September  25th 2013

Establishing Setting, Time, Props and Opportunities

Here is an example of how we broke down the scenes. We were put into groups and given and act each, my group had acts 4 and 5. We looked at the stage directions and from this determined the time of day, the props that may be required e.g An ipad.  The destination is key as the set will have to be representative of something literal and be effective in regard to the given circumstances. The idea of exploring opportunities is about making offers, I think for our director this is really helpful as ideas popped up that no one had thought of as well as being good offers. 

October 1st  2013

1, 2, 3 Exercise 

The space was set up as what is at the moment the configuration of out final set. The performance is on three sides therefore this exercise was great at teaching us how to play three sides, physically and vocally. 

How Does it work?

1. in partners we counted to three me starting with one jesse then with two and so on...
2. concentrating on connecting our breath and listening.
3. walk around the space doing this. Working the audience on three sides.
4. two members of the group (Josh and Sacha) left in the space a the rest of the group stood on three sides.
5. The pair carried on with the exercise, putting tone behind the numbers tested if they were listening to one another. Furthermore they had to work hard to satisfy the audience. As outsiders we as audience were asked to raise our hand if we felt we weren’t satisfied with the amount of action we were seeing and hearing. 
6. Finally the 1s 2s and 3s were replaced with the lines ‘tell me’ ‘no’. 

Sacha and Josh worked the exercise so that they had a connection. There was something real about the relationship that had formed in the space because they we listening and responding on instinct. The use of space is something that will need a lot more work as  everyone who was in the space found this a challenge. In my opinion keeping the audiences focus throughout the performance means keeping the visual state of play interesting and constantly changing and moving.

Scene Work:

Scene 2 - 

This Scene is in an airport, actors were given characters that will exist within those given circumstances. For example Jack and Nora are a couple waiting to get there car to be bought round. 

This scene is an introduction to the Harrison Family, I think that the visual opportunities for this scene will be really engaging for the audience because of the interesting way in which it will be staged. There will be projection in order to make a plain object something to do with what is in the scene. 

This scene was run, everyone watched as it was then put into a Meisner repetition exercise. I have never seen this done on a scene before and without sounding like an idiot it really showed me how brilliantly the technique works. It make actors live in the moment. 

'Britain's ugly.' 

'Britain's ugly.' 

'Britain's ugly.' 

After the watchign the scene again without the repetition, it seemed as though the actors were listening to one another more. Especially Gavin who is simply listening through out the whole scene. He became a more active body on stage. 

In conclusion I think this rehearsal gave me a really good insight into the Meisner repetition exercise, I haven't quite grasped it myself but im really looking forward to working on it in my scenes.