Trestle Theatre

“Good morning, welcome to seminar on Trestle theatre for Physical theatre, I hope you find it informative and fun”

TRESTLE THEATRE COMPANY HISTORY

Trestle theatre has been established since 1981

The company was established by three students: Sally Cook, Alan Riley and Toby Wilsher; they all met at university. Their tutor John Wright helped them to ‘start up’ but it was not until they were joined by Joff Chafer that they developed their distinct full mask/non-verbal plays, these plays sometimes incorporated puppets and music. By developing a unique selling point the company has been able to successfully tour for the last 20 years in Britain and internationally.

The company was nomadic, meaning they lived a traveller lifestyle until April 2002, when they managed to secure funding enabling them to move into Trestle Arts Base. The base is a £2Million refurbishment of 100 year old chapel hospital in St Albans Hertfordshire. This is in the East of England.

Trestle was one of the first touring theatre company to create their own home base. As such they have had to develop innovative ways of modelling the company identity and resources.

In 2004 the company realised they needed to adapt and change with the times. When the last founding member Toby Wilsher left and Emily Gray was appointed new Artistic Director: she focused the theatre in a “new-ish” direction. The pieces the company now make focus more on a physical storytelling theatre. Example during the 2011 Christmas period they ran their own adaptation of the Snow Queen, which they had collaborated on with and Indian theatre company called Little Jasmine.

In September 2011 due to lack of funding, the arts council slashed they budget; they were informed they would no longer be receiving their 260k. This meant the company could not tour and had to shut down many of the services they offered at the base/reducing opening days and times.

TRESTLE MASKS The masks are hand crafted at their base in St Albans, they then

get packaged and sent across the UK and world to be used in education, drama therapy/workshops and for personal use.

The masks come in three sets: Basic – Masks are used at beginner stages for an actor when your

just focusing on creating simple characters. They are distinct from the other masks in that they only portray one emotion; this helps the actor focus on gesture in the form of large movements.

Intermediate – Have more than one possible expression and they begin to start to look human. In workshop situations this level mask is normally used at the devising stage.

Adavanced- Masks are used for performances, this is because it is able to present a higher range of emotions when combined with the use of gesture from trained actors. The most notable changes are around the eyes and mouth. Performers with an advanced masked can either do a stand alone performance or they can do one accompanied with narration.

The different levels of masks can help an actor, especially ones with no experience of using masks because it makes you engage physically and mentally. And because the eye hole is so tiny you have to get in touch with your spatial awareness.

The company have also now introduced a half mask range, they have been producing the half faces for the past 5 years; they allow the actor to use their voice as well as their body.

Basic masks, one expression.

Intermediate Masks- Capable of more expression, more human eyes.

Far more emotional ranges available to the actor with these advanced masks; and they look more human in shape and colour.

The Half Face masks are all Archetypal characters.

Archetypal characters are characters that transcend time and culture; you will find these types of ‘characters’ in stories and plays throughout time and in every culture.

The Eight Archetypes:

The Crone, The Mother, The Child, The Romantic, The Trickster, The Hero, The Fool,The Devil.

TRESTLE INFLUENCE/TARGETS The company is hugely influential in the theatre/physical theatre world,

due to their initiative, spirit and willingness to adapt. But particularly the demographic whom they target.

They target schools; both students and teachers, offering to facilitate workshops and teacher training.

The workshops can be purely physical theatre, pure masks or a combination.

They hold international residences, they run story tent for pre-school children and their parents, during story tent the children get to create craft whilst being told magical stories in the comfort of their “mommy and daddies arms”.

They also run their own youth theatre for 5-18 year olds. This means their influence is far reaching and will continue to do so into the future.

Do’s and Don’ts of Mask work Never face the audience

when you are putting on your mask, if they see your face whilst you are doing this it spoils the illusion.

Never wear your mask on top of your head like a hat, also very damaging to the illusion.

Don’t fight the face of the mask, the body can conflict but the truth of the emotion should always be present.

Never speak in a full face mask.

Do exploreHave fun and go

with the flow...

PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES1. Making masks form their own faces- walking around the

room with a frozen expression at a heightened level, e.g extremely sad face. They then proceed to mingle around the room after a while (still with frozen faces).

2. A walk in another’s shoes- An activity I obtained from LeCoq’s book; a volunteer walks around the room whilst another volunteer watches them, B’s objective is to observe A and copy their walk exactly. The activity is repeated with all in the class. The point of the activity is to make them think about watching people but more importantly the responsibility taking on someone’s mannerisms ergo characters for actors.

3. Plunge- Explore being the character of the mask you have on, play with the props as they would, interact with others; play and generally just have fun.