The Impossible Task

As something a little bit different on Saturday, I gave the Senior pupils the challenge of devising and doing an Impossible Task. The acting exercise comes from the work of Antonin Artaud, a theatre director who is most famous for Theatre of Cruelty. Theatre of Cruelty believed that audiences shouldn't be passive and instead have their senses assaulted by the artists. Artaud observed the horrors that were being left behind by the First World War and wanted society to address them rather than brushing it under the carpet. He believed that theatre is a practice which "wakes us up. Nerves and heart." The meaning of cruelty was not used in the traditional sense, but referred to the determination to shatter a false reality. The Impossible Task is as it sounds. A task that is impossible to complete. But in this instance, our success doesn't matter, the drama as we try does. Artaud believed that "Acting is not to entertain, nor to instruct, but to affect." If you are truly trying to get this task done, the audience will feel your exhaustion and be moved by it. I encouraged the pupils to focus solely on completing their task. Finding words to narrate with took away from the truth. We need to remember that words are only 10% communication and feel comfortable enough as actors just to be silent.

The example I gave for an Impossible Task was for the actor to try and sellotape together some tiny torn shreds of paper. It doesn't sound very interesting, so here are the stakes:

"My boyfriend is a passionate writer and has finally finished his handwritten manuscript. We have got into a fight over how much time he devotes to his writing compared to me. He storms off in a rage and I think he’s gone for good. I rip up the manuscript into as many pieces as I can and go to bed early. My boyfriend calls me to apologise and say that he is delighted to have bumped into his publisher who is coming back with him now to pick up the finished manuscript. Once it is in the publisher’s hands, he will be able to devote more time to me. They’ll be back in ten minutes. I have ten minutes to put the manuscript back together." Now we have something interesting for the audience to watch. One of the pupils presented a bowl. She poured in flour and sugar and then cracked in an egg. "Oh no!" She announced. "My friend is allergic to eggs." She then smiled and said that she was finished.

"Keep going!" I told her. "Get the egg out of the bowl." "But it's impossible!" She cried. "Exactly. It is your impossible task."

We then all watched with great amusement as she tried to pick the runny yolk up out of the bowl, despairing as it spread out covering more flour and sugar. Despite her laughs that it was "impossible!" I made her continue for a while longer.

What made her performance so engaging and real to watch was the fact that she wasn't putting on a performance at all. She was just focusing on the task at hand. And that is all an actor needs to do.