TPPP Symbol

Symbol

Glass Sculpture by Christopher Ries

I chose my symbol for my growth to be this glass sculpture by artist Christopher Ries.

I chose this because of the effect that it has on light and the effect that light has on it (light being the world of theatre and the sculpture being me). This piece of art work is extremely beautiful but it wouldn't be so if it weren't for the light that passes through it and the effects that happen within the sculpture. The way the light reflect, refracts and splits into many colours changes as the positioning of the light and the sculpture changed. I feel like theatre has been the same way with me. It brings out the most in me. I find myself working the hardest when I'm doing something theatre related and that's what I find beautiful. Whenever I'm studying a new form of theatre it is reflect and refracted within me in a new way. When I'm being pushed or pushing myself into a new situation (whether it be taking on the main role in the IB play, taking part of the Butoh workshops or being left alone to come up with an idea for a performance all by myself) I find that I am pushed into doing new things, alter previous ideas that I had, having to accomodate other people and learning to work as a team, etc. In addition to theatre having all these effects on my internally and externally, I like to think that I'm also bringing something new to the world of theatre. Although, like the small amount of light that is shone outside of the sculpture, the amount that I have to offer to theatre is small, it is still something and that important because if there is one important thing that I have learnt during IBTA it is that theatre is collaboration. It is the merging of all the reflected and refracted lights of everybody involved.

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

http://jc-de-castelbajac.com/

- Take inspiration from Music and Poetry. Always listen to music and always read poetry - Poetry comes from the soul. You cannot buy poetry. Music reflects the rhythm of the heart.
- You should try remove walls between different things in the world.
- Live in creativity. Immerse yourself.
- Change everything for your own ideas. Be original
- "I am always split half/half between the past and the future. My father always liked the old fashion way and my mother was always looking to the future and to women's rights."
- Started off designing clothing for "fonction" (function: army, work, ect.)
- In history, the fashion and clothing reflected the people of the times
- Clothes always bring back the past
- There is no creativity without emotion
- To create there has to be a STORY
- Find creativity from yourself and tell your own stories
- Beauty or perfection is not creativity - "I don't like beauty or perfection."
- Weirdness/bizarenes/imperfection/accidents are creativity
- I made a jacket from the same material that my mother used to wash the floor and then I put silk inside of this tough material
- Use the cross to shape my clothing (shape of arms and legs)
- "You can never understand English people. I always wanted to be English."
- ACCIDENT - People are touched or impacted by something when they don't understand it. It makes people question
- Creativity is Accident - Creativity is not perfection
- You need to be courageous
- There is no randomness. You need to go for the randomness.
- Used animals as inspired - reincarnation
- "Over time, I faced a revolution. I had to change to keep up with the times and trends"
- Vivienne Westwood made shirts with chicken bones on them. She'd go to KFC buy cheap chicken, dry the bones and use them as art.
- Malcolm Mclaren was also a big inspiration - he created one of the sex pistol's covers
- "I am not alone. I want to work with other artists."
- Raymon Loewy was a huge inspiration. He created the shell logo, coca cola, exxon, bp logos and the moon rocket. He was an inspiration of Andy Warhol
- A fan of creativity
- It's important to take time to go and see art and MEET the people who create things. Become their fan.
- You have to be curious
- Asked to design the clothing for one of the charlie's angels in a magazine spread - empowerment for women. Sports clothes
- At one point, he used a sweater like a t-shirt (getting images and putting them onto sweater: e.g. snoopi, mickey, etc.)
- Trends and the times were heading into black and white whereas his fashion stayed in colour. It was difficult to keep up.
- Another inspiration was Kraftwerk
- "Hip-hop saved my life." - Jay-z helped promote his designs
- He did a line as a homage to pop-culture ( malcolm mclaren)
- Cartoons are important images because they are like ghosts. and empty frame for people to see themselves in. - Hello kitty is a total empty shell and that is why people love hello kitty so much. People can fit their personalities into these cartoon characters.
- Always thinking about how he could modernise old things e.g. modernise an old pair of shoes (colour them)
- You can take anything classic and change it and make it your own.
- "I would like you to be a gardener of friendship" - friendships are very important - Keith harring was a good friend to him. Before he died, his last artwork was dedicated to Castelbajac
- 2nd revolution - Teddy bears: we started to become a society of consuming. He used teddy bears to create fur coats
- It's important to realise that what makes you famous is not what sells
- What do you want to be your traces in the world? What do you want to be remembered by?
- If you just want to sell, you will not be leaving traces and will not be remembered in this world.
- Rainbow - link between God and the people

