Week 33

Monday 23rd September 2024  

Today we focused on mental synchronisation when working together as actors, doing a selection of activities to build up this skill. This is a really important ability to build up, as it allows actors to cover up minor mistakes that can happen when performing- it's also a way of making actors more self aware when performing. One of the activities we worked on was jumping, running and stopping in synchronisation. We also worked on some new warm ups that focused on synced instinct- building more on the skill of working on the same mental level as the people you're working with. These activities are actually something I feel we should do before rehersals when working on projects as it allowed us to all be set on the same wave length before relying on each other mentally.

Wednesday 25th September 2024

Wednesday was spent focusing on our ghost light tour auditions, beginning the day with a few warm ups, and then slowly going in one by one for our auditions. This year I went for Nurse Ratchet, which was a good choice for me to go for as she very different from a lot of the characters I played last year; all of which having larger more long personalities that are very obvious the the viewer, whereas Nurse Ratchet is all in the mind and very controlled on the face. Her physicality is slow and subtle, yet very powerful at the same time- which is something I've had a lot of fun playing around with when practising and rehearsing for the audition. 

Once everyone had auditioned we then grouped ack together at the end of the session- were some people then showed what they'd done with the class as an audience. It's really important to support each other as actors when we work and put ourselves out there, so this part of the session was really lovely to watch. 

Thursday 26th September 2024 

Today we had the amazing opportunity of getting to be part of a LAMDA workshop, getting to see a taster of what their working style was like- along with their approach to training and the access to facilities that they have. for me I was really impressed with how much I actually learned in that really small window that we had to work with them, and will definitely be taking on their way of breaking down Stanislavsky's techniques- as it really helped me put myself in character mindset, setting me up for feeling and delivering the character emotion instead of just the lines themselves. One of my favourite components   from this section of the session was they way we entered our imagination to put us in character headspace, instead of just using the magic if or emotional memory. For me this really felt a lot more reliable and effective- truly feeling that my instinct were activated and what I truly felt in my body and mind was brought straight to the surface when delivering the dialogue. I also found the way we went over the text to be incredibly useful and thorough, putting a large amount of our focus on the emotional shifts of the text to build on the dynamic  and the change within our characters focus as their wants and intentions slightly altered. 

The other section of the workshop was focused a bit more on the voice, and understanding Shakespeare monologues, and how to grasp the emotion by  just letting it rise to the surface naturally. This was done by using punctuation as an anchor when reading over the monologues, allowing us to pause or add natural emphases were felt necessary. They also instructed us to walk forward when reading over it, whilst changing path when coming to a new bit of punctuation. This helped identify why were small emotional alters were throughout and how to use the punctuation to our advantage when delivering Shakespeare monologues. I also really enjoyed the longer warm up we did, and I felt as if it very effectively took away heavy elements of anxiety that I felt- by pushing our focus from our surroundings, then to other people, and then onto ourselves- giving us a window to address how we felt and let it go. This was very helpful to me. 

More photos from the LAMDA workshop today:

Working on Pinocchio songs

We then spent the rest of our session blocking one of the biggest songs in Pinocchio, and seeing what worked and what didn't. Below is a clip of the work we did: