“The Theatre, in Plain Language” – an article from the WM call
By: Maija Karhunen
On the stage ten chairs have been set out in a semi-circle. On the back of each chair is the picture of a clef but the event that is about to start is not a day-time music club for people with intellectual disabilities but the work Disabled Theater directed by world-famous choreographer Jérôme Bel. The piece is performed by ten disabled actors from the Swiss theatre group Theater HORA. On the right-hand side of the stage there is a desk, behind which sits a kind of support person who has acted as an interpreter between Bel and the performers throughout the rehearsal process and also translates the speech of the actors in the performance from Swiss-German into English. The interpreter guides the progress of the performance by announcing the instructions given by Bel for each of the sections of the piece.
“First Jérôme Bel asked the actors to come onto the stage one by one and stand in front of the audience for one minute.”
Theatre is an art form in which an actor performs in front of an audience and the audience looks at them. Looking and being looked at is important in theatre. You can look at another person with curiosity, boredom, uncertainty or indifference, or patronisingly. Often we want the other person to look in a particular direction.
However, actors often pretend that they cannot see the audience. This is part of the illusion of theatre. It is what makes the audience believe that the performance is true. Nowadays directors may, however, decide that it is best for the performance if the actor looks back at the audience. In theatre the audience and the actors are often quite far away from each other. The audience are in the auditorium and the actors are on the stage. If an actor has eye contact with the audience, it may be easier for the audience to see what the performer is feeling or thinking.
When an actor performs, it is important that he or she has a strong presence. This means being in the here and now. When actors have presence are present they are relaxed and alert. An actor who is present speaks as if they are speaking in their own voice although they are really speaking lines. They find it easy to be natural, as if they were not on stage at all. This means they can easily stand on the stage without doing anything. They can look the audience straight in the eye and know how much time feels like a minute without looking at a clock.
“Next Jérôme Bel asked the actors to say their names, ages and occupations.”
So the job of an actor is to perform in front of an audience in the theatre. Some actors may perform on television or in films too. In the theatre actors speak, make gestures, move and sometimes also sing and dance. They often performing particular characters. They have to get under the skin of the characteristics and speech patterns of the character they are performing and identify with them. However, a number of acting techniques also emphasise actors drawing on their own lives, experiences and emotions in their work.
In the history of theatre the characteristics of the actor which were seen as ideal have varied over time. In the theatre of the ancient world, for example, the actors were always men. Generally actors need to be physically fit. The acting profession is also mentally demanding.
Most professional actors have had a long training in the field, often at drama school. Amateur actors are not paid for their performance and are not necessarily as virtuoso performers as professional actors. Virtuoso means skilled, expert. Professional actors have experience and this means they can be self-confident on stage. They know what they are doing and so they say their name, age and occupation (which is of course “actor”) at the right time as if it was routine. Or they improvise something completely different
“Next Jérôme asked the actors to say what disability they had.”
Having a learning disability means having difficulties understanding, learning and thinking. It is caused by an illness or defect acquired either before birth or in early life. This can affect language skills or the ability to look after yourself day to day or financially. People with learning disabilities also may have powerful emotions and find it hard to control them. Down Syndrome is one of the most common causes of learning disabilities. Down Syndrome is caused by the person with Down Syndrome having one extra chromosome.
Theatre often tackles social and political topics. The status of people with learning disabilities is a political issue which theatre can address, for example. Theatre can also seek to teach the audience something or to tell them about a subject they do not know about. Today there is also a lot of community theatre. This means that different people get to take part in creating theatre. People with learning disabilities can be a group that can create theatre, for example. Here actors with learning disabilities might tell the audience about their learning disability so that the audience learn more about it. Although they might have something else they would like to say about themselves as well. And the audience might be interested in something completely different. But still they repeat their lines and say that they are “mongols”. This might make them feel slightly anxious for a moment, but then they express that in an admirably free and genuine way until it is time to move on to the next scene.
“Then Jérôme Bel asked the actors to create a dance solo to music they chose themselves. From the ten solos he picked six to be performed.”
Dance is an art form in which people move their bodies. Dance performances usually have choreography decided in advance. Or a dance performance can be either partly or completely improvised. Improvisation means that people dance without any plan decided beforehand. Music and rhythm are strongly linked to dance but today some dance performances do not have music at all. Dance has rules. Different dances have to look a particular way for people to say that the dancers are good.
Another reason for dancing is wanting to express something that is important to you. This might be frustration or anger about something that is wrong. Dancing can also be fun. Often you don’t dance alone but want to dance with other people. Lots of people go out dancing. Some people find a partner that way. Then they can be in a relationship and have sex. Lots of people get married and have children and become a family. If this is not possible for some reason, at least you can dance. You can choose ABBA’s Dancing Queen for your music and dance mixing up clichéd kitsch disco moves with wild improvisation whose movements don’t seem to have any logic to them. You don’t care what the dance looks like, or that the audience’s cheers for this dance number might be a bit over-enthusiastic.
“Then Jérôme asked the actors what they thought of the performance.”
The theatre director gives instructions to the actors and others involved in creating the performance. The director is responsible for the performance as a work of art and makes the final decisions. In other words, the director uses their power. The director’s instructions may, however, be the kind of instructions that give the performers a lot of freedom. Then they can use their improvisation skills. On the other hand, professional actors are also prepared to receive instructions from the director and to follow them.
It is important to like what you do for your work. It might even be something special or super. But what you yourself think is often less important than what your family and friends think about the performance and about you being on a world tour. They might think the whole performance is a freak show. But the best performances are the ones that make people think the most. Or perhaps the issue isn’t important at all because the performance is only one moment that you live through and it is over soon.
“Finally Jérôme Bel decided to include the remaining four solos in the performance too.”
So the director makes the decisions about the performance. The director chooses the scenes and often which actors who will perform them and which ones won’t. The director wants the best and the most interesting scenes to be shown on the stage. Professional actors understand this and can cope with the disappointment and sometimes they are willing to give up their own ideas.
The scenes chosen for the performance are performed and then the performance ends. It is one of the customs of the theatre that the audience clap the performers. This performance gets wild, resounding applause and although the performers in the work are skilled and the performance makes people think a lot, a member of the audience who is very familiar with people with learning difficulties might not really understand why, and maybe in that fine indifference there is a state where you can avoid the need to take sides and where thinking can finally happen.