Friday, 23rd of December
Tempo-rhythm in movement

Last week before the holidays, we worked on another Stanislavski method called Tempo-rhythm. "The tempo is the speed or slowness of beat of any agreed upon units of equal length in any fixed measure, and the rhythm is the quantative relationship of units of movement,sounds, to the unit lengths agreed in a given tempo and measure." quote form Stanislavski's Building a Character book.

I thought that lesson was really important for all of us so so we can use it in other performances in the future, in fact I think that all of the lessons we've done learning about Stanislavki's methods are important and really useful.

Our first exercise was to tap the rhythm of a certain place, first we had to do it for Covent Garden on a Friday night. We all had different views on Covent Garden on a Friday night and different tempo-rhythms  which I thought was interesting to share it with the others. After a few exercises of tapping the tempo-rhythms of a certain place, I asked if we could tap out something a bit less boring and with more action in it. Mr F. said ok, so then we tapped out the tempo of a powerful dangerous river and then had to go back to a still little river. Our tempo-rhytms were different, it went up and down, down and up which I really liked; something was finally happening, there was an interesting action in it. And of course, all of our tempos were different form each others.

One of my biggest weakness in theatre is to ask to many questions when Mr F. sets a task to us. I tend to ask if we're allowed to talk in that exercise, if we have to close our eyes, if we can use a partner to do it, what kind of room we have to be in.... which is blocking the muscle of my imagination while I'm supposed to improvise the little exercise and just have a go for it, then you reflect on it and start asking questions. And I haven't got that weakness in theatre only, I have it in my other IB subject, especially in those I want to do really well. So instead of just having a go at it, I tend to ask what the teacher wants me to do, wheather I like it or not. In my old French school, you wouldn't be able to see one single student to just have a go at an exercise without asking the teacher thousands of questions. I am trying my hardest to let go of that weakness now that I'm in a different school but it's not that easy when you've been in a French school for 11 years. For our next the tare class, I'ml try to just get on with that exercise that has been given to me.

We had to tap the tempo-rhythm of our own character in a little extract we could chose. I chose one where Nora's tempo-rhythm goes up and down, the little macaroon incident. I thought I did pretty well in that exercise because I had studied here tempo in each section of our script. In our groups of 2, we had to act the rhythm out, with the lines, the movements, the sounds... Me and Richard struggled a little bit with our macaroon incident section, so we got help from Mr F. what actions we should do and how we should do it. While we did it, he was voice coaching us as well. At the end,we got a very believable scene with truth on the stage.

Just a little discovery I would like to share with all of you guys; when me and Richard had to do our little macaroon incident scene and we couldn't decide which one looked best, we asked Georgia and Spencer to watch both of them and tell us which one of them looks more believable and truthful on stage. When we had done both of them, they both sat there and told us "we like both, we think both of them look fine"
That wasn't true,both of them were too much over the top, and no one had the courage to tell us that. If were are going to spend 2 years together and making progress in class, I think that we should at least be honest with each other and tell us what does look good and what doesn't. We need to be able to criticize our selves and take it from others, other wise there is no point for all of us to have Theatre as a subject. Like Mr F. said, the studio is a place where we're supposed to experience our acting, making mistakes, reflecting... not a place where we're supposed to compete with each other and telling lies to all of us.

I hope we will be able to let go a little bit of the "I must do everything well and I don't care if the others are bad, I'll just tell them they're good" which I confess I have been doing a couple of times.
Mr F. told us this on Friday but I think this also has to come out from us as well.