance of this physical theatre stuff is "stupid".
There are 3 problems : words are not used, written entirely by performers and it's hard work
1. They don't worry about the language, they do the play in whatever language they wrote it in .. Doh a bit of mime is OK, but the magic of Shakespeare and most theatre is in the words. If such a brillant faculty is available why not use it ? why handicap yourself ? "you don't go to an art gallery with your eyes covered". Not using any words at all is one thing, but using a language the audience can't understand is just an insult to them. OK actually paintings don't have words either, so they missout the faculty of language, that's one reason I don't like them.
2. Actors writing instead of professional writers - Does Michael Schumacher make his own car ? or David Beckham his own football boots ? I am sick of going to films written by the film-makers themselves. They are excellent in their craft of film making, but generally they are crap writers, that's a job better left to professional writers.
3. Hard work and discipline - the actors must toil 6 hours every day. Why ? once you have enough experience of something you can do the job. A cabinet maker doesn't have to practice it , you give him a job and he does it. ... Not only that I think that there's a danger in over analysing things, often the first intuitive act is the best one, not always, a little practice can lead to improvement, but over practice brings diminishing returns to time put in.
contradiction : we talked about theatre not being real life, but more dramatic etc : then the workshop focused on being obsessively real. Drama is not reality : a real fight is usually much more boring than a staged one.
talked, watched a film, warmed up imagined situations.
If they can't make money, then surely that means they are not very good. In the early days they had super small audiences and even today they struggle to make money. Doh .. Yes it's true the public are stupid and the worst performers rise to the top, but otherwise the middle ground is made up of people who have talent.. If they are not making money after all these years then one has to summize they are not very good at their job. Odins's philosophy is supposed to be respect your audience, but they can't be doing this otherwise they would be packing out the theatres everynight and paying 1000's for training. There would be TV specials and commercials etc The public maybe stupid, but they know to pay more to watch Navratilova play tennis than watch me.
Indeed actually good street performers do make good money, it's the real sharp end and height of performer/ audience interaction. Bore them and they'll walk away, entertain them and they'll stay and put a quid in the hat, enthrall me and I'll put 5 quid in the hat (which I have done) . Why should it be a question of needing money to bring a group like Odin over if they are really that good then they should be able to perform in the street getting 100 people a night to pay 30Rm.
NEW KL links page **
My KL Events page
| 