Speaking of Cruelty...

A few classes ago, we covered the basics of what a Theater of Cruelty performance is by doing a few warm-ups on the orgasmic scream and the improvisation of disturbing, horror-like scenes without dialogue that derive from children lullabies. Now that we are working together in a group as the entire class – I’m not really sure yet how I feel about working with such a big group of different, sometimes clashing personalities. We have a lot of people who have interesting visions as directors but are not willing to compromise on their ideas – that can get frustrating at times. For example, we have decided on the following roles:

Master of Light – Talah, mid 30s

Dr. Christopher Foster – Chris, 50s

Mrs. Agatha Foster – Alia, 40s

Lolly – Rema, early teens

Polly – Mariyah, early teens

Music/Strobelight Coordinator – Abdul

The plot revolves around Chris and Alia, a psychotic couple that wishes to join together Polly and Lolly as their first child, while Talah guides the audience throughout the plot with a flashlight and provides as comic relief. From the start, I was hesitant about this idea: there seemed to be a lot more dialogue than there should be for a Theater of Cruelty performance, it wasn’t cruel to the performers and was barely cruel for the audience because of the lack of confrontational techniques, and there was definitely a lack of equality between the splitting of roles between actors. So when this idea arose, I started to bring up my concerns but certain individuals either ignored me or slammed my concerns down as not valid. I think this is one flaw with me when working with others collaboratively: to me, it is very important to respect the ideas of others and to compromise my own wishes for this purpose. But it has only been after this brainstorming process that I have realized that our class has too many resilient directors, and I need to voice my concerns even more that I usually do in order to be heard. I am a stubborn director as well, but in contrast to the others, I keep a lot of my ideas to myself so that others have a chance to be included. Although I was quite unsatisfied with the idea, Chris, Alia, Talah, and Rema were very excited about it so I decided it was worth giving it a try.

Rema and Talah decided to have the inverse of a stage-in-the-round for the seating of our audience: I loved their idea immensely. It was new and fresh, while it placed the audience right in front of the action. Furthermore, the forcible moving of members in the audience from one of the four sides to the next was perfect for the decided theme for our production: helplessness. Many of the characters in our piece are helpless such as Talah, Rema, and I, and it is important to make the audience feel this way too in order to communicate this cruel message.

Abdul and I were assigned to do the costumes and props – I was quite irritated that we were being pressured to decide on these extra ideas when our group hadn’t yet come up with a thorough plot, T.E.A.M., or intention/impact. But it is important to compromise when working in a group, so Abdul and I gave it our best shot to brainstorm.

COMPROMISE. That’s all it felt like today in our brainstorming session. So now the real question I have yet t figure out is, how much compromise is too much? I hope a few more theater classes help me figure the answer out.