Week 4

 Monday 2nd October 2023

improvisation and diction

To start the week off we worked on some tongue twisters, because one of the main things that we've been struggling with as a group is diction. Mainly because words tend to be shortened or re phrased in day to day conversation- and depending on the character this might work fine- but in general word pronunciation is extremely important so that what your saying can be understandable and clear. To add a sense of competition onto our tongue twisters everyone was split up into groups and given a tongue twister to perfect to then go up against other teams to repeat their own tongue twister back to one another. Not only did this help our pronunciation skills, but it helped our team work skills because if one of us could not say the tongue twister the whole group had no chance of synchronisation- forcing everyone within the group to teach and support one another so everyone could succeed collectively. activities and past tasks that require everyone to support one another as a group are in my opinion slowly making me feel more ready to work on bigger scaled projects with my fellow actors on the course, as we have already started to help build each other up to the best we can be.

We also started to do some work surrounding the practitioner Viola Spolin- who is more commonly known as the "mother of improvisational theatre", unlike other practitioners she takes a more game orientated approach to the art of stage craft, focusing in on natural reaction within the present moment. I personally am really intriguing by her methods, because although improvisation can be seen as something that lends more to comedy (although her practise does also help improvisational comedians) it's also incredibly useful within naturalism/realism. This is due to the fact that her improvisational techniques encourages actors to be focused within the present moment- forcing them to make improvised choices just like in real life. Obviously when performing within a play your characters decisions are already set out and structured- but her methods also apply to the natural way your face/body reacts to certain situations or conversation, allowing you as an actor to constantly appear "in the moment" because your face and body are always improvising in natural emotions. To exercise her methods we delved into some of her games such as a particularly funny one were you had to huddle round one another with your heads touching and attempt to try and tap each others knees while covering your own. Because you were constantly trying to tap the opponents knees your attention was never on yourself, but on the opponents movements and the wider situation as a whole. So instead of thinking about how well you were doing you were only ever responding instinctively to what your opponent would do and the way it would effect you- wither it would give you an opportunity to tap their knee or put you at risk of being tapped yourself. Although this exercise was not my initial favourite- finding it slightly repetitive at times- I do still think it was and will continue to be effective in the long run, because it encourages the ability to react instinctively into practise- which is a useful skill to have when performing both  improvised comedy and improvised/non improvised naturalistic acting.

Tuesday 3rd October 2023

Stage combat 

I personally really enjoyed learning and performing stage combat, because not only will it be incredibly useful in the future but it was also a way to learn more about stage/film trickery- highlighting ways to do it safely and well. Because stage combat involves people making themselves vulnerable to mimic violence, it's extremely important that your focused and positioned correctly so not to actually injure yourself or the other person your working with. The steps for this that we learned about were: foot placement and distance; your dominant foot stepped behind your other foot to tilt your frame on an angle- giving your dominant hand a deeper pull back and straight line shot to create a more accurate image of a "heavy hit". Eye contact was the second and arguably the most important step within stage combat, this is because if the two or more actors "fighting" each other are looking away from their opponent, their not going to be able to jest when the sequence starts or what emotions their opponent is using to signal the throw of a punch. Therefore they could end up not dodging or not realising the other actor isn't ready and consequentially injuring them. Although this was an exercise of trust it also was an exercise of professionalism, because not only do the actors need to be aware and focused, but they also need to be taking the work seriously- even more so than usual, because if someone starts breaking out of the sequence to try something more unrealistic or not in the moment they'll end up ruining the intensity of what's being done, and potentially once again coursing damage. I wasn't actually aware of how much you need to be aware of when performing stage combat and the sheer amount of energy that goes into it- needing to be conscious of what the audience see and how you will create the illusion of contact instead of just pretending to attack each other- it all needs to be built on a structure.

Wednesday 4th October 2023

Wednesday was spent entirely working on our auditions pieces for the globe so we could have them completly polished for the fallowing day which is when we performed them. Me and jess had already written our duologue, but were still feeling a sense of disconnection to the characters of Burke and Hare and their overall persona. Although we had both done a large amount of research on their history it still felt as though we couldn't quite become the characters so I decided to dig deeper into the nitty gritty quirks and elements of William Burke  as a character, beginning by focusing on the way he would walk and breath. I did this by walking in a circle around a room and actively thinking about every element that would make up Burkes walk- for example I started stretching out my strides and applying more weight to my feet by pushing them into the ground. I also experimented with changing my physicality while walking- lowing my head slightly whilst angling my posture, clenching my fists and puffing out my shoulders to make myself feel more intimidating and angry. I walked around in a circle like this for around five minutes not communicating or speaking just focusing on the perception of Burke as a character. I found doing this to not only be really fun but a brilliant way to warm up and start to naturally interact as Burke when rehearsing the duologue- it also helped everything else fall into play such as his facial emotions and characteristics which is something I felt I could slip into and execute more efficiently due to the fact that I was no longer thinking about my physicality anymore, and instead using it to guide the rest of what the character was doing throughout the duologue. I also found that improvising a monologue whilst doing this was also highly effective- touching up on the Viola Spolin technique by using an improvisational warm up monologue to make me react more instinctively as the character Burke to try and make the duologue more naturalistic.