Theatre director Nadia Foskolou talks about the original actor training technique on the occasion of the publication of her translation of
The Viewpoints Book (Athens: Patakis Publishers, 2020)
“When directing a piece, start with the assumption that you can create an entirely new universe on stage: a Play-World. Rather than take for granted that the reality of the play will be the same as our everyday reality, work with an attitude that anything in this Play-World can be invented from scratch.” (The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition)
For example, the characters may always enter stage right and always exit stage left, or they may hold their cigarettes the way people were holding them in imperial Russia, or they may… stay at least six feet apart, no matter what!
In the classic for actor/director training Viewpoints Book, writers Anne Bogart & Tina Landau have included the chapter “Viewpoints in Unexpected Places.” There, students of the renowned technique enthusiastically describe how they started recognizing Viewpoints’ elements in surprising aspects of everyday life –from serving drinks in a jam-packed bar to baseball to Animal Planet.
I think that, until we were hit by the pandemic and therefore forced to grasp (?) the notion of social distancing, I had never before observed such an extensive and conscious application of one of the Nine Physical Viewpoints in everyday life: that of Spatial Relationship, i.e. where the actor stands or moves in relation to other actors…
Viewpoints is a philosophy translated into a technique dealing with the fundamental notions every performer has to face: space and time. The technique is used in actor training, ensemble building and in generating movement for the stage.
Although Viewpoints is taught around the world and has been igniting the imagination of numerous choreographers, actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs and writers for decades, its theory and practice had rarely been documented until 2005, when Bogart & Landau created a practical step-by-step guide to the use of Viewpoints as a training and rehearsal technique. But through the practical exercises, the Viewpoints Book also distills the philosophy from which the method springs. The innovative directors and teachers clearly “warn” us from the very first pages: “These ideas are timeless. We have simply articulated a set of names for things that already exist, things that we do naturally and have always done.”
In describing their own first introduction to Viewpoints, the writers mention that they felt that “the world had been named.” It was precisely this feeling I had the rare luck to experience myself, when I first came into Viewpoints through a revelatory theatrical –but also broadly artistic- immersion, while auditioning for the Columbia MFA Directing Program in 2005 (from which I graduated in 2008).
The Greek translation which I have the honor to sign (Athens: Patakis Publishers, 2020) is the result of the vital need to share the invaluable experience (I trained for three years with Bogart) but also of the duty to disseminate it as far as possible, while, at the same time, inviting my colleagues –practitioners and theoreticians alike- to a dialogue around the question of how we practice our art. As a big part of this past year was dedicated to the struggle around whether we can and/or should “make theatre” (the art where you normally sweat while rolling on the floor with your fellow players –a nightmarish image in light of COVID) via Zoom, the opportunity for that dialogue appears now even more pressing.
The additional circumstance of Mary Overlie’s (1946-2020) passing on June 5th provides even more material for contemplation. A choreographer, a dancer and a teacher at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Experimental Theater Wing, Overlie invented the original Six Viewpoints in order to structure dance improvisation. Later on, her close collaborator Anne Bogart expanded the Six Viewpoints and applied them to the world of theatre.
The “simplicity” of Overlie’s approach is a refreshing starting point for further dialogue:
“The seed of the entire work of The Six Viewpoints is found in the simple act of standing in space. From this perspective the artist is invited to read and be educated by the lexicon of daily experience. The information of space, the experience of time, the familiarity of shapes, the qualities and rules of kinetics in movement, the ways of logic, how stories are formed, the states of being and emotional exchanges that constitute the process of communication between living creatures.” (Overlie)
This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on December 17, 2020.
It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com on December 29, 2020.
Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 17 Δεκεμβρίου 2020.
Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com στις 29 Δεκεμβρίου 2020.
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