Tail-tag

It's a set of children's games, but what they are concerned with is balance. Because of evolution we
were never made to walk on two legs. The top part of our body is infinitely heavier than the bottom
part, and therefore balance is not an easy thing, it is something we have to learn. Which is why a
child starts on four legs and after a while they learn, through a slow process of trial and error, to walk
and balance on two legs. The next logical step is to learn how to balance on one, which is more
difficult.

We can say that there are usually two sets of rules within games: one is the socialising rules (that is to
say we all play by the same rules, say hopping instead of walking). The other set of rules are
resistances against which we push in order to raise the physical skill to a higher level.

For me it is one way of getting back to the learning process if we have lost that skill in the process of
growing up. As actors, we need a sense of balance that is more extreme than people use in everyday
life. Very often as actors we are asked to do quite delicate and controlled changes of balance on
stage in a wide stance. Actors need more of what Eugenio Barba calls 'an extended balance': much
more than we use in everyday life. So we use these games to go back and work at the basic
elements of balance.

Although I would prefer to use a handkerchief for this exercise, people don't carry them any more so I
use toilet paper. You begin by tucking two sheets of toilet paper into your waist-band at the back.
This is a group game and rather than stealing the coin you take the tail. When you lose your tail you
are out. The rules are no violence, no speaking, no running, and no standing with your back against a
wall so that no one can reach your tail. In these games I keep returning to the same point, which is
that the function of the game goes beyond play and into the creation of theatre. This is very much a
model game for "Romeo and Juliet" and the various spin-offs from it such as "West Side Story". In the
first place the servants walk the street attempting to provoke people from the opposite house and later
this is taken up by the young men, the aristocrats. It is about the way that you faze the other people,
the way you sneak up on them; since duelling is forbidden, it is about the way that you attempt to
provoke your opponents into attacking you and thus placing themselves off balance, and then can
steal their tail. It is a game that I am very find of.

Balance for me is the physical integration of mind and body, it is about kinaesthetics, and the
coordination of the body. This then creates patterns of posture and conformation which are for me
beautiful because the body is then at its most expressive and therefore its most eloquent. It doesn't
matter what the age or condition of the person is, when their body pulls on line then that is beauty for
me. I have never lost the joy of seeing the body. I sometimes feel guilty being paid for my work
because of the joy that I get out of it in this way. This is about the centre-line that runs from behind
the eye, through the larynx, the pelvis and into the ankle bone. This is also what helps release the
actor's voice. Coming into line relaxes the breathing and also releases the imagination and the
instinct. Everything that we've done since we were born is somewhere locked in the back of the mind
in our memory. It's just that some of it is very deep and we aren't aware of it. Sometimes it creeps
back up on us. But it is there to be used and developed further. The brain is a magnificent and a
wonderful instrument.