mercoledì 17 dicembre 2008


Gomorra & Macbeth project

Write a setting for a specific scene (when, where) and describe the characters.

Scene I

We are in “the cavern”, a little pub bad lighted and dreary.
Three women, young but with horrible grey teeth and skinny faces, arrange their cocaine on the filthy counter, in order to create fine straight white stripes. A kind of zebra crossing of drug.
When Macbeth, one of the most important and cruel mafia bosses at the moment, enter in the pub, the three women understand immediately that he’s as upset as a big tiger in a small cage. So they offer him the drug that gives rise to a series of hallucinations…


Daniela Di Matteo

martedì 16 dicembre 2008

09.12.2008

Roberto Paci Dalò

(photos by courtesy of Michele Mari (c))

Brainstorming on multimedia with Roberto Paci Dalò

Roberto Paci Dalò frequentemente realizza opere in più media approfondendo aspetti percettivi diversi dello stesso materiale in relazione al linguaggio e tecnologie utilizzati di volta in volta

That is how the flier advertized and presented Roberto to Salerno audience. Very difficult to present, Roberto as he himself admits, so no more words on who or what he is or has been—we may visit his website.
Presenting what he said is not a minor task. I’ll remind you just some points of his very generous speech. First of all paradoxically he warned against the use and misuse of the monster-word multimedia. Paradoxically because the so called ‘magesterial degree’, the two years of specialization of the DAVIMUS is : ‘Scienze dello spettacolo e della produzione multimediale’ and everybody is looking around to understand what is meant by that definition.
Multimedia- Roberto said, in his perfect Irish accent, is working in more than one sector, in more than one language. It is working and imagining and inventing new professions. It is asking oneself: ‘What shall I do when I become a child?—cosa farò da piccolo’

The creative drive should unite Davimus students and staff . The contemporary dramatist/ planner/ designer is the one who inventively uses new techniques, tactics, strategies in the creative process for the making of infrastructures (servizi, attrezzature), cultural spaces, advanced cultural districts. We need desire and technology, and these are very cheap and very easy to have access to and learn (Roberto is thinking at the project of Punta Corsara in Scampia or the project of the Fondazione Morra in the area of Avvocata in Naples-a project Roberto is working at now.)

We are less and less paper people-persone cartacee.
We need to work in group

Technologies of sound and light

mercoledì 3 dicembre 2008

02.12.2008

Building a plot

Few heads, too much confusion... how to realise the abstract? I need to shout! Do we really believe in this project? I don't think so.
We have the opportunity to explode on a scene, to live in fantasy, to express our duties, talking with faces, words, colours, pictures, sounds, talking with the art through the art, give ourselves to the public, to rise the past, to see back, to show the present we stand with a mystic eye who understands, to make something special, something new, something with the taste of naiveté, inexperience, natural but it seems nothing touches you! Fear or lack of desire? The work is slow, thousand ideas in the same room fight between them, someone thinks, creates in its mind but doesn't speak, someone leaves us, someone doesn't agree, someone tries to impose himself, someone tries to recreate what's already done, we could make it but we don't know it, we'll probably arrive where they've already arrived, but we'll arrive alone, we'll be the makers of something which already exists but new for us. What did we make last Tuesday? Pietro knows well, we have no time, and now it's time to write, step by step, no structure, improvvisation and irrationality will guide us! There's no line to follow... Chaos can help us! Just 45 minutes to show and do not show the gomorra's punk and the atonement of a murderer, Macbeth. Pietro asks himself and us, how can Macbeth send his word to his lady today? A letter? Or an sms, an e-mail? Lady Macbeth sees her husband's words on the stage, the audience could listen Macbeth's voice who reads his letter and the lady's voice together as Piazza says. Can the three witches become only one? Not a witch, but a gipsy on a tv show who captures and provokes the audience with her lies. Doubt about the character, will what she says be true? This image of a gipsy is taken by a movie adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth of the 1950s intitled Jo Macbeth . We watched it during the lesson. Here Macbeth was a businessman in a city. During a dinner in a restaurant a gipsy read cards to him and his wife telling him it will be the king of the city. Lady Macbeth full of vanity tries to capture the white dressed Duncan through her beauty. We tried to analyse the film until we watched. Shakespeare in a noir, where classic and mistery are matched. The dark side of a man, of a woman of a mind, of a story, of a context, of a city. A closed atmosphere where we can breath the intimacy between characters. A little world of few people, a question mark. Next macbeth's message arrived, Lady Macbeth could turn on tv, zapping, lost in the news and aware of what happens around her, how much the husband's words are in the facts! The tv voice could be always present on the stage, showing Italian trash, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish... Pietro continues asking to solve the question of the wood? What abstract element can represent it? What can evoke it? Wood... Somethink built by wood. Another question, what sound can give atmosphere? Neomelodic sound? Touch the real or thwart it? I ask. These are the ideas which flow in the room this tuesday, what can I add ? I forgot, for t next tuesday Piazza asks the students to write Macbeth's letter to his wife, someone hides, not too clear. Pasquale' going to write the playscript, if you want to steal the pen, you can do it! What can I propose yet? I can try to give an order in disorder of my ideas. My ideas, not only mine. Create a soundtrack using programmes like flstudio, using a sound who can make vibrate human senses, sounds which disturb the scene, Shakespeare's words could be a song who enter the public's mind indirectly and faze them, three gansters called witches in code who convince Macbeth to kill Duncan promising him the power, playing with his sensibility and his weakness, human weakess, in a dark room, the grey of smoke, the white of coke matched with dialogues full of irony which can make smile and think at the same time... Giving the opportunity to the public to fight against the garbage which is eating us!

