Easy Life by Amaia Mugica
Trying to add a new rehearsal exercise to devise a character as collective in the production ‘Easy Life’ as a performer. Working with human organs and linking them in the rehearsal room to characters.
CONTEXTUAL STATEMENT
This piece talks about women while using autoethnography to theatricalize our experience as women! We talk about everyday life as a woman, the struggles, and inequalities we face constantly, and how society gives its opinion about it. In this world, we created women to take this pill called “Easy Life” which makes them adapt to their everyday life better while losing their identities and self-love. Throughout the end, we see how powerful each woman can get and what it takes to get rid of this pill that affects your inner self.
The moment we started exploring, it did not take long to state our struggles as a woman! To be able to speak freely about vulnerable topics and talk about patriarchal oppression in every way while linking to our past was really powerful. Stating the struggles we face in our everyday life was really important for our process to be able to feed on something coming from our own experiences and well-being. In the first rehearsal, I started reading What Body Can Do? Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research by Ben Spatz and he states, "The ability to act, and thus the ability to transform, comes not from the agent alone, but from the agent’s relation to the world. Action emerges from a dynamic interplay between body, mind, and environment, such that we can never distinguish entirely between what the body does, what the mind does, and what the world does." (Spatz, 2015, p. 9). With the patriarchal oppression we face every day, we unconsciously embody oppression and on so many occasions reproduce it. In this practice, we dig into the roots of why we are doing this and how we can change it.
Exposing the patriarchal oppression through our own experience and getting a positive reaction in the group was a very new experience for me. Mostly, in a rehearsal space, we were advised to leave our problems behind and come to the rehearsal space with a blank canvas. With the new developments around consent, intimacy, and ethics of care, coming to a place where I can be fully open with these fellow artists and talk about the things I would never imagine discussing felt safe. The fact that we were all women with equal power as peers and had a mutual agreement on discussing sensitive topics made the experience safer. In the rehearsals, we created a safe space around us where we acknowledged every struggle and did not try to give advice or help one another. We simply listened and discussed collaboratively in an artistically devised way.” Group agreements establish the expectations for the behaviour of group members and can provide a framework for developing trust and respect.” (Johnson, 2010, pg.162)
The idea of the piece comes from creating a devised feminist physical theatre piece while creating characters linked with an organ. I felt really disconnected from this idea when I first heard it. On the same day, we did a couple of exercises to re-imagine our body and especially our inner organs. I explored the heart, lungs, and brain in this session. It reminded me of the Alexander Technique in a way of feeling through the body and checking in. “Alexander Technique is not just a physical technique; it is a technique that involves the whole person, and it aims to bring about a state of integration and balance between mind and body” (Fischer, 2010, pg.41) In the second session, I created a character with the organ Liver, and it was an amazing workshop-based rehearsal where I discovered many things physically and artistically with the help of my knowledge in Alexander Technique and the anatomy of human.
EVIDENCE
This piece inspired me in so many ways, starting with this first piece of evidence, which is a document we got from the first rehearsal. All the organs have an integral part in human anatomy and link with feeling. Getting this list and creating a character document was a very confusing idea at first. I was journaling after every rehearsal to be able to keep up with the ideas and the flow of the piece. To personify an organ and connect them with a character was interesting.
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In this video, you can see the final version of "Not Enough" women linked with the organ liver. To be able to put so much thought into how to create a character linked with the liver and then seeing the outcome like this was very special. I experienced a new way of devising theatre while making this monologue section. In the performance, I chose to use `Yellow Flicker Beat` by Lorde to indicate yellow within the liver and how it gets into this colour when it is unhealthy. We show that in this patriarchal world we live in, my character tends to cope with a lot of unwanted scenarios and must face gender oppression. The yellow colour comes from that impact and the liver’s condition when it’s unhealthy.
REFLECTION
First, I had to investigate the anatomy of the female body and how the organs work. When we look at the functions of the liver, we can see regeneration/filtration, immunity, and the stabbing sensation it has when the functions do not work properly. With the three images I already had in mind, which were waking up to a brand-new day, going to work while using public transport, and coming back home to face my own mother’s comments, the liver was the perfect organ for my character.
