#admitting stories using authorities or structured around it was simply used as a storytelling tool

[hiriaeth]

The way people's standards have fallen sharply with how art has fallen into mediocre content intent to absorb and keep you complacent. Also amazing how hype really lulls people into anything. I truly think i'm not a media person period especially since nowadays copaganda literally has evolved to be considered a requirement in any show and they are centered/protected if not given emotional weight and purpose whereas unless the show was a literally in a precinct this wouldnt be happening.

[plotlinehotline]

"Overused” is Overused: Understanding Clichés and Tropes in Your Writing

I hate writing advice.

That’s my little tongue-in-cheek joke for this post, because the irony of what I’m doing literally as I type that statement is not lost on me. It’s true, though— I honestly think that advice is one of the most damaging things to a writer’s mindset. It makes them second-guess their methods, their ideas, and even whether they truly have what it takes to be a *~*writer*~* in the eyes of the rest of the world.

It’s a truly unfortunate thing, because it’s so important for writers to be able to share their experiences and successes. The problem is that these experiences get passed around in a game of It’s-Been-Ten-Years-Since-This-Essay-Was-Written Telephone, and the original intent of the advice (and sometimes its actual meaning!) gets lost along the way. They become these overarching blanket statements that offer broad limitations without reason or potential alternatives.

One of the greatest offenders of this is the idea that you ought to avoid clichés in writing. I’ve been part of online writing communities for a while now, and by far the most common concern I see is some variant of, “I’m thinking about doing [x], but I’m worried it’s too cliché”. It’s an epidemic amongst writers, and it absolutely infuriates me that so many writers have come to doubt their own work just because some vague internet grapevine has told them that clichés are to be avoided at all costs.

Because I’m so infuriated by this (and because I’m super extra and actually have a relevant platform on which to discuss this), I’m going to take some time to explain the actual meaning of this particular piece of “advice” and why it’s far less of a concern than you’ve been lead to believe.

To begin, it’s very important to address the fact that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding surrounding this idea. This starts with the fact that the terms cliché and trope are mistakenly thought to be synonymous, or otherwise become confused with one another. Before I move forward, I want to offer the proper definition for both.

A cliché is a particular phrase that’s been used often enough to become commonplace. In writing, they’re generally used to create a specific image or tone that we can take for granted that the reader will recognize.

She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. It was raining cats and dogs, but she still stood with her arms to the sky, laughing like she didn’t even notice. She turned to me and winked, and I felt my face go as red as a beet. In that moment, I knew that I’d give my right arm to be with her.

A trope is a convention used in writing to give meaning to aspects of your story. They’re used as storytelling shorthand to attach identifiable qualities to your plot and characters— recurring themes that exist throughout history to guide stories.

Examples of tropes include the hero’s journey, the character’s fatal flaw, the comic relief character, the hero with a dark past, and the Mom Friend.

I’ll be the first to admit that there are similarities between the two— both are used to help readers understand parts of your story, and tropes can be specific phrases as shown in the cliché example above. The key is to separate the two in your mind and think about them only by the definitions above.

It’s important to do this, because part of the central misunderstanding is that “cliché” is often used in daily life to describe ideas as a whole that have been overused (think of the “I’m holding up the tower!” pic that literally everyone takes at the Leaning Tower of Pisa). I get the confusion and concern here, I really do. The most important thing to remember is that clichés have a specific meaning when it comes to writing. No matter how often you may see a particular theme or character arc, it is and always will be a trope.

With that out of the way, I’d like to discuss why this should be good advice. The truth of the matter is that clichés should be avoided where possible because they give the impression of lazy writing. Writers and readers alike take the imagery for granted and rely on these tried-and-true phrases to add physicality to their prose instead of finding unique descriptors; while it certainly gets the point across, it comes across as more of a 2D picture from a magazine than a scene from the movie adaptation we all know our books are destined to have.

To illustrate this, let’s take a look at the example above with all of the clichés removed:

The world had never experienced a beauty like hers— neither had I. I just watched as she stood there, arms to the sky as the rain pelted her relentlessly, soaking into her clothes and hair. She smiled as it ran down her face, laughing at each raindrop, finally turning to me and winking. She could have just been blinking the water out of her eye, I don’t know, but my face was hot and I suddenly found it hard to look at her. I stared at my shoes, willing them to take a step for once so I could go and join her.

Clichés fall flat because they aren’t specific to you as a writer— they aren’t at all indicative of your unique style. Your story loses so much when it’s not told in your own voice, so you shouldn’t rely on old phrases just because you know people will automatically understand them.

