Week 5
The object Umbrella Businessman
In Tuesday’s rehearsal, I started to develop the character with the man with an umbrella. I took the little bit work that I did on the scenario of the umbrella with its normal function with the man in the rain waiting for the bus and tried to keep that same type of character for the “Umbrella Businessman”. I wanted to capture the impatience and annoyance of the character that I create in the scenario but one where the character moves around the space and has more actions than waiting at the bus stop. So I started to think about how the businessman would walk and I came up with him walking very stiff with very short steps in which he barely lifts his foot from the floor sort of shifting himself around the space. I would have the character standing upright with his arms stuck to his sides, holding the umbrella with his right hand and resting it on his shoulder. I build this physicality for this character as I imagine him to be a very serious, awkward man in an annoyed mood due the rain and his lateness. Every couple steps the man would take he would perform one of the four actions that I created for him to show his impatience and growing annoyance. The actions that created were taking a sharp sniff, looking at his watch on his left hand, sneezing, putting out his left hand to check if it’s still raining after all of these actions I would take a deep sigh before starting to walk again.
Looking at the Bird’s Death
During Tuesday’s rehearsal we came up with a group moment with Brandon and Josh. We were doing the actions with our objects and moving around the space amongst each other and we wanted to come together and be connected by a singular point. We wanted to do this moment because when we were walking around the space it felt like we were in the same space contrary to the other space but it felt like we were disconnected much like the inner city atmosphere when people don’t interact with each other and just keep to their own and we thought that a moment that had a point of connection would resonant compared to the dynamic that we already had. I thought that it would be a good idea for the three of us to be doing our own action then at the same time look to the sky to all observe something happen at the same time to break out of our actions and show that we are in the same space and to build the tension of what we saw. We then thought that it could be the death of a bird and we could track the flight of the bird’s fall with our eyes and slowly come together to look at where the bird had landed, we also thought that the bird could be shown by a spotlight with the silhouette of a bird and it fall the spotlight expands of gets brighter to show the fall of the bird from the height of the sky.
Warm-up exercise in the space
In today’s class’ warm-up we explored the floor and the different heights that we can use in the space. Exploring in all the ways how you can be the lowest that you can be in the space and the tallest that you can be in the space and also the biggest and the smallest whilst moving in the space. I found the sticking point of this exercise was to what extent you can think outside the box is tough and to keep doing so. I felt at one point that thinking of how to be as low or as high as possible was the restricting factor, much like most of the warm-ups, and as soon as I stopped thinking so much and explored my body and the movement of the body fully the more interesting things arose and more ideas came.
We then moved on to the dripping tap exercise which was imagining that a tap was dripping from the sky and trying to move your body to get every part of your body wet from the dripping of the water. When moving around imaging the drip of water it was hard not to be self-conscious and reluctant. It was also hard to maintain the stable imagine of the water dripping in one place and for the mind not to wonder. There was various points of doing this exercise when I was fully committed to imagining the dripping water and fully committing to the movements to get my body wet, but then those moments were fleeting as I caught myself in a weird position and got self-conscious or I started to think of the parts of the body that I didn’t reach and then got in my own head. In those moments of full commitment to picturing the drip I could see it clearly and my mind was clear of external thoughts and the drip had my singular focus, then the movements came naturally from just focussing on the drip, anytime I lost that focus on the drip the moment was broken and the movements were less free and dynamic.
We then walked around the space normally paying close attention to the way in which we walk. We focussed on the bigger actions of how we walked like what we led with and how our weight is distributed and our natural walking rhythm down to smaller mannerism like how we hold our hands whilst we walk. I found that I walk relatively slowly with a steady pace, I land on my heel when walking and finish my step toes, I’m upright and my chest is up and that has my head propped up slightly raised, my arms are by my side and loose and have a slight swing.
The Other Person
Following the warm-up we moved on from analysing how we walked to start to observe the way that someone else in the room was walking around the room paying attentions to the same details that we paid attention to in the warm-up. From observing we started to imitate these behaviours. Starting to build up the other person’s physicality. We would transition from our imitation of the other person to naturally walking as ourselves. I was walking as Jack. Jack walks with is head leading and his neck slightly extended. His right hand is cupped with his palm facing behind him his left is has its thumb in his pocket and the rest of the hand hanging out. His right arm swings gently but his left is stiff in held by pocket. His foot moves low to the ground and lands with his heel first. He leans forward and has a slight slouch. He walks relatively briskfully and tends to have a very slight rocking from side to side with each step. After building this imitation we started to walk as our normal selves the room and start to perform so normal actions that we would do in the space, for example there was a chair in the space that we had to interact with in some way whether it was sitting on it naturally or stepping over it. Whilst we were walking around the space interacting with the space we would observe the person that we were imitating doing these actions then recreate them when doing the imitation in the space again. Jack would slouch in the chair and not stay in the seat for very long. Jack also did a little shuffle with his feet when people would walk directly at him and get close. Jack also stepped over the chair with a bend back kind of skipping off of it with his haed down with his bent back.
Revision and precision of all material:
After the break we went over all of the material that we have and started to work on their details to polish their actions. I revised the Body parts, Opposites, The Object, The characters that we chose from the text.