Rays

This week we've been working on Rays. An exercise that can be really hard and at the same time really easy. When we got paired up into groups of two and that we were supposed to only look each other in they eyes, I knew that this was going to be a challenging exercise if you want to get it done properly.

I had read the book "An actor prepares" from Stanislavski and I had been writing down lots of interesting quotes in my journal. An interesting quote who would suit this exercise:" An actor, like an infant, must learn everything from the beginning.To look,to talk, to walk, and so on" 
That's why I knew this exercise wouldn't only be about looking i each others laugh. Of course i thought it was a challenging exercise, you weren't suppose to talk, or to laugh like a retard, you just had to look in each others eyes. All of us were giggling for the first exercise, which showed that we all had a lack of concentration. Or maybe it could be the nerves who were taking over, but for me it was the lack of concentration that was missing.
 For the second exercise I made a huge effort for concentrating and not laughing while looking into Richards eyes. With that huge amount of concentration, I wasn't even laughing when my partner was laughing a little bit and smiling. I was staying concentrated. One of us had the be the sender, and the other one the receiver. The sender had to send a telepathic message to the other one who had to demonstrate it. Strangely, it did work for our group. I was in chock and I was really impressed that we had succeeded this exercise.
For the third exercise we had to use the rays and improvise a little scene. We were aloud to talk and to move around the room.But the second time we did this exercise, we just had to stare at each other, without talking and moving around a little bit. The second time was more interesting than the first time and me and Richard thought it went better than the first time we tried it.
I thought that this double session we had on Wednesday was very useful and helpful and will definitely help me in other performances in the future.
 So lines and movement aren't the most important things on stage and for an actor, and an actor should never use the excuse "oh, my lines were bad that's why my acting sucked" because rays is what make a performance good an believable.