Laban Resources
Murray Melvin - 9 February 2004
Biography
(Born 1932)
Melvin joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1957 and gave his last performance for her in 1964. Apart from leading roles in her stage productions he also had roles film adaptations. He also featured in films directed by Ken Russell. He was written books about Theatre Workshop and the Theatre Royal.
Summary of the Interview
Melvin gives a vivid account of his time with Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Royal, and how she worked as a director. He explains how an understanding of Laban’s Efforts underpinned their work on character and on voice. He explains how the Efforts inform his work as an actor. Littlewood’s process began with Stanislavsky and then moved on to Laban.
The Interview
As we sit here in the Theatre Workshop Archive surrounded by all these figures who were Laban masters and it gives me great sadness to think that that tradition and the work which Joan Littlewood did in those days, for all those years, has not been carried on. Here we are surrounded by Laban centres, everywhere you go there are Laban centres coming out of your earholes - they are all doing dance but nobody does the voice. They say, 'That is very interesting, yes that could be helpful' yet it's never picked up and used. The trouble is, of course, that for an actor to pick up Laban, the initiation is quite long term. It's not something that you can pick up in a couple of weeks or even in a four-week rehearsal period. It has to grow and grow because there is an awful lot to learn. But once you've learned the basics then you can bring it to fruition all the time. But I am sad that there isn't a drama school that is passing on this knowledge because for actors it is such a short-hand, a quick way into discovering a character, because if you can find out what your character is physically it shortcuts an awful lot of problems. Once you've found what he is physically it helps with finding out what he is vocally. Laban is especially fascinating today when everyone is interested in stars and their horoscopes. We would ask whether a character is in the Air, grounded in Earth or in the middle. Once you've got that sorted out, which is what one did with Joan, you worked on the different planes. 'Is he grounded, is he on the table plane, is he high up? You have located yourself within these three possibilities (Table, Wheel, Door Planes; Low, Middle and High Centres) you instantly know where your voice is. So you have a double source of information about your character. Then when you go into your directs and indirects physically, again you know what to do with your voice. Is it direct speech, or is that hesitant not quite sure indirect voice? Immediately you start applying this it doesn't take long to sort it out. And once you've sorted out all the characters in your piece at this level, your approach to your characters and the attitude of the other characters to your character becomes easier to sort out. Your approach to somebody physically. One asks, 'Is that a direct or an indirect approach?' Some people in rehearsal would go through weeks to discover this. Using the Laban system, within a couple or so days you'd got the whole company sorted out - at a superficial level maybe, but at least you are sorted out into your little dockets which makes life so much easier for the actor.
The Practice of Moving and Learning Lines
Once you had broken down your script Stanislavsky-wise into your units and objectives which is what you did right at the beginning. We sat down on the floor and we united the whole piece then we roughly worked out our objectives for each unit and once we'd done that we got on our feet and that was probably the last time you ever got to sit down! You would get on your feet and take a unit, the opening unit or the first company unit and you'd try and work toward your objective - it might change as you began to move. You would begin to physically move that scene. Throw the scripts away - we wouldn't touch the scripts. We roughly knew what it was about. You then moved that scene as far as the characters were concerned: Who would stand next to whom? Who would keep the other side of the group? Who would interfere? This way you would get a physical relationship. That took many forms of doing. Very often to free you up she would play some ragtime. If anyone in the company could play the piano she loved them to do silent movie music. So, we would all move together in double time: double time was one of Joan's favourites because it stopped you thinking. When we started putting words to it she would do double time because it stopped you pondering. We would have to deliver our lines according to the diddledy dum of double time. By doing that, often out of panic, you would hit a truism which you would then have to go back and recreate. Movement came first, your relationship to another person or group of people. And that would take along time: to get the truth of your physical relationship. We often would swop parts, very rarely did you ever play your own part, you always played somebody else, you always swopped round - that goes for men and women. If there was a love scene you played the woman and she played you because you had to know what each other were about. Then once you'd got that sorted out you would pick up your scripts and have a look at the words. Very often the words fitted the movement, if the words were good enough. If they didn't then you would analyse why they didn't. Were you missing an emphasis or point of reference in those lines? It's then, when doing that, that you could sort out whether a line or lines were superfluous to the objective of that scene. Now that got rid of quite a bit of Shakespeare, quite a bit of Ben Jonson and it certainly sorted out lots of modern scripts. The waffle went, the colourings went. You got down to the bare reason of why you were there - all through Laban. And they don't teach him? I don't understand. Here you have this award-winning edifice in Deptford and words don't come into it. He was a man about human beings and that includes words. His whole system ...Whatever you do with your body you can do with words. All the Efforts, all the thrusts and punches, you can do with words. When a younger actor asks me, 'How do you mean?' I take a real basic like 'Get out' and 'Come here'. Where is the movement in these two lines, where is the emphasis? Very often you'll see someone out walking a dog and they'll scream, 'Come here' and I say to myself 'No, no, no, wrong emphasis.' 'Get out' starts from here and goes there, 'Come here' starts from there and comes here. You can move, you can physically moves those two lines with your body. So if you move and then put the words on top you will get the right emphasis of the word. That is just basic but it applies to anything - whether you're doing Elizabethan drama, especially if you are you're doing Elizabethan drama. You don't have to move it on stage but you do have to move it. This especially applies to those long lines in Shavian dialogue where he doesn't put any punctuation, that long breath has got to take you through the line because there's no stopping! You can move those, dance those and the marvellous thing about this for actors is that once you've done all that you don't have to go home and learn your lines because they are implanted in you. Movement comes naturally and once you've put the lines on top they are there because you can move them. Movement and memory come at the same time. Of course if you go about blocking in the old fashioned way of course you can't remember you can't remember your lines because the blocking doesn't fit them. Once you move you're lost. Her revolution in theatre started with this sort of principle. Up until then you blocked, then went away and learned your lines, came back and did the play. Both the breathing for the word and the movement all comes from the solar plexus. It has to come from there out. All movement and speech - if you are producing correctly - come from the solar plexus. That is why it becomes easy once you know those systems - everything else is frightfully complicated. It is very difficult to use this system in isolation - say with a company that doesn't know what you are talking about. When I am learning lines I go home and move them myself. I move their direction, not physically but mentally. Then I physicalise those mental movements. For example I have just finished playing Racine where there are two-page speeches. Your brain gives out. But if you can sort out a physical pattern for them: what is a thrust line, for example then the line sinks in. You be surprised what an effective aide mémoire this all is. Once you've done a bit of Laban, you say to yourself, 'Of course it's so simple'. That is why it so sad he's not taught because he simplifies this complex game we're in - it's complicated enough already. You don't have to spend your days digging out emotions. We know that's not allowed. It also takes the pressure off your rehearsal period in a way, it frees you. Joan would always say, 'Oh come on we've got to free this bit, it's all got stuck. Put some music on, get on your feet, dance it.' Free those brains because you've all got congealed in thinking how it should be done. Don't think it, move it. When an actor would pipe up, 'Well I think it should be ...' She would interrupt and say, 'Don't tell us: get up and do it'. Nine times out of ten you would get up and fail miserably because your idea was wrong, but the tenth time would work and it would all be worthwhile! You have to get up and move your ideas. Remember that you played everyone else's parts. Joan only gradually chose everyone's parts but when sometimes when someone did a particular movement she would say, 'You've got to do that' - and they were cast. Gradually she would build up the casting by the way you were working. You all had to do each other's parts, nobody had an individual problem: if you had one it was the company's problem not yours individually. That pressure wasn't on you because it was taken on by everyone. Then you would get it back after having seen the way through and you had to adapt this way through for yourself. Usually it came from doing some movement. So often one hears an actor asking, 'How do I say that line?' You get up and dance it. It could be a counter movement, or the reflection of a movement: your reaction to another character's movement. If you do it physically then you get the vocal. I make it all sound terribly easy but it takes years.
