Drift reflection and Snowflake errors in time for Winter

This week was interesting. While we made very little progress in rehearsing our parts, but instead spent the time reflecting. In addition we went to a dress-rehearsal outside of school that was incredibly impressive for many different reasons.

When we were doing our lines on Tuesday and Wednesday, it turned out that while we had the end and the beginning well nailed down, minus a few small problems, there was a long stretch in the middle that neither of us were prepared for. First off, we didn't really know our lines and thus slowly stumbled through the actions and emotions. This was a bit of a surprise for me as except for a few lines that I tend to transpose, I knew the lines that we had practiced before and even some of Georgia's. So when I reached a point where I barely knew what to do I was absolutely stuck, the Christmas break though will make a good time for me to fix this issue.

An extension of the above issue, is also that both of us are outside of our comfort zones. Especially me, as I'm not very romantic and thus have no idea how to make Doctor Rank's confession or the atmosphere of the stockings bit. I was worried about this when we gave out roles. The main problem with this is that it makes the acting very awkward, killing the life out of the act. While I need to fix this, it's part of having to act with true emotion.

On Wednesday, we also did another part of Stanislavski work, Rhythm and Tempo. It's based around the speed of the piece. I find this much easier to explain with a movie or a video game rather than an actual play. During a fight scene the music would be fast paced along with the events, thinking James Bond. The music in this case holds the beat of the scene. A more romantic moment, would result in a long violin piece and long moments of stillness, creating a much slower beat. Tempo is really the heartbeat of the bit. An important note about the tempo though is that while it can change over time, it doesn't change in just a quick sentence, unless it really is a dramatic change in the script. While we did this it was only because it was part of Stanislavski's actor training, the Dolls House has no action and harsh emotions tend to be hidden.

Probably the most reflective experience though was on Friday. We watched a youtube video of a pitch for a famous drama school, I should have asked for the name. Before we watched it however, we did an exercise. It consisted of talking about food while paying attention to various parts of the body. It was actually pretty hard as you had some many different things to pay attention to. 1. The conversation: Keeping the conversation going was a rather fun bit, but required both thought and attention. 2. Pay attention to certain body parts: while I know that I do various movements when I'm sitting still, I don't pay attention to them and was thus forced, and I think as part of the exercises goal, to try to behave as I thought I might. Once again this required attention and thought. 3. Control over other body parts: As we were trying to communicate with certain body parts we had to restrain others, this however, only took concentration. So the exercise was a large amount of multi-tasking which thus made it difficult.

After doing the exercise, we watched the video clip. Given that it was for promotional reason, it highlighted the good parts of the program but we were still able to gain much from it. First was the speed at which they started and the quote about "I learned from 42 other peoples' mistakes and brilliance". My version of the quote would be something like: I learn by doing. The goal of the activities is to learn and if you wait, question, and doubt than you won't reap the benefits of the exercise. The line also held a very true idea, by watching other you can learn. In short don't be afraid of the cop in the head.

Luckily, we managed to get tickets to the dress rehearsal of a dance performance. While my experience with dance is small, I was very worried that I would be repetitive and I would loose attention quickly but it was nothing like that. They kept the show constantly changing and came up with really cool ideas, would look at Richard's post as he has a better explanation (as he has done more with stage, I should look into different techniques) but they took their different ideas and combined them in to the story of life. While I didn't entirly understand the concepts, the tricks alone kept me engaged and focused. The main thing that I was really impressed by was that even when they stopped the show to fix the technical details, as it was a dress rehearsal, they didn't interact with the audience. While they made a few comments, waved, and did other silly things, the audience was completely unnecessary.

Just going to make a list of what they did:
Mirror Dancing: Using the mirror to create different shapes and affects. (Had a woman lying on the mirror, who would roll and stretch to have the above affect)
Bushes: Manipulated "Bushes"(like a big hula hoop) to create trees, bushes, birds, and other things.
UV paint or something: Created a situation were only the painted parts of the body were visible due to the light being given off. This allowed them to manipulate the amount that was shown by wearing another layer of clothes and form different shapes.
Oh, anyone know how to get square light effect from a rounded light?

Richard Spencer