The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg

 ANDREW BUCKLAND | MINOR TO MAJOR AND BACK AGAIN: THE PHYSICAL ENSEMBLE

“The greatest actors in the world are the chorus workers. It is the ability to hold, to support, to provide the activity and to invisibilise themselves when necessary.” – Andrew Buckland

A steady rhythm plays out while a collective body of performers activates the space. They are fast and frenetic, and they navigate the stage as a chorus, the sum of many moving parts. Later, the lead actor steps onto the stage and takes her mark in the midst of it all – the sound and movement of the chorus. Nothing further is required. She only stands and stares, managing to hold the audience’s full attention. This, we come to learn, is the power of the ensemble.

From 14 to 16 July 2022, the South African playwright, performer, theatre director, mime, and educator Andrew Buckland was invited to lead the second in a series of workshops focussed on movement and the body on stage. Hosted by SO | The Academy for the Less Good Idea, Minor to major and back again: The Physical Ensemble was held at The Centre for the Less Good Idea and saw 12 Johannesburg-based performers being led through the workshop by Buckland.

Over the course of the three-day workshop, participants explored the idea of the performer within the ensemble by engaging, through play, the phenomenon of the physical narrative and the theatrical chorus, focussing on the capacity of the actor to transform instantly from ‘invisible’ chorus member to core storyteller, and back again, in order to best serve the narrative or the theatrical moment.

The workshop culminated in The Open Moment, a public showing of the workshop’s process and progress, and a unique opportunity for audiences to witness Buckland’s approach and methodology.

CREDITS:

Employing a dynamic and exciting combination of visual comedy, sophisticated political satire, clowning, physical theatre, mime and an explosive performance style, the works of Andrew Buckland have become synonymous with provocative, entertaining and stimulating theatre both in South Africa and internationally. A principal feature of the style of Buckland’s work, besides its comedy, is its economy of production and a unique attitude to the relation between word and gesture. Buckland has a long history as a performance educator. He played a key role in the Drama Department of the University Currently Known as Rhodes between 1992 and 2017 when he retired and was named Associate Professor Emeritus.

The participants of Minor to Major and Back Again: The Physical Ensemble were Thabo Rapoo, Smangaliso Ngwenya, Phuti Chokwe, Philangezwi Nxumalo, Paballo Phiri, Obett Motaung, Soyiso Ndaba, Mlindeli Zondi, Kaldi Makutike, Campbell Meas, Buhle Mazibuko and Nwabisa Mbambo.

Athena Mazarakis is the Momenteur for the SO Academy

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

WAYS OF THINKING

“I believe that we are herd animals. We are able to know, instinctively, where everyone is around us and what we need to do. It’s about finding that instinct again.” – Andrew Buckland

How does the ensemble support the individual performer? And what are the ways in which the individual can leave the central role, without detracting from the activity or the narrative of the stage, to become a member of the chorus once more?

For the South African playwright, performer, theatre director, mime, and educator Andrew Buckland, being able to move from minor to major (and back again) in the physical ensemble is a vital part of being on stage.

Familiarisation, communication and negotiation

A collective chant begins the first day of the workshops. It is an exercise in familiarisation and repetition, neatly wrapped up in a game of rhythm and harmonisation. Later, a series of games centred around response – making and breaking eye contact, meeting and greeting – helps participants to better locate themselves in relation to the space and to each other.

These exercises, many of which Buckland has been leading for years, all work towards the central aim of helping the individual performer to better understand and develop their role, place and intention within the broader ensemble. There is also the process of negotiation that occurs between performers.

“Every action that a character has is full of intention, decision, motivation or fear,” explains Buckland. “So it’s about developing problems for the character: What am I saying? What do I want to achieve? What are the obstacles in my way?”

In all of these questions, there emerges a series of negotiations between performers, between minor and major, ensemble and main character. Often, it’s the slippages and miscommunications that arise through these negotiations that lead to the most productive moments.

Exploring minor and major in miniature

Many of the exercises in the workshop made use of pairings in order to explore the dynamic of the minor and the major through small-scale and short-form works. Participants were placed into groups of two and made to engage in a series of exercises such as following a partner’s hand around the stage or leading a “blind” partner across the stage.

In addition to building trust, communication and empathy amongst the participants, these exercises served as rich generators of performative energy and material – the act of steering a sightless partner away from a potential collision at the last moment, for example.  

A central outcome of these pairings was the exploration of minor and major in miniature through short, sharp choreographic moments. In these short-form performances, restricted to the length of a segment of music, the participants performed the routine of a morning ritual: waking up, showering, making coffee, getting dressed, eating breakfast.

In each case, there is a major who plays the central character, accompanied by a minor who plays the supporting character and who facilitates the activity and intention of the main character, sometimes even introducing obstacles and complications – a cupboard door that keeps sticking, or an alarm clock that refuses to be silenced.