Mara Melella
18.11.2008

Summing up William Shakespeare's Macbeth


The main characters

DUNCAN - King of Scotland
MALCOLM - Duncan’s elder son
DONALBAIN - Duncan’s younger son
MACBETH - the most courageous and successful warrior in the army of King Duncan; Thane of Cawdor, Thane of Glamis
BANQUO - Macbeth’s friend and a general in the army of King Duncan.
FLEANCE - Banquo’s son
MACDUFF - the Thane of Fife
LADY MACDUFF - Macduff’s wife
MACDUFF’S SON
THREE WITCHES
SCOTTISH LORDS
SOLDIERS


The main points of the tragedy

1) First Act scene opens with the three Witches.

2) A sergeant reports to king Duncan that Macbeth has defeated the forces of Norway and Ireland.

3) Banquo and Macbeth hear the Witches’s prophecy: Macbeth shall be King but Banquo shall father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one.

4) Regicide: Macbeth kills Duncan. Fearing for their lives, Malcolm flees to England and Donalbain to Ireland.
Macbeth becomes king of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king.

5) Macbeth hires killers to kill Banquo and his son, but Fleance escapes.
At the royal banquet, Banquo’s ghost appears, only Macbeth can see him.

6) Prophecies: the three Witches tell Macbeth to beware Macduff, that noone of woman born shall harm him and that he won’t be vanquished until Birnam Wood on Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.
Macbeth hires to kill Macduff ‘s family.

7) Macduff and Malcolm in England want to take the power from Macbeth and they plan to invade Scotland.

7a) Lady Macbeth’s sleep walking scene and her suicide.
Tomorrow and tomorrow…

8) Camouflaged by tree limbs, the army moves to the castle of Dunsinane and the battle begins.

9) Fight between Macbeth and Macduff. Macduff declares he was born untimely from his mother’s womb. Macduff beheads Macbeth.

10) Malcolm becomes king of Scotland.


Grazia Carbone

lunedì 24 novembre 2008

17.11.2008

On Monday, November 17th we had the last meeting with Sylvia Toone. It was one of three lessons in total, one on Friday and one on Saturday in Salerno. She gave us a series of theoretical and practical advices about how should an actor hold the stage and improve his stage presence.
We made exercises like “zip-zap-zoop” to experiment with new techniques of improvisation, which are based on the direct and immediate communication of what you want to show or express to others.
We made also excercises of relaxation and slackening which are very important for an actor because they give him the possibility to place himself in a specific situation or get into the character that he is going to play.
According to Sylvia Toone, an actor should play as he really sees what he speaks about. But to do that, a good actor has to mould his mind and put all his senses together to find a unique point of concentration (sense of hearing, smell, seeing, touching and taste). In this way he will become more aware of himself, of his body and gestures.

Grazia Carbone

venerdì 21 novembre 2008

14-17.11.2008

Sylvia Toone's Workshops

In order to achieve our goals (first year students should interview immigrants and build a story in English; second year students should create a stage and screen adaptation of Macbeth in a Neapolitan setting), the three meetings with Prof Sylvia Toone (The Department Library, Santa Maria dei Barbuti and the University Theatre) have offered first and second year students examples of techniques and craft which help to build trust and memory, improvisational methods - which are supports for the actor’s individual talent.