I was lucky in having a classical training before I arrived at Stratford East. Although the Danse Classique was anathema to Miss L - 'Get those bloody feet turned in - but nevertheless it did mean that I could do the movements in the table, wheel and door planes. I did pick it all up very quickly indeed.
Beginning with Littlewood in 1957
I began working with Joan Littlewood in 1957 four years after the company came down to the Theatre Royal in 1953. When I left school I worked in an office. But, being the eternal student, I started evening classes at the City Literary Institute in Drury Lane - that wonderful institution where you can learn everything from Egyptian hieroglyphics to classical ballet. Started on the drama course which sent me to the mime course which sent me to classical ballet because of course I couldn't move, though I did have rhythm. I ended up getting to the third year in my classical ballet. But when I came to Joan I hadn't realised that it was a Laban-based company and yet I had know about Laban because in my time at the office I had been to Sadlers Wells and seen the Ballets Jooss doing The Green Table. I hadn't realised until I got to the Theatre Royal what one-up-manship this was because most of the company, even the old company, had never seen the Ballet Jooss and I had. I still have a mental picture of that evening - I can see those white gloves on that table. And so I got my head around Laban's system quite quickly - what took time for me was then doing the parallel with the voice because I had never been asked to dance the voice. You could have a singing training but it's not quite the same thing as dancing the voice with those different efforts, with those different directions. It's probably all there in a voice training it's just that they're not aware of it. But then you do do Laban naturally, we all do - we're just not aware of what we do. And that's why anyone of any age with any physique can pick up Laban because you don't have to have a sylph-like body as you would have for the Danse Classique. The wonderful thing about knowing the System is that it makes you aware. That took a long time to get hold of.
The first production I did here, I danced it really. Mentally, vocally, I danced it. I didn't realise until much later the effect that I was having. My first character in February 1958 was an air sign, light and 'dabby' and indirect. In October of '58 I did another character that was totally earth-bound and direct. In that short space of time I went to the antitheses of Laban movement. It was wonderful, and tough, learning that one could formulate a character using the methodology of Laban. When someone doesn't do it, you wonder why because it is so much easier. They ask whether they should lift their hand at this point and you have to say, 'Stop, this is all external' - think of the efforts. I sit in the theatre all the time thinking how inappropriate the movement quality is for a particular character. It saddens me that this shorthand is not being passed on to younger actors because the younger they are, the quicker they'll pick it up - and they're not inhibited. I came here where I was 26 and inhibitions had already set in: with Laban you have to chuck those out. The body is the body and it has got be used. It does become easier if you work at it regularly, and we started with a movement class at 10.00 in the morning. Very often this was to warm yourself up because there was no heating in the building during the day. Very often we'd do another movement class halfway through the day because we were all frozen. What made it easier was not just using it as a class but using it practically and thereby always paralleling with your voice helped you pick up the movement quicker because then brain worked with body. If you do it with a line then that fixed that movement and you could bring that movement out again. If it was a wringing movement then you delivered the lines with a wring: this was almost two shorthands coming together. In the morning you would do the scales and you would gradually be pushed from one to the next. Jean Newlove would teach these or when she wasn't available, Joan. Joan was a great mover, a little Eighteenth Century Lady that moved. Typical Joan she had analysed it and become an authority very quickly. In some of the notes that we would get after every performance she would write, 'I don't understand this effort', or, 'That you're using is wrong, how could you use such an effort? Change the effort.'
We all have our natural plane. Clive Barker is a low mover and would find light movements difficult, while I am a high mover. At school I was a high jumper and won all the short distance races. I was a greyhound. That's my natural element. Down is what I have to work at. The problem with Clive is getting him up: it's those feet of his, clump, clump, clump. The times she's had him walking up and down, getting him to walk to the rhythm of the speech. That is an exercise we all used to have to do. This was important in the context of performances on this particular stage. It was always an open stage and very rarely could you get to one side of the stage to the other you either went across the gallery or under the stage. Sound was always a problem, the wings were open, and if somebody coughed in the Green Room you could hear it on stage. You didn't make a sound, the discipline in this building was unbelievable. We used to have these exercises to learn how to walk to the rhythm of the speech on the stage, whether you were in the green room, under the stage or in the wings. Whether it was light or heavy on stage you would continue that quality. That was a great exercise in itself because you had to learn to walk to someone else's rhythm - it's a great company exercise to have somebody speak and everyone else walk to the rhythm of that speech. From the hour there was absolute silence in this building - you never heard anyone walking down to the stage. The discipline was enormous: they'd only understand this in Eastern Europe where it came from. The concentration on stage was unbelievable because everyone's thoughts off and onstage was there. You came off as your character and then became inaudible. Woe betide if you made sound: there would be a note next day, 'Who was walking up to the Green Room when Howard was making his speech?' You'd have to own up! You couldn't get away with it. It interrupted that intense concentration on stage. It all has to do with the space that you are making: you are painting a picture with your voice, and if somebody does daub then the whole effect is ruined. When you arrived here as a new boy all this kind of thing was very difficult to pick for a little while.