24 august 1992

After this date, I realised that I was just designing for egoiste (selfish) people but I realised I can use my fashion for something more important.

- Inspirations: UK flag, snoopi, check pattern, oversized jacket, skull'bone, robin hood, rock n roll

- Use lego as a material to create first creations

- The Obama dress was the only creation he received negative and threatening letters (most were from texas funnily enough)

- If we speak of someone who isn't around anymore, they are still alive because someone is speaking of them.

- First outfit in a runway show is what makes an impact

- opening, middle, finale - the show has to tell a STORY

- Creation without a concept is nothing

- created for daft punk, MIA, Gaga (telephone video and kermit jacket), Beyonce (telephone video)

- "I love creating for music"

- He is also an artist
- Crystalise - to make the beauty of something stand out. Paris is so beautiful that you don't see the beauty (e.g. you miss the beauty in individual things). He placed neon lights around a statue in paris to frame it and to make people see the beauty
- To SEE is different from to look
- Decorate student buildings with art because the buildings are always building. It's important for young people to be surrounded by art.
- I spend my life filling sketch books with art
- Everyone has problem and difficulties in life. Drawing was his therapy. His obsession.
- The more you draw the better you get (PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE)
- Therapy and creation
- He draws on the walls in cities he visits with chalk. He always has chalk with him everywhere he goes.
- He sometimes thinks "why am I not connected?" - You need to force yourself to understand WHY?
- There is no frontier between art and fashion
- AUTHENTICITY VS KARAOKE (COPYING)
- "Everyone is shopping (for ideas) on the internet instead of in the brain"
- Always keep authenticity
- Now is the perfect moment to be an artist/designer/etc.
- If you are an artist you have an insight into society and the MOVEMENT OF SOCIETY
- Fashion - tool for democracy. It has a social role
- Constantly inspired by charismatic people (eg: obama, michael jackson, etc.)
- Capture: "The weather of the soul of the age that we live in."

"Your duty if to do what you want to do and not what others want you to do."

Daniel Foley

http://www.daniel-foley.com/

Gary Card

http://garycardiology.blogspot.kr/

- Gary finds inspiration from removing himself from reality. He dives into his childhood imagination in order to find inspiration and ideas for his designs.
- When you're trying to think of ideas it's good to get away from the problem and then come back to it later so that your mind is refreshed.
- His ideas are very driven by the material that he has to work with and finds that it is important to really appreciate the materials that you are working with.
- As an artist, your work is gonna get rejected all the time. It's important to keep all of your work even when it is rejected because you may use it in future projects.
- Designers are problem solvers whereas artists are people who pursue their own ideas.

Tadashi Suzuki- King Lear

First thing's first. I need to start by saying I CANNOT BELIEVE WE WERE ABLE TO MEET TADASHI SUZUKI!!

Now to talk about the performance.

I took notes during the performance of things I noticed so I'm going to talk about each thing as I read through those notes.

The biggest thing I noticed I noticed about the production is that there was very movement. The play had a lot of stillness in it. When there was movement, it was very choreographed and quick(such as the exits). The timing between movements and scene transitions, EVERYTHING, was so incredibly precise. I also noticed that sometimes when character's weren't technically in the scene, they would be in the back of the stage with their backs facing the audience. This was very interesting to me. I was confused as to why they did this, but it certainly made me appreciate the pure discipline the performers have and the amount of training they must have received in order to be mentally and physically able to stay still for such a long time.