First day - 14.11.2008 – The Department Library
The body has been at the centre of our exercises and discourses. The focus of concentration have been senses and their memories with consideration of individual responses and reactions.

The eye and simulation of watching a game.
The ear and simulation of hearing.

Group solidarity formation techniques:
1-8
Zip zap zoop (receiving and transmitting impulses)


Second day - 15.11.2008 – S. Maria dei Barbuti
(photos by courtesy of Michele Mari (C))

Trust in one’s body and in others.

One in the centre with his/her eyes closed and everyone pushes him again towards the centre

Mirrors in two

Sense of tasting and smelling


Third day - 17.11.2008 - University Theatre
(photos by courtesy of Michele Mari (C))

The third day saw the active and enthusiastic participation of a large number of students. Sylvia usefully repeated that a team meets on the basis of an agreement about a common task. Every exercise has to deal with a p.o.c., point of concentration. Students and teachers have focussed on touch memory. Two teams think about an object or a substance and then individually they perform the manipulation of that object/substance in front of an audience.
Sylvia made everyone concentrate on the body and then the body moving through cold and hot elements.

The second half of the lesson was devoted to the creation of a set up. A couple of actors had to perform, the first a WHERE - a location working with physical objects and the second a WHO - trying to establish a relation. In order to share with the audience the sounds and the pictures the movements on stage may take an upstage curve or a downstage curve

In order for the show to go on the improvising actor does not have to say NO and doesn’t have to ask questions, but the impulse has to be taken and continue with a YES AND…
And also you must remember that everything takes place in the moment.

Sylvia left us with one recommendation:
- everyone has to, for some minutes every day, consciously think what his/her eyes see, ears listen to, tongue, nose throat smell taste and feel, what the body touches and by what is touched…
and the most welcome promise:
...she will come again soon!

mercoledì 19 novembre 2008

14.11.2008

Prof. Stuart Marlow from Stuttgart Media University has shown two DVDs as examples of digital story telling (Stage on Screen):

Sacco and Vanzetti and the anti-communist, anti–anarchist, anti-immigrant hysteria in America in the twenties and thirties

Testimonies of immigrants in Germany (German and English)

martedì 11 novembre 2008

11.11.2008

Macbeth's storyline
04.11.2008
28.10.2008

Pina Bausch
21.10.2008
From page to stage to screen
There's a text...and there's an actor on a stage...and he's talking about the theatre...

...and how interesting to see how many different performances can come out from the same written text...even different from the "scene" we had in mind while reading...











14.10.2008

Is there any link between Shakespeare's Macbeth and Saviano's Gomorrah?




Macbeth is one of the most well-known tragedies by William Shakespeare. There’s the Scotland, a prophecy, a tyrannicide, and the rise and fall of a ‘wannabe-king-became cruel tyrant’ knight and his egoisme a deux with the calculating Lady. Gomorra is the groundbreaking 2006 book by Roberto Saviano, already staged and quickly transposed into the 2008 movie by Matteo Garrone.It features Naples, Camorra, money, violence, illegality, ambitious boys and ‘entrepreneurs’ who never listened to their conscience. A world in a word, the so called “Sistema”.Do the “Scottish play” and the Camorrists’ Chronicles have anything in common ? Of course they do, and we, students of the “English Language II” course, here at the DaViMus, are going to catch similarities, work on the differences, shape atmospheres and characters merging two worlds so distant and different, and at the same time so close, in our wonderful, amazing, forthcoming theatrical performance.During the 14th October lesson this project was presented (obviously, enthusiastically received by the students) and there was the first debate of a -likely- long series. We first tried to point out some of the concepts shared by both of the texts, for example the avidity, the eagerness of power, above all; then the betrayal, which paves the way to a new ‘boss’ both in Macbeth and in many of Gomorra’s tales, as well as the role of the woman in this cynical universes (Lady Macbeth is not very far from some of the Camorra women), and the use of fear as a mean to subdue the will of people. After some more or less abstract speeches, somebody suggest to start thinking about something more concrete, like the location of our play… well, maybe we’ve really gotta start talking concrete: but let’s not forget that our adventure has just begun, and there’s still a long, long way to go…

Pasquale Parisi