East


East is a 1975 ode to Berkoffs East End and explores the difficulties and uncertainty of growing up in the East End of London. We explored a small extract of this in groups and devised movement in the style of Steven Berkoff for it.

Personally, I really struggled with the sudden launch into this style of theatre. While I enjoy the devising side of the physical theatre and enjoy working with a group, I struggle with personal aspects of acting, in this particular unit the over the top vocal style. However, despite it being a personal issue this does have an effect on the group as a whole. So while I helped out with the devising of one of the pieces, I didn’t act in them myself.

 


First Berkoff piece:

The thing which you initially notice about this piece is that although the actors portray well this sense of confidence and aggressiveness in their lines and in their facial expressions, there seems to be a lack of certainty which impacts on this. Their actions, such as the turn they do at 0:20s could be more staccato and defined, and done with a bit more force could aid the violence nature that they are trying to present to the audience. The point that they do moments after this highlights that their uncertainty is perhaps a result of needing more practice with the movements, as the right actor seems unsure of which way to point. This could be improved my her dropping lower and pointing starting at this side so that the two meet in the centre. Equally they create some expressive images such as "gouging in our white and precious cheeks" at 0:39s and the chair clash at the end which adds punctuation to the piece. I think what his piece mainly needs to explore next is refining the work they've already got, perhaps experimenting with vocalisation and trying to define movements so that they become staccato punctuation to their piece.
 

Second Berkoff piece:

The second group in comparison had that punctuation which they expressed throughout with their vocalisation and also immediately with the jumps on "boots and the chains and the knives" at 0:03s as well as the definition when moving and places chairs at 0:018s. Just after that moment there is a pause, simply because the actor was trying to read the line, but I think the noise and then the sudden silence actually created a great contrast. I think this could be something to explore in this piece. Because while their physicality is often clear and aggressive in reflection of the characters, it is a very busy piece with lots of movement, and I think some moments of stillness could be very effective in building the tension for their fight. I think this also impacted on some of the more graphic moments in the piece such as the stabbing and the "Loathsome mouths" which undermined somewhat their much more slick movements- for example at 0:54s. I think that the main thing this group need to do is to make their movement more defined in the sense that when they are still they should be really still (whilst at the start we can see that they are constantly moving even when they were planning to be still) and perhaps maybe choose some key movements and focus on making them really defined, using more simpler movements in other places.

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