WEEK 3- LANGUAGE OF THEATRE, /PRODUCTION PROJECT: 10th September

Tuesday 10th September:

PRODUCTION PROJECT: 1st half

We started the lesson by doing a sun salutation and this was very successful as it allowed me to become present in the moment and also it allowed me to align myself and be open towards what the lesson will bring.

Last lesson in production project we performed an exercise which was called 'What if' , this exercise was all about reacting to the 'what if' moment there and then in that moment, for example;

'What if' moments:

• What if...a car nearly ran you over
• What if...you realized that you forgot something at home
• What if... it started raining
• What if...you realized you didn't put any underwear on.

 This exercise brought about allot of interesting observations because although the task involved no acting, it seemed like people were acting. This was because most of  the 'What if' moments were moments people had never experienced before and so they were being spontaneous rather than natural.

In comparison to the 'What if' exercise, today we were focusing on 'Given Circumstances' however this is not similar to 'What if' purely because a given circumstance is something more refined and therefore it is able to add more depth to a scene as it can make the scene continuously progress as a circumstance is given therefore meaning a stimulus is out forward to be developed..


Given circumstances:

In order to explore a 'Given Circumstances' we observed various people taking part in the various exercises and then shared our ideas amongst a group discussion.

There were three chairs lined up next to each other and a student in the class was asked to sit on the chair and be herself in a completely,natural state. With this we had to firstly comment on every single detail that we could pick out and share our interpretations.(but at this point there was no given circumstances).

1. Detailed student observations: (1)

-One leg shaking continuously (Nervous twitch) 

-  Hands clasped together

-Looking around the room

-Anxious energy

-Legs crossed

- Playing with her hair

 After observing her mannerisms we then had to interpret situations that linked with each mannerism; for example; her shaking leg could suggest that she was nervous about something as it was a continuous ,repetitive  movement, her playing with her hair was quite subtle and therefore made me suggest that she was meeting someone maybe that she liked, or was nervous around...

2. Detailed student observations: (2)

-One leg shaking continuously (Found out that it was actually a nervous twitch): As this movement is continuous it could suggest that she's nervous as the movement is repetitive and creates a temple rhythm. A temple rhythm 

-  Hands clasped together:

-Looking around the room:

-Anxious energy:

-Legs crossed:

- Playing with her hair: This made me interpret the idea of her waiting to meet someone in a date-like situation

After our observations we were given the first circumstance and this allowed me to start to piece a story together due to the observations that i made previously, alongside this i noticed that the observations started to become more tailored and refined.

For example the following circumstances were:

1)At a train station 2) the time was 6:00am and 3) it was raining 4) Under shelter watching the rain

After the circumstances were added the scene became allot more truthful and i could really picture the scene in my head in which i then compared what it was like in reality.

2. Another exercise was when three students in the class 

Circle of attention:
This part of the lesson was very interesting because I had never came across it before. We learnt how an actor’s attention can be focused differently. Some circles of attention will be wider than others, depending on the circumstances. A character could have all his/her attention focussed inside him/herself, directly around her/him, at a further distance, focussed on the audience (breaking 4rth wall), etc. Stanislavski believed that actors could choose their circle of attention in order to not feel nervous about the audience and not notice them as much and this was put in action

I took part in an exercise which also involved given circumstances.
There was 5 students on the stage including me on stage and we had to firstly be in our natural state, then we were given a circumstance and we was at a bus stop waiting for the bus.

Small attention: Bubble-gum flavors

Large attention: Bag- how heavy, what kind of bag

The given circumstances helped me because it made me think about the act as a whole in which i could then deeply look at the given circumstance in my specific scene and my character :

PRODUCTION PROJECT: 2nd half

In this lesson we were given our characters and who we was paired up with; I'm playing the role of Kristine in Scene three (page 83-85) in 'A Dolls House' by Henrik Ibsen alongside my partner who is Krogstad.

We firstly read through our extract and tried to deeply understand what the scene was about and to think about our objecitves

We later read the whole scene in order as a class and because everyone had been given their parts it was able to run very smoothly. I really liked this task  because i was able to see the transition into my scene as my scene was the second one.

Objectives: 

We were told to find an object in the room, locate it and then go to the object after we arrived at our object we then had to pick another object to walk towards and this kept on going for a while until some things were introduced for example;

Firstly we were told to think of someone in the room and to do this whilst still performing the object task, this was quite hard as you had to focus on the object that you wanted to get to whilst thinking about the person in your head.

I found out that once i had thought about my person it was quite hard to not be aware of them/ notice them because although i had to have my attention on the person i also had to focus on locating my object, walking to my object and then having to look for another object.