Undine

^ Watch Me! ^

This short piece of theatre is the final performance of “Undine”, my devising performance. Made in the style of practitioner: “Gecko”, it follows the story of Undine, a water spirit who falls in love with a fisherman named Francois. But when Francois, bound by the societal expectations of his village, is forced to choose between his love for Undine or his home, things take a turn for the worse…

Our story is inspired by the Germanic Folklore of Undine (or Ondine), that tells of how a water spirit is able to leave the water from which they originate for a brief time. If they fall in love and marry a human then they gain a mortal soul, and humanity with it. But if the man should ever be found to be unfaithful, then Undine is doomed to die, to kill her husband, or to be sent back to the body of water from which they came never to leave again. (depending on the version you hear) Which ending do you think she got in ours?

Cast:

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Bellow, you can also read all about it in my A Level Working Notebook, that accompanied the creative process of making the play.

Section 1

Rational:

Peer pressure, mainstream opinion and societal expectations are enormous factors in human behaviour, and it’s this effect on individuals that we wanted to criticise in our piece. With the internet, the views of mainstream media have an even stronger impact on the actions and opinions of everyday people; discriminating against anything and anyone that is deemed different or outside ‘the norm’. It was our joint desire to bring this issue to light that drove our piece and led us to explore how we could tell this timeless tale through traditional folk stories. This led me to find the Germanic folk lore of the Undine, a story that is found all over the world. A water spirit, tied to nature, leaves their home to take on human form and falls in love with a human man, gaining a mortal soul with their matrimony. However, if the man was found to be unfaithful, then the spirit was condemned to return to where it came from, to kill its lover, or take its own life. Deeply inspired by this tale, I was struck by its implications, and how provocatively it presented this singular “other” who still pursued love, despite being hated. I knew this would be perfect to create our own version from. A man, in an arranged marriage by his parents would fall in love with Undine, but despite their attempts to be together, he would be forced to choose between her or his village. This story of connection was perfect to be told in a Gecko style, as their company is driven by “a deep interest in human beings and their extraordinary and challenging journeys to express feelings and emotions in society”[1]. And their desire to create theatre that “reflects issues relevant to a modern diverse society”[2] was one that would be the ideal choice for us. (307)

Stimulus Research:

I looked online for tales and cases in which the Undine was mentioned, and found the novella Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. Fouque was a 19^th century German writer and it was his retelling of the story that inspired the plot of our piece and prompted our focus on the dynamics and relationships between the characters. However, it was further research into the story’s roots that made the difference. A medical article on Science Direct from December of 2020, gives some background into the Undine legend and how it links to medicine, the term Undine deriving from the Latin word “unda” meaning wave; linking the Undine to her characteristic power over water. We wanted to portray this power and difference within our piece, thus prompting our opening scene, in which Undine manipulates the ensemble as if they are the waves, elegantly commanding them with her breath. The article also mentions a version of the folk lore in which Undine curses her husband after finding him unfaithful, removing his autonomic functions and stating “for as long as you are awake, you shall breath, but should you ever fall asleep, your breathing shall cease”[3] – this was later interpreted in medicine as a rare syndrome that caused a similar effect and was aptly named “Ondine’s Curse”. This piece of lore lends itself perfectly to our piece and has encouraged us to put a focus on how we use breath to show emotion and tell story, linking both to our practitioner Gecko, and the folk lore behind the piece. (257)

Practitioner Research:

Founded in 2001 by Amit Lahav, Gecko is a theatre company with the vision of “Deepening human connection” [4]and is renowned for its moving and politically relevant pieces that aim to “remove barriers… for as many people and cultures as possible”[5]. They work with physical theatre elements and incorporate visually visceral elements of “choreography, sound, lighting and set[6]” to create their worlds and engage their audience in a broad variety of ways. When devising their pieces, they use breath to drive their emotion and character, and implementing different languages into their work, allowing for an even more universally applicable message that any audience member can resonate with. When asked about the use of language, Amit states “It’s clearly not about language… it’s human. The work is human. It’s a human experience. It’s not abstract”[7] and it is this focus on the audience understanding and connection to the performers that is crucial to their working method. Amit says that he needs an entire “thinking year” just to experiment with the concept for a piece, before he makes it[8]. This showed us we needed to know exactly what we were doing and why, before we started creating our piece. (201)

