Tihamér Bakó Phd – Attila Donáth:
Self-expressing Theatre Workshop
We have been the members of the Theatre of Improvisations of Budapest since 1992. The theatre where we represent the personal stories of the spectators improvising and with the conductor acting as a go-between. At the beginning we participated in this theatrical formation as actors, and later as conductors as well.
The Self-expressing Theatre Workshop is an experiment in which we wish to combine our psychotherapist identity with our artistic creative powers, where we try to unite the cathartic power of theatre and the common experience of the psychotherapeutic group keeping the joy of action, creativity, and spontaneity in childhood as well as in adulthood.
Philosophical background
During our childhood we have abilities that make us open, interested and curious. We participate in the world with active presence, searching eyes, amazement, and watch the things that happen around and to us with the desire of getting to know them. Children react not only with consciousness but with experience, their whole beings as well. Every child is – just like the archaic people of the ancient cultures – a spontaneous creating and reproductive artist .They draw, paint, build, form roles, play dramas, dance and compose tales.
In the course of growing up the general artistic demand and expressive skills gradually decrease and appear in our grown-up lives as a dried-out well. It is hard to believe that this ability, skill and capacity used to colour our lives as an abundant spring, they sink into oblivion and live on as a part of our memories. We regard it as the special, unrepeatable magic of our childhood that we loose while growing up.
But the disappearance of this ability is not inevitable as there are some who “survive” this “damaging” effect of growing-up and are able to use their fantasy actively and keep their creativity. To our approach these abilities of the childhood can be activated with proper practice, they can be preserved and live on. Through this it becomes not the privilege of artists, everybody who builds, uses and trains his / her creative talent with proper attention and care can be a part of it.
The Self-expressing Theatre Workshop helps with it when we play different roles in the course of our common work or as Grotovszki states “through these roles we get into the depth hidden behind our everyday masks and reach the intimate sphere of our personality. We overcome our obstacles; step out of our barriers to fulfill what is empty or insufficient in us in order to get realized. This is not a state or simply a condition but a progress, and an active searching through which the dark parts of us get light.”
The aim of the workshop
The Self-expressing Theatre Workshop is a playful stage, as described by Ferenc Mérei. In this psychological field the aim of the common work is to extend the autonomy and internal freedom of the members, support the sovereignty and through these try new means. These are means that shall enrich our internal and outer world. They activate our fantasy extend our repertoire of behavior, keep our creativity alive, make our spontaneous manifestations free.
The Self-expressing Theatre Workshop makes the effort to make self-expressing richer, improving the self-confidence and satisfied feeling of the participants. This is the background that helps directly or indirectly to solve the changing phases and the crises that come together with the events of life in a creative and self-building way.
The ancient forms of self-expression
When the ancient hunters danced in front of the animals, painted on the wall and imitated the killing of the big game or when the fishermen copied the sea or river fishing with body motions and with a sound that imitated splashing water; or when the tribes that had already known agriculture and animal keeping, greeted the spring that meant the beginning of pasturing and meadow works, they did not simply recall the primitive momentum of their everyday lives. Much more was hidden in their actions. They believed that this way they could influence the mysterious powers of the imagined invisible, fantastic figures that were responsible for the success of hunting, catch, good harvest, abundant progeny, the triumph over the neighbouring tribes. Ritual games expressed their pain caused by the perished hunters, drowned fishers, ploughmen that died because of the extremely hard agricultural work and the killed fighters. The mysterious natural forces embodied in ancient gods and the notions about souls that had gone from life were closely united. Ritual games involved them both. The ancient people believed that these games could influence the gods that were present everywhere, the good and bad ghosts around them as well as the souls of the dead people in the desired way.
The ancient people got involved in their own lives through these playful rituals. They possessed something they could use for influencing certain events. Their previous vulnerable existence could be influenced to a certain degree. They held ritual ceremonies, presenting their desire, happiness, sorrow and changes, future events as well as past actions. Rite was an important element of these ceremonies that were held according to a certain dramaturgy and took place mainly on the same holy place. These places were like totem centres where the myths of the totem ancestors were present so to say in themselves as well. Magic actions as well as mystical bewitching and finally a common ritual meal were the characteristics of these ceremonies. Through these ritual games the ancient people relieved their fears, tried and prep-played the future events. They made traditions, inherited knowledge and experienced the power of community.
