Tag Archives: The Master and Margarita

Poetry and Madness – despatches from the rehearsal room

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As you walk towards a rehearsal room on Day One it’s impossible not to feel a little bit like you may just carry on walking and not go in at all.

Before you start, the possibilities are limitless. Safe in your imagination, the show could be anything – somehow, this time, the laws of physics will be broken. You can smell the awards.

But as soon as you set foot in the room, reality bites. The walls close in and the dreams of world domination come tumbling down. We will have a few chairs, a pile of old coats to play with, some people and ten weeks to turn words on a page into theatrical gold.

I could just carry on walking.

Another problem with any new show is that I always have a fairly ripe memory of the last one. And as you look back it’s impossible not to have just a little bit of romance about the past. How wonderful it was when I did that bit on the stairs, wasn’t it great when so and so made us all laugh night after night after night. Hang on – couldn’t we just do what we did last time? If only.

Still not too late to turn back and go home.

So. Week One. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. 450 or so pages of some of the craziest satire written. It has magic, murder, romance, insanity, about 100 totally believable, perfectly realised individuals with names that are impossible to remember. Oh, and a talking cat. The book they said could never be successfully adapted for the theatre. Well, they said that about ‘Carrie’ didn’t they? Oh.

- Richard Katz

Devising Notes/ SPACE

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Space is the backbone of a piece of theatre. Learning how to use space is an essential part of the rehearsal process. The dynamic of an ensemble moving in space will create the atmosphere, narrative and emotions in the piece.

Complicite uses 6ft bamboo canes (gardening canes) in the rehearsal room as a tool for exploring the use of space. The bamboos should be as straight as possible and need to have smooth, unsplit ends.

There are a variety of games and techniques you can explore with bamboos. For example:

Vertical bamboos

  1. Give everyone in the group a bamboo. Hold the bamboo vertically out in front of you, with its bottom tip about ten centimetres above the ground.
  2. Move around the space silently, being careful not to bump into other people, and keeping the bamboos upright and ten centimetres from the ground. The point of this exercise is to be very precise about keeping the same distance from the ground.
  3. Next, get into groups of three, doing the same thing but now moving as a tightly knit group. Change the leader of the group with each change of direction.
  4. Experiment with changing speed, rhythm, group formation. See what happens when the leader alters the position of their bamboo to create different shapes. For example, what happens when a group of bamboos moving slowly together in tight formation suddenly backs away from each other to create a gulf in the middle? What happens to the space they’ve opened up, and what does it suggest to onlookers?

This is a simple exercise that will build your understanding of space and movement. Bamboos are efficient and clear, but you can use any object. In The Master and Margarita, we substituted bamboos for chairs.

Practical application: devising from The Master and Margarita                    Chapter 4, The Pursuit

In this chapter, Ivan chases Woland and his retinue around Moscow, through streets, buildings and even a river. His journey is frenetic and quick. It is part of his descent into madness.

In order to stage Ivan’s journey, the company had to create all the environments and buildings he travels through on an empty stage. We used chairs for this, but you could use bamboos or any other collection of objects that are easily moved.

We split into four groups and each took a section of the chapter. Each group then worked out where Ivan was going and what was happening in that part of the journey.

In each group one person would play Ivan, with the others using the chairs to tell the story of his journey through Moscow. The important thing was establishing whether the space he was moving through was small or large, public or private, dangerous or easy to navigate. These distinctions helped us understand the emotion of Ivan’s journey.

Each group showed the result of their explorations and then we threaded each section together to create a single story. As a large group, we now added in Woland, constantly appearing and disappearing, but always just out of Ivan’s reach.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Devising Notes/ GAMES 2

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Games are essential to Complicite’s rehearsal process. They are warm-ups, ice-breakers, outlets for the inevitable competitiveness and aggression we carry with us. Games help with concentration, with building a team – crucial in developing the ensemble – and, of course, games are relaxing. Although there’s often time pressure in a devising process, games are almost the only thing that shouldn’t be left out. We begin every rehearsal session – morning and afternoon – with a game.

Relatives on a train

This game is great training for improvisational reflexes – learning how to react to fellow actors and to unexpected events, and how to make the most of opportunities the action presents.

  1. Place four chairs in the space, facing each other as in a train carriage.
  2. Four actors enter the train one by one. Each actor plays someone in their family they know well: their mother, father, uncle, grandmother. They should adopt all their subject’s physical and vocal characteristics.
  3. The actors enter the train, and sit down in the four seats. But the train has been delayed and won’t leave the platform on time.

The reason we choose a relative is because it is someone we know inside out. The closer the actor sticks to the true characteristics of their relative – as opposed to trying to make the situation funny – the more playful and successful the improvisation will be.

