The Positive Hour by April de Angelis

Over the last week we have been working on "The Positive Hour" by April de Angelis, I am the character of Miranda hurst who is a social working in London in the 1990s and has just come back to work after a mental break down.

First Cassie researched the cultural, social and political context of the time the play was set, so the 1990s in London.  I then took certain points that suited my character:

Cultural:

• The different cultures you could find in London in the 20th century are - Jewish, French, German, Caribbean, Chinese, Russian, Belgian, Italian, Serbian, Australian, Canadian and African Troops.
• Internet, email, home  computers, mobile phones all became common in the 1990's. 

Social:

• Younger Population compared to the rest of England
• Depending on where you lived also showed the type of class/status you were in society.
• Between 1991 and 2001 the population of Greater London increased by 492337 and it increased in Inner London by 261524.

Political:

• Employed more women and Ethnic people into work
• Changing status of women in society, have equal rights.
• Marie Stopes birth contraceptive - to help poor families
• Higher divorce rates, single parent families = smaller homes and more homes because everyone was living on their own.
• Birth outside of marriage - 35% in the 1990s
• Politicians also decided to try and make London slums into a cleaner environment. In the war they were destroyed, so they built public houses to accommodate the less fortunate.

From this research I concluded that Miranda had a mental break down because of the added stress of equalizing women because she didn't actually want to work. She also had to learn about many different cultures in order to understand all her clients who suddenly were from many different countries, she also had a lot more clients because the government were attempting to clean up the slums and so a lot of people were sent to counseling. There was a lot of births outside of marriage and so she had a lot more single mothers like Paula to deal with on top of the stress of learning how to use all the new technology they were expected to use. 

We also got the setting of the play from the historical background, as mentioned London was very cramped at this time, and so we decided to have Miranda's office in a small cubicle with a very small table and chair to show how cramped everyone was living and to illustrate how Paula was trapped in her situation and couldn't get out.


Character profile sheet

By doing the character profile sheet i discovered that i imagined Miranda as a touchy, changeable, sober, unsociable, reserved, quiet, careful, reliable and controlled character. 
I was then influenced by Emma Pillsbury from Glee, her character has OCD and is very insecure about herself. She wants to be professional but is lacking the confidence to appear professional. 


Whilst reading through the script I wrote down her aim in each sentence i said, they were either: trying to be professional, trying not to break down, trying to calm Paula down. This helped me detect her change in objective as well as gaining a better understanding of her personality and developing a deeper character. 
I tried to portray Miranda as both a very controlled and strict character as well as an insecure, weak character and by trying out both we found that the insecure, weak character creates a bigger contrast from Paula who is a very out-going and demanding character. This creates comedy because it gives more power to Paula who is the one who's life has completely fallen apart and should be the weaker character, and Miranda who is the upper class character with a job and good money is the one who portrayed as the weaker and more threatened link in the relationship. 


In the rehearsal process we used Utah Hagen's Object Exercises, we asked ourself these questions :
1. Who am I?
Character.

2. What time is it?
century, year, season, day, minute.

3. Where am I?
country, city, neighborhood, house, room, area of room.

4. What surrounds me?
animate and inanimate objects.

5. What are the given circumstances?
past, present, future, and the events.

6. What is my relationship?
relation to total events, other characters, and to other things.

7. What do I want?
character, main and immediate objectives.

8. What's in my way?
obstacles

9. What do I do to get what I want?
The action: physical, verbal.


In order for this to work you have to be very personal, very descriptive and dig very deep. You have to be completely honest and overanalyze the situation so that you really realize how you act in real life and it'll then be easier for you to use it on stage. (check examples in portfolio). 
Here are my answers for Miranda:


1. I am a 30 year old social worker who is scared of the empowerment of women as she feels inadequate to go into the workforce. i am very high maintenance and very afraid of germs after her recent collapse which I blame on a virus as I don't want to look weaker than my clients even though I am in most cases. I am very reserved and try to avoid personal conversations with clients and I try to stick to the books and what I have been taught. I am married but I have no kids because I am afraid of the responsibility as well as the pain from child birth. I grew up in an old fashioned family as an only child in a middle classed family. 


