Practitioner - Berkoff.
History and background.
Born Leslie Steven berks to a Romanian Jewish family on 3rd August 1937. He was trained as an actor, writer and director at Webber Douglas academy in London, whom he later worked for.
In 1968, he formed the London Theatre Group where he proceeded to gain fame and momentum as predominately a director. He focused on non-naturalistic theatre. He mainly wrote and performed theatre in the 70s and 80s which were a period of huge cultural shift and social change so lots of his plays explore these ideas.
Characteristics and techniques.
- Massively over exaggerated mime - particularly with physical skills, Berkoff beloved in extreme exaggeration. Every action is played massive, a Berkoffian character would never just shrug; they would throw their hands up and scrunch their face into a picture of confusion and misunderstanding.
- Mixture of chorus-like poetic language - in many of his plays there are a set of characters who represent the chorus. They tell the story through poetic language and exaggerated movement. They often also talk about how the main characters feel and express what the main characters can't directly say.
- Political themes- lots of Berkoff's work or work inspired by him is political because it can be so easily linked in with epic theatre. As Brecht hammered home, political theatre should not be believable.
- Stylised movement - often slow motion and robotic but can be energetic when needed. Performed by an ensemble usually.
- Masks- in some of Berkoff's work, in order for the audience to truly focus in on the mime and physical actions of a character, they wear a mask which hides their face - in order to dehumanise them while keeping character clear.
- Monologues, tableaux and direct asides - Berkoff uses lots of non-naturalistic acting techniques and lots of audience address.
Practicalities.
Lighting.
The lighting used by Berkoff is incredibly simple. It usually involves a single light that white-washes the stage and illuminates everything. Exceptions to this are if lighting is used to illuminate the cyclorama (a common set part in Berkoff theatre) and when a character or mood needs to be highlighted. For this strobe lights or different coloured spotlights are used but for the most part it is simple minimalistic lighting.
Sound.
Berkoff is the master of non-diegetic sound - his plays are full of original scores and strange sounds that play over the action. These are usually used to set the mood or introduce a character. This sound is often hypnotic and warped and although there is no actual dancing, lots of characters perform actions in time to this music. This is particularly obvious in East Production's metamorphosis.
Set.
Berkoff uses very minimalistic set in his plays - usually involving just one stationary prop. This is often something like a sofa or table and is placed centre stage. As there are no other props or parts of set, the other areas of the set are produced by lighting and sound changes. The central prop also plays a key role in the choregraphed actions of the characters (not dancing!) - even in scenes that don't directly involve the central piece of set, actors can still interact with it, by jumping over it for example.
Total Theatre.
Total theatre was created by Steven Berkoff. It aims to have maximum involvement from all aspects of theatre so it uses:
Dance - there may be scenes or characters that are portrayed though dance.
Song - although it is not strictly a musical, parts of the story in total theatre can be told through song.
Slide Projection - rather than have a permanent backdrop, total theatre often uses a projected series of slides that may change over the course of the play.
Links to Metamorphosis.
In 1969, Steven Berkoff (see blog page on Berkoff) rewrote Kafka's Metamorphosis as a play. Berkoff wrote the play because he felt strongly connected to the character of Gregor and he was moved by the nausea of Kafkaesque nightmares. In the text, he combines the ideas of total theatre with Kafkaesque nightmares.
- Kafka and Berkoff were alike: both came from a lower-class Jewish family and had difficult relationships with their fathers. They both felt connected to the character of Gregor and so when Berkoff wrote his play, he keeps the story from Gregor's point of view.
Inspirations.
- Greek theatre - Berkoff drew on the overly exaggerated physical storytelling off the ancient greek chorus in many of his works. Characters often use a mixture of poetic language and dialogue although it is often vulgar and crude, like in Bouncers remix which is inspired by Berkoff's works.
- Kabuki theatre - Berkoff also took inspiration from the Japanese Kabuki style theatre. The central pillar of Kubuki is jo-ha-kyo. Jo is a slow predictable beginning in which the characters and basic plot is introduced. Ha is the quickening of events in the middle of the play, usually leading to a tragic moment in Berkoff's case. Finally, Kyo is a short and satisfying conclusion usually involving characters moving on quickly from tragedy.
- Barrault - Jean Louis Barrault was a french stage mime actor. Berkoff really liked the idea of mime and exaggerated movement, which Barrault specialised in. Barrault's work on stylised movement then became a core pillar of Berkovian theatre.
- Japanese Noh - derived from the Japanese word meaning skill, Noh theatre focuses on dance. Berkoff took massive inspiration from the chorus-style dance routines coupled with the use of masks.
- Artuad - Anton Artuad was very famous for being strange. He used elaborate props, magic tricks, special lighting, primitive gestures and articulations couples with heavy dark themes to give a rug-pull style shock. When Berkoff was producing total theatre, he took lots of inspiration from Artuad's strange lighting and non-diegetic sound.
- Brecht - Bertolt Brecht was the father of political theatre (see the blog page on Brecht) and his use of gest as a way of instantly conveying character stood out to Berkoff who subsequently used it in his works.
Jacques Lecoq.
Steven Berkoff took the most inspiration for his works from Jacques Lecoq - a french stage mime actor. Jacques Lecoq's techniques that Berkoff used include:
The neutral mask - When miming, Lecoq made the neutral mask. The idea is that by wearing the mask, the audience can gain absolutely no information on the emotion or thoughts of the character. The neutral mask is the base-layer that the exaggerated movement and mine is layered over the top of. It also represents the idea that a Lecoq style actor is unaware of their own performance as the mask has no previous knowledge of how the world works.
The progressive masks - Once Lecoq's student had mastered the neutral masks, they were encouraged to work with larval masks, expressive masks, the commedia masks and half masks. Finally, students were introduced to the smallest mask: the red clown nose. The idea of the character masks was to enhance the total feeling of the mime but the philosophy behind them remains the same as the neutral mask - the actor is not purposefully miming.
Seven levels of tension - Lecoq believed that all mimed characters have one of seven levels of tension. By changing how tense a character is, the actor can convey lots of emotion and internal thoughts without the use of dialogue. fro example a relaxed mime would involve the level 2 'Californian' whereas a stressed mime would be a level 7 - running around like crazy.
Le Jeu - meaning 'playfullness' in his native french, Lecoq liked improvisation and Le Jeu was his idea that comedy is funniest not when it is scripted and carefully planned but when the actor spontaneously did 'playful' things.
Complicité - meaning 'togetherness', complicité is the idea that the ensemble works together to create a central emotion. Berkoff drew on this coupled with ancient Greek chorus in his ensemble pieces.