Steven Berkoff – East (practical workshop)

Steven Berkoff – East Has been described as: exciting, controversial, thrilling, egocentric, eclectic, dynamic and difficult

Total Theatre  The aim of Total Theatre is to create extreme moods to give the audience an overwhelming experience and to shock, amuse, scare, or amaze them.

Read your booklets...  In East he frequently uses strong sexual imagery. He says "I could not render sex as an everyday encounter but needed to treat it with comic humour and exaggeration so that it would never resemble the enforced nudity and simulated sex of the naturalistic stage. I had an aversion to the idea of real talk, real nudity, real crudity, since this could embarrass the audience." Thus he describes somebody as having "Balls like the great cannon that Pompey used to subdue the Barbarian", and has the actors performing grotesque overstated phallic mimes.

Watch extract of East  Written and directed by Steven Berkoff  Use postmodern elements to analyse the extract.  Make notes and contribute to class discussion.

Physicality "There is nothing on this earth that a performer cannot suggest using his body. The actor’s body is a powerful and even dangerous instrument."

Read your booklet (p18)  By asking the actors to create sounds, Berkoff breaks with traditional mime convention.  Like many of Lecoq's students, Berkoff freely bastardises the pure form of mime to create an individualised style: the Berkovian.  Lecoq encourages this practice, believing "it is important to be open and not to copy the style of someone else because you will never be as good as he is. Each is better in his own style".

Group mime task  Group 1: refer to scene 5 (pg 16) and create a cinema  improvise with reactions to different genres of film and the relationships between characters.  Aim to use the whole body as well as "overstated facial expressions that are entirely mask-like".  Group 2: refer to scene 8 (pg 21) and create the seaside amusements scene  Use the stage directions, including this direction: The scene should be improvised and the mime accurate and clear.

Group task – devising  Inspired by scene 2 (pg 12), devise an original scene that contains a variety of characters and culminates in some sort of conflict.  Perform the scene with the same staccato, jerky motion of an old movie like in East, and remember to use repetitive actions that create texture.  Use sounds and noises to heighten the tension and atmosphere.

Final thought  Video clip – How far can an artist go? 7:00 – 10:00 minutes Berkoff - Provocation: How far can an artist go?  Does Berkoff talk about anything which resonates with your understanding of Postmodernism?