This character had trust issues and the feeling of not being enough in this world. People might categorize her as `the rebel of society` as she does not follow society’s norms and rules. She normally does not care what others think, but when it comes to her own mother, she cannot stop the demons in her mind. Her words elect her and get her to her lowest. Every morning she wakes up and has this different energy towards the day, almost like the regeneration function of the liver. when she filtrates every comment from the previous day and starts the day new. Also, the liver has the capability of being taken away up to %10 and can regenerate itself up to % 90 without any external help. This is exactly the inspiration point for the character I was creating, the liver’s processing of toxins as an allegory for the patriarchal toxicity that women must endure daily. To be able to think this character starts her day at %90 confidence and ends up with %10 with all the comments, looks, silent treatments, and verbal & physical abuse she is getting.
The second inspiration point came from the immunity function. The Liver is the most important organ within our body with the cells that detect and clean the viruses and bacteria that enters the liver through the gut. This resembles her everyday life, fighting with society, and trying to fit in with her differences. In a way, she is immune to every comment, look, and abusive action throughout her day as she already knows how to repel them, except one… The comments come from her mother, which is the third moment of the liver monologue. When the liver does not function properly you can visibly see the person going yellow on the face, around the eyes, and around their skin. There are not many chances to hide the effects. Your inner pain comes from your lower abdomen where you feel this stabbing sensation throughout your day. She feels this when she has an interaction with her mother. It's almost like her comments do not get from the filtration system. She communicates with her mother when she has %10 left at the end of the day after all the struggle during the day. The feeling of exhaustion and having no energy left to fight affects her immunity toward her mother. After all, the people who hurt us the most are the people whom we love the most and care about the most. “We can never distinguish entirely between what the body does, what the mind does, and what the world does." (Spatz, 2015, p. 9), which makes the idea Spatz quoted more understandable in this piece because of internalised patriarchy. In this monologue, she is confused about these moments with the help of liver functions & the external ensemble comments where we feel the pressure, even more, where she feels trapped under her feelings. The physical theatre aspect of the piece makes the monologue come alive where we feel the intense ensemble moments coming alive step by step while still portraying the character’s liver.
I have never done any practice even closer to this before. Using the elements of the devised theatre was something I was familiar with, but connecting that with the liver was something I was new at. Using the Alexander technique throughout my acting & devising process made me realise I was really good at connecting with my body internally. In this practice, we were connected with our inner body, moving constantly. Usually in Alexander Technique, you have a soft gaze while you are laying on the floor, fully focused on your body. In this practice, we immediately started moving and feeling every organ one by one. Interestingly some organs were easier than others. For example, the lungs and the heart were always the easiest for me as I have a movement and a soundscape linked to them. The most complex ones were the brain, the gallbladder, and the liver as I had no idea how they worked internally, how they sound in my body, and how I would portray that. So, I wanted to challenge myself with this practice and picked the liver, an organ I had little idea about. Creating a character for this was challenging and was a whole new experience in terms of imagination. I felt really disconnected in the first 2 rehearsals. I think the idea of thinking about my inner organs was too hectic for me. Whenever I thought about my heart, my heart rate got up, or my lungs, I couldn't breathe properly. After making the characteristic choices, and giving a name, profession and age to my character things got a little bit better. The liver is the organ of power, stability, detoxification, anger, and discrimination. A young woman at the age of 23 called Eve who is a graphic designer was perfect for the role. Her stability through the day writing facing discrimination in her daily life which Then causes her anger at the end of the day was really fascinating to figure out only by reading what liver stands for. In the end, I have so much knowledge about my inner body and how my psychology can be linked with it with my different moods. Being able to play with different tempo rhythms and being in a women-based rehearsal room makes the process even better for a safer space and a clear mind. “By exploring tempo and rhythm in rehearsal, performers can develop a greater awareness of their own bodies and their relationship to space and time, allowing for greater precision and control in their movements.” (Bogart, 1993, p.144). This helped us to be able to create a tempo rhythm for our characters and initially, the organ we chose.
In my future roles, I will connect all the different characters I play with a single or two organs to make more sense of it, while still putting all the work from the Stanislavski technique I learned. After " the lure", this might be a new useful technique to be able to connect with my character more and to manifest the functions of the organ to the character. The centering of the female experience in this work motivated me as a human and an artist and I realised the importance of performing characters that resonate with my values