While the argument could be made that tropes fall into this same category, I would point out that tropes serve a deeper purpose than clichés. Where a cliché would act as filler, a trope would act as a foundation. Tropes are tools (most frequently, structural tools) that guide the story through plot/character development and tonal themes to give your reader a general idea of what they’re signing up for when they read your story.

Example Time!

Say that you wanted to write someone a love poem. You do your research, sifting through decades of poems to pick out the best phrases and metaphors, and you end up with the following:

Your eyes are as deep as an oceans Your eyes shine like stars They’re like windows to your soul I get lost in them every time I look

The poem is essentially a cut-and-paste of phrases from every cheesy romance novel out there, and will most likely leave the object of your affections wondering why you’re so obsessed with their eyeballs.

Alternatively, you hand them this:

Roses are red, Violets are blue...

and things get a little more interesting. Sure, the opening to the poem is a cliché in and of itself, but it sets the stage for whatever you want to fill it with. You could go with something traditional and make it cutesy, you could subvert the trope by dropping the rhyme scheme for dramatic or comedic effect, you could even revive the old 2015 “gun” meme. The world is your oyster!

The point is, the poem hasn’t been written for you. Sure, it follows a similar structure to poems that have been written before, but where you take it is entirely up to you— the opening lines are simply the prompt to make way for your own creative license.

Let’s be real, here. 

I get that everyone wants to make something new and exciting that comes entirely from their own imagination. It’s the dream! The idea that anything we write could potentially be sourced back to an existing piece is super aggravating, and you don’t have to tell me how discouraging it is to have something that you’re genuinely proud of suddenly fall flat because someone says, “Hasn’t the teen dystopia thing been done to death?” or “Didn’t Star Trek do an episode like this?” or “Penney, this is just a Star Trek fanfiction with the names changed to Dirk and Spork, please stop.”

To be totally honest, there is not (nor will there ever be) a single piece of writing on this earth that’s 100% original. Everything is based off of a story that came before it, or had plots and characters that were cherry-picked from the millions of plots and characters that existed previously.

Even more honestly, people like it that way. Tropes help us to identify our favorite genres and characters, guide us to stories that we may like based on those preferences, and open our eyes to new stories and authors that follow those tropes in a slightly different way. 

In short, embrace your tropes. Learn to recognize them and how they can be used and reimagined, and build your story out of the wonderful things that come of that knowledge. Be like me and waste a billion hours in the rabbit hole that is TV Tropes!

Most importantly, write the way you want to write and don’t let anyone else tell you how to do it. They’ll have their time when you’re ready for peer review. Right now is your time to do as you please, ignore all writing advice you see online, make a few mistakes, and do it all over again because that’s what writers do! Get out there and make some beautiful, cliché-ridden, trope-y masterpieces.

Love, Penney

[keremulusoy]

Pantomime Is A Universal Art And Its History Roots Back To The Earliest Days Of Humankind. Its Modern Foundations Were Laid Upon Theatre Theory Hence Turning It Into A Technical Performance Art.

Pantomime is a form of expression that roots back to tragedia, the oldest version of the theatre. In most basic sense, pantomime is a wordless form of acting. The name derives from “miming” which is a form of acting where the actor/actress expresses an action or sensation with facial or body motion. The theory defines it as the type of comedy to mime the dailylife and customs in Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. The performer tries to tell an entire story only with facial expressions, mimics, body motions and gestures.

Scream Of Silence Vecihi Ofluoğlu is one of the most prominent names of pantomime in Turkey.  Just like other performers whose lives revolve around an art or craft since early childhood, his eyes shine with the sparkle of the creating. The sparkle of the inner-light emitted from all souls that are passionately in-love with what they do. When asked “How did you become interested in pantomime? Is there a formal school or conservatoire for it or all pantomime performers in Turkey are self-taught artists?” his passion reveals itself in full force.

“In mid 1960s when I was still a pupil of Sarıyer Junior High, I started to take stage in our school group. One day, I heard a French Troop came to French Cultural Centre in Taksim. I watched them and a new, brighter, a more colorful world was revealed to me. It was a stage performance without words but motions only. I was astonished. It was a magical moment for me. You see, I was bored to memorize, and to remain loyal to all those texts for school plays. Then, we were rehearsing in one of the halls of the library in Buyukdere. I went running to my friends and told them what I had seen. I told them: “It was strange and beautiful, they (actors) never speak but easily convey whatever they want to express; I memorized entire pieces, we can try if you want”. That was the moment where everything started for me. I was initiated to the art of pantomime, so-to-speak. You see, there was no place to formally, or academically train in this field at that time. Later on, after I enrolled in the conservatoire, I achieved the much-needed body predisposition of course. Then I trained with different masters of the art and also was in contact with the Turkish pantomime artists, many of whom are deceased now. They contributed tremendously in my development. I have always endeavored to formulate my own, personal style. In short, there is no institution that I was not trained in, since then”.