Training
All day long was formal training. This was a university as I said in my obituary to Joan, 'Thank you for my university'. Where else would have I been taught so much in such a condensed time? Within five months of my arriving here I had my first major role, without any formal training at all. But she didn't like formal training and rather than being given special treatment as a beginner, you'd be screamed at for doing it wrong, because you weren't being aware of what other people were doing. You may have been cold, have been working 16 hours that day and spending the night help making the props, but come10.00 the following morning if you weren't aware woe betide you. It didn't matter if you'd being working all night on making props, that was then: this is now. It was very tough. I always remember an actor who joined in the late fifties; it was his first production and as usual he was being crucified, and suddenly he snapped. He screamed at her, 'I don't know what it is, I don't know what it is, I can never do anything right for you, never. All you do is tell me off for this, tell me off for that. You never tell me that I am any good, I am always bad, bad, bad.' It was quite a blast he gave, he was very cross, furious; and she stood there utterly shocked with a look of amazement on her face. She couldn't comprehend what he was on about - what could he be meaning? She looked round and asked, 'Any more of you feel like that?' The older members of the company went into their shells for fear of being blasted. And there was moment when she was sorting things out in her brain, and then she said, 'Don't you understand', looking round at all of us intently, 'Don't you understand that you are all geniuses? For Christ's sake, why would you be in my company if you weren't geniuses? But I've only got 24 hours of the day and I haven't got time to tell you when you're good: you've got to take that for granted. I've only got the health and strength to tell you when you're bad, to help you put it right, to help you make it better.' He didn't stay, he couldn't stay. We were particular animals.
Recently I was doing a play and had a problem with a particular scene and of course it was my problem, nobody else's. I went home and thought of it in terms of movement and suddenly I thought, 'What would I have done with the company?' Then I had this great déjà vu moment from about 25 years ago. She was nagging me about something that I wasn't doing and I tried all different ways and she got me doings even though I could never pull it off. She would accuse me of holding back at this movement. Now, all this time later, I have realised, 'Ah, that's what she wanted me to do!' She was always ten or fifteen years ahead of your ability, and she was always nagging you in order to get that potential out of you. It was tough because you couldn't comprehend what you could do, you didn't think that this other stratum could be possible. I often read criticisms of her casting of certain parts, and they would say, 'I can't see why she played that part, she was totally wrong for it.' Now I know why she was cast: that was her next step up in the company, that was her next improvement. She always gave you parts that you couldn't do. Joan would sacrifice a production if it was someone's time for a step up in a major role. It was said that she did this in her production of Henry IV Parts I & II. And she wouldn't care as long as that actor had learned their lesson for the next time. She would willingly let a production go if it was going to push a performer on to the next level. This is what you got out of it as a company: the whole thing was a training lesson. The whole thing was a university, a series of lessons that took place nightly in front of an audience. She always changed everything, nightly. Once you had achieved something she would come to you after the performance and say, 'That was the best performance you've ever done, absolutely wonderful. Christ knows what we're going to do for tomorrow night. Tell you what, we all better get in a two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.' And then she'd change everything, you'd go on that night and be dreadful. Three nights later and it would be wonderful again but in a completely different way. Audiences used to say, 'I always come two or three times because it always changes.' I felt like saying, 'You could come every night because if it wasn't always changing she'd be on to you.' She'd come backstage and ask, 'Were you comfortable in that performance?' and I'd reply that I was. 'Of course you were because that was yesterday's performance. Go home and rethink something.' It was never about comfort but conflict, you went out there for conflict with the other characters. The amount of times I would walk on stage thinking, 'I'll kill her, I'll kill her for making me do this.' She knew and she'd be in hysterics. At least the performance would be better if you're going on stage wanting to kill somebody. Sometimes as an exercise she would purposely make you change the dynamics, the movement: she might say, 'Don't hit him with those lines tonight, go sideways. See what happens'. Not only did this affect your performance but the other actor had to change his. This set off a chain reaction which meant that everyone had to react, and woe betide you if you didn't. Or if you hadn't read the notes that Murray was going to do something different and you had adapted to this change. You always had to be aware. That change all happened through Effort qualities in your voice or movement: it was understood and effected in terms of Laban. Once you'd changed the efforts in your body you had then changed it in your voice. The two are parallel. Although there was a group awareness nothing was ever choreographed because that would suggest that it was set which it wasn't. Our awareness came out of the organic work of the actors. 'Dance' is not the right word to describe our movement, it is too abstract. This was centred on speech and thought and how we reflected those thoughts and movements. Those fights. When they performed Uranium 235 the company did the explosion of the atom. Jean Newlove talked about this. They were all particles and those particles reacted to each other causing the explosion on the stage. It must have been fantastic. How could you possibly have done that without Laban? The political and the physical combined in Littlewood's work: they were the same animal and that's why it was so strong - because out of a real purpose, real thought, real commitment. They called it 'political theatre', small 'p' but it was political. Because the body was fully involved it guaranteed that there was nothing peripheral about this work. It was a theatre of movement, by which I mean physical and vocal: they were totally combined. When we recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the company coming to the Theatre Royal at the Theatre Museum one person said how he would never forget our performance of Edward II, that it would remain with him for the rest of his life. The impact that our theatre made at that time! It went into people's lives. She would never write about it. When we were doing Henry IV, I & II at the Edinburgh Festival I remember Howard as the old Henry. He hated it at first. She had him carried on, supported. He complained, 'Why do I have be carried on?' 'Because you're past it.' He had a black cloak with a golden lining which we would flick open every now and then just to show he had wealth. It was mesmerising. Everything was physical with her. She could show you what the Effort elements of Weight, Time, Space that you read on paper actually mean on stage. It was in practice. It was easier to pick up the Laban because you were practically doing it, sorting out those problems of weight, time and space every day, all day long. In the end you didn't have to think about it when you had become an older member of the company - you would automatically do the right effort because you would know that that line was in that effort. Your voice automatically changed with your body. Or if you read a line then your body immediately went with it. It was more than a technique. There's a word that they use today: 'style'. But then it's a dangerous word because it can simply be a case of putting on the style. A lot of it comes through the manners of the period. But then when you analyse the Elizabethan manner in a Laban manner, how raw was that language, we colour it today, but when you get down to basics... That's why her productions of Shakespeare were so good. But the lovely thing about Laban was that you could apply his principles to modern as well as Elizabethan drama. People often ask, 'What was her way, what was her method of working?' Well, of course it changed with every different production. Take one of the first scenes of O What a Lovely War that takes place in Sarajevo. She loved parades so we were all put into corsets. But talking about method your first was Stanislavsky: he was our bible, you always went back to the old boy. We used to have sessions in the early days in this very room which now houses the archive: this was her room. We would all come up here and do a chapter of Stanislavsky and then we could analyse it from your own point of view of that of your particular character. Konstantin was the rock, everything was around him. But once you'd got that sorted out then Laban came in. He was your next layer. But within that, according to whatever you were doing she would make changes. How many times did we do Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers, anything to release the pressure on you, especially the pressure to be good. She would stop everything with, 'You're being good, stop everything.' It's the easy way out; you've done that one already, is there any chance of doing something new? The basis was Stanislavsky then Laban, but then after that she would keep changing in a myriad of ways. Remember this was the one place where you'd get notes on the last performance and woe betide you if there was something in those notes that you then did again in two productions hence. She would remember the exact performance when she had first made that note. They weren't there for fun, they were there to be absorbed and learned like a catechism. Your course, your education was ongoing and the assessment never stopped. It was like a continuous PhD in theatre which is what it was.
Lorn Primrose, September 9th 2004
Biography
Lorn Primrose studied at Bedford College of PE and then at the Art of Movement Studio in 1946. She was known as a dance educator.
Summary of her Interview
How she got to the AMS Manchester. The teaching styles of Bodmer, Laban and Ullmann. The diagonal scale and work with the icosahedron. Joan Goodrich and her early championing of Laban. Her own way of teaching effort and shape.
The Interview
Our three years at Bedford ended with a spectacular dance production which was performed for parents and teachers. And at the end of my years in July 1941 Lisa and Laban came along, and Lisa taught us all. We were playing with the shape of a 3 and I have to say that I thought it was ridiculous as we did it small, large, and around us. When I left Bedford I got teaching jobs which always included dance.
Then Myfanwy Dewy of the HMI visited me when I was teaching near Liverpool and she suggested that I should go into teaching training. Myfanwy was a great supporter of Laban. Finally, after this, I got a job at a College of Physical Education where I thought I could do more dance, and though the students liked it, the Principal didn't and so I had to leave. Joan Goodrich rescued me with the news that Laban and Lisa had started a new studio in Manchester, and that I ought to go there.
Sylvia Bodmer I found difficult to understand not just because of her accent but also because she talked so quickly. I liked her very much.
Mr Laban's lessons used to have me aching. I remember particularly the diagonal scale. He used to shout a lot at us, which I didn't think was very educational but he was just treating us like future dancers. This was true of the diagonal scale and that particular session.
Lisa lessons I really did enjoy. They were much more dance-like. Learning notation was fascinating. To think that the slightest movement, a flick of the head or any everyday movement, can be notated. That was an incredible discovery.
There were funny moments. Hettie Loman, one of the more senior students, was tasked with preparing works on which Laban would then comment. I was asked to be a prostitute. I had a go, but although Hettie wasn't that pleased, she didn't really know what to do. When the time came for Laban to see the work he said, 'You mustn't just tell her what to be a prostitute, you must give her their movement qualities.' I think this helped me be a better prostitute.
Did the syllabus have discernible structure?
I think it did really. Lecturers didn't always come, but then this often happens. We studied choreutics and the efforts. Obviously we worked on the icosahedron, and that was about exploring the journey between two points so that it might be rising, lifting and opening. The idea behind the diagonal was that it was very mobile, you were almost losing your balance, unlike the dimensional where you are very stable. The movement within the icosahedron was somewhere between the two. The whole body must respond to the idea of rising, or advancing or opening and how one moves through the different centres of the body. This was something that I should have given my students: it was so definite and logical. We used certain shapes within the icosahedron : the three and five rings, but I never actually taught the A-scale. A great lack. When I studied the icosahedron I used to think of the different shapes between the Table, Door and Wheel - they are like slices of cake.
We were also set more improvisational tasks, like making dance studies on specific themes or shapes. We had group dance with Sylvia which were fun because we didn't always know what we were doing. One theme was coming together, mixing and then separating, then meeting someone else. Sylvia was such an enthusiast, she sometimes couldn't get the words out, at which point she'd rely on gestures. She almost injected you with enthusiasm.
Lisa had a lot of her own ideas. I used to assist her when she gave lectures and remember her passion for what she called 'movement sensation'. She'd never stand and deliver a talk, she was always striving for us to get movements into our bodies. She was very inspirational.
Joan Goodrich
Her influence really was great and she taught so many of us who then went out and taught Laban in schools. I remember Valerie Preston Dunlop saying to me, 'Well doesn't everyone have it at school? I had it at school.' She had been taught by 'Migs' Baron who had been in the year above me - taught by Joan Goodrich. She did a lot of 'flopping' things to get us relaxed, and once asked me quite tartly, 'Have you done this thing before?' I said, 'No' because it was totally new to me - running three steps forward and then collapsing. It was very odd … I still do my exercises, you have sort of hunger when you been doing it all your life.
She was a very impressive woman. She eased the way for Laban, she was so supportive of them. She taught with them on their courses, especially at the beginning. Quite a lot of people found Laban's and Lisa's ways strange or different. She made their work much more accessible. She further the cause of dance even more when she became one of Her Majesty's Inspectors. She was very keen to get dance into schools and colleges. Myfanwy Dewey was sometimes a little exaggeratedly supportive of Laban: her approval would put people off. She worked in the Manchester area and I think she went to their classes a great deal.
What was so refreshing about Joan Goodrich was that she offered us a new way of moving. At my first school we learned 'Greek Dance' in which we would see a rose, stretch our knees, pick it up, smell it, and throw it away. And I remember saying, at the age of 7, 'I don't want to throw it away'. But you had to. It was mock ballet. You had to stretch your legs and then you wondered why you had to stretch them. Joan's approach was wonderfully free: it was really most enjoyable.
What did you take from Laban and Lisa's teaching?
The thing I was thrilled about was that everybody could have the dignity of having some talent in movement and that that could be developed. Slow, heavy movement had its place, whereas mostly the idea of ballet that is given us, is all light and airy. I think this is a terribly important tool in education - for a class of kids to see that even the fat dumplings have something to contribute. It's no good saying it to kids, you have to show them, amongst each other. The group work is very important too - sharing movements; I start a movement and you finish it and then I come back again. Then us moving simultaneously. They are really 'life happenings'. I really feel that if children don't have the opportunity to dance it is a great lack, because this is a mind-body-feeling education.
Laban had rather a shouting, dictatorial way of teaching but he obviously had a certain thing he was trying to get out of us. He taught us more regularly in the first year rather than later.
It was thrilling to teach what we had learned at The Art of Movement Studio because it gave you a different concept of movement - especially us who had been through a physical education training, because that was all anatomy. This was so 'whole human being'. It was about quality of movement.
Once you were bitten you never gave it up and went to courses all the time.
Other people at the Studio
Mary Eldridge was a great dancer - like Geraldine and Hettie Loman. They were the dancers, while we were the 'odd' ones.
Have you heard of Betty Meredith Jones? She was the first to study with Lisa and Laban - in a caravan in a field in Wales. She was the first English student and studied with them alone. She bought a caravan and lived near them.
