19/09/2014

In today's lesson we were focusing on Michael Chekhov and learning about the exercises he used. 
"Moulding, floating, radiating, flying"
These different movements explore different methods actors can use. Radiating is to express your inner self to an audience, it looks very simple but requires confidence, inner strength and self determination. Moulding is the idea of pushing something away from you, for example we all moved around the drama studio today using these 4 exercises, when moulding we were to imagine we were trying to push something away from us using all parts of our body, it felt very heavy and took a lot of strength to do, it was quite mentally tiring. Floating was the complete opposite, and it felt very light and airy, I was imagining seeds being blown into the air, and we were all the seeds, floating off into different directions and everyone was very calm and relaxed when doing this. And lastly, flying, was not how it sounds. We were to imagine a buzzing fly around the room and almost trying to catch it by followings its choppy movements, we would fly into one direction, then suddenly change pathways and fly into another space. It was very upbeat and fast and was physically tiring. I enjoyed this exercise, as it allowed me to play around with the different types of movements my body can make, and I became very absorbed into the exercise and was very focused on my movements at all times.
GROUP WORK; Myself, Jenny and Chloe.
We were put into groups of 3 or 4 and were given wooden sticks(Peter Brooks Using Canes) and shirts and blazer jackets and were told to use the 4 movements, moulding, floating, radiating and flying, and to create a tableaux using these together. We tried out various movements and interpreted the shirt we had, and used this as a stimulus almost, and began by radiating in a circle, holding the canes up to the air, and using complicity we began to float around the space we had together, and then picked the shirt up from the floor and all held it into the air using our canes and were almost skipping around in a circle together, it was like a ritual with the shirt, and it was very calm and relaxed. We then tried out a lot of different movements for flying and moulding, and began to throw the shirt in the air and using the canes to move the shirt in the air, this was like Flying as the shirt kept changing direction and represented Moulding as well as we were all trying to keep the shirt off the ground and keeping it away from us, it was almost like playing hot potato! It looked very effective, and once rehearsed slightly more it would look like a ritual and very spiritual. I enjoyed this group work as we all gave our ideas and just improvised together and noticed what worked and what did not. We all had complicity with each other and just went with the flow, interpreting the 4 Chekhov movements.
Frantic assesmbly, duets of chair: Myself and Harry
This exercise involved a pair, Harry and myself, sitting side by side on two chairs, and creating a sequence of 16 movements, it was not to show a story, but as we are all actors, we all did create a story without meaning to! It was focusing on movements and team work. Harry and myself, somehow created our piece to show two young men watching the football together! I do not know how this story came about, it just did. Our movements were simple and masculine. They involved crossing our legs, putting our arms behind our heads, leaning forward, heads in hands etc. We practiced this tableaux a few times and then performed it to the class. We were filmed on one of the college tablets and I will include this in my blog as soon as it has been uploaded. Our director asked us to perform our sequence a few times more using different types of movements, including flowing movements, sharp movements and movements which do not include any emotion or story. I liked this exercise, as I love team work and working with other people, and I have never worked with Harry before, so it was interesting to see his ideas and create something together.