My first impression of 'The Nerve Metre.'

My initial emotions when I first read the poem was that it was most certainly intriguing and I found I was engaged within the first line. During the first read, I may not have fully understood what he was trying to portray and what some of the lines meant, but I admired that and I enjoyed the obscurity. Some lines were used beautifully to describe personal emotions and Artaud also used such captivating metaphors. For example, the poem opens with the line “An actor is seen as if through crystals' and 'I have aspired no further than the clockwork soul.’ It’s not clear what he actually meant and that’s what I find so interesting. It’s open to interpretation.

Most of the lines screamed the potential physical movements of them that we could devise and be a part of as actors. The thought of performing something physical like using physical theatre movements interested me and sparked off more ideas. The poem appears to be quite intense and so sharp dramatic movements would fit best in my opinion.

We embarked on a class discussion and explored different ways of using the 'nerves' in our performance. What was mentioned a lot were the factors in this world that personally made an individual nervous, like their fears and things they generally dislike. I think this is a good idea personally because it’s all about effecting the audience and taking some of life’s most disliked and worst moments, creatures, fears ect, which is perfect for doing what Artaud wished within his theatre and writing.

It was beautiful hearing the poem read out aloud, each of us sitting in a circle and reading a line each just to get the feel of them poem. Each line was delivered in a altered way as it was read aloud by someone different, so each time it was a varied pace, tone and pitch. Although this was just a quick class exercise of reading the poem we were to be using as a stimulus for our piece, it gave me inspiration that we could use this within our theatre performance. The differences of the delivering of the lines symbolised how restless the poem was itself and how things were constantly changing. The ideas on the page represented how altered Artaud’s mind was when he wrote it and I think it would be great to incorporate it into our performance.

Thinking of the structure and layout of both the poem and our performance, I discussed with a few others how basing our piece as a promenade would be both appropriate and experimental. When you read through the poem, especially personally in your head, you’re taken on a journey through the mind set of Artaud and the poem itself. The idea of taking the audience literally on a journey throughout our performance would be appropriate to what you feel when reading the poem but it would also be completely immersive and engaging from an audience’s perspective.

Our teacher shared her own perception and idea of 'The Nerve Metre' with us which immediately I took a liking to, conveniently! She suggested that it could be presented as a night club. Not stopping there of course, but a night club where you would go to face up to your wildest fears and to find your true self, even if you don’t want to actually do it as you’re too worried about what you may find. I thought this was completely relevant to the theories and devising techniques of Artaud as he believed that everyone, whether they know it or not, does at some time fantasise about life’s most sensitive/disturbing/taboo subjects. Having a nightclub based setting for our performance in which characters attend to see these things fits nicely with my guy Toady.

I have many ideas and am very much looking forward to putting myself in an experimental directors shoes and unleashing in tomorrow’s workshop.