Lorn's Approach to Teaching
I often started with an idea which I then translated into movement. Ordinary people are interested in life and the disasters that happen. All artists are influenced by the age they live in, aren't they? We'd take themes like disasters, or war and peace, and often the children, but students in particular, would opt for one. Then I would render these themes in terms of movement - qualities and spatial relationships, what groups to make.
I also taught dance students. Once we had Lisa as an examiner and she rather praised these studies. They were movement studies based on efforts in space. We might do a flicky jump with a pressurised movement across, and so on around the icosahedron. I don't know who pushed me towards this, possibly it was Lisa, but I thought it was natural to link effort and shape. I remember Lisa approving of this. That was the training, the discipline side, because if you leave student to their own devices they would just move in front of themselves. They would think of high or low back. But Valerie Preston Dunlop has developed all that. She proposes that you go, for example, to High Right in relation to your body which could be tilted off the centre line. That way you can get all sorts of movements. Your base could be your knees, your hips, or any part of yourself that could take your weight. I could also do the scales with a different body part. All these are variations of it. Movement is marvellous. It might be interesting to do it just with the legs. You can do the scales in other ways than standing, and I think VPD has come to this realisation through her experience of American movement that suddenly came upon with Martha Graham. She had the idea and then found the movement: like most artists she was inspired by something. If you see a beautiful view then you put it into movement. Think of all these horrific pictures we have seen of the mourners in Beslan following the terrorist siege there. While one's heart goes out to them, it also interesting to watch the movements that they do.
Dorothy Heathcote, 13 September 2004
Biography
1926 – 2011
Dorothy Heathcote MBE was a drama teacher and academic. From the age of 14 she worked as a weaver in a woollen mill whose owner then paid her fees at Esmé Church’s Northern Theatre School in Bradford. Church advised a career in teaching and she got her first post in Durham in 1951, later joining Newcastle University where she ran influential courses on drama education until her retirement in 1986. She published several books and was awarded an MBE in 2011.
Summary of Interview
She begins by explaining how she got to Esmé Church’s school. She describes classes given by Geraldine Stephenson and Rudolf Laban. Her early experience of teaching. Work on The Magic Lighter (a play produced by Church and Laban). Laban’s use of pictures in helping students transform their movements. How Laban influenced her manner of teaching: ‘He was building upon what we were doing.’ An account of her teaching style.
The Interview
How did you hear about Esmé Church's School?
I was a weaver in the mill. All my family were weavers. I left school at 14 and I was now 19. I was interested in drama in my hopeless way, and I was in school concerts. My mother and I had read in the Yorkshire Post, which she could afford once a week, that they were starting this theatre school and I said that I'd like to go. We knew that we couldn't afford it, of course, but I said that I'd still like to be interviewed. 'Do I or don't I have any talent?' Is the way that I looked at it in my naive way. I have a day off work and so we go forth to Bradford. Esmé Church and J.B. Priestley were there, and Molly Sugden. I chose two pieces from Shakespeare - Volumnia and one of the three Margarets. Esmé asked me why I'd chosen those pieces, so I said, 'Look at me', because I was so big. I didn't think I could play juveniles. She said that she would offer me a place, so at that point I had to say that I couldn't come because we hadn't any money. My mum said that she had £75. There'd been some kind of money paid out to my granddad and he'd divided it amongst his family. It couldn't have been much - there were nine of them. Esmé said, ‘Let's face that when we come to it.’
We go back home and I'm thinking, 'I'd love to go there', but I knew it wasn't possible. I go back into the mill next day and young Charlie Fletcher (in his sixties), the boss, sent for me. I'd had one or two things happen between 14 and 19 with old Charlie who was in his 90s. One day I'd seen this man walking up the steps and I'd been carrying a heavy load of bobbins and I thought it was the overlooker who played tricks, like he'd go slowly - you might drop a bobbin. It wasn't nasty, it was just a joke. So I said, 'O get owt o't road, if tha doesn't want to work there's somebody else does.' And when he turned round it was Charlie Fletcher! So he just said, 'Ladies first!' I thought I would get the sack. Anyway, he came over to me (this was the 90-year old), and said 'Tha's Irwin Sugden's grand-dawter.' I said yes I was. He said that my grandfather had dressed a warp for him before I'd even been thought of, or my mother. Every time he came into the mill he'd give me a wink and say, 'Irwin Sugden's grand-dawter'. Anyway, young Charlie called for me (after I'd come back from Bradford) and I just thought, 'O what have I done now?' I'd had a day off, but I'd had permission. When I got to his office, which I'd never been to before, he had the Yorkshire Post on a completely empty desk. He turned it round and said, 'Is this thee?' It said, 'Weaver gets chance of Stage Career' - this was Esmé, of course! I looked at it and said that it must be me since it said what I did in Bradford. He said, 'Hastha' any brass?' I said, 'I can't go, but I think they thought I'd some talent.' So he said, 'I'll pay thee fees'. Now my mother had given up weaving. There were only a certain number of looms because of the war. She'd given up weaving because her legs were bad. I was earning £5 a week, which was great. He said, 'Could thee mother cum back?' I said that I'd have to ask her. He said that if she did comeback he could give her two Dobby Looms, which was plain weaving - Bolton sheeting and air force stuff. I was on officer's khaki for ages. He said, 'I'll pay thee fees and I'll give it yer mother a pound a week then there's no tax problems.' I was impressed even then because he was a Methodist and theatre is not right good according to them. Of course, his parting shot as I left in a daze, was, 'And there'll be three looms waiting for tha when tha's finished. That's why the film about me was called Three Looms Waiting. Dear Ron Smedley - he's just got a BAFTA award, I'm so pleased. I wrote to Miss Church and duly turned up. I always remember that I had no clothes really because of the war; you didn't have many. The church was selling its blackout curtains and they were a wonderful fabric with a sheen, a pucker black. So I made two frocks, hand-stitched and embroidered. I turned up at theatre school in my two black pinafore dresses. It went on from there.
So that's how I got to know about the theatre school. There it was, right up high in the flour mill. There people like Bernard and one or two older men who had come through the war who were a bit older than Bernard. There were about thirty five of us. It was great, and wonderful watching Esmé. After about two years she said, 'You'll have to teach.' I said 'no'. 'My dear, you'll have to teach, you're the wrong size for your age. I reiterated my response and she said she was going to lock me up in the room and when she returned back I would agree to be a teacher. She did come back and began to talk about teaching theatre to children in schools and this made sense to me. She'd also got one or two jobs with me with local amateur theatres. So I was earning a little bit. I enjoyed that. They put me on the teaching course, which meant that I watched Esmé all the time. The teaching course was hopeless, but I used to watch Esmé direct and that was really interesting. And then we did our practice in Saltaire. It was an utterly hopeless course! But I knew what you had to do. You began with a question and not information. I knew that much. So I go to this school, but the head had forgotten that I was coming, so quick as a flash he took me to the hall and there were all the naughty boys outside the classroom doors and he said to them, ‘This is Miss Shutt and she's come to teach some drama.’ Anything was better than nothing: they were all stuck outside of these doors. I remember my first question - they were all boys so it was fairly easy - ‘if you were captains of a ship, what qualities would you look for in your men?' I didn't say it as a dull question. And they became so interested and so interesting.