Folk games
It was not only the primitive people who used the means of game, magic and other dramatic representations to gain the goodwill of gods, but people of later times too. The rich storehouse of representation can be observed particularly in the life of communities who experienced the closeness of nature and their vulnerability themselves, as agricultural workers and fruit growers. The cult of Dyonussos, the god of fertility could develop in Greece this way. According to mythology, he was the one who brought the first vine shoot returning home from afar, and he taught the Greek how to grow grapes and make wine. There were different forms of Dionussos celebrations in the ancient Greece. They held carnivals, processions, and dramatic games that symbolized fertility. These ceremonies were mainly part of autumn harvest, vintage, winemaking and the tasting of the first wine.
Hungarian folk games
Hungarian folk culture had its own dramatic representations that occurred during the changes of nature described above. Such as harvest, vintage feasts, Balázsjárás and carnival. Nativity play was one of the games that included the widest range of dramatic elements.
Das Stegreiftheater
(Nonscripted Theatre)
Through its development theatre left these ancient forms behind. Auditorium and stage as well as spectators and actors separated. The storyteller disappeared. The author of the play and the director who put it on stage replaced him. Actors did not have to improvise. They had to perform the roles that they had practised during the rehearsals. The direct connection between the storyteller and the actors was not there any more. Getting on stage, playing together, completing the scene with ideas remained the unfulfilled desire of the spectators.
Between 1921 and 1923 this connection was recreated in Maysedergasse 2 in Vienna, when Jacob Levy Moreno gave free scope for nonscripted theatre. Moreno knew the habit of archaic culture himself, as in his book called “Psychodrama”, he reports about a scene when a native gets horrified after an unexpected meeting with a big bird. The shaman, after having heard about the story from the members of the tribe, plays the events, setting the dramatic effect in the centre, accompanying it with sounds and music. Among the other members of the community the victim who saw and relived the things that had happened, experienced a catharsis and through this he was able to rid himself of the dread.
Personal stories came to life in Moreno’s home theatre too. The actors performed the script said here and now and “written” by the spectator. The topics stated by the conductor could be completed by anyone – even the spectators – by entering the play with a role and extending the action according to his / her motivations. Sometimes they read out newspaper articles that the actors represented with spontaneous play.
Moreno brought the chance of game, action, creativity and spontaneity back to the stage.
The birth of Play Back Theatre
Moreno left Vienna in 1926 and moved to the United States of America where he worked out the method of psychodrama. The Nonscripted Theatre was thrust into the background for a long time. One of Moreno’s students, Jonathan Fox was the one who called this theatre experiment into life from the mid-seventies on. He established the first Play back Theatre in New York in 1975. This genre has now become a popular theatrical formation and it is practised on every continent and in countless countries all over the world. Play back theatre is an original form of Improvisation Theatre in which spectators or the members of the group share their personal stories, dreams and other events of life with the audience and watch the performance created on the basis of these stories. The conductor plays an important role in this form of theatre who – after listening to the story of the storyteller – helps to choose the characters, and acts as an intermediary between spectators, actors and the storyteller. He keeps the rite of the performance in control with the following important tasks: he warms the spectators and actors up and takes care of the spectators, the storyteller, the story itself, the actors and the performance as well. His important role is to form the rhythm of the performance that shall fulfil itself in unit of beginning – catharsis – finish.
Improvisation Theatre of Budapest
The first Hungarian play back theatre has been acting under the leadership of György Ádám Kis since 1992 and I myself was also a founding member. Every member of the company is qualified in psychodrama. This might explain the particular way of expression that is said to be our characteristic - on the basis of the feedback we received after our international appearances. The essence of it is that through our play we often find the hidden expectations of the storytellers, and why they shared their stories with us. Our psychodramatist background may be the reason why we often succeed in forming the psychological surplus that leads to catharsis, mental purification even if the storyteller tells a story of a loser. A good example for this is the story of a sixty-year-old man who explained two hours of the revolution of 1956. He had two hours to save his and his parents’ life. As he had been the sportsman of Honvéd (Soldier) Sports Club before the revolution, the counter-revolutionists wanted to take him away to execute him for being the protégé of the previous system of government. He had two hours to convince the people who broke into his house with weapon, that the communists persecuted his family and his father was in their prison as well.
