Today we started the
lesson with an exercise to make us more alert and give us more energy as a
group.
Clapping Game:
In this game we had to start off in a circle and all close our eyes so that we could not see what everyone else was doing or going to do. We then had to all begin to clap as one. We started at a steady pace where there would often be a beat in between. This then began to gradually speed up as the claps began to get faster to the point where it just sounded as though we were applauding. After a while we as a class, still with our eyes closed, began to slow down the tempo of the applaud until we were back to the original pace that we began with.We were able to acknowledge as a class that this build up was similar to the rhythm of life ( or the rhythm of all things in love) e.g. something begins steady and slow it eventually begins to speed up as there is a build-up of something often tension, an event occurs and the pace is steadied.We realised that it would be a good idea to reflect this in our play as it would create more interest for the audience as it would mean they would be pulled into the build-up of tension or excitement. This exercise definitely brought to my attention the importance of the structure of our piece and the how this will impact the audience.
We had been asked to bring in a random object from home or something we had found in the street or an interesting picture from the internet.
We then had to use the object to inspire the characteristics of a character that we could use in our play. One person was chosen to sit amongst the rest of the class in a circle and then had to describe the character they had moulded using the random picture or object as a stimulus. Another person had to stand on a box in the centre of the circle responding to and acting out the character information that they were being fed by the creator of the character. This was a good exercise because it was a new and more experimental way of forming a character. Normally you wouldn’t rely on a stimulus to form a character however this meant that our characters were a lot more colourful and complex. I feel this will help me in rehearsals in the future because my character will have far more layers that I can play with and portray through her interaction with others.I brought in a picture from an alternative rock synth artist because I felt that the album art for it was so interesting to look at and very eye-catching. I looked at the image and thought of who would like the image and then decided to think of the way a typical person who would like this type of music would look like. With this picture in my mind, I began to think of the polar opposite of this kind of person and I then came up with Gladys, a 67 year old woman, who has a real love for rock synth style music. I felt that Gladys was quite kind and generous, a gentle soul who had many children and grandchildren none of which know about her love for this style of music.I was surprised at how quickly I was able to form my character and her traits and I definitely feel that this has a lot to do with the fact that I used an interesting image as my inspiration because it meant that my mind was stimulated in a different way from which it normally is stimulated when developing a character. This makes me feel as though my character will create more interest than if I had created her in another way (without a stimulus).
One Sentence Story Exercise:
For this exercise we all had to stand in a circle and as we took it in turns each say a phrase or short sentence. We were able to say anything we wanted to, there were no restrictions or limitations. I found this particularly hard because it meant that because there were no limitations, the possibilities were endless, making it harder to make a choice of what to say. I feel this exercise helped in teaching me that sometimes you have to use your instincts and impulse to connect the story. I felt that because we were asked to say a phrase we were able to have even less control over what the story would transform into. This may have been a good thing because it allowed us to create a more interesting and experimental story because none of us really knew what was going to be said or what the end outcome would be.We next played another version of this game. The only thing that we altered was how much an individual in the circle was allowed to say. Instead of saying a sentence or phrase each, we were only allowed to say a word each. This was quite difficult in terms of making a story because there was less of a sense of control in the direction the story was going in because each person has less of an ability to change the story. Also as individuals we felt we had to refine our impulses to say a certain word to make a good sentence which meant it took us longer to figure out what we wanted to say. This exercise definitely made me feel like I was being less instinctual than the previous exercise because I was using my brain far too much. This was quite amusing because we found that because we all had no control over the direction of the story, more people were adding in random and rude words. This made the story much more interesting as the words we used to create the story were quite funny.These exercises helped me to realise that the importance of telling a story in an interesting way isn’t through being decisive or choosy about what you say, sometimes it’s more effective if you just use your instincts and say what you want to on impulse because sometimes this creates the most interesting stories.
Brainstorming the Brain
After realising that we wanted to make our Experimental play about the brain, we decided to brain storm all of the interesting facts that we knew about the brain as a class.Between us all we came up with these facts:· Chewing stops you from stressing about things because it tricks the brain into thinking that you are eating and therefore makes the brain think that there is no danger to stress or worry about because as primitive animals when eating we are not in danger because you would never eat whilst in danger.
These facts could be quite helpful in helping us to devise and refine any material we may want to put into our performance. This is because I feel it would be good to be able to reference actual facts or connotations about the brain in our performance so that the audience can really take something from it, not just in the theatrical sense but also the educational sense.
Experimental Story Exercise
The exercise we next played was very fun and I feel it would be a great piece to incorporate in our piece. One person was given a piece of paper with a drawing or image on it. This person then had to use the image as a stimulus to create a story whilst telling the rest of us the story. The rest of us had to create the story we were being told using our bodies. We could do this through embodying the physicality of characters or in a more abstract way creating emotions. I like the fact that we were able to tell a story using our bodies and not just through the normal play narrative of a play. This made it a lot more experimental as there was a sense of unpredictability in what the people around you are going to do. I like the idea that if we were to do this in front of the audience they would't know what to expect and neither would the actors doing the exercise.
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