2. It is the spring of 1997, a monday morning and I would say it's around noon. The sun is starting to warm up and people are coming in without jackets on. 


3. I am in my office in Lewisham, London. I am in the far corner of the office in my cubicle, furthest away from the door and any windows. 


4. I am surrounded by three walls, it is a very small cubicle and I can hear the writing on keyboards and phones ringing in all the cubicles around me. The room is quite dark because of all the extra walls set up and it creates a very grey atmosphere despite the golden sun outside. I only get the light the white lamps hung around the room. On my table there is a phone and a new PC which I am learning how to use because all my old paperwork has been taken away in the time I was on leave.


5. Since I last went to work there has been a lot more immigration and so I now have to get familiar with many more cultures and religions, I find it very difficult to understand anyone who cannot speak proper English and therefore very hard to communicate with them. Over the past 10 years there has been an increase in births outside marriage and so I have to deal with a lot of single mothers, most of whom are very inadequate of looking after a child. I am now expected to use all the new technology as this has become very fashionable.


6. I find it hard to deal with other nationalities because I don't understand what they are saying or where they are coming from. I find it hard to have respect for single mothers because I don't understand how they can be so irresponsible and have no fear at all, I think I am a little jealous of their independence because I am very dependent on my Father and Husband. I do not understand technology, I would rather use my old paperwork. I think Paula is very strange and rude, I don't understand why she thinks she is good enough to look after her child but I'm afraid of telling her she is inadequate to look after her child because she gets very scary when she is angry.


7. I want to get through the day without too much stress and recreate a professional image for myself because I want to fit into society as I don't like to be different and I don't like to disappoint people.


8. Paula's anger and my fear of having another collapse.


9. I talk her down when she has a blade in her hand and I convince her that I'm on her side so that I can go back to the script and do what I've been instructed to do.




http://alisontheatre.blogspot.com/2011/05/positive-hour-april-de-angelis.html
These are the pictures from our performance.
I think once we got started our energy was very high and the comedy came quite natural. I exaggerated my insecurities with the technology, I showed this by typing with one finger and hitting the table very hard. I also stuck my nose very close to the screen, as if i was trying to look "through" the screen whilst sticking my tongue out of my mouth to show I was concentrating. I exaggerated my facial expressions and kept emphasizing on my OCD by cleaning everything around me and pulling my hand away when Paula tried to touch it. When Paula lit a cigarette I started coughing into my hankie with very big eyes. 
I think we had very good dynamics and once we started performing the comedy came quite natural because we had both studied our characters very well and so we both had very in-depth characters. This made the contrast between the characters very apparent without us having to try to make it clear, which is where the comedy came from.

Kathakali

The storyline never changes, the way its presented changes due to different interpretations.

Content

1.     Introduction to Kathakali.

2.     Costume and Make-up.

3.     The mudra.

4.     The 9 basic facial expressions used in Kathakali.

5.     Training.

6.     The instruments

7.     The performance.

8.     Bibliography

Introduction to Kathakali

Katha= story                 Kali= playing

Kathakali= story playing or in other words the playing of a story.

Kathakali dance-drama is a distinctive genre of South Asian performance that developed during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in the south-west India which is now known as Kerala state. Kathakali has become internationally known over the past thirty to thirty-five years because troupes have been regularly touring the world as part of government-sponsored international cultural exchanges or through private initiative.  Most of these performances have been kathakali’s dance-drama versions of episodes from the Indian epics (Mahabharata and Ramayana) or stories from the puranas, which are encyclopedic collections of traditional stories and knowledge.

The performers, musicians, writers, singers and directors are known by the institutions they come from, not their names. Most of the performers who came to give us the workshop came from the Kalanilayam institution and it is located in Irinjalakuala. Another major institution is Kalamanda, which is located more north in Cheruthusuti.

Kala= art            nilayam= temple        manda= world

Kalanilayam= art temple           Kalamanda= world of art.

