In Search of the Lost Mode: Improvisation and All That Jazz

Abstract

Years ago, NTQ co-editor Clive Barker was tantalized by a passing and lost reference on a radio programme to a source of inspiration for musicians of the Be Bop generation: this had showed them ‘a way forward by taking them away from music based on chords and riffs to music based on modes’. Can acting aspire to an analogous state to the improvisations of jazz musicians, in which spontaneity is modulated by the discipline of true respect for the ensemble? Drawing on his own experience as an actor with Theatre Workshop – whose orchestration came close to that of jazz – and on teaching actors to break down inhibitions through the work described in his seminal Theatre Games (1977), Clive Barker looks towards a ‘next step’ in actor training and rehearsal techniques. This would work towards integrating the controlled freedom of jazz with the results he knows can be achieved through his own work with actors – the creation of ‘great and beautiful physical poetry in small rooms’. Oh – and can anyone offer a lead towards that elusive book which inspired the jazz musicians of the 'forties?