'Homo Fuge' Paper from 'Where the Image Meets the Body' Symposium

Below is a link to the page where the MP3 audio recording of the paper titled 'Homo Fuge: Physio-Vocal Practice of Unifying Imagery, Body and Voice' from the 'When the Image Meets the Body' Symposium at Monash University can be found. The session was recorded on Thursday November 4, 2011.

The session includes demonstrations by Laura Bishop and Chris Jackson.

Link:

Where the Image Meets the Body

Andrew Peek ABC Radio Interview

The following audio recording is from an ABC Northern Tasmania interview with Penny Terry and Andrew Peek discussing the upcoming performance of 'Profuge'. It was broadcast on November 29, 2011. The still images are from the performance.

Experiencing 'Profuge', a review by Barbara Hatley

The following is a review of 'Profuge' by Professor Emeritus Barbara Hatley

Stage in semi-darkness; actors already in position, motionless, as the audience enters the theatre. Three black-clad figures lie in  a semi-circle. face-downwards,  with haunches raised and  arms stretched out before them. A man bound to a kind of wall near the back of the stage is frozen in an agonised struggle  to break free.   Above  him several hooded figures are grouped around  an amazing construction –  long sinews clustered together at the top, stretching  outwards and downwards in  triangular formation to a large illuminated base. With its eerie, spine-tingling sounds,  it projects an image of a futuristic space station somewhere out in the cosmos. To the left a  man in tie and jacket with a hat perched sideways across his head leans casually against the wall, like a character in a 1930s -1940s film, waiting  to meet a shady acquaintance  in a bar or on a street corner.

I thrill with anticipation of the drama to come. And when the actors on stage come to life these expectations are amply fulfilled.

The constrained figure breaks loose from his bonds as the man in the hat, the Chorus, announces ‘We must perform the form of Faustus’ fortunes, good or bad’.  The newly-freed  man , Dr Faustus, now confronts  the three figures arrayed before him,  the Angels of  Good and Evil and Mephisthophilis. His interactions with them, together and separately,  form  a kind of  core  motif of the play. They move towards  him with intense, acrobatic, dance-like movements,  reinforced  by scraping, plucking music  from the sinews of a large leather harp, my imagined space station. Faustus responds  - now with stiff-limbed, blind-eyed terror, now with a conjuring dance. They urge Faustus  on to pierce his body, then lick up the gushing flow as he enscribes with his own blood  on his limbs a deed of gift  – the gift of his soul to Lucifer, in return for boundless knowledge. Chorus inspects his body and reads the deed aloud.  He announces various events – the appearance of the seven deadly sins, Faustus’ visit to Rome -  sometimes  in  loud, booming tones, sometimes in garbled, muffled confusion as his words pass through the  strange machine at his side, the Contraption. Finally great thunder claps and bolts of lightning accompany the tragedy of  Faustus’ demise. The three figures drag him off to hell – a hell symbolised by a return to chains, the reimposition of bondage.

Watching Profuge is an intensely dramatic physical and emotional experience. The patterned the movements of the actors’ bodies, the tones and timbres of their voices and the accompanying, punctuating sounds of the harp music create a visceral sense of the themes of the play.  We  feel the seduction of ambition, the threatening power and menace of evil and the helpless terror of its victims. Could there be suggestion, too,  in the subversive impact of the Contraption and the control of  the space-station/ harp, of the seductive, destructive power of contemporary technology?  

Aiming to move beyond literal reality and the semantics of conventional play texts,  the Voice  Theatre Lab succeeds strikingly in focusing attention instead on the phsysical, emotional,  symbolic aspects of theatre, opening up new paths for the  imagination.  And yet…..

Considering the small audience numbers at  the performance of Profuge that I  attended, and my own  feelings of frustration at times at not quite understanding  what was going on, I wonder if  more could be done about communication. Actors  who have  been rehearsing together for many months understand and revel in their new discoveries about theatre;  for audience members seeing the performance for the first time, however, absorbing meanings and interpreting nuances is much harder. Could the experimental activities of the  Voice Theatre Lab be extended to canvassing reactions to their work by some outside observers?  Might discussion sessions  be held after some performances? Conceivably, engaging more   fully  and directly with  the texts of some iconic dramatic works could result in wonderfully rich fusions of the known and the new. There would seem to be many exciting opportunities for extending the reach of the activities of the Voice Theatre Lab more widely.    

'Profuge' Performance Pictures

Opening image. Dr Faustus (Chris Jackson) attached to a wall, before he breaks free. The musicians who play the Mountain Harp are raised on blocks. 

Dr Faustus in the centre being pulled by Good Angel (Justin Groves) and Evil Angel (Shannyn Foon) while Mephistophilis (Laura Bishop) watches in the background.

Dr Faustus lies on the ground while Mephistophilis guides Good and Evil Angels. 

Andrew Peek as Chorus, controls the 'Story Machine', a sculpture created by Glen Butler called 'The Contraption'.

