Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.
19.04.2023 | Day 3 | Production Exercise 2
What a day!
Honestly my brain is mush at this point but WOW. Just came home from experiencing the play Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again at the Freies Werkstatt-Theater (FWT).
Let’s start with the beginning:
Morning — Arrived in class as usual and we started the day with a lecture on feminism taught by Jimena Aguilar, head of MA Digital Narratives. It was a super interesting session where we held open conversations on what feminism exactly means and how this ties in with the play and how it manifests in different societies. To understand the play as well as possible, we got to read the first scene together. Well, it turned out to be a reenactment, as Samar Nahas, my colleague, and we gave the performance of our lives ;)
Once we read the play we analyzed multiple aspects of it such as:
- Theme — What subjects are dealing with
- Structure — How each scene is structured, which function does it have
- Tone — What is the attitude that the text conveys; what feelings does it leave you with
- Characters — Who are the characters? How do they evolve throughout?
- Language — What language is used? Choice of words. How does it change throughout?
- Narrative Figures — Any symbolism/metaphors?
- Space — Which spaces show up?
We then attempted to answer these questions. It gave a good sense of what the play was going to feel like, or at least as well as you can try to imagine before having seen it.
At noon — We decided to refine our task list using a collaborative board on Trello. The task list contained the preparation for visiting the FWT. We were not only going to watch the play, we were going to get a tour at the FWT and meet the people who work in/with/for the institution. It went a bit roughly at first, but Maren Demant provided useful guidance to help us divide our energies in a way that was sustainable.
Once our task list was sorted out, we had our lunch.
In the afternoon — We met up with Guido and Caro for our tour in the FWT. The weather was amazing the sun warmed up everything it touched and life was good ❤ The tour started out with the kitchen where chocolate vulvapops were made (for the play of course ;)). Later we saw the offices, where the people make the theatre functional. After we strolled through the practice rooms, wooden floors, spaceous and sunlit. After we had seen the building, we went down to the foyer and walked to the stage of the play. We listened to the play’s technician talk about his experience in theatre (well count me out, because I literally got lost after my bathroom visit so I missed out a little here :-I)
We grabbed a bite, so that we didn’t get hungry during the play.
Evening — The first people arrived and we approached them with our prepped interview questions. We needed to collect data for our research to get a good sense of how to best create our own prototype afterwards. It was important to get to know the audience of our client i.e. FWT, why they choose this theatre, why this play, what are their experiences/thoughts on feminism and gender equality, what to expect and so on and so forth. I ended up recording quite some people, one pair even in German (challenging but fun).
After we did our initial data collection, we watched the play.
I fear I lack the words to describe how profound this experience was. As a woman I recognized myself a lot in the expressions the actresses portrayed. The speed of the play varied also to such an extent that it kind of reminded me of a rollercoaster ride. It reached the apparent climaxes but also rocked the bottoms, and I felt this nagging exhaustion deep inside at certain points where I just wanted it to end. It felt cathartic and I got goosebumps. They played with space so wonderfully, from being contained in their “bubble” on their furry mats, to complete rave chaos. I loved how they used lighting to set the atmosphere for each scene, and how at times, the spots were directed on us. Frequently we did experience the 4th wall to crumble right in front of our eyes. It was like experiencing a narrative that many of us women live through yet expressed in 3 different simultaneous ways.