Live Theatre Research:

Looking into Gecko’s seminal productions, I found two that stuck out to me: “Kin” (2022) and “Institute” (2014) both original devised pieces by the company’s artistic director, Amit Lahav. “Kin” is a powerful piece based on Lahav’s family history with migration and explores racism, family, empathy and belonging. We took a lot of inspiration from it, as its themes go hand in hand with our own. For example, at 15:42 in “Kin” the family go to work, using physicality in an ensemble synchronised movement to portray their average working day; reaching down to the ground as if gathering something from the floor, breathing heavily and grunting as they then reach out to the right and left pulling down towards themselves and combining this with turns and hearty cheers. This created a beautiful effect of community and teamwork, endearing the audience to the family as they support each other. We wanted to replicate this, thus inspiring the scene between the fishermen in which we mirror their working ensemble movement; flinging our arms out in different directions as we stand in formation, creating the impression of nets, breathing in rapid and hard breaths with powerful arm movements and faces set determinedly to portray our focus and the effort of the work. Our choice to have no music here, deviated from “Kin” as we start to hum and chant, slowly building to a crescendo, resembling a sea shanty and furthering our goal to create a sense of community.

In addition to this, “Institute” provided the inspiration for our interactions between the head fisherman and Undine. After an intimate moment with Francois, Undine is met and consoled by the fisherman, who offers support. We wanted this moment to resemble the moment in “Institute” where Daniel comforts Martin. In this scene, Daniel offers physical support, sitting next to Martin and resting his head upon his shoulder wordlessly. Martin’s intakes of breath showing his surprise, and after a slight hesitation, reciprocating the action. This later develops into Daniel using comedy to cheer Martin up, contorting his face and making noises that resemble speech with mocking and comedic tones. This encourages a smile and laugh from Martin, and it was this emotion and tenderness that we wanted to evoke in our scene. Undine, looking up confused as the fisherman approaches, the fisherman sitting beside her with concern etched upon her brow as she gently asks her what’s wrong. A moment to portray the kindness of some people, and how not everyone is so cruel as we believe, everyone knowing the human desire to “care and be cared for” just as in “Institute”[9] (435)

Individual Aims:

As François meets Undine for the first time, I use dance like movements in a Gecko style aiming to show his immediate attraction to her, intrigued and drawn in by her unusual behaviour and foreign dialect. With a quizzical squint of my eyes, I would begin to circle her, mirroring her movement around me, breathing deeply at first to match the timing of our steps. As she begins spinning and manipulating the ribbon between us, the pace of my breath would quicken and a wry smile would begin to spread across my face. Matching her energy, on the beat of the music I would spin quickly into the middle of the circle until face to face with Undine; gasping in short sharp breaths, looking deeply into her eyes as I let the intimate moment linger to make the tension and attraction clear, and evoking a feeling of suspense.

As François is forced to choose his village or Undine, I would aim to use the more naturalistic scene to evoke deep sadness and shock within the audience, portraying the devastating power the opinions and pressure of the majority has. Standing alone centre stage with my hands clasped in front of me, posture weak to show my uncertainty, I would smile slightly and take a small step forward beginning to say Undine’s name. However, as the villagers behind me begin to laugh and mock Undine as she dances, I would flinch, withdrawing further into myself and turning my head away from her, closing my eyes with a grimace and shuffling backwards. As the villagers call my name, I would hang my head shamefully and turn to join them, shocking the audience and causing them to empathise with Undine, angry and confused at François’ betrayal. (292)

Group Aims:

We set out to make an emotionally charged, thought provoking story of love, societal expectation and heart break. Gecko’s focus on the emotional exploration of the relationships shared between real people, and the storytelling in their dynamic movement, brought to life by breath and language being ideal techniques we aimed to use. We also intended to use lighting and sound to amplify our piece, the storm sequence encapsulating this, as we utilise a dark hazy stage with strobe lighting and hand-held torches to create the effect of a dramatic storm. Flashing lights representing lightning and our ensemble slow motion movement – kicking one leg up and leaning back, arms flailing with shouts frozen across our faces – creating a visually impressive portrayal of the rough and wavy conditions of the storm, and nicely leading into the use of a lift. The lift isolating Francois’ figure and bringing him into major, before sinking him into darkness and disorientating the audience with loud, frantic shouting and glaring lighting, creating a dramatically tense and engaging moment that projects the fishermen’s concern for their friend in the audience. (182)