Pantomime is an art more familiar to early childhood of the generation which grow up with a single TV channel, who are now around their middle-ages. A performer with face painted in white and black, acting mostly funny stories on TV screen, is a picture mostly remembered from childhood of them. Only those who showed an ongoing interest in the art know that this is a branch of performance arts in itself. So, often the mime is confused with clowns for the children who saw him only on TV screen. When asked about the origins of the pantomime, Vecihi Ofluoğlu gives elaborate information, down to the etymology of the art:

Pantomime Is The Act Of Focusing Inside And Expressing To Others “Pantomime” contains “panto” and “mime”. “Panto” means all whereas “mime” is mimicking. You might know, the concept of mimesis, must be deriving from here. So, in terms of etymological meaning pantomime means “mimicking the whole”. Of course, modern sources call the art pantomime, but the etymology is what I described. Technically, pantomime is the entirety of the actions in which the performer conveys the narrative story to the audience without any costumes or accessories or use of language by using only his/her body and face. Can everything be performed? Naturally, this is not possible. Every narration has its limits. Much like the ballet or other performance acts, similar limitations apply to the pantomime as well. The artist, however, should not focus on such limitations but should concentrate on what can be conveyed. This art needs a strict training before one can become a performer. As goes with all performance arts, one should master the body because the body is the only instrument of a mime. We, the performers, must structure the things based on the body. So, it all starts with knowing and highly physical training of the body. To achieve meaning one must master. Therefore, this is the art of focusing internally and expressing externally. What I mean is, you need to know your body and what you can do with it. That’s the starting point upon which you will structure the narrative which you will convey through your body.”

Space And Acting In Pantomime It is a certainty that pantomime has a minimalist approach. To pantomime, costume and decors are mere details which are not so welcome. Considering the theatrical theoretical elements, one can wonder if space is significant, or poses a limitation for the pantomime? Vecihi Ofluoğlu admits the minimalistic approach yet highlights that pantomime is a true performance art in its own right.

“I have given theoretical and practical education and training of pantomime. It is a stage performance. Therefore, it is a format of performance arts and has space requirements and limitations. Especially in abroad, street pantomime shows refuse all spatial limitations, but I personally think that they approach the art in a different format. Because their performance is for the passersby who naturally are not actually attending. It is safe to say that the pantomime performed on stage is different than those performed in streets, without spatial concerns. After all, there is a dynamic circulation in the street. Passersby are not constant. If you can attract their attention, then they become audience. At that very moment, one needs to repeat the story by rewinding a little. Also, a passerby cannot be expected to show same patience and loyalty with the stage audience. So, the street is more difficult and harsher than the stage-performed pantomime.”

Since before the history, acting on stage to make the audience subjected to an adventure or a story is the most basic method of narrating. To achieve this, the artist’s most essential tool is the text to be voiced. Well, the pantomime takes the hard way. The mimes try to convey the story without using this most essential tool of the performance arts. Vecihi Ofluoğlu gives clues to those interested while he tells us about how a mime deals with such difficulties.

“There was a time when the mankind lacked verbal communication and communicated through primitive instinctive voices or gests and mimics. Verbal communication developed later and included a set of concepts and definitions but use of gests and mimics was never abandoned. To put it simply, if I feel the instinctive need to use my hands and facial expressions while talking to you, this is a natural motion of my body. Of course, daily use of the gestures and mimics are not the exact same of those we use in pantomime. So, in short, history of mankind does include transition to non-verbal towards verbal. Non-verbal communication is not a show in itself, of course. But people do enjoy expressing something without talking and thus the art developed in due natural course. Can one express everything with body actions (non-verbally)? Of course not! It is also worth underlining that some bodies are especially predisposed for this. Some people can easily convey what they mean in this way. When technically so needs, pantomime can use minimal number of accessories or sound effects and even visual materials. The essential purpose is to convey a message to the audience in a certain format of storytelling.

