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PART B – Issues on Audiovisual Education 135 4.48 Psychosis Thomas Bürger, Lotta Auerswald “To play needs much work. But when we experience the work as play, then it is not work any more. A play is a play.” Peter Brook 1 Introduction Peter Brook has described theatre as a journey into mankind. 2 From my experience as a drama teacher to date, I can say that Brook’s definition identifies an absolutely fundamental aspect of engaging schoolchildren in drama. In a school set- ting, drama can offer schoolchildren at completely different levels the opportunity to embark on a journey of discovery – to discover themselves, their surroundings and their fellow human beings. The act of presenting themselves or of tak- ing on other roles is an important way for schoolchildren to experience the very essence of their being. At the same time, drama teaching aims to give actors the opportunity to devel- op freely as individuals and to initiate processes of personal creativity by encouraging as much self-awareness as pos- sible and creative group work. 3 In theatrical performances schoolchildren empathise, using all their senses, and look for solutions – to role conflicts, for example. 4 In this way, drama always provides an opportunity to broaden the spectrum of one’s own personality as well. Drama for schoolchildren means gathering countless new experiences through performing and, in the process, getting to know the other actors and themselves in a com- pletely new and very special way. Drama on the one hand is, of course, the fascination of becoming someone else, tak- ing on a new character and gaining a new personality. On the other hand, drama also allows pupils the freedom to be crazy, to break down taboos and to let their imagination run free once again. ‘It is drama that helps to break down old conventions. (...) It brings about creative restlessness, stirs up curiosity and fosters our imagination.’ 5

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4.48 Psychosis

Thomas Bürger, Lotta Auerswald

“To play needs much work.

But when we experience the work as play, then it is not work any more.

A play is a play.”

Peter Brook 1

Introduction

Peter Brook has described theatre as a journey into mankind.2 From my experience as a drama teacher to date, I can say that Brook’s definition identifies an absolutely fundamental aspect of engaging schoolchildren in drama. In a school set-ting, drama can offer schoolchildren at completely different levels the opportunity to embark on a journey of discovery – to discover themselves, their surroundings and their fellow human beings. The act of presenting themselves or of tak-ing on other roles is an important way for schoolchildren to experience the very essence of their being. At the same time, drama teaching aims to give actors the opportunity to devel-op freely as individuals and to initiate processes of personal creativity by encouraging as much self-awareness as pos-sible and creative group work.3 In theatrical performances schoolchildren empathise, using all their senses, and look for

solutions – to role conflicts, for example.4 In this way, drama always provides an opportunity to broaden the spectrum of one’s own personality as well.

Drama for schoolchildren means gathering countless new experiences through performing and, in the process, getting to know the other actors and themselves in a com-pletely new and very special way. Drama on the one hand is, of course, the fascination of becoming someone else, tak-ing on a new character and gaining a new personality. On the other hand, drama also allows pupils the freedom to be crazy, to break down taboos and to let their imagination run free once again. ‘It is drama that helps to break down old conventions. (...) It brings about creative restlessness, stirs up curiosity and fosters our imagination.’5

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Drama means more than merely standing on a stage, being present in the role and reacting to the key points. It is not just the individual that counts; it is primarily about the in-teraction of the group, since this greatly affects the chances of creating an interesting and successful production.

Drama is far more than simply putting on a play. Acting does not simply mean wearing costumes and learning a text by heart or standing on a stage saying the lines out loud. Theatre is about gathering new experiences, pushing back boundaries, experiencing change … and this is what makes the time spent in the drama group so valuable!6

By employing a steady stream of new theatrical stimuli, it should be possible for schoolchildren to develop a creative and critical awareness. Drama is an art form which, above all, serves the eye and the ear. Therefore, it should enable the ac-tors to consciously choose and shape theatrical sign systems and eventually to discover their own performance styles and forms of creativity. It is important to approach the task without having everything established in your mind while it is going on but, instead, being open to respond to the impulses and interpretations that come from the group, to consider them as valuable additions, examine them and try them out.10 In fact, this attitude is just a minor venture, which teaches me to have faith in the pupils’ creative and artistic potential and reduces the burden on me as a drama teacher.

