On the 20th of February 2020 I went to see a production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number at The bridge Theatre. This was so that I could see a piece by Caryl Churchill be performed life, to give me a scenes of what this would look like and more specifically to get a sense of what the acting might be like in one of her plays. Although the play was quite clearly postmodernist this was more in the story and staging rather than being reflected in the acting. The play is a sci-fi about cloning which quite obviously makes for a non naturalistic plot. The scenes also are non-linear,  in naturalism the performance takes place in one place following a story which takes place within just a few hours. However, in A Number the story frequently jumps time and place. In this production they used what seemed to be a turntable to change the setting from scene to scene. This was interesting although again created a non naturalistic style. The two characters however conversed with each other quite naturalistically. Showing emotion and connection with each other, unlike what my research into postmodernist style acting was.

Forced Entertainment are a British theatre company who are based in Sheffield. Their work is heavily postmodernist and abstract. I have watched many clips of their performances and read about their work on their website: https://www.forcedentertainment.com/about/

• Their performances explore the contemporary world.
• Their performances take on many different forms including site-specific and interactive formats, for which an actor in this company would need to be able to adapt their performance style.
• This means that the formations of their performances are not restricted to the sole use of proscenium arch which has become the most dominant layout for storytelling in the theatre.
• Their work can create ‘confusion, silence, questions and laughter” all of which is attributable to the postmodernist theatre style.
• A lot of their work comes from improvisation.
• A clip from Forced Entertainment’s The Notebook (2014) https://youtu.be/q_7cPLXzklA
• The stage in minimalist and almost empty of any setting bar two chairs, this goes against naturalism and will act to prevent naturalistic acting. In terms of acting, in this piece the performers speak in third person. They are quite clearly talking about themselves, but instead of acting out the story they act as the narrators speaking from the notebooks they hold. This dismisses naturalism and is more abstract in style of acting.

I have been looking at how performers act in performances by The Wooster group to get an idea of what postmodernist performance can look like.  I have watched this clip of The Wooster groups 2012 production of Hamlet. 

https://youtu.be/_10u984AvzE

• Elements of the meta-theatrical, the man who speaks at the beginning is supposedly speaking as himself, the actor, about what this performance of Hamlet is trying to achieve. He is playing an actor, playing a character.
• The performance uses videos projected on the back wall.
• The actors imitate exactly what happens on the screen in this video of Hamlet.
• The audio of the video plays and the actors on stage speak the same dialogue over the top of the voices from the video.
• The performance by the actors on stage is somewhat lifeless and robotic.
• The performance is lacking in emotion and becomes something of a mechanical procedure.
• This all works to eliminate the chance of a believable performance, which demolishes any sense of naturalism in the acting style.

• In the book From Acting to performance: Essays in Modernism and postmodernism, Chapter 4 Task and Vision Phillip Auslander says about The Wooster Group “Their style of performing, which at once evokes and critiques conventional acting could be described as performance “about” acting.”
• This is a factor in making The Wooster group a postmodernist theatre company.
• Caryl Churchill can also be seen to be making a critique of conventional theatre.
• The status quo scene of Hearts Desire is naturalistic.
• The glitches introduced in this come to represent the postmodernist ‘critic’ of naturalism as the performative norm.
• Our performance should hold the same postmodern values.
• As such my performance should represent this too.

Auslander, P. (1997) From Acting to Performance : Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism. London: Routledge. Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,athens&db=nlebk&AN=70814&site=eds-live (Accessed: 11 April 2020)

For production project two I would like to take on the role of a performer. Being an actor is my main speciality in theatre production and is what I feel most passionate about, for this reason I would be able to give it my best work both in terms of researching performance requirements and for this style of performance. Caryl Churchill’s style of writing is addressing many topics to do with the political and social climate, you could describe the plays she writes as naturalist with a post-modernist twist. In Blue Heart, Hearts Desire,  the main scene is set up as the characters wait in a living room type space as they wait for the impending arrival of Susy, this is naturalist in the sense that it is set in one room and plays out in real time. However, Caryl Churchill introduces this post-modernist twist quite early on in the play which causes destruction to this naturalism. The scene constantly runs into odd scenarios, such as someone entering and shooting everyone and even a large bird.  This is then reset to the top several times and to other various points within the scene. This style of play could cause a lot of trouble for the actor, as the constant repetition within the same scene can cause a lot of confusion. For me as a performer, acting in a production that follows a similar structure would be a challenge, it is unlike anything I have done before and this would help me to develop new skills and experience. Resetting to certain parts within the scene would mean I would have to have a great awareness of everything happening within every moment of the play. I will need to know exactly where I am on stage and what I am doing at every moment and at every line I speak.  To develop these skills, I will need to do some research into what this kind of performance looks like. I have been to see A Number, another play written by Caryl Churchill, so I have a rough idea what the acting in tales in performing in one of her plays. The acting style can come across as quite naturalistic, but obviously the storyline in which we perform is rather post-modernist. I will need to look into past performances of Blue Heart and other Caryl Churchill style plays to give myself an understanding of what such a performance looks like and how I should go about developing my own performance.