Then I met Mr Stone who was revered in those days, and indeed still is. He wrote a book for the West Riding called Story of a School. There were about seven of us doing the course, among whom Margaret Hilder, and we all used to sally forth to our various schools. I was planning my own things and nobody asked me what I'd be doing next week - it was ridiculous. Stone comes along and he watched me teach, and by now we on an Odyssean voyage and were getting more interested and interesting. He said, 'If you write all this down, you'll never have to plan any more lessons.' I remember thinking, 'This man is a fool, how can you teach the same thing twice?' I couldn't put it like that. I didn't take any notice. After we got our certificates, Esmé asked me to stay on each of the evening classes on Tuesday and Thursday for the Bradford Civic. I met some interesting teachers there: wise people. I watched one of the women, Sheila Sanderson, and thought, 'Everything this woman does had tears in it.' I've always trusted myself to make comments like that: they're either really right or hopelessly wrong. And if they're said with grace, they can get back to me. Later, she said to me, 'How did you know?'
She became a great friend and one day said, 'You are going after this job at Durham University.' I read it and thought, No way! I was only 24. I was doing a lot of amateur production teaching and earning. She said, 'You are applying for this, so get your references together.' I only had Esmé's reference. To my astonishment I got an interview and I thought, 'Although I won't get the job, I'll be interested in what they have to say.' I happened to hit upon Brian Stanley who didn't care what you looked like. He'd interviewed 100 people and gave me the job. He asked whether I had any questions, and I asked about Superannuation. Anything else? I said, 'If I got the job - and I won't - would I be able to teach the way I wanted to?' He replied you could sell fish and chips if you felt it's what they needed.' I thought, 'He's done some research because my mother had run a fish shop after the First World War.' He had done his research. At the interview he asked me to tell the story of my life. There were about 20 people there. I said, 'You should know that I failed my scholarship'. He said, 'How many of us matriculated?' He looked around and said, 'I think we're all in the same boat here.' He asked if I'd read much. I replied that I'd read what Rudolph Laban had written, and various people nodded. There were one or two names that I'd read which rang a few bells. I was asked to wait, and then told I'd got the job and I stayed there untiI I was sixty. I grew and grew as the job grew and grew. It [the course] never fitted the university model. The teachers who came had been released for one year and they were all experienced teachers. This was the time when the government were recognising that teaching was changing and teachers deserved to be constantly learning and recharging batteries. They were lovely to work with. But I didn't farm them out to psychology, etc., for an hour - as was usual in University courses - I was with them all the time, and went into the schools with them. I could learn on any group - it was wonderful to have access to all those children of various groups.
Laban and Geraldine at Bradford Civic Theatre
We knew Geraldine was young but she was so assured. She didn't hesitate in her teaching. My memory of Laban is of this tall man, usually saying, 'It ees meezerabble, do eet again.' He used to have this wonderful smile. I thought he had such a warm personality but it wasn't done through eagerness to bridge the gap. There was always this wonderful stance and his phrase. He understood if you could dance in your head. That's what I used to feel. I was the biggest woman in the group but I was also the lightest. I loved all the work, and I could do it in my way. He would say, 'This girl understands', which of course comforted me. He didn't make a big fuss, he would just say, 'It is so, it is so'. I loved the work on the cube and that is what I still use. I do not necessarily teach the cube in the way that Laban taught us. I realise how very important his ordering is though, especially in the rich variety of direction, speed, weight plus the space around. You always knew where your arms and legs were and the orientation of where you were. Which is wonderful for theatre work. You can't move a dress train wrongly – it might be fifty foot long - if you understand where you are. You know which way to move so the train comes along. You never do an awkward move on the set somehow; and to me it was because of this. Partly it would be instinct, of course.
When you talk about ‘the cube’, you are talking about Laban’s diagonal scale with the Efforts?
That’s what I’m talking about. Laban gave us no lectures on the significance or meaning of the diagonal scale or the Efforts, he simply said, ‘We will float’. It was like some orchestral conductors – they don’t move a lot. Laban would just give an indication that it was indirect, it was light and slow. So we would float for hours and hours and hours. It was because we are all there in a fairly restricted space. So that’s how we floated and then we went on to gliding. He was always standing and he would just explain, ‘It is up to here, and then it is back there. No it is miserable. Do it again. The right must lead.’ Although I can no longer do it – being an older ‘body’ - I can still remember all the sensations. And we worked on the left. It seemed to go on for ever, but we never tired of it. Of course we had ballet and fencing, and I thought that the ballet was very useful as well, but it wasn’t like the Laban work. I knew I would never be a ballet dancer, nor would I dance in the theatre. Gerry (Geraldine Stephenson) would then carry forward his work. Then we went moved on to the levels: there are High movers and Low movers, and those who move from the Middle. Mine is a very crude way of explaining but I am thinking of it as a body ’thing’, not what he called it. I was astounded to find that I was a naturally ‘high’ mover. At the time I put it down to the fact that I wouldn’t have been much good as a low mover, because I’m too big to move a lot low down. It’s very hard for a big woman to sit cross-legged, so doing the yoga positions isn’t for me, though I value the other aspects.
One of the most valuable things was when we were producing The Magic Lighter and I was the witch. It was the story of Cerberus the dog with three heads and the tin soldier. It was the way that he began to work on the crowd that made me realise he’s working on character. He’s using the Efforts but we’re really beginning to be people. This was how I understood it in my simple way because he didn’t ever explain much. But somehow even though his body didn’t move a lot, Laban always had this aloof head, rather like a tortoise, but a very benign tortoise. Geraldine’s body moved all over the place in a very proper way. I used to think that he must get very bored with us, since everything we did was so miserable that we had to do it again. But I remember in the crowd scenes in the market place he began to build upon what we were all inventing to do. I particularly remember that some man decided to be a dancing bear, and I heard Laban pick something out and say, ‘Do it again.’ And then he’d be developing that. It was when he was working on the bear that I realised that he was working on pressing. I began to notice. I was creating the character of the witch with Esmé so I wasn’t in the market scene. As I developed the witch with Esmé I could hear his instructions, so I started to make my witch from the efforts.