Dr Faustus with Mephistophilis and Good and Evil Angels.

Bec Clarkson playing the Mountain Harp.

Derek Stagg, Sarah Stagg and Bec Clarkson playing the Mountain Harp.

Andrew Peek as Chorus.

Mephistophilis taking Faustus to Hell.

From 'Dr Faustus' to 'Profuge'

The following essay appeared in the 'Profuge' performance programme. It was written by Andrew Peek, who played the Chorus. It discusses the adaptation process from 'Dr Faustus', from Voice Theatre Lab's 2007 and 2008 seasons to 'Profuge', staged from December 1 - 3, 2011. 

The original Dr Faustus is a hybrid, a mixture of comedy, slapstick and satire with high tragedy. Bearing in mind it is five hundred years old, it has lasted remarkably well. Faustus was a man of his time, literally a 'Renaissance man', an over-reacher, a prototype for what Montaigne's Essays and Shakespeare's character, Hamlet, have in mind in relation to man's infinite possibilities and terrible limitations. Of course, this theme as relevant as ever. So is the central action of the play, in which Faustus sells his soul to the devil, in exchange for twenty years of being able to do and get anything he wants, via the services of the devil's agent on earth, Mephistopheles. A Mephistophelian bargain, we still say, meaning a disastrous one, an exchange in which we give everything for little in return. It was an idea Christopher Marlowe, the play's author, got from an earlier German pamphlet, called the Faustbuch

What has made Dr Faustus amongst the best-loved of plays in English, though, is the quality of the language, of Faustus's heart-breaking rhetoric and the menace and desolation of his dialogues with Mephistopheles. Robert Lewis's radical recasting of the play, notably replacing a great deal of dramatic language with physical and vocal expression, is therefore at first glance a risky undertaking. 

How does this new version recast Marlowe's? It has a new title, 'Profuge', deriving from the word 'fugue'. Musically-speaking, a fugue is a composition using several voices or parts gradually building to a strong climax. The 'voices' in Profuge are provided by the actors, in combination with sounds from Greenwood's leather harp, borrowed from the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston. The harp is played by a small team of musicians who follow a carefully developed, improvised program integral to the performance. From the earliest rehearsals, musicians, actors and Lewis as writer/director used the harp as an essential tool and the plan was always that it should be play a prominent role, both in terms of sound and visual appearance, in performance. In psychiatry, fugue describes a period during which a person 'suffers from a loss of memory, often begins a new life' and subsequently 'remembers nothing of the amnesiac phrase'. Lost memory and a new start relate disturbingly to the plight of the central character who has two 'new' starts, the first, the twenty years of knowledge and power provided by Lucifer and Mephistopheles, the second, entry to hell, after which any of the previous twenty years of excitement and pleasure will cease to mean anything at all, except as the price Faustus has paid. The new title, therefore, signals the work's thematic continuities and technical innovations.

Marlowe's text has been reduced by well over fifty per cent in Profuge and actors play multiple parts, a common practice for VTL productions and other small ensembles. Portions of the original text that remained after initial cutting are often subject to further modification so that, for instance, in delivering a speech, Faustus will enunciate only the consonants in every word. This creates a staccato effect overlaying his decisions and acts with internal doubt and confusion. Tension and conflict between characters in the Marlowe's text are represented in Profuge by dramatic, sometimes violent physical gesture. Over six years, VTL has developed a palette of techniques to evoke strong physicality, adapted to meet the needs of individual texts as in this case. Another element in the final production is the organisation of actors' movements on stage. Lewis uses the word blocking to cover a process that continues and movies virtually up to the dress rehearsal and final run. However, blocking isn't really adequate to describe something that takes in complicated directions in relation to music and movement, as well as speech. A better word for this is choreography.

The final production is, in fact, a combination of modern dance, ballet and melody, in addition to dramatic language. After Faustus, the Chorus is given the longest speeches from the original text to deliver. Lines from other characters have also been given to the Chorus -- introducing new levels of complexity within the interplay of characters. Primarily, the Chorus provides a kind of narrative anchor to guide the audience, a function important in the original play and particularly so in Lewis's reformulated script. 

It seems relevant here to quote Robert Daly from a recent 'Life and Style' section of The Age. Commenting on the process of collaboration between composer and librettist in adapting a novel to production as an opera, Daly writes: "As long as the narrative context is clear, it's best to be subtly indirect; that allows the music to be emotionally quite specific and direct". Although spoken word and movement play a more prominent role in Profuge, I think this beautifully suggests the way Lewis's text in performance aims to use gesture, music and movement to get inside the consciousness of the audience in non-verbal ways in more penetrating ways than simple text is able to. 

