GECKO (Ryen Perkins-Gangnes)
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| Ryen Perkins-Gangnes |
18|08|19
Prior to coming into the last few weeks of Gecko training, I
had very little contact with the company or its works. In fact, the only work
of theirs I had seen in full had been Time
of Your Life, and that was really as a result of it being so accessible and
well-made for digital viewing. I had also viewed videos of Amit speaking to the
company’s philosophy and aims, but that is still a poor substitute for actually
seeing the resulting work. Basically, I knew they were highly physical, seemed
to have a penchant for mid 1900s costuming, and used a whole lot of breath.
The first encounter I had with Gecko’s use of breath would
actually have to be the audition material provided via online video. Amit explained
a whole lot about the material’s context and how we could approach the small amount
of choreography – however (as far as I remember), he did not speak of the use
of breath in the routine. This then left me in a small predicament, as Amit
seemed to be exhaling all throughout the choreography and I of course did not
want to miss out any details in this audition. My girlfriend watched one run rehearsal
run through of the material and promptly told me the breath made me look silly.
Honestly, it probably did. How was Amit able to make it work so well, then?
There was a moment in working with Ryen that he stated
something along the lines of “let the breath move you”. I instantly had flashbacks
to sweaty yoga sessions at Power Living in Perth, and the overly peppy
instructor telling us something similar. It really does work though; with yoga,
and with Gecko’s work. That small shift in manner of letting the breath be the
instigator of - or at the heart of – movement makes such a significant
difference not only externally, but internally. The movements begin to feel more
natural and full.
This use of breath is definitely a challenge at first – even
remembering to breath deeply is still a conscious effort some days. If I’m
going to relate it to theories of learning (which hey, may as well) then it is useful
to align this process with the Four Stages of Competence:
1)
Unconscious incompetence. This would be not even
realising the use of breath in movement was a thing. Or, at least I didn’t see
the value in it or need to learn. The switch to the next step would be seeing
the use of the breath in Gecko’s movement, and how effective it can be in
conveying a sense of mass.
2)
Conscious incompetence. Knowing of the thing,
knowing the thing is useful, but still not knowing how to do the thing at all.
This would be in my efforts to inject breath into the audition material. Lots
of mistakes. Frustrating times.
3)
Conscious incompetence. This is me, today. I
understand the skill, I can do it to a certain extent – and boy when it works,
it works – but I’m often still needing to switch into that mode to do it.
4)
Unconscious competence. Second nature. Don’t even
need to think about it. This is Ryen. Observing how he uses breath is like day
and night in comparison to us. It’s a quality that can’t necessarily be described,
but felt.
Ironically, in my undergraduate degree when rehearsing movement,
it was brought to my attention that I would unconsciously make small exhales
and sounds. It’s not uncommon, but I became self-conscious of it, and it slowly
left me.
Another challenge of the movement is the notion of being moved as opposed to moving
yourself. Again, it’s not so much a matter of the physical action itself, as it
is the quality in which you perform
it. This quality can be infinitely altered, with descriptors of ‘honey’ or ‘smoke’
on so on and so forth. This is a technique
I’ve explored before with my undergraduate mentor, whom with we spent many
classes switching between metaphorical descriptors to see how they impacted our
movement quality (think “crumpled alfoil”, or “soggy leaves”). Not only that,
but the “seaweed” exercise is one for one an exercise I have explored before.
Naturally, they have their differences, but it’s seeming more and more that so
many disciplines overlap and share methodologies.
One such difference is that of allowing emotion into the
exercise. This is straight up something that I think I would need months years
to become adept at. Not only does emotion have a tough enough time making room
for itself in my own work, when we’re trying to allow it to come through simply
based on our movement and breath; that’s tough. I think there would only be a
single moment that an emotion came naturally, but I am so glad I had that experience,
to use as a reference point moving forward.
As soon as things begin to become too emotional too fast, I disconnect. A prime example of this is when engaging in the latter stages of the clapping warmup exercise. The circle splits, the clap is darting around, and we are encouraged to allow emotion to find its way into the picture. Often though, this emotion feels disingenuous and unrelatable, so whenever I am passed the clap I try to not over extend the emotions I feel. Maybe I need to run headfirst into these moments more?