What Laban gave me was entertainment for a lifetime: the ability to just watch people. I know that there are very few pure this or that. But we do see in some people the characteristics of one pure effort. Efforts are so useful in character work. So I have been entertained all my life by just watching people: ‘That one is a floater-dabber’. All my students [in Durham] were experienced teachers, so they were fairly mature, and although their names might escape me, I was looking out for their effort qualities. I always did the interviews by getting them to meet the people from last year’s course: I used to put the meal out for them, and leave them to it, so that they could say what they liked. I didn’t want people coming to me for a year who didn’t like me. It would be wasting their lives. By the time I sat down with them they came to talk with me about the course they had already learned a lot, and that’s when I started to look at them. Quite a lot of them stayed at my house thanks to my marvellous husband, Raymond. Often I had students who were short of money, and we had bought a big old house so as to accommodate my parents-in-law. Because they were living in the house I could really study their movement. I well remember thinking that Laban would have adored this.
One of the teachers was a Jewess in her fifties who lived in Israel. If ever I saw a presser, a pure presser … she didn’t quite bend the cutlery but her pressure was enormous. One day she said to me, ‘I have a stigma, I press hard on everyone’. Her room was chaotic, although you’d expect a presser to be organised. I said to her, 'everything you do has this enormous weight’. And she said, ‘Everything you do is like a fairy, floating with energy.’ I really have watched people because of Laban, and of course always when I’ve been producing plays I’ve used the Efforts as a possible way for people to think ‘different body’. The other thing I observed, though I don’t think I got this from Laban, and I certainly wouldn’t know what to have called it then, was the habit that amateur actors have of waiting to say their lines. All the time I’ve worked with students on ‘bonding’. My lines are born because of what you are doing. You are nodding. I am not waiting to speak; you are offering me something to respond to. If you once get this, then you’ve got a text. I learned that from when you worked with a partner with Laban. Often on the cube I might begin with a float and someone else might respond with something else. You anticipate but receive and let be born the next possibility.
Another exercise that I always worked on with my teachers and am still doing it with some special needs adults, came from Laban. One day he arrived with a load of paintings torn out of books and things and he threw them all down on the floor. They ranged from portraits, right through still life, landscape, abstract, architectural, animal, etc.. He asked us to choose one and then to create a dance using the efforts and the levels and whatever else that we’d done. I don’t actually remember anything else apart from these two things as being absolutely seminal to it. In the first one I ever did I chose Velasquez’s Las Meñinas, with the Infanta in this huge, hooped dress. It seemed to me that she was so encased that first I must dance this terrible, rigid, formal thing. Yet the child is inside. Then she should have this great thing taken off and in her dreams she should dance the princess-child she is. And then of course she would have to take one the mantle again. It was so exciting fighting for that form, I can still remember it! That is why I used it with the teachers because they often don’t move well. They’ve not had a lot of chance to move. They’ve sat listening to lectures and then they can’t let themselves go in the classroom. If you have a rubber face then you shouldn’t use it because you might confuse the children! I felt that teachers often felt they mustn’t make fools of themselves. But in fact we need a huge range of selective signing by deliberate intent. And this is not acting in the usual sense, but it varies the signalling, enriches the contrasts for learning purposes. I found that the sheer challenge of finding the design that did not destroy the art, because you should not invent Velasquez, except for what you feel could be there if you look at the face of the child and the restriction of the court as defined by the dress. I remember Van Gogh interested me a lot, because again it was powerful in terms of movement and even in stillness - the chair with and the pipe. You could do so much with it and with the Efforts. Laban wouldn’t do this exercise a lot. Occasionally he would drag this out and some people loathed it. I liked the fight for the form. Of course I love art, because art reads you, like books do. All art gives you the opportunity to be curious again. You don’t have to like or that, you just have to be open to it. Raymond and I used to go around galleries. We used to see a lot of art. I think it is a great foundation. That is the only time I saw Laban use paintings: but his comments … He was always standing looking. I never remember Laban sitting. He would look at the painting that you’d put on the floor with his high-chested stance, and it didn’t look inflexible, it didn’t look like his back was rigid or locked. I was never embarrassed doing that exercise because I was concerned with the painting I was trying to be honouring. You haven’t time to be fussing over yourself. You have a job to do. I think it’s the same in teaching – you haven’t time to fuss over yourself. I remember with such joy doing that exercise.
When I began to use Laban’s work with teachers I felt that they should experience movement that didn’t embarrass and I felt that the Efforts put their minds in a totally different place, than saying, ‘I can’t dance’. And then you could move straight into dramatic situations where they could see, ‘This is what I’ve just been doing. I didn’t know I could think-move like that.’ They don’t pretend that they can act, because very few teachers can act. Very often the drama work in schools, especially High Schools, is taught by English teachers, not so much now, but it used to be. Look at the title ‘Drama and English’, as if the two were the same thing. This makes it very hard for them to fully use drama and theatre laws in praxis. They often say ‘I can’t act’ – but what they really need is an understanding of sign in the whole learning area – space, objects, people, ideas. Literature and Drama! How it could ever have been thought like that! I still find, whatever group of teachers I have to work with, and whatever play we have to deal with - usually it is on the examination syllabus – that I have to get them to see the difference between praxis, or ‘think-do’ and ‘think-reflect’. They are amazed, that this is one of the things that they’d never thought about. They were often teachers of literature, much more knowledgeable than me about literature, and yet they hadn’t perceived this unique difference that makes both the arts worth bothering with; but not confusing them. I used to do a lot of Laban work with them, sometimes just to relax them when they came in of a winter’s evening after they’d been teaching in school all day.
Of course when I’ve been working with theatre groups, the work on Laban’s Efforts has been invaluable. It’s knowing where you are in relation to all the other signs in a place – though he never bothered explaining any of that as far as I can remember. Geraldine would explain more, but because it was done in Praxis you didn’t sit about meditating on it, you did it, you got on with it. And of course it’s only when you come to teach that you learn that being able to do it yourself isn’t enough. It’s analysing it down to its absolute basics. I worked with a good cameraman, Dennis, and he used to work with four year olds, helping them to get the sense of what you don’t want in the picture. Raymond understood this, so I got this quickly. One day he said to me, ‘The problem is, you never have to forget what you’ve forgotten you know.’ This is so valuable in teaching. I mustn’t forget to re-member what has now become so absorbed unto my understanding. Those I am working with have as yet no earlier experience, so I must examine the first principles I no longer am aware of using. A camera is an excellent clarification of this principle because most people put things into their picture. But real photographers eliminate the inessential. Because they now don’t know this, so I must not know it, it in order to devise where this begins. When you are working on bonding, to get people to stop waiting to speak … it is so complicated. I have joined a local amateur group here in Spondon and although I can’t any more learn the lines for a part, I can sew costumes. And they are a bit amazed; they’ve no idea who I am. I am simply an old woman who comes along. They haven’t a clue. They are lovely people and I don’t but in and say anything. I look at all these awkward moves and I know that they could build them on Laban’s Efforts, but I won’t say a word. I still watch them struggle not to wait to speak.
