hello welcome to organic acting and today we're going to look at our toe exercises
antonin arto was born in marseille france in 1896 he was a dramatist poet visual artist actor
and director who suffered with health problems since childhood he suffered from nerve damage and
meningitis and even in his adolescence depression when he was 17 he had a full-blown breakdown
so his parents committed him to a sanatorium there he was prescribed opium which began a lifelong
addiction to narcotics without drugs he found his life was overcome with paranoia and anguish
these things really informed his work in 1925 otto became a prominent figure in the surrealist
movement surrealism wanted to get away from the norms of artistic expression it wanted to move
away from what was literal by exploring dreams by exploring the subconscious by exploring nightmares
it was through this development that otto started to question the validity of text the validity of
the written word he felt the words really couldn't do justice to the human experience how can you use
words to represent what love is or what anguish is or what it means to be born to live to die
words words are just useless when it comes to really exploring the human condition exploring
anguish and torment in 1931 otto saw a troop of balinese dancers and was struck by how they
could communicate with their bodies with their rhythm through sounds movement rather than words
they used costume they used they used music and he really was struck by how effective this was
and he wanted to incorporate that into his theater and this is how we start to get into
the definition of otto's theater of cruelty his theater wasn't just cruel as we know it or as we
define the word but it was a cruel physical way to end texas dominance over the theater he said that
contemporary theater was boring it was outright boring it should be something more magical
it should be more transformative it should really attack the audience uh in a similar way to brecht
he wanted people to make change he wanted people to make change in their own lives but it should be
an assault it shouldn't be just this boring thing where people stand on a stage and and fire text at
each other speak words to each other theater was capable of so much more now a lot of arto's ideas
can be explored i would say best by working in groups so a lot of these following exercises
are going to be group based and they really help you to start learning what otto called his visual
poetry being able to use movement and rhythm sound expression to explore the human condition
as i said before birth life death everything in between how can you explore those things
without just using words so the first one you can do in a group is called physicalizing words
this is a way to work on the visual poetry of translating something without just using words
so you are going to choose or be given by your director an adjective or a describing word so
word like heavy or hot how would you physicalize that trying to stay away from something that is
literal so an obvious way of saying uh heavy physically would be to pretend you're carrying
something heavy but how can you get away from that literal representation how could you show
weight how could you show heaviness in your body and use the visual poetry to tell that
once you've worked on a word each in your group then you can start to put a sound to that word
so what sound would go with the word heavy it can be an expression it doesn't need to be a word but
it perhaps shouldn't be a word at this stage but an expression of how how would that how would
heavy translate verbally into a sound so you put in sound with the action trying to stay away from
what is literal the next one is group greetings in this exercise you and your group will move around
the space and as you encounter other members of the group you are going to politely greet them
but without words you are going to use your body language and a sound a non literal sound so no
words of hello or how are you just a sound you're being polite at this stage you like everyone in
the room and you are pleased to meet them after a minute or two minutes of doing this the next time
you meet someone and the person after that the person after that this emotion turns into love
do you love that person how does that affect your body how does that affect the sound you are making
love will then eventually turn into adoration you adore that person how does that affect your
body what sounds are you making keep on adding the emotion more and more and more experiment
don't be afraid of going too big or too loud eventually adoration will turn into hatred you
hate that person you do not want to be anywhere near that person you hate them still only using
sounds using your physicalization then eventually you are reversed by that person you cannot stand
to be within 20 feet of that person how is that going to affect you physically what sounds are you
gonna make and then you can take it back to any one of these levels any one of these feelings or
emotions go back to the physicalization you were using go back to the sounds that you were using
but then you can introduce this is where it gets interesting this is where you can introduce
a hello so the word hello using hello with the physicality and with the sound that you
found for that emotion so here you have some text and otto did use text in his theater of cruelty
you've got text but you are flipping it by adding the sound and the physicalization to it so
how can you experiment with those different levels and those different emotions
you're getting a bit more surreal here this next exercise is called symbolism so here you are as
individuals going to be given a word or choose a word which represents the human condition so
you could choose loneliness you could choose love you could choose frustration
and you can explore that word as before with your physicalization try and stay away from
norms or what is obvious but now you can start to use some of the other elements from theater
of cruelty going back to otto's influence with the balinese dancers so how can you use
chanting perhaps how can you use sound such as breathing how can you use rhythm could
you use anything else any other stimuli such as masks or maybe costume and choosing your word
you are going to try and give a miniature bite-sized performance which is symbolic of that
word and that human condition so i've done this before and i think i chose the word frustration
and frustration for me the something that comes to my mind is prickly i see frustration as prickly
so i tried to explore that with my body and the sounds i was making and in terms of rhythm it was
it was it was fast and it was it was punchy and it was it was it was that kind of tempo to it so
have a play with this see how you can make a symbolic representation of the human experience
this next one is narrative so you are going to be working as part of the bigger group and you
are going to tell a very simple story using all the skills you've developed up to this point
movement sound rhythm breathing chanting even and you're going to tell a simple story such as
boy meets girl boy loses girl boy gets girl back again or as we say now in the 21st century person
meets person person loses person and person gets person back again so how are you going to do this
obviously you can have one person playing the boy one person playing the girl and all the
people playing anything your imagination can can bring out in the performance you could have people
playing doors you could have people playing trees you could have people playing sounds of emotion
as the two me you're exploring love you're exploring loss you're exploring frustration you're
exploring despair how can you tell that story staying away from literary or written devices
so you have so much to work with there in terms of the movement and in terms of the rhythm and
sounds you know the this there's so much to work with in theater of cruelty once you've
experimented with it you can almost look back at things like naturalism and see how limited it is
arguably uh but yeah i've i've worked with people who have loved theater cruelty and have never gone
back to naturalism again so explore play how can you tell that story without using words
on a page and finally you're going to go into even more depth with your storytelling skills
by using a fairy tale a well-known fairy tale something that has been told to us since we
were kids and think of all the amazing images and moments and emotions that you find in fairy tale
look at hansel and gretel if you were to choose that hansel and gretel who go into the woods
into the forest and leave the trail of breadcrumbs and the birds eat the breadcrumbs and they're
lost in the forest what does it mean to be lost what is the emotion behind that
how can you explore that visually with sound as well what about to be imprisoned when they're
imprisoned by the witch they're going to get eaten by the witch how can that be explored
if you're interested in arto and the theatre of cruelty i urge you to read as widely as you can
obviously these videos are very bite-sized i don't want to give you too much biography um i just want
to give you some practical examples but if you are interested go out and and read about auto
go and see some shows that are based on theater of cruelty go on youtube and type in auto theater
of cruelty there's plenty of examples on there plenty of weird and wonderful examples
that's the best thing about theater you have to try a little bit of everything sample as much
as you can is this your first encounter with the theater of cruelty are you an
auto expert let me know in the comments below as always if you've liked this video give me a like
subscribe share it i really do appreciate it i've been chris and i'll see you next time bye bye