He was crying during the whole performance. He relived the story that he hadn’t talked about before. He could experience the moral amends that though he was afraid, he managed to stand up for himself and his parents without self-abasement. This was something he couldn’t experience there in those two hours.
Self-expressing Theatre Workshop
The Self-expressing Theatre Workshop is a small group that wishes to combine the means of expression of the theatre with the group dynamic necessities. The leader of the workshop agrees with the members to help them acquire the basic theatrical means of expression, the spontaneous-creative forming of the roles. They do it in order to widen the self-expressing repertoire and resources of the members so that they could find their creative power and use the joyful experience of being playful and participate in life with new solutions and creativity.
The theatre workshop gives the power of common experience back to us. A common rite arises between spectators, the conductor, actors and musicians. Spontaneous topics taken from life get to “stage”, so that they could create a psychological field. The events, stories of life no longer appear as a selected experience banishing us from our lives, but become an integral part of our existence. While we are watching a critical experience, forming it on stage, our means of expression gets wider and that helps us react to a critical situation in a creative and spontaneous way.
Through the collectively created theatre experience – as worded by Peter Brook – we get over our own experiences of life. They let us undergo an experience that takes us behind our everyday life.
Frames
The group is usually controlled by one (or two) leader and consists of about sixteen to twenty people. We agree with each other on holding forty to a hundred and twenty lessons. Taking part in the workshop does not require previous theatre qualification or stage experience.
The periods of the workshop
The workshop has three main periods.
First period
This period is the time for welding together, the basic experience of safety and getting tuned to each other. We meet the method, the leader and each other. We acquire the basic self-expressing theatre techniques, experience the means that will be detailed later as well as get to know the expressing methods used on stage.
Second period
Working phase. According to the focus of the group we work out the stories with play back technique. The unity of storyteller-actor-spectator-musician takes shape during this period. The storyteller explains a private story to the conductor. The members of the group represent this story as actors, with musical accompaniment. The story can be a probable future event, a past action, a dream etc. It can be represented in several versions in accordance with the character of the story.
In case of a future event we perform the story in four or five different versions, including the fear, anxiety and desire that come together with the expectation.
Third period
This period can end as a usual finishing event in the life of the group when we think the past events over, give feedback to each other and say good-bye to each other with a closing sentence. This happens seldom. We usually end the common work with a theatre performance. We can direct this performance for ourselves or for invited guests who are mainly relatives and friends.
As its ritual power is much more effective, the groups usually choose this closing. Feeling the magic of stage, being an actor, playing in front of others usually means a cathartic experience that crowns the work of the self-expressing workshop. This has a great effect on them and they learn how to integrate what they experienced and are able to use them freely.
The two forms of the workshop
Future in focus
In this approach the expected events of life are in the centre of our activity. We may often experience that getting ready for a future event we have feelings that make us uneasy and afraid. These expectations often influence us unfavourably, stop our mind and spoil our creativity. This way we experience the event as a predestined lost one, which will result in the certain “slide effect” when we feel that our fate is getting to change in an unfavourable way.
The workshop that brings the future events in focus is trying to prevent this. After having explained a story about a future event, the storyteller shares his / her fears, anxiety, doubts as well as the desired experience with the conductor. The actors chosen for the story (with the accompaniment of a musician) perform the explained story. For example a thirteen-year-old boy told us that he had to go to his grandfather’s funeral to a small village and he was full of fears. He is afraid that he might burst out laughing or start to cry and won’t be able to stop it. He is afraid of the dead grandfather; at the same time he would like to say goodbye to him in a decent way, as he knows that this would be an important moment of their connection.
We played this series of events in four versions one after the other. Seeing these future fantasies on stage released the feeling that he felt for his grandfather. Through this he got closer to his own feelings and could participate in the final farewell according to this.