Christine Talitha’s Experience [she/her]
This post is jointly written by Christine Talitha and Georgia Sim.
The room is quiet, save for the thrum of the air-conditioning. Bodies poised, ready to leap into the next action. All focus is on Darryl Lim, Artistic Director of Split Theatre, as the actors wait for their next cue from him. Feet rushing across the ground, leaps in the centre, small gestures that become the basis for someone else’s interpretation, near-collisions with each other. The exercise slowly starts to take the form of each individual’s imagination and creation, yet maintaining the integrity of the exercise. Small grunts become loud exhales, a pointed finger becomes a smeared hand of…whatever the person was thinking of.
This is Split, where introductions come in the form of silence.
And with very good reason, too. Split’s primary framework is grounded in physical theatre, which is why most of their warm-ups and exercises take place without spoken word. Most of the time, the only thing you can hear is the laboured breathing that comes with such intensive physical warm-ups (the writers can definitely attest to that). But for this particular ensemble, this is nothing new. All of them are graduates of Work On The Self (WOTS), Split’s signature actor training programme, well-versed in the demands of physical theatre training. Most of them have even served as facilitators for subsequent runs of WOTS.
They are now embarking on a pilot run of Split’s second programme, Work On Resigning (WOR), an extension of WOTS that demands presence, commitment and discipline. A 5-month programme inclusive of individual sessions, WOR takes the actor through a journey of resignation. This journey manifests in different ways for each individual. For some, it comes as frustration when they are pushed to seek discomfort. For others, it presents as hesitation, as unsureness. In the past 2 months observing WOR on the sidelines as a documentarist, I have not seen a single actor go through this journey of resigning with ease.
But why work on resigning? Why should an actor resign? Why resign after working on the self?
It does sound counterintuitive, the concept of seemingly letting things go to the wind after regaining control. But resigning does come hand in hand with working on the self. In WOR, resigning happens at different layers of an actor’s process. The first one that is arguably the most important of all, is resigning to be. To be is to simply exist in the present, to be mentally within the moment without labelling the past or expecting the future. A line that can be heard in every rehearsal over the cacophony of the ensemble is “Don’t think so much, just do.” And somehow, that apparent truth when vocalized, helps everyone just a little to be a bit more grounded within the present. Movements are tweaked, tones change, lines are discarded.
It’s a concept that is easier said than done, with the actors hovering over the boundaries of “Is this enough?” and “I’ve done that before”, trying to negotiate the liminal space that is “I am doing this”. One actor was struggling with their score and found it hard to keep moving to develop things, eventually becoming upset. “You need to keep moving, keep trying, see how things change,” Darryl insisted. And as time went by, even though it was difficult, the actor slowly but surely managed to break through the mental block. As artists, external influence informs our work to some extent, with audience expectation as one of the key troubles that plague the mind. Yet art is subjective, and art is free of forms and constraints, and to resign to be, aids the artist in reorienting the self as centric to the art. Once the artist is back in control of their art, only can what they produce be truly theirs.
This first step of resigning to be then leads to the next one, of resigning to be taken. To be taken is to let the self be guided to perform with some sort of inner passivity. Confused? Don’t worry, so was I. As an observer, the best example of “being taken” was when there was a vocal exercise conducted for warm-up. The instructions: vocalize notes, release what is trapped within the body or calling for attention, build upon the piece if it calls to you.
When this exercise first started, it was chaotic. People were vocalizing what others were vocalizing, voices were very hesitant and discordant. “Okay, stop. Now, I want just one person to start first, before the rest come in,” Darryl said. It took a few minutes of eyes darting around the loose circle we were standing in, before one actor took the plunge, vocalizing rich notes reminiscent of Chinese folk tunes. There was no repeatable melody, no structure to the sounds, but the rest started coming in with their own supporting sounds. Some followed the same kind of folk/tribal based sounds, some added harmonies. At the peak of the exercise, almost everyone was in some sort of trance-like state: with their eyes closed, expressive faces, hands reaching out or curling in. (The writer would like to take this chance to emphasize that Split is not a cult.)
It was when one actor let themselves be taken, that allowed the other actors to let their guard down and be swept by their own inner demands. The energy in that room was nothing short of magical, the energy when everyone was committed to being in the present, to willingly fall into and be swept away by the river of possibilities.
Exhausted yet? We’re just about halfway through the process of resignation. This process is taxing on the actor’s psyche, both during rehearsals and after rehearsals. It requires deliberate communication between the actor and their own inner processes to understand the tensions that come to exist. Sometimes these tensions take centre stage within the actor, which results in an individual-centred actor. At this point, the process of resignation takes the actor to learn how to resign to not hold back. In this particular concept, the actor slowly starts to move forward in communicating with others. How does one hold onto themselves and their character in a flexible, adaptable manner? How does the actor constantly find something new without compromising the foundation of their character?
This concept comes together with the last stage, resigning to communicate. Simply put, when the actor resigns to not hold back, the actor resigns to be a communicator. At this point, the actor is a vessel, a conduit for the character. They are in the moment and present as the character. They think, move, speak like the character. They adapt and evolve as the character.
Be ready to learn and adapt according to the situation! As you will discover something new about yourself!
You may question the definition of leaping used here. Well, I am also not sure about it as it is a very big term. To me, leaping means entering into space with purpose . Therefore, in acting we are leaping into someone else's score with purpose, care and understanding. However, leaping doesn’t come easily, many a times we are leaping into the unknown that means it can either make sense or it doesn’t actually make sense at all. When you leap into the unknown, it can either be an amazing experience or an extremely frustrating and confusing experience- two extremes. Either way, to make a leap into an endeavour requires strong faith. But what amazes me, was how the actors and actresses manage their frustration and confusion by channelling it into producing a better score together as a group.
The process can either by everyone in the group to do their own personal score or everyone in the group to do their personal score and then form a leap with someone inside the group. It is like bouncing energy or reacting very quickly from one person to another person. Therefore, leaping occurs when someone quickly adapt to everyone in the surrounding and form a co-relating relationship with the fellow the actors and actresses.
While the possibilities of leaping remain endless, this is how I have perceive leaping to be. As what I have mention earlier, leaping doesn’t come easy. The first few weeks of them trying to leap as a group were met with confusion, uncertainty and doubts. For example, during one of the group sessions that Cheri, Damien and Xin Rui had there was a lot of trial and error trying to find the perfect moment that they could leap together as a group. I remember very clearly that Cheri started her own personal score, followed by Damien leaping in. There was so much confusion pertaining whether their leaping was done appropriately and Xin Rui’s integration into it?
The next frustrating process, was judging whether it make sense or doesn’t at all. There was this burning passion in their eyes. Even when things got hard, they never gave up but they kept on trying until they were able to conjure a successful leap that also made sense. The way that this group leapt together was by having one person to enter whenever they deemed appropriate. Timing was of the essence.
Therefore, those who graduate from WOTS, I highly recommend you to join WOR as it is indeed a life-changing experience as you have to let go of certain belief systems while also challenging yourself to avoid resigning to a certain fate and code your own reality of things.