Section 2

Devising approach

Devising our opening section, we emphasised Gecko’s love for dynamic movement that tells stories. Aiming to show Undine’s control over water, we found it helpful experimenting with ribbons as a non-naturalistic physicalisation of water that could be used to represent Undine’s character and punctuate other moments. Our process was based around a piece of music we found: “Blue Cathedral” which resembled pieces used in “Institute.” We improvised movements inspired by waves that incorporated breath and revolved around Undine. This led us to consider our stage proxemics, finding a layout with Undine in the centre holding the ends of the ribbons that could work as an effective way to portray her manipulation of the water, the ensemble around her rising and falling to the beat of the music and her breathing. We then expanded upon this idea by starting the ensemble in a group around Undine, all looking wistfully out in different directions and breathing with her, before splitting off in flowing dynamic movements to the corners of the stage. I aimed to enrich my own performance here with light bouncing steps, raising the ribbons in a smooth arch over my head, smiling with wide eyes and raised eyebrows at the audience, incorporating Gecko’s non-naturalistic clowning style. Ending with them clutched to my chest, a longing look on my face which brought life to the innocent and romantic aspect of Undine’s character, continuing to build upon the Gecko style and intentions.

Taking inspiration from “Kin” we aimed to create a moment that would help to build our characters and their relations to each-other. We started “the storm” scene by standing in a line and enacting movements representing fishing in sync: reaching down in a lunge, hoisting our arms over our shoulders and flinging them out towards the audience as if casting a line, sharply inhaling and exhaling on each beat to emphasise the physical exertion. However, this didn’t give us enough opportunity for characterisation, and quickly became boring to watch. Accordingly, we changed the line into a diagonal and repeated the “role-call sequence” from earlier, giving a moment before our ensemble movement to talk with each-other and establish dynamics. Albert’s late arrival gave a comedic moment of confusion and disbelief as he ran on, out of breath, and apologising; here I looked at him incredulously and asked, shaking my head, “Ou es tu?”. Expanding upon this scene, we experimented with using torches to show the coming of the storm and the fishermen’s distress. Using “Swords Crossed[10]” as a backing track we tried using shoaling, holding onto each other protectively and gazing out with worried expressions. As the music crescendos we aimed to show the panic to escape the storm, to do this we repeated the movements but twice as fast, panting heavily. I found this left a gap of relative silence, so to evoke sympathy in the audience, I experimented with stopping and gasping, hunched over as I shout “Pierre, je suis trop fatigué”, tone full of fear to non-naturalistically convey my emotion in a Gecko style and keep the energy high. (521)

Development and Refinement

Reflecting on the moment in which Francois rejects Emilia and storms out, we found that my entrance was too energetic and upbeat. I needed to show Francois’ dejection at being taken away from Undine. Considering this, I reworked my physicality during the dance, waving away Pierre with a dismissive mumble, not meeting his eyes. Following our Gecko style, we march in a circle clapping and cheering, so I kept the tension in my body loose, smiling weakly and keeping my head down, half-heartedly clapping. This more effectively portraying his disengagement with the celebration while drawing him into the lime light for standing out from the ensemble, contrasting from his earlier high energy and evoking a concerned interest in the audience. Refining this, as Pierre takes Francois downstage, I emphasise my use of breath to show his disinterest, sighing dramatically and incredulously groaning “quoi?”, shrugging my shoulders and spreading my hands before turning away, in an almost caricature of a fed-up teen, aiming to create a comedic moment of character interaction and conveying my meaning through my use of Gecko style non-naturalistic dialogue and exaggerated body language.