Acting and working processes

Working methods

A year with the drama group at the Herderschule Kassel is divided into several phases (learning phase, exercises and design phase and an intensive rehearsal phase with the sub-sequent performance). The following sections will go into more detail about the different working phases of the drama group.*

The drama group in the upper secondary level of the Gymnasium at Herderschule Kassel includes students from several grades and is a very mixed group (grades 11-13); the

* The article refers to a school theatre production which was the result of theatre work during the school year 2009-2010 at Herder-schule Kassel and was performed in June 2010. The performance used a lot of new media and represented the state of Hessen at the National School Theatre Festival “Schultheater der Länder” in Nurem-berg in 2010. The theme of the Festival was “Theatre and New Me-dia”. (Editor’s note)

Concept of drama teaching

The starting point for my concept of drama teaching is the process of forming groups. As a drama teacher I see it as my task to support a large number of young people on the way towards becoming a group of people who trust one another and can experience physical contact without fear. The actors should first learn to trust themselves before they can express themselves with their whole body, using it to communicate with others and therefore gaining the trust and understand-ing of others.7 It is about fostering individual abilities and strengths with enthusiasm and developing creative team-work. Therefore, it is important to allow time for this initial phase in order to expand the individuals’ range of experi-ences and not to pigeonhole them as a particular type.8 With the aid of self-perception exercises and by using the body as a means of expression, through having one’s own body and movement experiences and observing those of others, one’s own possibilities for movement and expression are in-creased.9 These should all enable the actors to demonstrate presence and credible behaviour on the stage at a later date and to work towards a practical understanding of drama.

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composition of the group changes annually, with new pupils from grade 11 joining us, school leavers moving on, and for-mer pupils continuing to help or to act. Rehearsals take place at the school one evening a week (6 pm to 8 pm). Rehearsing at that time has proved to be beneficial, since the break in between the normal school day and rehearsals means that taking part in the group becomes less like being at school.

In the first months of a new year for the drama group (August to December) the primary focus is on getting the group ready for acting, enabling the participants to get to know each other and to establish trust between them. In the learning phase and over the course of many rehearsals which combine the seriousness and fun of acting, the group grows from pupils with very different acting experiences into a theatre company in which familiarity has been established, and the inhibitions about acting in front of the group quickly disappear. The actors discover their own limitations and how to go beyond them and learn to trust one another so that they can put on a play together. Besides experiencing inter-personal relationships through distance and closeness, this learning phase also encompasses experiencing boundaries and the special features of a movement space.11 Furthermore, by experiencing contact and the willingness to cooperate, the actors come to realise that it is not the individual that counts but rather the performance of the group as a whole.

As the first few months of the academic year are spent undergoing intensive drama training with a focus on vocal, isolation, body and improvisation exercises, each actor is given the chance to experience and expand their own acting repertoire. An important aspect of this initial phase is, there-

fore, to teach awareness, since ‘their ego and their body are an actor’s instruments.’12 Whether consciously or not, people constantly communicate with their body and drama is about transferring these unconscious processes into the realm of consciousness, and doing so artistically.13 In the process, an important objective is to make the actors aware of their own personal gestures, to help them understand their own body language and to learn to use their body as a means of ex-pression. This is in line with the established drama teaching systems of K. S. Stanislawski, M. Tschechow, J. Grotowski and others.14 As a consequence of this self-awareness, the actors can expand their physical, holistic awareness15 and as a result ‘dismantle and dissolve physical and mental inhibitions and barriers.’16

Discovering and recognising space through movement encourages the actors to acquire an awareness of space, which is a vital aspect. The notion of space also involves the arrangement of fellow actors and the atmosphere that it cre-ates. Playing with movements in an empty space, with bodies and objects, with choral and movement-oriented elements is an important aspect of drama. The actors can try these out in the creative exercises, expand their individual artistic forms of expression and establish an acting repertoire that will be available to them later on when looking into the dramatisa-tion of the selected play. Meanwhile, the theatrical mindset of the actors will have been broadened.

The work on the play is introduced via the decision on which play to stage, which always happens at the end of the first half of the year. The members of the group indepen-dently put forward proposals that they find interesting and

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vote on them democratically in an additional session. The idea for a theatre production can be taken from very differ-ent sources, for instance from novels, dramas, films or origi-nal productions.

After having reached a decision on which play to put on, an early intensive week of rehearsals in mid-January sees the first ideas on how to stage the play being developed and tried out. We approach the themes of the play through improvisa-tion and, in the subsequent rehearsals, the drama training continues on the one hand, while on the other the techniques learnt are already used in the play, so that the first impressions of how the play may be staged in the end are gained.

Besides the rehearsals that now last three hours, there are additional voluntary dramatisation sessions, where the ideas for staging the play take on new forms. Each actor can contribute in various ways, whether this be through analys-ing the characters, searching for the play’s main thread or thinking up the first creative ideas for the stage. A joint deci-sion on which play to stage and the distribution of roles, as well as independent work on ideas for scenes and constant exchanges during the dramatisation sessions provide, on the one hand, further opportunities for the actors to gain a broader understanding of theatrical work. On the other hand, there is an opportunity for any questions related to the planning, organisation and implementation of the play to be discussed collectively. Areas of responsibility such as design-ing the posters and programme and marketing the play are allocated. The joint and democratic process at every stage encourages everyone participating to identify strongly with the project and substantially relieves the burden off me as a drama teacher.

After undertaking a range of improvised trials and col-lecting dramatisation ideas and roughly three weeks before the premiere, the intensive rehearsal phase begins; it is the most demanding but also the most productive period of the drama group’s year. This is the first time the various theatrical sign systems are introduced. In parallel with the first stage re-hearsals, the stage, lighting and sound are arranged in close cooperation with the events technical group, and the music and video material is composed and edited.

After an intense period of work and change the theatre year culminates in the performances.

Development of materials

Working on the text

4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane is a dense world of images, a sequence of monologues, words and chains of numbers with fragmented speech, distorted perspectives, supposed dia-logues and poetry in the form of a text that has been com-pacted to the extreme.

This work by Sarah Kane with its oppressively personal language is far removed from any defined theatrical form. The fragmented structure alone makes it a particularly ex-citing subject for theatrical treatment. The actors approach the text with complete freedom – whether this be in perfor-mance improvisations, dramatisations of the content of the text or the development of concepts for playing out or struc-

turing scenes. Through the controversial discussions on the text, a script is eventually drafted by the actors in the drama-tisation sessions and the script is then used as the model in the intensive rehearsals.

Prominence is given to the issues addressed in the play, such as depression, suicide and self-harm, calling for each in-dividual to deal with them in a very personal way.

Text and new media

Working on the media is inspired by Sarah Kane’s text. The pupils look for possible ways of using media to express the protagonist’s distorted, unreal inner world. The story on stage becomes a constant search for human lows and highs – this adventure should be substantiated through the use of new media. The interplay between perception, awareness and reality is the inspiration for the play’s multimedia support, which should enable the imaginary journey through the in-ner and outer worlds of the protagonist to be portrayed, not one-dimensionally, but always in a fragmented and distorted fashion. The consideration of the topic of media is a particu-larly valuable addition to this production since the “inner battle of the consciousness” can be expanded, alienated and deepened through the use of new media.

The schoolchildren improvise during many rehearsals and test out the different types of media until finally they are able to select the elements that they find most appropriate from a wide range of media sources. A dramatic structure is then worked out by them and is further expanded and re-fined until, in the final rehearsals, the individual media com-ponents can eventually be put together.