This simple and instructional exercise, explains Buckland, comes from the classical French tradition of Miming. “It comes out of the mime work I used to do with Gary Gordon. Initially it was just about making story and character in mime, but by doing such an exercise in pairs, you realise that you’ve got a major and a minor, and it really can illustrate so clearly how that role shifts. In moving from being a cupboard or a basin as minor, how do I shift and disappear, then reappear somewhere else, for example?”

Ultimately, this exercise not only served as one of the most instructional exercises of the workshop, but was a generator of material to be shown on stage as part of the workshop’s Open Moment.  

Fostering intimacy

While intimacy is a vital part of the relationship between fellow performers, and between performer and audience, it’s also a fragile quality that can’t be manufactured. The task, says Buckland, is to unmask as much as possible. The actor needs to disappear to such an extent that only the essence of the scene – what exists between the characters – is apparent. “In order for the actor to disappear, that vulnerability and that openness needs to be there,” he says.  

An exercise taken directly from his work in the Michael Lessac-directed play Truth in Translation – a work created in response to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission – Buckland separated participants into groups of three and set them the task of interpreting each other’s stories. “It’s taking someone else’s story, someone else’s truth, and taking responsibility for it,” says Buckland. “But at the same time, not feeling tied to it and rather saying, ‘I’m not going to do a literal reinterpretation of this, I’ve got to give it its own life in which I partake’.” 

Coupled with physical performance and the tactics of minor and major, these stories evolved into a collection of live performative vignettes over the course of the workshop, becoming one of the key, instructional exercises of the workshop.   

Celebrating mistakes 

“Technique is really all about failure,” says Buckland. “We learn through failure. Acting is an impossible task and we learn to fail better.” And in mistakes, he explains, there is performative gold. When a mistake is made, when a gesture or a line is fumbled or forgotten, the chorus celebrates this failure by holding each other. It moves around the mistake, holds it, distracts from it, ultimately generating something new and potentially richer.   

Individually, too, the act of embracing failure is a vital part of developing one’s technique. “You celebrate failure because you are constantly working against an ideal that you can never achieve and the more failure you have, the more you start to understand your own technique, your own strengths as a human being,” says Buckland.  

Re-investing in the exercises

The methodologies employed by Buckland over the course of the Minor to major and back again: The Physical Ensemble workshop are channeled through a curated collection of exercises, provocations and moments of play that he has been teaching for more than 25 years.

A central component of Buckland’s methodology is “learning through doing”. As such, his exercises are devised and implemented in the context of the collaborative and the incidental, allowing for a simultaneous process of learning and the generation of new material. Through the repetition of this material – through performance or through revisiting the exercises – the act of learning is a continuous one.   

Similarly, Buckland’s exercises are meant to be tested and played with over time, allowing for the participant to bring new perspectives, new ways of seeing and being on the stage and in the ensemble each time they revisit them.

“So, the habit of re-investing in these exercises is for myself, but also for the participants so that they come back to it each day, or each year, and find something new,” says Buckland.   

– David Mann

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

THE OPEN MOMENT

The Open Moment is a public showing of the exercises and improvisations explored over the course of the three-day workshop Minor to major and back again: The Physical Ensemble, led by the South African playwright, performer, theatre director, mime, and educator Andrew Buckland. The Open Moment was held at The Centre for the Less Good Idea on 16 July in The Other Space.

For his Open Moment, Buckland leads the workshop participants through these exercises and scenarios once more for a public showing that is made largely in the moment.

Exercises in handing over and accepting responsibility, negotiating presence and space through communication, and short physical narrations using the principle of major and minor were all shown to the audience. Throughout it all, Buckland unpacks and contextualises the exercises, often drawing on his personal history as a performer and educator, while always drawing back to the central exploration of the workshop.

Each exercise demonstrates the principles of minor and major, and of the role of the chorus in a performance. In one such exercise, Buckland delivers the story of a woman who is tasked with journeying across mountains and oceans to retrieve a rare medicine for the ailing people of her community. The performers begin to act out the scene, the chorus shifting and adapting. They become rocky mountain passes, tempestuous ocean currents and exuberant townsfolk, both to facilitate the journey of the central character and drive the narrative, simultaneously.

Concluding The Open Moment is a showing of the key exercise of holding and communicating the stories of fellow workshop participants. This exercise, explains Buckland, comes out of his experience of working on the play Truth in Translation, and having to grapple with and communicate the heavy and deeply personal stories that emerged from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

As an exercise on stage, the performers convey childhood memories – birthday parties, playground antics and adolescent rebellion – all in the short-form. Here, physicality, communication and trust emerge as the central components of the ensemble.

Finally, in a brief Q&A session following The Open Moment, Buckland shares more of his insights into improvisation, storytelling, and the vital, inimitable role played by the chorus worker on stage.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

FACILITATOR | Andrew Buckland
PARTICIPANTS | Thabo Rapoo, Smangaliso Ngwenya, Phuti Chokwe, Philangezwi Nxumalo, Paballo Phiri, Obett Motaung, Soyiso Ndaba, Mlindeli Zondi, Kaldi Makutike, Campbell Meas, Buhle Mazibuko & Nwabisa Mbambo