Pantomime is not the art of silence but is the art of being able to express in silence. Vecihi Ofluoğlu carefully conveys all he gathered about this art, most of which were learned through trial and error, with the excitement of a man talking about his passion, with the care and mastery of craftsman. He ends his words with the excitement of people who love to express their passion. So we learn how much there is something we don’t know about pantomime, and we understand what a sonorous voice this silent art actually has.

scream of silence

imitating the whole

Vecihi Ofluoğlu

thr language of silence

pantomim education

makeup

mask

 NOTES

Who Is Vecihi Ofluoğlu? Born on 1950 in Bartın, Turkey he was graduated from Trakya and İstanbul Universities. His debut was in 1965 with the play “Ölümden Daha Büyük Şeyler Var (There Are Things Bigger Than Death)”. He started the pantomime in 1966 and put great efforts to promote this art in Turkey. In 1968 he founded the very first pantomime troop of Turkey in modern sense. He created and chaired “Pantomime Branch” of İstanbul University. For a very long time, he gave mimic and motion courses as artist faculty member of Opera and Ballet Department of State Conservatoire. He served in private theatres as trainer and actor and featured in many opera, ballet and films. Holder of many domestic and international awards, his plays were featured on countless domestic and foreign TV channels. He authored approximately a hundred pantomime plays most of which have been staged.

Mask And Makeup In Pantomime Art Preferring a minimalistic style of storytelling, costume and decors are not musts of pantomime but the masks and makeup are used frequently. During the silent era, the cinema benefitted from pantomime acting to a great extent (even though there were some technical differences). This highly contributed development of pantomime in modern era. Charlie Chaplin as well as Laurel and Hardy are successful examples of adaptation of pantomime to silent motion pictures.

Pantomime Education In Turkey “Unfortunately, academically, there is no department of pantomime in university in Turkey. There was a certification program which had been opened within the conservatoire upon my personal efforts. Many people participated in this program and even today most of them actively continues to perform. However, the program was discontinued regretfully. This is not a problem unique to Turkey, same goes for all of the world. The trainings are mostly formulated as courses.”

How Should Be A Pantomime Artist Like? “A mime must be amorph to a degree. The mime is the author, the director, even the poster designer of the play. She/he sells the tickets, create an audience and prepare everything and only after all these, takes the stage and performs. On stage is where the artist must be extremely careful. The audience might miss a part of the story even at the slightest abstraction. So the mime must always, but always, observe the continuity and synchronization of the audience with the story that is being told. Not an easy trick to pull, right?”

By: Bahar Alban

*This article was  published in the  July– August issue of Marmara Life. 

Narrator Of Silent Stories Vecihi Ofluoğlu Pantomime Is A Universal Art And Its History Roots Back To The Earliest Days Of Humankind. Its Modern Foundations Were Laid Upon Theatre Theory Hence Turning It Into A Technical Performance Art.

[vileart]

Mouth Dramaturgy: Quote Unquote @ Edfringe 2017

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Quote Unquote Collective in association with Why Not Theatre presented by CanadaHub with Aurora Nova presents

Mouthpiece 

CanadaHub@ King’s Hall 

3:30pm daily, August 4-27, with the following days off: August 8, 15, 18, 22, 25; 

Preview: August 3, 3:30pm

Following a run in L.A hosted by two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster, Mouthpiece brings its vital, relevant and provocative storytelling to the Fringe. 

Playing theatrically with the universal themes of women’s voices, thoughts, opinions and place, Mouthpiece is an electrifying and important piece of theatre for all. 

What was the inspiration for this performance?

The two of us did not set out to make this play. Initially we were attempting to create a totally different show, one that explored the particularly special nature of female relationships; that specific bond women experience which is at once intimate and violent, beautiful and ugly.

When we kept hitting a wall in rehearsals we decided that to research the issue of women in relationship to each other, we should look at what it is to be an individual woman. And the easiest way to do that was to use ourselves, our own personal experiences. 

Once we started looking inward, digging deep to uncover our truths, we had a major feminist awakening. It was a total slap in the face oh shiiiiit moment that had been building inside us for a long time. We were slapped with our own hypocrisy, with the layers of masks we were wearing, the piles of bullshit we had swallowed and internalized and the clear-as-day fact that we were still very much under the thumb of the patriarchy. 

And we realized that we had to make a show about that. So the journey that Cassandra takes in Mouthpiece is very much a reflection of our true experience in trying to create this show.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

Absolutely. I say that because of our direct experience with this play. We have had so many rich, deep, complicated discussions in the wake of performing Mouthpiece. 