This is a great tool for building character. Choosing someone you know well and examining how they walk, stand, talk and interact is essential when you move on to creating a character from scratch.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Devising Notes/ GAMES

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Games are essential to Complicite’s rehearsal process. They are warm-ups, ice-breakers, outlets for the inevitable competitiveness and aggression we carry with us. Games help with concentration, with building a team – crucial in developing the ensemble – and, of course, games are relaxing. Although there’s often time pressure in a devising process, games are almost the only thing that shouldn’t be left out. We begin every rehearsal session – morning and afternoon – with a game.

Volleyball

  1. Make a net in the centre of the room. The net can be made from a line of chairs, boxes, or even a rope of string tied like a regular volleyball net.
  2. Split the group in two. The simple rules of volleyball apply: you hit the ball over the net and if it touches the floor, your team scores. Each person in the team has a turn to serve.
  3. The ball must be touched by everybody in the team before it crosses the net. This is the most challengingpart of this game. But it’s an essential component as it builds awareness of the group and each member’s strengths or weaknesses.
  4. The first team to get to 11 points wins. Only the team that is serving can win a point. If the non-serving team scores, they win the serve. Then they can start winning points.

This and other ball games fed into The Master and Margarita rehearsals by helping form a strong ensemble. The ensemble in The Master and Margarita are constantly aware of each other and their actions in the space. They are quick to react and support a member in an improvisation. The fluidity and precision of their movements on stage is developed through playing games like this.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Bizarre stuff in The Master and Margarita

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andyisreadingbooks:

There are a lot of very strange things happening in Bulgakov’s book, but at the moment, I find the connection between Margarita and Margerite de Valois/Henry IV to be the most interesting, at least for taking in the whole range of Margarita’s role in the narrative.

Exhibit A: While flying over Moscow, Natasha calls Margarita ‘Queen Margarita’, she’s also referred to as a queen at the midnight ball very many times.

Exhibit B: The goat-legged man on the banks of the Yenisei calls Margarita ‘Queen Margot’ (‘Forgive me, I didn’t see you, your majesty. Queen Margot. It’s the fault of the brandy.’). Queen Margot was Marguerite de Valois, famous for her beauty, literary talent and numerous affairs. Her wedding with Henry III of Navarre (later Henry IV of France) occasioned the St Bartholomew Massacre and I think there’s a reference to the massacre in the same paragraph (the goat-man ‘in a mixture of Russian and French jabbered some nonsense about having just come from a wedding in Paris’). This would further fit with Margarita’s story because Queen Margot was trapped in a loveless marriage and couldn’t have children.

(HOWEVER, the goat-man first calls Margarita, ‘Claudine, the merry widow!’ – my guess is that this was Claudine Françoise Mignot 1624-1711, who was a very merry widow indeed – she was married three times, every time to very rich men who were much older than she and who died a few months/years after their marriage.)

Exhibit C: ‘I rather think that a certain king of France of the 16th century would be most astonished if somebody told him that after all these years I should have the pleasure of walking arm in arm round a ballroom in Moscow with his great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.’

‘A certain king of France of the 16th century’ is, I think, Henry IV of France who was a famous womaniser and had lots of mistresses and illegitimate children. Now, you know Berlioz’s disappearing head? Henry IV’s head disappeared too! When revolutionaries ransacked his tomb in 1793, they took his head. An embalmed head that was supposedly his was passed around by collectors for some while then dropped off the radar. It was only rediscovered last year in the attic of a retired tax collector and the French state recuperated it and gave it a national mass then buried it with the rest of Henry IV’s body.

Revellers at a masked ball at the American Embassy, Moscow, 1935

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The Spring Ball of the Full Moon – the extravaganza of the undead that Margarita presides over in Bulgakov’s beloved novel The Master and Margarita is said to have been inspired by real life events.

In the spring of 1935, the American Embassy at Spaso House held a formal reception for the foreign diplomatic corps in Moscow. Ambassador Bullitt instructed his young translator Charles Thayer to plan a party that would surpass every other embassy party in Moscow’s history.

‘The resulting Spring Festival, held on April 24, 1935, remains possibly the most elaborate and dazzling diplomatic function ever staged by an American overseas mission.

…Thayer obtained some mountain goats, a dozen white roosters, and a baby bear that would spend the party perched on a small platform… Workmen created an artificial forest in the chandelier room using 10 young birch trees, which had been uprooted and stored temporarily in one of Spaso House’s bathrooms. They also constructed an aviary made from a fish net to house pheasants, parakeets, and 100 zebra finches (all on loan from the Moscow Zoo). Finally, the dining room table was covered with Finnish tulips, and with chicory grown on wet felt in order to simulate grass.

…The event brought over 400 guests to Spaso House….As far as Thayer was concerned, “except for Stalin, practically everyone who matters in Moscow turned up.”

…Apart from the fact that the bear vomited on a Soviet general after its bottle of milk was mischievously substituted for champagne, the party was a remarkable success, and lasted until the following morning.’

 - Extract taken from US Embassy Moscow’s website: Spaso House, 75 years of history