Classic drama in the English tradition poses its own challenge to directors wanting to work broadly within the terms of the received script. I don't know how Elizabethan audiences dealt with the appearance of Lucifer or the sight of Faustus being carried off to hell at the play's end. Hellfire was more literally accepted then than now but costume and scenery were always representational devices and at that time pretty basic ones, too. These days, hell and the devil are mostly the territory of fundamentalism and cults so, with the exception of radio drama, it's even more important for directors have to avoid thunder-and-lightening theatricalism that distracts from the sheer terror of Doctor Faustus' concluding lines. Robert Lewis's solution is to create a new kind of theatre in which to perform Marlowe's text. Profuge remains true to the spirit of Marlowe's play at the same time representing an extraordinary new exploration of possibilities invested in it.

Andrew Peek

Profuge

Here is the poster for the upcoming VTL show featuring Garry Greenwoods Mountain Harp, played by Derek Stagg, Sarah Stagg and Rebecca Clarkson. VTL's core company members for 2011 will be performing: Chris Jackson, Andrew Peek, Laura Bishop, Justin Groves and Shannyn Foon. The actual image on the poster is of a section of the Mountain Harp.

The most proficient way of rehearsing at the moment is by loosely mapping out each scene first, and discussing the specific imagery for the music.

Movement is loosely mapped out, and the expression of sound is determined by the images drawn from the text.

Launceston Discussion Event: Iteration: Again at Sawtooth ARI. "Two Houses" speech

A CAST event at Sawtooth ARI, 160 Cimitiere St, Launceston, 

6pm Thursday 22 September, 2011

"Iteration:Again is a series of thirteen public art commissions by twenty-two Australian and international artists taking place across Tasmania, September 18 – October 15, 2011. Produced by CAST and David Cross, in conjunction with seven associate curators, Iteration:Again will present a compelling array of temporary artworks in largely unexpected places throughout Hobart, Launceston and beyond.

CAST presents an evening of Iteration:Again discussions at Sawtooth ARI. Participants include: Iteration:Again Curatorial Director, David Cross, Wellington, NZ; Our Day WIll Come curator Fiona Lee, Hobart; Two Houses artist, Voice Theatre Lab’s Rob Lewis, Launceston; and I Live With Birds curator Fernando do Campo."

Discussions regarding our involvement in the project began months ago, and it was quite a challenge for us as a company because this was going to be our first site specific, outdoor performance.

Voice Theatre Lab have been researching methods of vocal and physical synthesis since 2006, and since then have produced 7 productions. Our main focus is combining various non-conventional Eastern performance practices with Western contexts. Two Houses is a good example of how we have used these concepts – combining very strong Butoh training and performance aesthetics with a very Western text as a base: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The performance has many layers, and I will briefly speak about my experience as conceptual and performance director, and performer. There are 2 main aspects of Two Houses: the performance, and the recorded soundscape.

The show

The narrative aspects of the production(s) itself inexplicitly follow Romeo and Juliet, not in a logical sense, but more of a figurative, conceptual sense. There are 5 overall iterations of Two Houses. The first 4 cover some key elements and emotions: 1) Conflict and Anger; 2) Unity and Love; 3) Betrayal and Jealousy; 4) Death and Sadness. The 5^th and final iteration sees all these come together as one performance.

The performers are attached by red elastic to Henty House and Macquarie House, in Civic Square, Launceston. Two ‘Romeo’s’ are together at Henty House and the two ‘Juliet’s’ are at the opposite end at Macquarie House. The elastic is red, which simbolises the blood ties to each house; the conflict being present in the tension felt within their bodies (and voices) the further each character moves away from their houses. Each iteration (which is each performance) shows different actions that relate to the element and emotion.

The body

The physical aspects are inspired by Butoh dance – being connected to the ground, idea of emptiness, and expression of internal imagery which is determined by the blood ties to the houses, emotions, inner conflict and physicality of the other performer (in the form of Pretzeling).

The voice   

The vocal elements are also an important aspect of the iterations. Each week sees a different way of using the voice, including breath, per-verbal expressions and postverbal expressions (where the word has been intentionally fragmented).

The soundscape

2 speakers have been mounted in the windows of Macquarie House. After each performance, the sounds build. Each week sees a different part of the Romeo and Juliet text. Using a piece of text: Conflict and Anger is represented by breath, Unity and Love is expressed through vowels alone, Betrayal and Jealousy through consonants and Death and Sadness through preverbal expressions of chosen text.   

The experience

As a performer, you are immersed in the immediate environment. In a sense, nothing matters – you feel sweat, mucus, saliva – but you cannot stop and wipe it away or adjust your costume. Nothing matters but just that given moment. You feel the breeze, see litter fly past and even perhaps allow the spectators to walk in front of you or  sense their gaze at the corner of your eye. You must, however, only concentrate on your intention – on your iteration. The space is always there with each performance, but with slight changes in the environment – the space and the happenings in and around it are the iterations itself. In a sense, the space between these two buildings – and all that occur between them (performance, pedestrians, vehicles and the sound), are all part of the process and experience. 

With David Cross, Curator, at the discussion event