Aesthetic considerations

When teaching drama, aesthetic criteria naturally play an im-portant role (“Theatre as art for the eye”).17 Therefore, right from the start of their theatre work, the pupils are trained in the aesthetic dimension of theatre; in the process, they adopt roles, in addition to their acting experimentation, that involve observation and expressing criticism. In the dramati-sation sessions the aesthetic criteria are also discussed and worked on, and are then implemented in the rehearsals.

In order to make a consideration of aesthetic aspects possible, acting work at the beginning of the theatre pro-ject is particularly important. ‘The drama education meth-ods which the director and actors would like to use on the play should be fixed in advance (body, rhythm, atmosphere, sensory triggers and thought).’18 By learning various theatri-cal “tools of the trade”, it becomes easier to implement the aesthetic elements appropriately.

Even if the theatrical aesthetics are of great importance, the actors should appear as individuals and not just fulfill aesthetic concepts. Encouraging individual experimentation and expression on the part of the actors, as well as develop-ing a personal connection with the play are prime objectives. The aesthetic tools that feed into the staging should, how-ever, be broadly defined in advance and be suitable for the group.19

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Aesthetic media concept

The aesthetic media concept should always endeavour to ensure that media are not used for their own sake, but are instead present in the context of the action, and are used to broaden it, keep it going or even contradict it. The use of media symbolises our discontinuous, fragmentary method of narrating and portraying outside the structure of the play, and documents our different ideas for using new media.

We spent a long time evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of using diverse types of media and tried to find the most suitable forms for our theatre production. From a wide variety of media elements the actors selected the ele-ments that, in their opinion, presented the greatest connec-tion to the play:

Video feeds

video as a dialogue partner

film sequences as an atmospheric stage set

photo projections as an alienation effect within the stage space

appearance of text fragments to amplify and accentuate

light projections to define the space

dictating machine as a means of alienation

noises amplified by the use of microphones

soundscapes

music as a medium with various functions.

Finding ways to deal with the topic of new media is par-ticularly enriching, but also challenging in theatrical work. Each use of media is specifically considered in order to reflect its justification and its added value in the production.

For this production we opted for a black, empty frontal stage, which, over the course of the play, changes through the use of hanging, slidable sheets of cloth, meaning that new spaces within the stage are continually created. The topic of new media also leads to an expansion of the areas of the stage selected to be empty by opening up inner worlds (video abstractions). These constantly changing stage for-mats offer different possibilities for arranging the light, video and text projections without them seeming one-dimen-sional, but instead always arranging them so that they ap-pear fragmented and distorted. As a result, the protagonist’s distorted, unreal inner worlds are presented, new spaces are created and virtual dialogue partners are added to the stage. The interplay between perception, awareness and reality in-spires the use of video as a dialogue partner, in which a very personal treatment of topics such as distance and closeness plays a significant role. At the same time, atmospheric video sequences and images enable the ambience of individual scenes to be expressed on another level. The text fragments and the dictation machine enable the inner world and the protagonist’s consciousness to be portrayed.

During a performance on stage, sounds occur, which may be music already or can be used as a starting point for a

musical arrangement. From the large amount of sound ma-terial already existing in each scene, noises are separated, amplified live by microphones and added to the scene as abstracted new soundscapes. Our story on stage is also sup-ported by the use of pieces of music for each scene, which were assessed on the basis of their musical function in cin-ematic terms (paraphrasing, polarising and dramatic coun-terpoint). The use of music in the dramatisation process is always treated as an instrument of equal value alongside the performance, and reciprocal connections between the func-tions of speech, music and movement are sought in order to develop a theatrical whole.20

Dramatisation

In an effort to develop a conceptual dramatisation for each theatrical sign, an individual concept is designed in the dramatisation sessions for aspects such as the costumes, stage formats, stage sets, props or stage elements, media and music, and they are set in balance with the “main thread” of the staging idea while work is carried out on meshing to-gether the individual concepts.

Moreover, in relation to the content, there are discus-sions about various topics, such as the roles of the victims, culprits and audience, or psychosis/depression and the ap-propriate theatrical ways of expressing them are sought.