As soon as things begin to become too emotional too fast, I disconnect. A prime example of this is when engaging in the latter stages of the clapping warmup exercise. The circle splits, the clap is darting around, and we are encouraged to allow emotion to find its way into the picture. Often though, this emotion feels disingenuous and unrelatable, so whenever I am passed the clap I try to not over extend the emotions I feel. Maybe I need to run headfirst into these moments more?
On this note, observing the small works we created and
performed on Saturday afternoon in the open class was remarkably clarifying with
regards to the ‘epic’ style that Gecko encourages. There were so many beautiful images and vignettes created,
but there were a few that really had those high
stakes that Ryen kept reminding us of. As soon as the stakes went away,
even if every other element was present,
it didn’t feel like Gecko, it just felt like a nicely put together moment.
There’s no neat way to package these experiences into a
pretty little box with a bow, so I won’t. Working with Ryen was great, and I
really look forward to exploring Gecko again down the line. If anything, these 3
weeks have really reinforced the idea of qualities
of movement over the actual physical shapes and gestures themselves, which I
feel may be a popular notion with many of our guest artists. It’s also going to
take me a week to stop moving with breath.
17|08|19
EPIC EPIC EPIC
adjective. heroic or grand in scale or character.
adjective. heroic or grand in scale or character.
Although Ryen has been touting this word for days now, it
only took us until Friday afternoon to actually research a definition – and although
close in nature to what a lot of us had imagined, it was still quite helpful to
lock it down.
The tough part about this epic quality, is that it can’t just be a layer of style on top of a work. Instead, it has to be in the veins of the material, pulsating through every moment. The mistake here can be made in thinking that every moment therefore has to be loud or fast or wildly expressive. Herein lies the difficulty: making something pulsate with a quality of epic-ness while doing very little.
The tough part about this epic quality, is that it can’t just be a layer of style on top of a work. Instead, it has to be in the veins of the material, pulsating through every moment. The mistake here can be made in thinking that every moment therefore has to be loud or fast or wildly expressive. Herein lies the difficulty: making something pulsate with a quality of epic-ness while doing very little.
It could then be the next logical step to find a psychological in, that raises the stakes
and therefore the performance. This in some ways may work – I’ve certainly
found it easier in the devising process to access some sort of psychological
investment along with the physical and the breath. Often this takes the form of
more well-known text-acting building blocks: character, relationship, and
objective. In fact, this ‘objective’ has been quite helpful in keeping the work
flowing, as a way of making sure you’re ‘doing’ and not ‘being’. If you watch
Gecko’s works, it seems like everybody on stage is ‘doing’. Maybe this is a
psychological objective, maybe it’s more primal, but the it’s hard to find any
moments where someone seems like they’re just ‘being’.
Now that I’ve written this all down, it really does just
seem obvious in regards to a lot of fundamental actor training. Who would’ve
thought.
16|08|19
I have been thinking a lot about the experience of devising in a group
without a leader. The last few days have – at least for myself – really picked
up in energy. I’ve reflected on this, and I think it might boil down to a few
things:
1)
MORE VERTICAL THINKING – I know I said in my
last entry that this is a personal flaw I should ideally be improving, but boy
does it feel good to be charging towards a target. By this I mean that we have
more or less locked down the form of our 10 minutes, and now it’s about
creatively improving the work and our performances. Maybe it’s not related to
so much vertical/lateral thinking dichotomies as it is to having some sort of base to work off.
2)
Similar to the idea of ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’
(also please note I am not trying to use these in the academic sense that I know
we’re delving into in contextual studies, I’m likely way off) we’ve been working with scenes where we move towards
something a little more. The momentum keeps rolling, and although there’s
disagreements on what we go to next, there’s a consensus that there now should be a next
3)
CREATIVE FRICTION – I really do love it. Not
arguing, or personal attack, but the friction that comes when everyone actually
gives enough of a shit to want the best for the work, even if it’s different to
someone else. Anne Bogart talks to this idea in her A Director Prepares as far as I remember.
