Viewpoints

Time

  1. Tempo
  2. Duration
  3. Kinesthetic Response
  4. Repetition

Space

  1. Shape
  2. Gesture
  3. Architecture
  4. Spatial Relationship
  5. Topography

Comments

  1. At its heart it is a synthetic system, not an analytic one. The strength lies in its heuristics and exercises as a means for generation.
  2. The viewpoints may seem kind of obvious. This is a feature, not a bug. It’s meant to be a naming of familiar ideas, not an abstracted theory. It is surprisingly easy to neglect the basics; all art training constantly reinforces fundamentals.
  3. This is a sourcebook; for the most part we have to infer the philosophy. One deeply recurring theme: listen to each other. Other themes are very similar to Tai Chi and dance training.  However, let’s remain aware of the limits of our knowledge: we can’t deeply understand this unless we were to spent a lot of time practicing it.
  4. Some exercises create a general state of mind and some stimulate a particular kind of creative direction. Themes for the state of mind:
    1. physical relaxation and presence
    2. group awareness
    3. unspoken consensus building
    4. subsuming individuality to the group
    5. building communication
  5. Robots don’t have emotional state. A focus on practical, visible, external movement is a productive approach. A related theme: actors don’t ‘act emotions’, they perform actions which reveal emotion.
  6. In the spirit of practical training, I think one central question is to ask how we can translate the exercises into robotic puppetry and automation?

Quotes

“In all the improvisations, movement should be made for a reason. The reason is not psychological, but rather formal, compositional and intuitive. Viewpoints = choices made about time and space. Every move is based upon what is already happening. The reason to move may be a kinesthetic response to a motion or might clarify a spatial relationship or a choice about speed in relation to a tempo already present onstage. A move may be made to conform to a floor pattern or in relation to issues about duration that arise within the group. A choice may be made in relation to the existing architecture or may be a repetition of a shape or gesture. But no move should happen arbitrarily or for a desire for variety.”

Bogart, Anne; Landau, Tina. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (pp. 70-71). Theatre Communications Group. Kindle Edition.

 

“What do all actors around the world, despite their language and cultural differences, share in common?” He calls the answer to this question “Sats,” a Norwegian word that describes the quality of energy in the moment before an action. The action itself, post-Sats, is particular to the culture of the performer. But the quality of energy before the action is what all actors around the world share. The quality of the preparation, or Sats, determines the success of the action.

Bogart, Anne; Landau, Tina. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (p. 73). Theatre Communications Group. Kindle Edition.

 

“The gift of Viewpoints is that it leads you to, not away from, emotion. People often misunderstand the goal as being a state of neutrality and deadness as opposed to a state of aliveness, receptivity and experience. What’s important to remember about Viewpoints is that, just like other “methods” of acting, the goal is to be alive and engaged onstage. The beauty of Viewpoints is that it allows us to reach this goal, not by forcing it out of ourselves, but by receiving it from others, and ourselves.”

Bogart, Anne; Landau, Tina. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (p. 80). Theatre Communications Group. Kindle Edition.