Candidate Marks ReportSeries : M16 2016This candidate's script has been assessed using On-Screen Marking. The marks are thereforenot shown on the script itself, but are summarised in the table below.

Centre No : 000307 Assessment Code : THEATRE HLSOLO THEATREPIECE inENGLISH

Candidate No : Component Code : SP(ENG)TZ0Candidate Name :

In the table below ‘Total Mark’ records the mark scored by this candidate.‘Max Mark’ records the Maximum Mark available for the question.

Examiner: 029020

Paper: M16thtreHSPE0XXXX

Paper Total: 25 / 32

Question Total Mark / Max MarkCriterion A 4 / 8Criterion B 7 / 8Criterion C 8 / 8Criterion D 6 / 8

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Coursework confirmation Yes

Word count 2963

I SEEN I

IB Theatre Higher Level Solo Presentation

Candidate Number: 000307 0031

Word Count: 2963

Monday April 4th 2016

Session: May 2016

Austin Gallagher

I SEEN I

Table of Contents:

The theorist, the theory and the context 3

Practical explorations and development of the solo theatre piece 4

Analysis and evaluation of the solo theatre piece 9

Appendices 11

The theorist, the theory and the context

Michael Chekhov: Realism in the early 1900s

Michael Chekhov's style of Realism has long been an interesting style of theatre in my mind.

Over the last century realism has become the default when thinking of acting and theatre,

and while we studied the early works of Stanislavsky, he only began a system many argue

was perfected by his best pupil; Chekhov.

In 1911 Chekhov began his tutelage under Stanislavsky at the First Studio of the Moscow

Art Theatre, later becoming the director of the Second Moscow Art Theatre at Stanislavsky's

invitation. It was here that Chekhov developed his own style of psychophysical acting, until

he was forced to leave Russia in 1928, being labelled "alien and reactionary" by the Soviet

government. After seven years in Europe, Chekhov moved to the United States and by 1938

had set up his own theatre in Ridgefield, Connectic~t)owever, when the 1942 draft caused

"The Chekhov Theatre Players" to be disbanded, Cl'lim<hov moved to Hollywood, became an

acting coach to 'The Drama Society," acted in many plays, and most importantly formalised

his method in his book, "To the Actor." Chekhov died in 1955, before his contribution to the

world of theatre was widely known (Michael Chekhov Association).

I chose to focus specifically on the way gesture is used in Chekhov's theatre. As it is

"psychophysical" in style, this implies that half of what Chekhov intends is mental (and

therefore cannot be shown as an aspect in the solo presentation) and the other half is the

physical movements and gesture the actor shows.

As actors and actresses, we must rejoice in the possession of our physical faculties. We

must experience joy in the use of our hands, arms, body etc. Without this appreciation and

realization of the body and its many possibilities, we cannot perform as artists

- Michael Chekhov

rResearch and quotes need to be cited I

This quote will be at the forefront of my mind throughout this entire process as I push

forward with my exploration of gesture in the scene. Chekhov highlights how different parts

of the body can be, and must be, used to gesture. The Threefold Body will be important in

my rehearsals and during all of my practical explorations I will need to think about the

relationship Chekhov outlines between different psychological and emotional qualities and

the three portions of the body (the head, the chest and arms, the legs and feet).

~ (This intention is a bit unclear.

My intended impact is to give the audience a feeling of release followed by a tonal shift to

resignation. I believe through gesture I can show the idea of pent up aggression and anger

in Ken as a character, finally being released before Ken becomes understandably

emotionally and physically tired of Rothko. The feeling and meaning of the monologue

changes as the piece goes on, and the way gesture is used throughout will change

accordingly.

Practical explorations and development of the solo theatre piece

While the large majority of the text (John Logan's Red) is unaltered from the original in my

solo version, some liberties had to be taken with the play in order to do the extract with only

one actor present on stage. As I attempted to keep much of the text consistent, there are

some pauses which naturally occur that I later use as a gap to include gestures relating to

stage elements.

I decided on this text as I thought it was a great showcase for gesture based purely on its

tone. Ken is exasperated and his explosion of anger includes moments where he openly

mocks Rothko, all of which lend themselves to exaggerating the gestures while still

remaining realistic. Chekhov's style is realistic, but I believe that to showcase the way that

Chekhov explores gesture I required a piece that lent itself to something that would feel

natural being more ext~e. This meant I spent a long time exploring Psychological Gesture

and my character's Main Desire (objective in Stanislavsky realism) to connect the gestures

with my piece. Overall the piece uses Mark Rothko's life as a basis to ask what exactly it

means to be an artist, and the existentialist nature of the question what is art; something I

kept in mind when designing my stage.

