[boxhead]

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Darren O'Donnell. [boxhead]

[boxhead]

SOME OF DARREN’S THOUGHTS ON COLLABORATION

PRODUCTION HISTORY

CHARACTERS

TIME

STAGE

LIGHTS

COSTUMES

SOUND EFFECTS

MUSIC

PERFORMANCE STYLE

SCENE ONE

SCENE TWO

SCENE THREE

SCENE FOUR

SCENE FIVE

SCENE SIX

SCENE SEVEN

SCENE EIGHT

SCENE NINE

SCENE TEN

SCENE ELEVEN

SCENE TWELVE

SCENE THIRTEEN

SCENE FOURTEEN

SCENE FIFTEEN

SCENE SIXTEEN

SCENE SEVENTEEN

SCENE EIGHTEEN

[songbook]

I’M FEELING GOOD ABOUT LIFE

YOU’RE BRILLIANT

THE WORDS THAT BURBLE IN THE THIRD HOUR OF FUCKING

I LOVE YOU

BOX ON HIS HEAD

CLONE TIME

BEAUTIFUL FACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Отрывок из книги

[boxhead]

Chris was little help in this matter, searching as he always seems to be for a one-to-one relation between the things that happen in the show and a subconscious rationale that was completely clear, clean and transparent to consciousness. You know, what directors are supposed to do. I thought it was too Freudian an approach, excavating the text for the ‘real’ explanation behind the bizarre things that were happening. I wanted to create a show that would remain outside the grasp of rational thought, that questioned the boxheadedness of this acutely rational approach to life and hovered just outside of the audience’s understanding. It seemed to me, however, that to attempt this while still completely understanding the show myself was impossible. If I could rationally comprehend the show, then, chances were, the audience could too. So the three of us scrapped a lot, while still having a respectful fun; in the end, this collaborative tension between us produced what has become my most successful play.

.....

The entire experience for the performer is something that materializes some of the themes of the show. I wanted to create something that went beyond merely representing a post-rational state and actually forced the performer into a state where they had to abandon their rational mind and fully accept the groove of the show. The split of consciousness required by acting can be an amazing thing to watch – an actor can sometimes appear to be fully engaged in a complicated discussion or choreography while in her head she might be assembling tomorrow’s grocery list. But, inspired by the writings of E. J. Gold, who was, in turn, inspired by G. I. Gurdjieff, I wanted to create an experience for the actor that would be so overwhelming that it would be impossible to concentrate on anything else, so that the constant obsessive yammering in my head that provides the soundtrack to my life would stop and I could simply plug into the machine of the show and tune out of life. Gold and Gurdjieff both have techniques and exercises to overload the conscious mind, in order to let intuition run the human biological machine, as Gold calls it. Actors are often told not to overthink, to simply get in there and do. That’s easy to say. [boxhead] was designed to make this happen by giving the actor as much to deal with as possible: complicated text, multiple characters and a detailed and complex physicality that is often at odds with what is being spoken, as the actor’s voice has to portray one character while his body portrays another.

Paul Fauteux, the original boxhead: ‘[boxhead] is a very unique performance experience. It is not acting in the traditional sense. It is a concentration exercise. The exercise is created by the layers of disorientation which must be focused through while performing: the box on the head, through which we can see only dimly when it is tilted down and only the inside of the box when we are looking up; having to reach very precise locations onstage in the blackouts while we can barely see; the rhythmic, very imaginative, often non-linear language; the precise physicality; the fact that our voices are treated so we hear our own voices in the box and another voice going out to the audience simultaneously; the abrupt switches from one character to another – all these layers of focus create a trance-like zone of hyper-concentration which is extremely satisfying because it moves the actors’ imaginations past the intellectual into the subconscious and throws them directly into the immediate.’

.....