Three elements within Theatre:

1.     Natam: Pure acting (no dance or rhythm/music).

2.     Nrithyam: Blend of acting, dance and rhythm/music.

3.     Nritham: Pure dance (no acting or rhythm/music)

This is a south-Indian theory about world theory and through further reflection I found that this can in fact be applied to western theatre as the Nrithyam is used in musical theatre as well as Ballet and Natam can be used in Tragic comedy whereas Nritham can to a certain extend be applied in physical theatre.

There are four elements of the enactment of Kathakali:

1.     Ahryam: Costumes and make-up.

2.     Angikam: which only deals with bodily movements in all their subtle intricacies.

3.     Vachyakm: refers to the vocal delivery (done by the singer behind).

4.     Sathbivikm: the accurate representation of the entire range of mental and emotional feelings sought to be conveyed by the actor through physical expressions.

“Where the hand goes, there the eyes follow;

  Where the eyes go, the mind follows;

  Where the mind goes, the mood follows, and

  Where the mood goes, there arises the sentiment”

This acting theory detailed by Nandikeswara in his Abninaya darpana, is followed in its entirety in Kathakali acting.

I saw this in the workshop when they were demonstrating the hand gestures using their entire bodily movement because wherever his hand went his eyes followed and it looked as if he was in a trance, which I found very fascinating.

Costumes and Make-up

In Kathakali the characters dealt with are superhuman and semi divine and therefore Kathakali accepted a special imaginative pattern of make-up and costume to project these epic characters. Because of this, the characters are classified into different categories based on their nature and personality and given unique costume and make-up patterns. There are five basic make-up categories and they are known as pacha, katti, kari, tadi and minukku. For the make-up on the face they use; chayilyam (red pigment), manayola (yellow pigment), mashi (a black paste), rice paste, caustic lime, manjapodi (a pink or red powder) and indigo.

In Kathakali the characters wear headgears  (kirita-s) and ornaments that are made of wood, carved and gilded and jeweled, with creative use of glass pieces, peacock feather and even the shell of beetles. The size of the crown worn by the actor determines the size of the skirt worn. To make the size of the skirt  a number of strips of cloth are worn one over the other, this is called uduttukettu. However all the minukku characters wear special skirts made of folded cloth and they wear uttariyam, which is cloth folded, shaped and with a small round looking glass fixed to it over their shoulders.

The mudra

The mudra is like the ‘basic alphabet’ the actors use to speak the text and therefore in the delivery follow the word order of the story they are telling.

“mushti” is the name of a hand gesture, and the 24 basic hand gestures  create an alphabet. Once the performer has learned the basics, their movements become stylized and they use their eyes and body to support the idea expressed. They draw the picture in the air using their gestures and their eyes follow the movement to put emphasis on the movement, for example if they are portraying fire the eyes twitches a lot whilst follow the hand to show the fierceness of the fire. When the animals are presented they are portrayed in their wildlife form not their captived form. I found this fascinating and odd at the same time, the eyes moved very fast and it was impossible to understand how they did it but it made me realize how much training they have to do before they can perform. The fact that the animals are shown in their wildlife form shows how old Kathakali is and that it has not been majorly modified to fit society.

Hastalakshanadeepika is a reference book which the Kathakali mudras come from, and it is writing in samskrit which is the oldest Indian language. It means: the light on the expression of the hand.

 

The 9 basic facial expressions used in Kathakali

Bhava	Corresponding rasa
Rati bhava	The erotic, love or pleasure
Hasa bhava	The comic, mirthful or derision
Soka bhava	Pathos, sadness
Krodha bhava	Fury, anger, wrath
Utsaha bhava	The heroic, vigorous
Bhaya bhava	Fearm the terrible
jugupsa bhava	Repulsive, disgust
vismaya bhava	Wondrousu, marvelous
Sama bhava	Peace, at-onement

Training

To become a reasonably good actor you need atleast 12 years of unbroken training and the best period of training the pupil is between the ages of 12 to 15. The pupil lives with his guru or teacher. Pupils with well built bodies and a taste for acting are slected, they go to the kalari (the centre of training) and  give an offering to the guru. The guru blesses him and presents him with a four and a half metres long and twenty centimetres wide cloth. The pupil wraps it around himself according to the instructions of the teacher.