My first step was to read the play in its entirety and decide how Ken is feeling during this

monologue. He's exhausted mentally by Rothko, starting with mocking, raving before moving

towards anger and finally resignation. It was important for me to understand these

differences and represent them in the tone of both my physical and psychological gestures.

Psychological gesture in Chekhov Realism is the idea that gesture can communicate the

psychology of a character in a single moment. This moment was hard to isolate and I spent

a long time looking at djferent lines and the gestures attached to them, attempting to figure

out one particular m¥ent which really expressed Ken as a whole. After showing my

different ideas to my peer mentor I realised that this may not be possible. We discussed that

Ken goes through a variety of moods in just this short time, ~u~one of it truly expresses him

as a whole. I decided to use Chekhov's exercise of leading ¥estions. In this exercise you

ask yourself the most obvious questions about your character and their desires.

Who is your character?

A painter's apprentice who feels underappreciated.

Why is he here?

He is an artist, but is forced to be in this studio as Rothko is his employer. He does not feel

passionate about what he is doing.

What does he desire?

To convince his stubborn master to change his view on modern art.

Once I had established Ken's Main Desire, I read the text again looking for ways I could

physically embody Ken's attempts to convince Rothko, while also changing my physicality to

represent Rothko onstage. Next I explored the way Chekhov uses rhythm through some

different exercises removed from the text. I began with the difference between staccato and

legato movements by taking a sweater off and putting~ck on, noticing the difference

between the two. I then performed the monologue and kept in mind the way the gestures

naturally occurred, what was fluid or restricted and how that changed the delivery. Each time

Ken mocked Rothko I naturally transferred to staccato, whereas before my movements were

predominantly legato elsewhere. I was using gesture to separate myself as an actor playing

Ken, and Ken pretending to be Rothko. As Chekhov says, it is important for the actor and

their body to exist in complete harmony, and therefore, if I am to be vocally mocking another,

it is clear that I should physically mock them also.

However not all gestures came about easi,Aor example, I spent a long time debating the

line, "Consider: the last gasp of a dying race ... Futility" with a small hand gesture, a simple

but exaggerated gasp, or the eventual movement in my piece. Meanwhile some were

obvious, such as praying or the literal gesture to stage left during their respective lines.

However, the most important moments of gesture came about after a process of first

establishing a psychological

gesture and then deciding which

portion of the threefold body

would best represent it

physically. Chekhov highlights

that our will to commit an action

is often evident in the way we

move towards it, with our legs

and feet being key in

communicating a character's

capacity to take an action. This

moment was an important

exploration. When I first rehearse~s. it was still a moment of high energy as Ken would

passionately tell Rothko he "would not recognise a real human being if he were standing

right in front of him," but as I continued I realised this was more likely a moment of

resignation and then apathy towards Rothko. This heavily changed the moment from one of

intense upper body gesture followed by storming out of the scene to what can be seen in the

final performance. I drop my arms and chest, which have been animated and large for the

duration of the piece, and shuffle back before becoming more committed to my exit offstage.

This was to heighten the difference between Ken's exasperation and his resignation.

The chest and arms were used to bring the audience into the character's own mind, whose

focus has become internal in this moment, no longer wildly gesticulating outwards but

instead becoming reserved in his resignation with Rothk~e exit began with a short

shuffle backwards before becoming more committed to leaving as my character transfers

from resignation to apathy. I showed that Ken originally crumbled under the pressure of

Rothko's glare, before proceeding to a decision to leave the studio.

~ It was at this point I decided to implement my stage and costume design. Inspired by

Rothko's own abstract expressionism, I attempted to place the stage design within that

world. The audience was seeing the world as Rothko would, and thus each element had

symbolism behind it. Rothko believes himself to be standout in a world of art that has

otherwise become bland, shown here by the red stool on which he would work and the white

tarp that covers the stage space that traps Ken. His failure to produce work is shown by the

black canvas, and his intrigue into Ken's thoughts on art the red that is painted during the

performance (mirrored by the red paint splotches on the black shirt worn in the piece,

covered by a white shirt).

Each of these elements, while symbolic, also played into developing gesture during my

piece.

White Tarp:

Limited stage space, ensuring the focus was on the gestures and not the overall movement

of the character. Used predominantly in the final scene to add audience ~ct to the exit

after spending the entire piece pacing around the tarp. Additionally used when I practiced

the piece to mentally prepare myself into the world of the stage, as suggested by Chekhov.

Each rehearsal I performed an exercise in crossing the threshold as outlined by Chamberlain

in his book on Chekhov. I mentally put away all issues or extraneous thoughts unrelated to

the project at hand as I physically stepped onto the tarp, placing them into a mental box to

be opened after the rehearsal (and eventually the performance). Chekhov sees this as a way

to separate the troubles or the life of the actor from that of the character, and I found it

helpful to separate the stress of other subjects from this project and further engross myself in

the character of Ken.

