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Molly 

Jones

Hello, my name is Molly Jones and In this section, I will be sharing with you my progress in my Actor and Object module. 

A brief introduction to the main influences in our work.

Throughout this module there have been many practitioners, books and websites that we have extensively researched into to create the final piece we have today. For instance we are doing our piece off of the brothers grimm adapted version of 'the golden key'. The version we have is in the book 'collected grimm tales' by Carol Ann Duffy and Tim Supple. We decided on this story as it sempt like the most challenging story to go with. We knew that it wouldn't be easy to recreate this story via objects, nonetheless we thought the challenge would be a chance for use to really push ourselves. 

The golden key synopsis:

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'Once in the wintertime when the snow was very deep, a poor boy had to go out and fetch wood on a sled. After he had gathered it together and loaded it, he did not want to go straight home, because he was so frozen, but instead to make a fire and warm himself a little first. So he scraped the snow away, and while he was thus clearing the ground he found a small golden key. Now he believed that where there was a key, there must also be a lock, so he dug in the ground and found a little iron chest. "If only the key fits!" he thought. "Certainly there are valuable things in the chest." He looked, but there was no keyhole. Finally he found one, but so small that it could scarcely be seen. He tried the key, and fortunately it fitted. Then he turned it once, and now we must wait until he has finished unlocking it and has opened the lid. Then we shall find out what kind of wonderful things there were in the little chest.'

Tadeusz Kantor

'Tadeusz Kantor (1915 Wielopole SkrzyÅ„skie – 1990 Kraków). An avant-garde artist, painter, draughtsman, art theoretician, stage designer and director, author of happenings, a prominent. 20th-century theatre reformer, one of the most renowned artists on the. Polish art scene.'

 

kantor is one of the main influences to our work. His use and understanding of the term 'bio-objects' have helped to inspire the work we have created. 

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'The Bio Object is something which Kantor developed in his work, it means that a person and object cannot be separated, there are two stages to this which vary in extremity, the first being that the actor must do anything necessary to make the object stay visible.'

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'The intention is to convince those watching that the thing contains breath, that it is inspired, that it is alive'

'there must be a very close, almost biological symbiosis between an actor and an object - they cannot be separated.' - Francis. P (2012)

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Challenges I faced:

During the module we had to face some serious challenges. Due to unpecideited times because of the Coronavirus our university had no choice but to stop face to face teachings. This made things very difficult for my group as we now have to do our assessments from home. This had all very inconveniently occurred just before we were supposed to have our second progress report. this then needed to be recorded and sent to our lecturers. 

In this progress recording I stated "One of my main challenges was that at the beginning of the module I felt very insecure about performing as I felt like I had no idea about the styles and the techniques I was supposed to used. This meant I felt quite embarrassed and that I looked very silly with what was being asked of me. How I overcame these fears; I remembered thinking back to my first year at the university I watched a performance of the students that were a year above me doing their actor and object performance. Watching them reminded me of how I can supposedly do this right and how I could potentially make my work look better. I used their work as inspiration for my own. After thinking of this I remembered we did a workshop a few weeks ago where we were asked to make the objects look as though they were controlling us. I felt as though I was really invested into this activity as I remember seeing the third years do this and how I could make this look realistic for myself. I really thought about how the object I was using was trying to push me around and make it look as though it was trying to strangle me.'

These are my progress drawings throughout the semester:

My interpretation of bio-objects and inanimate sounds:

In my demonstration of voice and bio-object exercises, I wanted to really connect with my object by making it look like it was really controlling me by gradually building up to making it violently control me. I wanted to build tension in my work. I really wanted to explore this by using sounds like, heavy breathing, nervous laughter, and screaming as I wanted to come across that I didn't want to be controlled. Towards the end of the video I made it look like I was running into the camera with the picture that I was holding of myself to, hopefully, add the element of surprise into my work as I was just playing with different physicalities. I also wanted to see if I could take my body to new extremes and take risks hence why I fell over. Reading into Kantor, it helped me with my piece as I looked at some of his manifestos for his performances and saw how abstract they were. This made me think that it would be possible to use this physically and try and get creative with my body and voice. On top of this Kantor was not a teacher of theatre, so when I was reading into his work it made me think, i'm not here to learn from him, i'm here to be inspired by his work. Overall , with performing this online I felt as though Kantor’s idea of liveness-deadness / liveness-pastness did change when performing online as I felt if I had a live audience in front of me I would have used my nerves to fuel me to do my best work.

My Object Of Choice 
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My Reflection

Our group decided to go with the idea of using pictures of ourselves as a way of telling a story. The story focusing on mystery and memory. The aim of this story is to portray a portrait of our younger selves is trying to control us into being someone who we don't want to be. Someone who we used to be but have grown out of. In addition we had Raquel use a mirror instead and have her story portray that she is questioning her identity as a whole. We decided this for Raquel as she speaks fluent Spanish which we agreed she could play around with and add to her piece. In her words 'selected it because it reflects very well the emptiness and stagnation of a person by forgetting.after much deliberation we decided that for those of us who are using pictures that we just use the frame as it takes away the aspect of mystery. The mystery behind these empty frames is to represent an empty memory and what exacty it might be this particualr person had forgotten. 

To reflect on my time throughout this module I would like to state that there have been many negatives and many positives. The module has made me laugh, cry and feel so many new emotions towards my education. Firstly I would like to thank my lecturers for the support they have offered me throughout these unprecedented times and for keeping calm throughout the whole process. 

During the time of face to face teachings I found that this module was going to challenge me in ways unimaginable. I knew from the very beginning that I was going to have to push myself to limits that I'd never even realised I could reach. 

When it came to reading and understanding what was expected of me in this module, I found that some of the readings I was tasked with didn't make sense. For instance, 'Things are granted a higher dramatic status. The personal actor has lost the thing in himself.' Francis. P (2012). this quote made no sense to me as I had no idea how to essentially be a puppeteer for an inanimate object with no physical human-like characteristics. Over time I eventually developed the understanding that I had to lose myself within the performance and stop myself from feeling self-conscious. I had to know that the only way to make an inanimate object with no physical human-like characteristics seem like that was the only actor on stage; I was the one that had to give it that persona. 'The intention is to convince those watching that the thing contains breath, that it is inspired, that it is alive.' Francis. P (2012). From this I had to understand that the thing in my hands was the actor that the audience was looking at, not me. 

Bibliography 

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Collected Grimm Tales- Adapted by Carol Ann Duffy and Dramatized by Tim Supple

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Berry, C. (1973) Voice and the Actor. London: Harrap.

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Francis, P. (2012) Puppetry: A Reader in Theatre Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Witts, N. (2010). Tadeusz Kantor. London: Routledge.

 

https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm200.html 

 

https://www.cricoteka.pl/pl/about_kantor/https://europeantheatre.wordpress.com/tadeusz-kantor-the-theatre-of-death/

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