The problem of casting provides an additional aspect since there is one protagonist in the text while we want 16 actors to participate and to be continuously present on stage. Alongside their roles in the scene, they are also sup-posed to participate in the staging with quiet sound collages or mute acting.

A particular focus of the dramatisation sessions is the de-velopment of a dramatisation concept for the use of media. Furthermore, connections between different media forms (such as collages of text fragments, microphone effects and musical alienation) are considered and a basic structure for staging this is designed.

Conclusion

In conclusion, working with new media in the area of theatre has shown me that this can lead to all kinds of valuable addi-tions, but also to challenges in the theatrical process.

Challenges are posed, above all, by the sheer diversity of new media. The variety of possibilities offered by media supports makes the centralisation and conceptualisation of the use of media absolutely necessary. It is also a constant balancing act between the use of media and aesthetics. This inevitably leads to a continual search for elements that will connect the staging. The amount of extra work caused by the addition of new media in theatrical productions should not be underestimated.

The enhancement gained from using new media is to be found particularly in the opportunities for adding new levels and highly charged atmospheres to the stage and, as a result, our theatre experience can be expanded, productively alien-ated and deepened.

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Editor’s note: This article was first published in Theater.Neue Me-dien, Fokus Schultheater, Vol. 10, edition Körber-Stiftung, Hamburg 2011, pp. 86-91. Reproduced with kind permission from edition Körber-Stiftung.

Notes

1. Brook, P. (2008). The Empty Space. Penguin Classics.

2. See Ortolani, O. (2005). Theater als Reise zum Menschen: Der Regis-Der Regis-seur Peter Brook (pp. 10-61). Berlin: Alexander Verlag Berlin.

3. See Ehlert, D. (1986). Theaterpädagogik. Lese- und Arbeitsbuch für Spielleiter und Laienspielgruppen (pp. 9-11). Munich

4. See Aye, T. (2003). Praxis Schauspiel (pp. 33-50). Berlin: Schibri-Verlag.

5. Körber, Kurt A., quoted from: van Kaick, Barbara: “Vorwort”, in: Kör-ber-Stifung (Hrsg.), Theater in der Schule, Hamburg 2000, p. 9.

6. Based on Auerswald, L. (2005). Bühne dunkel – Vorhang – Licht. Die Theater-AG der Herderschule (p. 60f ). In Festschrift 50 Jahre Herd-erschule. Kassel.

7. See Ehlert 1986, pp. 62-64.

8. See Aye 2003, p. 39.

9. See Ehlert 1986, p. 62-64.

10. See Aye 2003, p. 36.

11. See Ehlert 1986, pp. 71-75.

12. Rellstab, F. (1994). Handbuch Theaterspielen (p. 50). Wädenswil.

13. See Bubner, C., & Mangold, C. (1995). Schule macht Theater (pp. 16-24). Braunschweig.

14. See Aye 2003, pp. 11-32.

15. See Ehlert 1986, pp. 76-78.

Lotta Auerswald is a qualified psychologist and drama teacher. She was formerly an active mem-ber of the theatre group and has worked for the group on a voluntary basis since 2005.

Thomas Bürger is a Drama teacher in the up-per secondary level of the Gymnasium at Herd-erschule Kassel. He teaches Music, Performance Drama and Religious Studies. He has been leader of the drama group, events’ technical group and orchestra group since 1995. He is a lecturer on the Hesse teacher training course in performance drama.

16. Aye 2003, p. 30.

17. Reiss, J. (2000). Kriterien der Kritik. Qualität im Schultheater. In Körber-Stifung (Hrsg.), Theater in der Schule (p.24). Hamburg.

18. Aye 2003, p. 35.

19. See Aye 2003, p. 35f.

20. See Giffei, H. (2000). Musikalische Dramaturgie im Schauspiel. In Körber-Stifung (Hrsg.), Theater in der Schule (pp. 38-46). Hamburg.