Tell us about the Physical and Vocal Preparation
Anna Korolainen:
Every performer recognises the importance of a good warm up. However, I have often felt like we as actors run through the warm ups blindly, aiming towards physical endurance and impressive vocal expression. With Spindrift we have tried to create warm up structures that enhance the performers' presence and respect of one another. Naturally we have also borrowed exercises from the practitioners that we have worked with, but tried to push them into a direction that serves our aims and ethics as a company. We ask our performers and workshop participants to have their focus both inside and outside of themselves, checking in with their bodies and minds whilst staying connected to and supportive towards their partners.
We are continuously shaping our Grotowski-based physical preparation towards a direction, where the performers don't only execute strenuous physical movements, but warm up the room and share their energy with their partners. Like in yoga, physical training is not about the concrete outcome or competition, but about presence and precision in each action.
In our vocal training, we often start from the places that we feel insecure of. Vocal training can be exposing and make one feel very vulnerable, and we like to embrace those "dark places". Actors are constantly bombarded by judgements of "not having the ear for music" or "not having a strong enough voice". With Spindrift we aim to free our performers from value judgement when speaking, voicing or singing, and bring the attention to communication and connection with the partners. In everyday life people communicate with one another regardless of one's range, diction or vocabulary when speaking in one's second language, and we are aiming to bring the same attitude to our vocal exercises. Each vocal quality is interesting, and the softer and more subtle ways of speaking can flourish side by side with the loud shouts and projected scales.
Tell us about the Illustrated Self-Perception
Julia Johannsdottir:
For us the stage is not bound to one specific art, we aim to build bridges across disciplines. By this we mean both in our performances and in the rehearsal and devising process. This exercise, in the beginning was aroused from Julia´s experience working with young children. In the kindergarten the children were asked to draw a self - portrait ones a month. The teachers would ask the children questions about the drawings and write them down. This was one way for the children to express themselves on their journey of self - discovery. This gave the tutors and parents a great opportunity to get to know their children and watch their communication development, their drawing development, language development and more.
What interested Julia the most was how the children described their drawings. The stories the children would tell, and all of them were about their personal experiences. Even though the drawing was the typical “potato head” without a nose and maybe few dots here and there, the children were able to tell a whole story about their drawing. Then Julia noticed the stories often had in common how the children described the environment, even though it wasn´t really visible in the drawings.
We started using this way to express ourselves whilst devising Me…Whilst being humane! and found it extremely useful as a source of material. For that project we were working with the concept self and identity from different angles and this way we found great moments and personas and got information about each other that we believe we wouldn’t have other wise.
For Carroll: Berserkur we use plants as subject for the drawings, asking that you imagine yourself being a plant. We focus on the environment because what is interesting is that plants are completely dependent on the environment, they are 100% product from their environment. Plants have great characteristics, which can easily be identified with and played with. These characteristics are very open to own interpretation and developments. The environment and the plants characteristics give information to devise from in relation to an individual within a society and the environment we thrive in and create around us. Here we find an opportunity to devise both characteristics and sources of material in the environment for the stage design, costume design and even sound design, which, like said before, we like to devise simultaneously. From the environment we receive great information about the character, as if it is extension of the character. This gives a chance of playing with opposites of the character and showing his or hers different sides through the environmental design.