4)
I finally found my personal in. There was a
moment in rehearsal when no one was performing, but Markus began moving around
the space with a hand-cranked fan, playing the game of keeping a floating piece
of plastic in the air. At the same time, I coincidentally played a track consisting
of the slow accumulation of fly sounds. For a moment in time, I saw myself as a
kid in Biloela, Central Queensland, beating off boredom and a torrent of
blowflies – the emotion caught on, and even though this exact moment may not
realise in the final piece, it allowed me to invest in what we were doing. Then
it felt like the rest began to flow.
15|08|19
There’s something quite holistic regarding the body when you
allow your breath to be involved in in physical action – suddenly the entire
body seems to move as one, even if a single limb is the one doing the majority
of the motion. This holistic approach seems to also manifest in the way that
the single limb in motion affects the rest of the body – this one body can then
affect other bodies and so on and so forth. This initial hit of breath has a
ripple-like quality within the space, which upon re-observing Ryen’s movement,
as well as Gecko’s recordings, seems quite integral to their devising and
performance style.
Although the first 2 weeks of the Gecko classes based
themselves in skill training (connection, breath quality, commitment, epic
emotion etc.), the last few days have taken a turn into the devising of material.
The process is following (albeit at a breakneck pace) the rough stages that
Gecko employs: Stimulus, Research, Seed idea, Play, Rehearsal, leading to a
first performance. With the stimulus being ‘migration’, and the research
heavily involving our own personal family stories, it has been difficult as my
family (as far back as I know) do not have any real significant tales of
migration – however, it was comforting when we were able to expand and allow
these stories to sit at the back of our heads, rather than dictating our
material.
14|08|19
This place that we sit in now; making images, and sequences,
and loose content – this is the place that I enjoy. Whenever I make my works,
this is where I spend a lot of my time, even beginning in this mode. Whereas
Gecko seems to find a stimulus in the human condition, I find a lot of my works
begin with an image, that I then find the human condition in. A little topsy
turvy, but it seems to work for me so far.
Another challenging aspect of the Gecko process is the deep
lateral thinking involved. In many aspects of my life beyond even creative arts,
I often find a target and creatively try to reach it. Thinking laterally does
not come easily to me. In fact, writing this blog entry is agony for my mind – writing
laterally and reflectively grinds against my habitual style, which is to find a
point and run at it. Maybe this is good for me and my practice. I guess I’ll be
able to look back in 2 years and find out.
13|08|19
In my second year of theatre-making at WAAPA (The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) I devised a solo work titled All There Is. Following this, my physical theatre mentor, Samantha Chester, told me quite explicitly to “try and work with Gecko.”
I had never heard of the company at that point, but I promptly
googled, facebook-ed, and youtube-d their entire online presence. Although, as
I was still studying, I more or less filed them away as something to look into
after I graduated.
Fast forward to graduation, I’m scrolling through Facebook, and lo and behold: a post from Gecko regarding this new course in Estonia…
Fast forward to graduation, I’m scrolling through Facebook, and lo and behold: a post from Gecko regarding this new course in Estonia…
Fast forward again
(and one 5 day trip to Seoul, Korea, later) and I’m training with Ryen
Perkins-Gangnes from Gecko, and a group of likeminded theatre-makers, in
Tallinn of all places.
I promise I’ll start actually speaking towards the work we’ve
been engaging with next entry, but I think deep down I just wanted to begin
this blog with a bit of gratitude for how remarkable it is to be here, working
creatively with a group of wildly talented makers, and such a wonderful company
like Gecko – all because a mentor threw their name into a wide-eyed 2nd
year drama student’s head.
19|08|19
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19|08|19
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- The use of breath in relation to movement
- Allowing breath to move you
- Un-precious breath together
- The use of breath in relation to emotion
- Voice coming from breath
- ‘Epic’ style
- Groundedness
- Connection
- Eyes out
- Rhythm
- Clap exercise
- Supporting the key performer
- Seaweed exercise
- Qualities of movement (honey, water, smoke)
- Reacting to external impulses, without injecting your own
- Devising:
- Stimulus
- Research
- Seed
- Create
- Edit
- Perform
- Refine
- No “director”
- Energy
- High stakes
- Supportive music
- Leading and following
- Object transference