I aimed to improve my portrayal of Francois’ love for Undine, as my group informed me that when going back to find her, I didn’t look believably like I cared. To remedy this, I entered the stage agitated, ringing my hands and looking around, eyes scanning the audience as if searching for her. As my eyes finally rest upon her, my face breaks into a grin, tension leaving my body as I rush forwards to clasp her hands in mine. Where before I had stood straight and looked out into the audience, I then built upon this moment by keeping my body slightly hunched, making myself physically lower and less threatening, this led me to experiment with constantly looking up into her face with soft eyes and a gentle loving smile; only turning away to angrily shout “ils ne comprends pas” to the wings. As I do, flinging an arm in aggravation to portray my annoyance at the scene I had just left, in an over the top Gecko style, and endearing the audience to my character’s hopelessly romantic behaviour and rebellious nature. (369)

Final Ideas

Our final scene, acted as the final portrayal of the ostracisation of Undine, as she enters stage left our final track kicks in. The ensemble gasping and stepping back on the beat, moving in slow motion between each step until they reach the opposite side of the stage. Our non-naturalistic use of the ribbons to form a walkway, now being violently pulled away. Breathing heavily and glaring at Undine, the ensemble begin to circle her, bodies tense and low to the ground as we prowl animalistically, starting a low chant of “monstre”. Taking up positions around her the chant crescendos as they aggressively whip the ribbons inwards, causing Undine to sink to the ground now sobbing in fear. This culmination of noise and hate evoking a fear for Undine within the audience and a tense anticipation. Then, mirroring the opening scene the ensemble begin to use the ribbons to represent water, however unlike the beginning, Undine is at their mercy, no longer in control. Body wracked with sobs as they circle her creating a whirlpool effect that ends with her cocooned in blue fabric, as the village stand looking disdainfully inwards. The non-naturalistic ending portraying the final message of the villagers hate and ostracisation of the other, linking to our Gecko message of how the mass opinion influences the actions of individuals, swaying Francois to betray the one he loves and wrenching at the hearts of the audience. (238)

Comparing Final Piece To Initial Aims

Initially, we established our themes through the non-naturalistic portrayal of a market, in which Undine tries to incorporate herself but is repeatedly rejected for doing things wrong and simply being different. However, reflecting upon this we found that the scene was forgettable and unclear, and sugar-coated our message. We then looked at it from a much harsher angle, leaning into the discriminatory element of our storytelling, doing a more witch hunt-esque rejection of Undine. This more dramatically conveyed the village’s rejection of Undine while also furthering our initial aims to portray how mob mentality and the main-stream opinion influences people. Embedding this, the village entered along the back of the stage to a war like drum beat, lighting changing to a sinister red, they circle and swarm around Undine and Francois, isolating them. This, accompanied by Gecko dialogue, muttering to each other until, led by one figure, they join in a hateful chant of “monstre”, slamming their fists against their chests like a rally. We think this change much more effectively conveys the divide between the village and Undine, and feel it better links to the modern issue of social media mass opinion that we took inspiration from initially. (199)

Final Word Count: 3000

Bibliography:

Demartini, Z., Maranha Gatto, L.A., Koppe, G.L., Francisco, A.N. and Guerios, E.E. (2020). Ondine’s curse: myth meets reality. Sleep Medicine: X, 2, p.100012. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleepx.2020.100012.

Encyclopedia Britannica. (n.d.). Undine | mythology. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/undine-mythology.

Gecko (2019a). Amit Lahav on Gecko’s use of language. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddhz_78nbyw.

Gecko (2022). About Gecko. [online] Gecko. Available at: https://www.geckotheatre.com/about.

Gecko (n.d.). Our Culture. [online] Gecko. Available at: https://www.geckotheatre.com/our-culture.

Gecko (2019b). What is the creation process? | Education | Gecko. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3bs-dz0yqc.

Gecko, I. (2014). Gecko. [online] Gecko. Available at: https://www.geckotheatre.com/institute.

Gutenberg.org. (2016). Undine, by Friedrich de La Motte Fouque. [online] Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2825/2825-h/2825-h.htm.

mythicalencyclopediaadmin (2023). Undine: Mythical Creature Overview and History – Mythical Encyclopedia. [online] Mythical Encyclopedia. Available at: https://mythicalencyclopedia.com/undine [Accessed 6 Dec. 2024].

to, C. (2004). novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. [online] Wikipedia.org. Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undine_(novella) [Accessed 6 Dec. 2024].

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[1] https://www.geckotheatre.com/about

[2] https://www.geckotheatre.com/about

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259014272030001X

[4] https://www.geckotheatre.com/our-culture

[5] https://www.geckotheatre.com/about

[6] https://www.geckotheatre.com/our-culture

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddhz_78nbyw

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3bs-dz0yqc               

[9] https://www.geckotheatre.com/institute

[10] By Klaus Badelt, from “The Pirates Of The Caribbean”