Rays

I am going to try my hardest to make this post better than the last, which won't mean I have to try too hard, my last post was dismal. but I find I do struggle quite a bit with the reflecting side of drama.

Right, so this week we focused on Stan the Mans "Rays". I don't think it possible to be able to explain this in one concise sentence, so I will just have to try my best to explain it. In my opinion what Stan means by "Rays" is a connection felt by the actors on stage with one another, and also a connection between the actors and the audience. these rays create a special relationship between actors and actor and audience. They help to make a piece more believable and real. This was very important to Stan.

The exercise that we did as a class to experiment with rays entailed sitting next to a partner, on the same level at about 6 inches apart, and using "rays" to tell your partner to do something, e.g. scratch their nose. One person was the sender would use "rays" to tell their person what to do, the reciever would try and keep an open mind and be susceptible to the "rays" the sender was giving and fulfil their task. This was to show that humans have this sort of sense in that they can sense to some extent how someone else is feeling/thinking etc. It is an actors job to acknowledge and use these rays, as well as emmitting the right rays that their character would to another actor or to audience members.

While the rest of the group where successful at sending and recieving rays, I didn't find myself able to do either. To begin with, I'm not 100% happy with keeping such eye contact for a long period of time, I find it disconcerting and the longer it lasts the more I feel I need to move or do something. With sending rays, and recieiving a bit, I found the longer it went on the more exasperated I would get, I got so annoyed with myself for just not really getting anything, and when recieving rays the only thought I really had in my head, other than why can't I do this, was what am I meant to be thinking?

I'm in two minds as to why I sort of failed at this task. One the one hand, some of my friends see me as quite an open person, and I do think of my self as that sometimes. But I think a lot of the time I like to have people always think of me as happy/doing well, so I will try and act a certain way. I don't know whether this affected how much into the exercise, like whether or not I closed up on recieving rays. This was sort of touched upon in the lesson, that maybe I didn't fully fail at the task, but instead did not reach my own expectations of what I expected to do. I know I do set myself high expectations, I want to do well, but in this task I was also frustrated that i couldn't do something everyone else managed. What did come out of the discussion with Mr Fearnehough was that I shouldn't take constructive criticism to mean I am doing something wrong. I should take on other peoples ideas better, and if I am stopped just take on someone elses ideas and try the part again.

We also had a spot test on friday about Stan, this helped to clear up some of the work done and gave me clear definitions on things like the magic if and given circumstances. It also helped me to get to grips with the ideas properly.

 Hope this is an improvement on my reflection.

Georgia