Red Stool:

The piece begins as I am sitting on the stool , in a moment where the symbolic

representation of Rothko and Ken take up the same stage space, before the monologue

reveals the vast differences between master and apprentice. The next time a physical

gesture involves the stool is when I touCJ#il/f as Ken has a tonal shift, beginning to understand

Rothko despite not agreeing with him. This shift is accompanied by a drastic change in

levels, something deliberately put in this moment to isolate it as a turning point, as much of

the text is delivered at one level.

Black canvas and paint: .,/

This element was suggested after feedback from my peer mentor. Originally I had mixed

paint together to symbolise that "black swallows red", however they felt that this might not

work. First, it could be difficult to see for certain members of the audience, and second, lifting

and pouring paint cans on stage would have to be done carefully resulting in less freedom

with the gesture. I wanted each and every gesture to feel like it was natural, and pouring one

can of paint into another was symbolic but unnatural to do during a rant such as this. I then

began to explore ideas of quick and aggressive movements as opposed to pouring the paint

and decided I could apply red paint to an entirely black canvas in order to show the same

idea. When I first explored this idea I did so with definite edges, but once again my peer

mentor and I felt that this did not properly show either Ken's psychological state of chaos as

he bounces from one idea to the next nor the idea of the red being "swallowed" as was

intended. Thus the gesture of applying the paint was done in a more aggressive and

haphazard manner to communicate both ideas. S udent often refers to theory with no source attribution

Each of these elements helped me to develop one of what Chekhov refers to as the Four

Brothers and more specifically the Feeling of whole/entirety. I performed the piece multiple

times and each time my peer mentor and I discussed what worked and what felt out of place.

Each time we eliminated something that felt out of place we tried to replace it with another

movement or gesture which better fit with the piece as a whole, giving it a feeling of entirety.

One of these things that I notably eliminated late in the process was the original starting line

of, "So said the cubist, the second before you stomped him to death." I felt like this never

quite felt right, and instead in my final rehearsal decided to cut it, starting with a much

stronger line that had an associated ge~. The next exploration that I took was how the

set changed the nature of my gesture. I found that once I had developed pieces of the set I

realised that I needed something for the functional use of preventing paint from covering the

stage, and also something to heighten my use of gesture over my use of movement. The set

therefore helped me expand the movements that came predominately from my chest and

arms.

As I use expansive gestures throughout the piece I was attempting to use the skill of flying;

each of my movements "flies away from us [me] and continues indefinitely" (Chamberlain).

Ken as a character is no longer in control of his verbal facilities and I wanted to represent

that with movements that did not look to be hugely planne.cl.}loments of flying were used as

Ken rants and raves at Rothko, but I found this did not exMi"y work as Ken mocks and

impersonates Rothko. I then practiced certain activities of molding, flowing and radiating to

experiment with the differences. I found that alongside the staccato movements that

occurred naturally during these lines, molding felt as if it fit the moment more than flowing.

The movements did not lend themselves to continually transferring from one to the other, as

the abrupt motions showcased Ken's anger towards Rothko.

Analysis and evaluation of the solo theatre piece

Following the performance I believed I excelled in some areas and but could ha_v~one

more to make the central idea and message clearer. For example, I believe tha~y set and

lighting design was very well done, especially the way each portion of the set related directly

to a gesture with specific intent. These set elements helped to convey the mood of my

monologue, that of the release of pent up aggression and anger, just as effectively as the

text and gesture did. This greatly assisted in my Feeling of the whole/entirety as well as

crossing the threshold, making my rehearsal process much more effective once the set and

costume had been decided on.

Ken's character is quite easy to read, with the will evident in my legs, the gesture from my

upper body keep the rhythm and fly from myself. Ken is a clear character and despite this

being an altered monologue from the ending of a play, I believe I communicated the change

that occurs in his character during this scene. Ken is clearly at his wit's end and this is a

release for him.

However I do believe there are a few iss~ with my piece. During the moments when I am

attempting to mock Rothko I could differentiate the way the gestures are performed to more

clearly heighten the difference between master and apprentice. A stubborn person who is

stuck in their ways and unyielding is likely to be physically similar in the way they carry

themselves and use their upper body to indicate things. Meanwhile, someone who is losing

control, exploding with a release of stress and anger would be more random in their

movements, with larger gestures without an easily recognisable beginning or end. During the

rehearsal process I was hesitant to experiment and exp_Jjre these movements as much as I

could have, as I was concerned that if they were sep~ed too heavily from one another the

element of realism would be lost. This turned out to be an issue with the final performance

as when watching it I believe that the speed, form, and kinds of gesture that occur during

those moments are too similar to that of Ken throughout the piece, which was not intended.

