Pedagogical Approach

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Hagley Theatre School's pedagogical vision is based on the question, "How can theatre be made an art form?" Considering that theatre is essentially the actor, we believe theatre can only become art when the art of the actor comes into existence. For us, theatre is the actor's presence on stage, which is their body in action, and only through the body can actors obtain art.

ART OF THEATRE = ART OF THE ACTOR = ART OF THE BODY

At Hagley Theatre School, learning is a journey into the principles behind the art of the actor. Our aim is to guide students towards the study of the transformative, playful, and creative body.

Hagley Theatre School is more than just a training ground. It's a space for students to develop knowledge of self, a safe place to explore theatre techniques and create new theatre with an internalized orientation. Our commitment extends beyond the classroom to preparing for theatre creation and contributing to the advancement of theatre practice in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The psychophysical training introduces a holistic approach to training the body, voice, and mind for specific acting-related techniques. It consists of a series of physical exercises, improvisations, and games to develop the organic unity of body and mind. The main challenge for an actor is to inhabit a body that can respond to any demands made by the mind; a body that is alert, light, alive, and awakened, ready to react to any stimuli – spontaneous and inventive. It demands a relaxed, grounded, light, centred, calm, and whole presence. The student must deal with the unexpected and remain alert, present, appropriate, and in touch with the moment's needs.

Psychophysical training aims to develop the ability to be spontaneous and avoid the tendency to be 'cerebral.' In short, the psychophysical unity (body and mind) is evident when the actor is sensorially present; his/her/their impulses are not faulty, redundant, or incoherent. The school is committed to guiding the students into becoming physically and mentally sensitive in a performance situation, emphasizing the students' active role in their own learning and growth.

Psychophysical Training

HTS uses masks and embodied theatre practice to form versatile actors. The mask allows expression and exploration of its relationship to space, stage presence, strength of purpose, emotional flow, and the investigation of form and intention. It demands concentration on spatial elements such as lines, planes, volumes, space, rhythm, timing, efforts, dramatic projection, physical integration, stillness, movement, structure, articulation, organicity, contradiction, texture, and dynamic levels of energy. All these elements are crucial for acting and serve all theatre styles. The learning process at HTS starts with neutral masks.

The Pedagogy of Masks

The journey begins with the ‘awakening’ of the poetic potential of the body. It is the rediscovery of the world and nature by studying movement. Through the imitation of nature and everyday life, the performer is aware of reality based on a network of actions and reactions. The neutral mask, a perfectly balanced mask, is not just a tool but a transformative agent. When placed on the face, it enables the student to experience the state of neutrality prior to action, a state of receptiveness to everything around us, with no inner conflict. This mask is a reference point, a basic mask, it forces the student to make the body expressive as it covers the face stopping it from being the only source of communication. In addition, the Neutral Mask promotes a temporary suspension of the wearer’s identity, it transforms the performer into a universal human being erasing all the personal habits, mannerisms and idiosyncrasies.

The training with neutral masks starts with body awareness in the space. The process allows the student to comprehend physical action and the basic structure of theatre play. The neutral mask reveals the story/conflict/action that every individual carries in his/her/their body. It allows the performer to develop presence, willingness to play with the space, and to find the silence before the narrative. Once the search for the neutral body and mind begins, various rhythms, forms, gestures, and dynamics are discovered.

Neutral Mask

Larval masks represent semi-formed faces, not yet a fully formed character. These masks require minimum movement and subtle actions to find expression. They allow the actors to experiment with simple dramatic situations and basic physical states (joy, anger, fear, sadness). The Larval Masks introduce the possibility of exploring dramatic situations with naivety and innocence. They do not have gender, age, or social class, enabling the students to explore simple human physical forms and the realms of animal, imaginary, and fantastic worlds.

Larval Masks

Expressive masks offer more defined physical and psychological characteristics and enable the performer to create characters with more emotional depth. While these masks require detail and rigor in choosing appropriate gestures and movements, they embody specific types such as drunk, kind, gentle, naïve, nasty, stern, flirt, and perplexed.

The expressive masks, including neutral and larval masks, play a crucial role in the development of physical expression and communication. These three types of masks, which do not use verbal language, set the scene for introducing spoken text with half-masks.

Expressive Masks

The study of half-masks follows the expressive masks and introduces the use of voice. The objective is to make the body expressive and let a particular grammar of gesture and movement organically connect with speech. Half masks allow the students to explore the voice of each mask, sound, rhythm, accent, and intonation.

The school utilizes four types of half masks:

Expressive half masks made by mask maker Russell Dean from Strangeface (UK)
Topeng and Bondres masks from master mask maker Ida Bagus Anon Suryawan (Bali)
Commedia dell'Arte masks (Italy)
Aotearoa masks made by Kate Lang and Pedro Ilgenfritz

Half-Masks

The exploration of object masks involves using found materials as theatre masks. Students work with recycled materials, abstract forms, and volumes that are transformed into theatre masks. Cardboard boxes, plastic containers, kitchen utensils, car parts, paper bags, sports gear, or anything can become a mask and a character.

Object Masks

Clown technique and the actor's game

The practical investigation of the basic rules of physical comedy is a journey that unfolds through the technique of the clown and the bouffon. The clowning technique reveals the poetic side of human beings and the acceptance of stupidity and joy. More importantly, the clown's pedagogy is a powerful tool that allows students to experience the transformative power of failure and gain a deep understanding of the logic of clown.

The school mixes Philippe Gaulier and Jacques Lecoq's concepts of flop and le jeu with the concept of the actor's game as a methodological framework for studying clown technique. Rather than relying solely on exploring individual subjectivity, naivety, idiosyncrasy, failure, or ridiculousness, the study of the clown technique focuses on the study of the actor's game and the logic of the clown action. The approach to clown methodology examines the structure of dramatic creation fusing the red nose technique with principles of Viola Spolin’s improvisation methodology.

The study of the actor’s game and comedy also extends to the territory of bouffons. Bouffon is a modern French theatre term for a specific style of comedy work that focuses on mockery, parody, and satire.

Bouffons laugh at everyone, and nothing is considered taboo or off-limits, as they are holding up a mirror to societal norms and institutions: religion, sexual mores, family, gender, education, politics, morality, and death can be effortlessly mocked, so long as a larger truth is revealed- this is its very essence. Bouffons represent elements of society in an amplified, distorted, or exaggerated way, provoking laughter and outrage. The buffoon represents the bottom of society, and they have nothing to lose. Their pleasure is blasphemy.

Bouffon

Melodrama aims to give the student actors further opportunities to explore the importance of heightened theatricality. It also provides a further in-depth study of the connection between physicality and characters' emotional states like affliction, remorse, resentment, shame, and revenge. The goal is to achieve a strong enough performance so that the spectators are moved to tears. Actors can only reach this level of play if they believe in everything with the greatest possible conviction: sacrifice, confrontation between good versus evil, courage versus cowardice, and morality versus justice. Melodrama is not an old-fashioned form; it is all around us every day in the one who waits for the phone to ring for a job, in a family hit by war, or immigrants who must leave their country.

Melodrama

Final Project

The One Year Acting Training Course closes with students’ final performances in November. The Final Project presentations showcase short theatre works developed from the material generated during classes. It is the culmination of the teaching and learning process, where students present short works depicting masks, clowns, bouffons, melodrama and test their learning in front of an audience. The Final Project also serves to test ideas to be developed further in the Six-Month Theatre Creation Course.