The play was both in Korean and Japanese. This was so incredibly interesting to watch. I found it hard to understand the Korean let along try to understand what was being said in Japanese but it was interesting to see how the actors managed the interactions between the character when constantly switching from language to language. In my opinion, the acting was very much focused on the voice and the language. Most of the time, the actors were facing directly to the audience when they spoke even if they would be speaking to other people on stage. Their voices were also very sharp and powerful (even the women). All this gave a sense of formality to the performance. The movements of the actors reminded me very much of the movement of the Japanese Bunraku puppets that I researched last year. They had a sense of robotiness whilst also maintaining the fluidity of human movement.

There were a few things that I noticed and symbolic but didn't quite understand. The father (King Lear?) was on stage for most of the time upstage centre in his wheelchair. He was alway still and was sometimes accompanied by a nurse who has been reading and would give a laugh from time to time during scenes. There must've some sort of significance of the nurse and the book that she was reading as the play ended with the image of the nurse being the only one on the stage, reading and gives of a cry.

Victor ou les enfants au pouvoir

Victor au les enfants au pouvoir was one of the stranger shows that I have seen. It reminded me a lot of The Odyssey that I watched last year in a way the the set was very unique, the performance style was very post modernistic and that I didn't understand what was going on most of the time. The show was written Roger Vitrac (a surrealist french playwright), directed by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and was performed by a french company called "Theatre de la ville". The play was created with a theatre of cruelty type of approach. There were many examples of theatre of cruelty apparent to me (although I am still trying to wrap my head around the whole concept of theatre of cruelty). There were many forms of violent in the play such as the use of power tools during the bedroom scene. The character of Victor is also a very violent person. He seems to be like he is trying to drown his friend at some point and also pulls out a gun.

The set was one of the elements of this production that I thought was absolutely incredible. It was constantly changing as the play progressed and it played a huge part in setting the tone for certain parts. The set comprised of three walls creating a small box in the centre of the stage. The walls reflected a red light and gave a sense of danger and isolation. Whenever victor was in the room, it helped the audience understand the size of victor and helped the audience understand the mental state of Victor. As the play went on, the walls parted and revealed the entire stage. The expanding size of the stage increased as the number of characters introduced to the story also increased. It created the feeling of as more and more people become incorporated in the story, the problems between them seem to expand and also become more and more complicated. The set also featured a pond type water feature at the front of the stage. The little pool reminded me of the sand pit that was featured in the Odyssey and when the daughter was found inside of the pool, it reminded me of Ophelia's death in Hamlet (connecting images and ideas!!woooo!!!). The set also evolved throughout the performance in the sence that it started by creating a sense of a "proper" family and household but as the story went on, there were certain features that were added to the set that gave the family a sense of gothicness and decomposition (the vine/root features from the ceiling and the chandeliers, open doors and mirror, ect.)

One of my favourite scenes was during the party where all the actors had a mask. Each mask had it's own personality but still had the element of neutral mask in it that gave a sense of similarity and blankness between all the masks/characters. The actors were constantly taking the masks off and putting them back on their foreheads, the back of their heads ect. The audience were able to see the masks at different angles and this also allowed to actors to do physical movements that would seem out of place if not for the audience's focus on the mask.

tbc.

BTB: Research on Victor ou les enfants au pouvoir

- Surrealism
- Roger Vitrac (author)
- Emmanual Demarcy-Mota (director)
- Theatre of the Absurd
- Heralded Eugène Ionesco - plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.
- Plot - Victor's ninth birthday
- victor is mature for his name
- family does not know about "normal"
- Family is Feydeau style - Wiki: Georges Feydeau (pronounced: [ʒɔʁʒ fɛ.do], 8 December 1862 – 5 June 1921) was a French playwright of the era known as the Belle Époque. He is remembered for his many lively farces. He wrote over sixty plays and was a forerunner of absurdist theatre.
- upper middle class family
- deception everywhere
- First produced by Artaud in 1928





http://www.theatredelaville-paris.com/spectacle-victoretlesenfantsaupouvoiremmanueldemarcymota-346
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Feydeau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Ionesco