Another issue I noticed when reflecting ~n my performance was that while the tarp helped

me to develop the gestures I used early on, in my final performance I restricted myself to an

unnecessary point. I use a small portion of the area of stage I had already restricted,

retreading the same ground when I could have use the edges and symbolically and literally

pushed the boundaries of the space. My intended mood was in part breaking free, and

release. I could have progressively moved further and further off the tarp and brought the

light up around it, heightening this feeling of being released. Then as I moved into the mood

of resignation I would soften the lights as I exited.

Despite these issues I believe the meaning behind the text to have been communicated and

represented. Exploring this through Michael Chekhov's style of realism has allowed me to

take an aspect of theatre that I have not consciously addressed in my prior performances,

raising my physical awareness onstage.

I SEEN I Appendices

Appendix One: Adapted monologue text from page 35-37 of John Logan's Red

"Tragic, really, to grow superfluous in your own lifetime" ... Right? ... "The child must banish the father. Respect him, but kill him" ... Isn't that what you said? ... You guys went after the Cubists and Surrealists and, boy, did you love it. And now your time has come and you don't want to go. Well, exit stage left, Rothko. Because Pop Art has banished Abstract Expressionism ... I only pray to God they have more generosity of spirit than you do, and allow you some dignity as you go. (He glances around at the painting) Consider: the last gasp of a dying race . . . Futility. (Beat.) Don't worry; you can always sign menus for money.

(Beat.) Do you know where I live? (Beat.) Do you know where I live in the city? (Beat.) Uptown? Downtown? Brooklyn? (Beat.) (Each following question builds on the next until KEN explodes) You know if I'm married? Dating? Queer? Anything? (Beat. Slow.) Two years I've been working here. Eight hours a day, five days a week and you know nothing about me. You ever once asked me to dinner? Maybe come to your house?

You know I'm a painter, don't you? My work, you say it (mocking) "bores you" (beat.) (Explodes.) Bores. you. Bores you?!- Christ almighty, trying working for you for a living!- The talking-talking-talking-Jesus-Christ-won't-he-ever-shut-up titanic self-absorption of the man! You stand there trying to look so deep when you're nothing but a solipsistic bully with your grandiose self-importance and lectures and arias and let's-look-at-the-fucking-canvas-for-another-few-weeks-let's-not-fucking-paint-let's-just-look. And the pretension! Jesus Christ, the pretension! I can't imagine any other painter in the history of art ever tried so hard to be SIGNIFICANT! (Ken roams angrily.) You know, not everything has to be so goddamn IMPORTANT all the time! Not every painting has to rip your guts out and expose your soul! Not everyone wants art that actually HURTS! Sometimes you just want a fucking still life or landscape or soup can or comic book! Which you might learn if you ever actually left your goddamn hermetically sealed submarine here with all the windows closed and no natural light- BECAUSE NATURAL LIGHT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!

(Rothko lights a cigarette. He continues to stare at Ken.) But then nothing is ever good enough for you! Not even the people who buy your pictures! Museums are nothing but mausoleums, galleries are run by pimps and swindlers, and art collectors are nothing but shallow social-climbers. So who is good enough to own your art?! Anyone?! (He stops, slows, realizing.) Or maybe the real question is: Who's good enough to even see your art? ... Is it just possible no one is worthy to look at your paintings? ... That's it, isn't it? ... We have all been "weighed in the balance and have been found wanting." (He approaches Rothko.) You say you spend your life in search of real "human beings," people who can look at your pictures with compassion. But in your heart you no longer believe those people exist ... So you lose faith ... So you lose hope ... So black swallows red. (Beat. Ken is standing right before Rothko.) My friend, I don't think you'd recognize a real human being if he were standing right in front of you. (Pause. Rothko's stern and uncompromising Old-Testament glare makes Ken uneasy. Ken's resolve starts to crumble. He moves away.) Never mind

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I SEEN I Bibliography

"About Michael Chekhov." Michael Chekhov Association. MICRA, n.d. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.

Chamberlain, Franc. Michael Chekhov. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.

Chekhov, Michael. To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting. New York: Harper & Brothers,

1953. Print.

Dalton, Lisa. "The Psychological Gesture." The Psychological Gesture. NMCA, Inc., n.d. Web.

6 Mar. 2016.

Logan, John. Red. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2011. Print.

Michael Chekhov Association. "About Michael Chekhov." Michael Chekhov Association. N.p.,

n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 20 16.

Petit, Lenard. The Michael Chekhov Handbook: For the Actor. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon:

Routledge, 2010. Print.

"Welcome to Michael Chekhov Acting Studio New York City." Welcome Page. Michael

Chekhov Acting Studio New York, n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

"Who Is Michael Chekhov?" Michael Chekhov Introduction . National Michael Chekhov

Association, n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.