When I came to Durham I had access to many schools in Northumberland and I went into a school where this ghastly woman was teaching the Efforts. This woman said to me, ‘They can’t do ‘presses’ because they haven’t yet finished learning how to ‘float’. That must have been going on for ages. I thought, where has she got this from? It must have been from some short course. It was awful. The headmaster would say to me, ‘Don’t start on any of the Efforts with the children because I’ll get in trouble with the PE teacher who does them.’ The PE people took it on for a time and they weren’t necessarily the people to feel the body dancing. I think that this eventually died out. According to this teacher you could only ‘slash’ after you’d ‘floated’. So if you were doing the Efforts you always had to do them in that set order.
Laban once said - and it wasn’t in theatre school, maybe it was on a train journey when we were touring one of our plays – ‘I should have been in the theatre.’ But of course he was in the theatre when he did the ballets that Lola told me about. I think I see what he meant, when I saw him building up the crowd scenes in the plays. These were always for children. The efforts were the basis not only of the characterisation of all of us, because obviously we had to be fairly specific characters for young children, clearly understood and signed. At the same time the choreography was like that as well. He never told us where to go, he would simply say, ‘Do it again’. And we’d have another go and he would pull something out that established that thing as an Effort or a direction. I could see that this was a very creative way of flogging us to death, you might say, but he was using what we were bringing. He was building upon what we were doing. This is what I’ve always done with reluctant students or with reluctant high school pupils who must never be embarrassed because they feel they lose face.
I was teaching at a school in America which was the ‘Last Chance’. These were eighteen-year old men. The place was so nervy it was frightening. They showed me round and explained that this was deeply psychological work and I was to work there for a week and wasn’t to know anybody’s names or backgrounds. It was crazy. They showed me the room and it was tiny and was full of cushions. I asked about the cushions, and was told that they wouldn’t work without them. I do teach people at risk and thought, ‘The hell with cushions! They’re out.’ I thought long and hard and decided that we would be Argonauts with Odysseus. I asked if I could have some of those huge poles that they wrap carpet round and got 18 of them, 10 – 12 foot long. These boys came in and they were massive. I thought we should begin chucking great big spears. What are the Efforts involved in this? I had moved the cushions with great fear, so I was left with this small room. I got all the Greek names ready and written up on cards and I knew I must look for any first sign of response. There was one lad who met my eyes briefly and I had all these great things standing up. I said, ‘If I give you a spear will you fight with me?’ He took it, he took it. And I went round asking the same thing and they all took them. And it was the way they took them. They took the pressure of the way that I handed the spear to them. I said to them, ‘My name is Odysseus and I should warn you that I am the wily one. I cheat. Be careful.’ They were amazing and everything that we did had to be controlled by the Efforts because of this stupid space. I don’t know why I didn’t ask for more space, but it was perfect. It was perfect for a ship; it was perfect when we carved a horse, because of course the Trojan Horse was Odysseus’ idea. It was things like this that I know about from Laban. I asked, ‘Who will carve the great wave in the tail? Who will carve the brightness of the eye?’ I didn’t see the Horse as a machine but as an animal. They sat carving and in the end, they walked, blindfolded, into a horse with all these spears, controlled. They were wonderful. There was great sustainment in their Efforts. It was an incremental process; if you can get to this point you don’t continue with it, you ask, ‘What develops that next?’ Learning and progressing ideas is not a smooth ‘story’ process. Each episode creates the possibility of the next – e.g. owning a spear and recognising yours among a hundred others may lead to many episodes not just the one in the story line. So it appears that you take a totally different episode that continues that learning. Nobody ever hit anybody. The first exercise that we did began with me saying, ‘The men that fight with me know their own weapon. Throw down your weapons.’ You can imagine throwing these huge poles down. Then I said, ‘Pick your own, NOW!’ And they were up. I always did get my own, and I assume that they got theirs. They adored it. It wasn’t ‘psychological’ in one sense, but in another it was totally. They went on to great things when I later went back. I remember thinking, ‘Thank God for Laban.’ If you creep into a horse with a great spear and you have your sandals and your grieves on, and your helmet under your arm, and whatever, you are thinking, ‘What Effort?’ I actually used words like this to them because their bodies knew. We didn’t do characterisation. I wasn’t asking, ‘Who is this, who is that?’ We were all sailing to Troy. The big spears made their bodies look massive. I must have looked an utter idiot to anyone looking at us. There were a few teachers watching, but not those from the building where we were working, because I’d got no cushions. You can’t indulge students or yourself. The Thing is what wins and it has to carry you. You are no boss round here, it is IT that is boss. So when Laban would say, ‘Do it again’, it was IT that must win, not ‘Oh, I’m too tired.’ Esmé would say, and I’m sure this is what people don’t understand about theatre, ‘Well, I think we’ll do it just once more to get the feeling again.’ And we’d work on until midnight because that is theatre. You can never explain, it has to be bigger and clearer.
The last time I used the Efforts in theatre work was in Doctor Faustus which I did with these special needs people - obviously it was adapted. A student of mine with two colleagues leads this group in Bristol and I butt in when I can be of use. They have created a form which uses some actual text and some telling of events. I put theatre bits in when it’s useful to develop their ideas, much as Laban would do – I see what they are vestigially bringing and ‘enlarge’ and build upon it so it remains theirs. It was done very much as story theatre because they can’t remember long speeches. Some can’t talk, some are in wheelchairs, but one of the most important things that held the production together was the action of closing a book. The image of a book slamming shut and the dust cloud it created when Faustus repudiated books. I was working on the Efforts: the reverence of opening the book, the pressure of opening it, and the slamming of it shut. You can talk about the Efforts with them, they understand. The controlling of the hands in the folds of the gowns is much better than asking them to feel like students or monks. It is the way that the hand goes in the sleeve, the body rises and the head goes back. Of course it’s only when you think that way that you can say that way, isn’t it? You don’t use these silly phrases. In a way Faustus’ character was based entirely on what the boy could do and what he couldn’t do, and the actual sense of Effort in his body. A lot of this group’s poetry is recreated into story-theatre because these poems come from their experience. One woman might start, ‘The first time I had an ice-cream I remember’, then someone adds a line and then another and you get a piece of story-theatre. It breaks down to this apparent simplicity, and so much of it is Laban because that is how I see.