When we first premiered in 2015, we were surprised and thrilled to find that a play so distinctly about a personal experience could have such a profound impact on men as well as women, both intellectually and emotionally. We heard stories of husbands going home to their wives to open up conversations that had never been cracked open before. 

We heard of women from diverse backgrounds sitting in parks and sharing their personal histories with one another for the first time in their lives as a result of the play. We have heard of women leaving abusive partners after the play because of what it stirred up in them. 

We have been changed by the discussions we have had with audience members, and they too have expressed that they have been changed. And I honestly believe that this kind of impassioned, visceral, life altering response can only be achieved with live performance. If you want to get people riled up about something, there is no better way then face-to-face.

How did you become interested in making performance?

The two of us were both drawn to study physical theatre originally because it is a discipline where the performer is often also the author. The actor is not simply tasked with a performance but is also driving the ship: developing ideas, writing text, conceiving of design elements, choreographing movement, and has her hands on every aspect of the creation. 

We believe that art and performance are simply tools to provoke political and social change. So we are interested in authoring and performing work that is saying something, that is pushing for change. If we weren’t making work with an active message, we would probably be doing something completely different with our lives. 

The message is the thing, theater is just what we have studied and know, the tool we use to crack open dialogue and conversation around topics that we feel are absolutely necessary.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

We work through a method of devising, which includes a lot of on-our-feet improvisation, bashing-our-heads-against-walls and collective creation. This is complimented by a writing process where we give each other assignments, set time limits, and then edit each other’s work. 

When we first started writing the play, the main goal was to write from as honest a place as possible – admitting all of the darkest secrets and most shameful thoughts that we would never want anyone to know. The reaction to these confessions was usually “I think there’s still a more honest layer underneath of that. You’re still hiding something, try again.” We were trying to expose ourselves and be as vulnerable as possible in every aspect of the creation.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Mouthpiece is Quote Unquote Collective’s first production as a company. We have individually worked with many other companies over the last ten years (Amy in the UK with Theatre Ad Infinitum, and Norah in the United States) but this is our first collaboration as co-creators. 

That being said, it is in line with our past creations, but is an evolution of the experimentation we have done with vocal work. We have taken the tenets of physical theatre and translated them into the voice. Working with harmony and dissonance, tone, rhythm and dynamics, we have married our physical work with a vaster range of vocalization than either of us has ever worked with before. Our next show Now You See Her will be expanding on this idea - plugging us in for the first time to create a six-woman rock-play. Stay tuned for that.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope that in watching Mouthpiece, people experience what it feels like to be inside of our female brains. The chaos, the cognitive dissonance, the confusion, the non-linear nature, the mess, the beauty and hideousness, the sexuality, the fear, the moments of clarity and the anger, all at once. 

I hope that they will come away feeling as if they were stewed in our brains for 60 minutes and have understood something more about themselves and how the patriarchy has fucked us all up. That as a society we can do better.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

This play is constructed to reflect how a woman thinks. Structurally, we looked at building Mouthpiece like a crystal. There is a core truth, and light is refracted through it in many disparate directions all at the same time. There is no linear timeline to a crystal, the light comes out of it all at once in different ways, and depending how you move it, that changes. 

Although time moves forward through twenty-four hours in the play, we wanted to create the feeling that you could look at it from any direction at any time and see something different. It is layered. It is dense. It is a shock to the system in the dynamic shifts it makes. It is very loud and very quiet, very exuberant and very soft. There is a departure from the traditional storytelling methods on purpose, because that tradition was built by a patriarchal system. Our play attempts to restructure based on the feminine.

Created and performed by Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken.

Jodie Foster commented, "When we first saw Norah and Amy’s breath-taking performance in Toronto we were speechless. Mouthpiece touches on every part of the female experience from birth to death using dance, music, wicked humor with just a bathtub for scenery. The result is a new kind of feminist language which ignites pure, intravenous emotion. It’s impossible to describe and truly unforgettable.”

From the producer who brought 2016’s political theatre piece Counting Sheep to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe comesCanadaHub– a season of new and established theatre makers bring work from Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax and Calgary to King’s Hall as part of the award-winning Summerhall and Aurora Nova programmes. 

CanadaHub comes to the Edinburgh Fringe in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts, and with support from the Canada High Commission in the United Kingdom and British Council Canada.

3:30pm daily, August 4-27, with the following days off: August 8, 15, 18, 22, 25; Preview: August 3, 3:30pm

Regular run: £10 full, £8 concession, £7 family. Preview: £8 full, £7 family   

Age info: 14 and above

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