Max Stafford Clark

Max Stafford-Clark was born in 19 94 . He attended Trinity College Dublin and his directing career began when he graduated in 966. He became Associate Director and then Artistic Director at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Max has been a keen supporter and user of verbatim theatre. Verbatim theatre involves interviewing many people connected with the idea and then perform their actions and works in verbatim. Max directed his first verbatim play with Joint Stock, The Permanent Way, Talking to Terrorists, A State Affair and Mixed Up North.

Taken from "The Permanent Way" 

The Permanent way is a play about the privatisation of Britain’s railways. He read the book, ‘The Crash That Stopped Britain’ by Ian Jack, that talked about the Hatfield train crash of 2000 in which four people died. Max approached David Hare about making it into a play.
A workshop was organised with Max, David, and a group of actors. They interviewed people related to the train crash including union bosses, a survivors group, a victim support group, relations of people who died in the crash, the head of Rail Track Gerald Corbett, and Richard Branson. Actors also went out and interviewed people in pairs or groups. Instead of recording the interviews they returned to the rehearsal room and assumed the role of the interviewee while the rest of the group asked them questions. "Using this Stanislavskian technique of observation, improvisations would emerge and characters were developed. Two of the actors went so far as to get jobs in the railway for a few months to immerse themselves in the industry."

"A workshop isn't exactly rehearsal, nor is it journalistic investigation, nor is it academic research and yet it contains elements of all three of these.” 

Conflict Devising Project

We have been given the task to create "an informative piece of educational theatre (TIE)." Working in a group of 5, we spent the hour choosing a target audience (teenagers) and devising 3 questions to ask peers in interviews that would act as our verbatim. Our 3 questions were:

• Have you ever misplaced your trust in someone?
• Have you ever had to keep a secret from your friend/friends?
• Do you hold conversational opinions you can't air in public? 

We choose these questions as we believed they would allow our peers to connect with previous moments in their lives and therefore allowing us to receive more in depth responses giving us the best stimulus for our piece. 

Verbatim is a technique used by Max Stafford Clarke, it means "in exactly the same words, word for word, exact to the original source" you take people's body language, voice, "the way they tell a story" and emulate it in your own work, in more simper terms, there story telling and body language becomes a stimulus for your work and should be reflected perfectly within your own piece. 

Complictie

On searching Complictie, it became very obvious that they were a very successful drama group due to the extensive amount of positive critic reviews on their work but it also was very difficult to pinpoint a particular style/process of the work due to the fact Complictie, only continues one method throughout history, this being, that everything changes. Each production is different from the last, just as each rehearsal is different from the day before.

From the production "The Master and
Margarita" 

Some things could be described as being more or less consistent, for example they have a principle of working collaboratively and there's a strong emphasis on the performers body, even when starting with an existing play, rehearsals will involve lots of games and physical improvisation and exploration. When looking
at images of their work it also seems that the lighting is similar throughout each production, dark, with spotlights focused on the most important areas giving a very dramatic, impending sense to their work.

Many of their members trained at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and they say that this training is the heart of their teaching workshops, which reach over 2000 people in schools. These workshops include the techniques Complictie use in the rehearsal room, for example the neutral mask, clowning or story telling.

From the production of "The Elephant Vanishes" 

HOIPOLLOI

Hoipolloi "attempts to celebrate people's imagination", taking the audience's mind into "fantastical worlds and blurring the line between reality and fantasy." Their work is playful, theatrical, physical and shows elements of humour.

Since 2005, Hoipolloi has been producing the work off emerging Welsh artist Hugh Hughes. In the last few years Hoipolloi’s artistic focus has been producing the work of Hugh Hughes. This year we’re helping Hugh, his brother Derywn and sister Delyth bring Stories from an Invisible Town to life. They rely solely on funding and receive funding from many projects such as, Arts Council Arts, The British Council and the National Lottery Arts Project and through the donations of the general public.

There work reaches behind the stage in a very real way and engages audiences directly through a mixture off live performance and online digital context, there main objective is to tell joyful stories which entertain audiences whilst playfully challenging their sense of reality.

Hoipolloi was set up in 1994 by Shon Dale-Jones and Stefanie Mueller, they are based in Cambridge and have produced 17 new theatre shows, a film, and a range of online content, they are big promoters off community life and recently were seen with this street recruitment campaign.

Tension

In class today we focused on the 7 levels of tension, starting on 1 with complete exhaustion, feeling as if our whole body was melting into the floor and it was an effort to produce vocal sounds, up to level 7, (full timeline added below) which meant we focused on having tension throughout the whole body, starting in the feet to the head, to the point of shaking with elements of madness and paranoia, making anyone watching feel uncomfortable. This is a useful technique when thinking about the stimulus of "conflict" because it perfectly describes how different people react to conflict and being able to push our bodies to these absolute maximums will help us to create a more believable on stage performance, and not only that but allow us to connect more with our own characters.

 "Timeline of the 7 levels of tension"

We took the script "The Exam" and took the first 8 opening lines between 5 characters. Focusing on the practitioner Artaud as he focuses more on noises and movement as opposed to speech, we also decided to change the scene from naturalistic abstract. We stood in a triangle formation and on the opening line stepped forward with our left foot and leaned in as if intruding the watchers personal space.

Conflict

Our given theme for Unit 3 this year is "Conflict," Google's definition of Conflict is:

"To come into collision or disagreement; be contradictory, at variance, or in opposition; to clash"

Conflict is the essence of dramatic story telling, conflict may manifest as external or internal, but it is without a doubt that somewhere within a storyline, play, book or film there is conflict of some nature.  In story telling there is always a villain or the "bad guy", out to cause trouble usually due to the opposing ideas of the hero, this type of conflict can be intriguing, however to me, inner conflict is much more compelling. Internal conflict is the struggle that is seen in the mind of a character. The hero against himself. The psychology of conflict.

The word "clash" from the Google definition helped to act as a stimuli, the word clash to me, seems hectic and uncontrollable and therefore the idea of Physical Theatre really appeals to me for our given Unit 3 theme "Conflict." As Physical Theatre is very energetic and unforgettable it achieves the dramatic side you'd expect to see in an argument.

Frantic Assembly

Frantic Assembly creates thrilling, energetic and unforgettable theatre. The company aims to attract new and young audiences with work that is modern. Frantic Assembly's unique physical style combines movement, design, music and text.

Frantic Assembly is lead by director Scott Graham. Scott created the company with Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton in 1994 and strives to collaborate with many of today's most inspiring artists. Frantic Assembly has built a strong reputation as one of the most exciting companies in the country. The company has also performed, created and collaborated in 30 different countries across the world. 

"It's really hard to shock and surprise a theatre audience these days. Unless you are in the gifted hands of Frantic Assemby"
"A play that will stay in your head and your heart long after the curtain comes down, due to it's originality"
Western Morning News 

The idea of Physical Theatre really appeals to me for our given Unit 3 theme "Conflict." As Physical Theatre is very energetic and unforgettable it achieves the dramatic side you expect to see when you think of conflict.

Choreography for the "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" 

Frantic Assembly will be beneficial for us as a group when thinking about devising a piece of work with the stimulus "Conflict" in mind. We as a drama group were lucky enough to see their performance of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" their stunning use of portraying emotions through movement created a very memorable capturing piece of work. To use something similar to this in our own work would hopefully allow us to create similar tones for the audience maybe in a more striking way when using it to portray conflict. 

The "franticness" of it (excuse the pun) could make the audience feel very on edge if the conflict was something they could relate too as some of the movements are so difficult to keep track off the audience could almost end up feeling very involved in a performance.