In the workshop we attended they told us how their daily routine went at Kalanilayam.

·      The practice sessions start at 4.30 am everyday.

·      First they put Ghee (natural cow fat) in their eyes, and then they start their eye exercises for half an hour.

Whilst doing this they hold their eyes open with their fingers.

They start crying because they are exercising the eye muscles which squeezes the tear glands, not because it hurts.

·      Second they apply oil to their bodies.

·      They then start their body exercises: it is split into upper and lower body exercises. All their jumps are stylized even the warm-up exercise jumps.

The leg exercises are done with rhythms which gradually increases, this also prepares them for the rhythm exercises later.

·      You need a high stamina because the shows are 3-4 hours long and the costumes are heavy.

The eye exercises looked very bizarre when just looking at them but when I attempted to do it I realized how hard it is as my eyes started watering and itching. I gained more respect for them because I realized how much training you have to put into this style of theatre and how hard all their exercises are. When I looked at the warm-up exercises they looked easy and smooth but as we attempted to do them I saw that it was very hard because of the core strength, balance and flexibility required.  When they were doing their leg exercises they hit the floor with the outside of their foot so they don’t get the shock up through their body and I found out that (zarrilli) (Venu) (Phillip b Zarrilli)when you clap the rhythm you keep the slow rhythm you started with, you don’t follow the increasing speed, to understand where it ends.

When the pure dance training, which takes two years, is completed, training to act the part of various characters begins. After practicing that for about four to five years, the pupils follow the teacher to witness actual performances and are given minor parts to enact and thereby gaining practical experience.

The Instruments

The instruments are heavy and so the men who are playing them have to be strong and have a high stamina as they are holding them (standing) throughout the performance which is 3-4 hours long. They approximately practice for 15-20 years before becoming professionals and performing in shows.

The chenda weighs 9 kg and is held on one shoulder. It is made of cylindrical wood and both the ends are covered, usually in cowskin, and it is played with two wooden sticks. (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2010)

The Maddalan weighs 22 kg and is carried on the hip. It is made of solid wood and has leather straps across it which are as hard as metal and they are made by hand. On the musicians right hand they have a fingerpiece which is made of rice moulded together to the form of your thumb and the two sides of the Maddalan make two very different sounds.

The performance

In traditional style performances were conducted in the open specious compounnds of temples. However now-a-days a slightly raised platform is made with a roofing for it. The stage is called arangu. On the stage they only need a couple of stools and the curtain. A big lamp about four feet tall is filled with coconut oil and the stout wicks provided are lit, this is what provides lighting for the show. The main acting area is just behind the lamp, but when fighting scenes and similar events are enacted, the actors run about among the audience through the temple precinct.

The stage of Kathakali never changes it always stays the same! The right singer is the lead singer (ponani) and the left singer is the minor singer (sinkidi). “Kathakali music has developed into a distinctive type of singing known as the sopana style. There is neither raga nor any elaborations like niraval or swaral singing.” (Nair, 2007)

Bibliography

Courtney, D. a. (2011, 01 04). Kathakali. Retrieved from Chandrakantha: http://chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/nritya/kathakali.html

maddalam. (n.d.). Retrieved from keralavadyakala: http://keralavadyakala.com/index.php?id=29

Nair, C. (2007, 12 22). Kathakali, Indian Classical Dance. Retrieved from Indiannetzone: http://www.indianetzone.com/1/kathakali.htm

Phillip b Zarrilli, B. M. Theatre histories.

Venu, G. The language of Kathakali.

wikimeadia. (2010, 12 27). Kochi kathakali. Retrieved from wikimedia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kochi_Kathakali_4.JPG

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (2010, 11 04). Chenda. Retrieved from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenda

zarrilli, P. b. Kathakali dance-drama - where gods and demons come to play.