My attention returns to my body. I start to feel the structure of my body. Initially wondering consciousness traverse back and I realize a vibration in me. I hear poundings in me. Strong pulses, my heart is palpitating. From the centre of my form, I can feel the vibration spreading out, rippling like waves towards my limbs. My consciousness stretches out towards my partial paralyzed legs and arms.
I have fingers, and toes. And if i will it enough to move, slowly it moves. They are stiff. I can feel the friction whilst separating the formerly in-contact skin on my fingers and my toes. And I move, more, faster, and in larger in action... I raised my hands above my head and I stretch further. I can feel my spine lengthen; vertebra by vertebra from my lower back towards my neck. I'm becoming longer, and longer. At one point, my body is so tense, and then i relax my muscles, and I open my eyes. A blinding white light flashes in front of me, my eyes strained and I close them again for a few seconds. I open them, and blink. I can feel that the veins or whatever structure that is holding the back of my eyes in the eye socket contract and then relax. I stare into the white lights above me.
"Am I a new born baby, a tabula rasa?... Maybe not." I find myself having a monologue. Then, I get the feeling that i just came out from a surgical theatre. The white lights, so blindingly glaring, are like those lights in the operation theatre. I raise my hands, close to my eyes. I can see the lines, the wrinkles on them. I flex my fingers, like how a puppeteer would do a marionette (but at that moment, i wasn't thinking about anything, just curious!)
Using my arms, I support my body into sitting position. I look around me and try to absorb everything into my mind. I realize that I'm sitting on a rough but quite soft surface - it's a floor carpet. I notice a yellow spherical object a few metres in front of me. I crawl towards it and poke it. It's not hard but it's elastic. Springy. And i experimented with it like a child, receiving his very first ball.....
In this chapter of Theatre class, I learn the concept of Neutrality. Lecoq describes the training of an actor as an effort to become a blank piece of paper, without any knowledge or preconceptions about the world, but with the potential to do of become anything. Personally, I don't feel too difficult to get into the state of "partial" neutrality. (I put it that way because I'm still skeptical about the fact that we can be entirely neutral and pure, and innocent just with that short time of practice. But no doubt, we can reach that level of transcendence with practices!!) One of the way that I opted to proceed nearer into the state of neutrality is by possessing the curiosity if a newborn baby. I know that it might sound hard and unconvincing, but in my opinion, one way to maintain the curiosity is by constantly remember oneself in life that we don't know everything. Even if we know an object, we should know that we don't everything about that object, and therefore, with that perception in mind, we would have the inquisitiveness to ask for more experiences, be it sensory or emotional, like a kid. We would have to let go of our ego and return to our humble self; in search of the inner child. One would scarcely believe that a grown-up will do goofy childish stuff. Yet, like a forgotten fire in the glowing ash of a coal, curiosity can always flare up inside us.
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| The neutral mask |
For those who wish to proceed further with the concept of neutrality, Ms Val suggested further research in the use of masks, We have the neutral mask - an expressionless mask . How would such a mask could be a tool used in actor training? Maybe in some way, the mask could help the actor focuses more on his/ her body gestures first before including facial expression into the conveyance of message through theatre. By putting on a mask or a neutral face, one tends to put more attention towards the body and movements I suppose. Apart from neutral mask, we also have Character masks and Larval masks. For all mask, I believe, it helps an actor, especially beginners like us, to pay more attention to the other parts of the body, and to fully utilize the body parts express the actor's creative and intuitive response to the character he or she wants to portray. Putting on a mask is like putting on an identity. The actor achieve neutrality by not revealing his/ her own self . With neutrality, one should be able to prevent the play character having the personality, behaviors, habitual actions, signature movements of the actor.
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| Character Masks |
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| Larval Masks |
Apart from neutrality, I also discovered one's tendency of showing personal attachment towards object(s) at the first sight in one's transition into the neutral state. In most scenario, curiosity and inquisitiveness as well as limitless imagination are the major factors contributing to such as inclination. In my case, the long, plain, purplish cardinal, silky cloth that I played with, later became one of the prominent tool I utilized in the further exploration of this chapter.
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