We had our first lesson with our teacher in Production Project 1 on Tuesday 28. January. We used some time in the first lesson getting to know each other and getting comfortable as a group. Everyone in our class shared what their passion for theatre is in just one phrase. We later used these phrases to make our first statement piece together. This was a great way of getting to know everyone in our class a bit more and to challenge us to step out of our comfort zone and work together as a team. As we all were a bit more confident, we started talking about the module and which play we were going to put on at the Rope festival. The play we were going to work with was the Japanese play The Water Station by Ōta Shōgo. This was the module I was most excited for since acting is way, I am studying theatre, so I was a bit disappointed that there was no dialogue in the play. After talking about it some more I tried to change my disappointment to focus on how I could use this to try something new and that this might be a great way to challenge my acting style. We ended the session we starting to practice for our performance by walking around in the room change our space and moving in slower and slower. We ended up trying to walk one step per minute. We then walked for three minutes going for one step per minute.

As we had our first rehearsal the next day, we continued where we left off and started with exploring with slow movements and ended up walking 6 feet in 5 minutes which was our preparation task for next week’s class. The whole class spread out in the space and one of us took the responsibility of timing it and also filming some of our rehearsal. For next week we were also supposed to read the Japanese paly The Water Station by Ōta Shōgo. I managed to read the play before the rehearsal and started to think about how I would contribute to this production. I had never read anything like it. I thought it was hard to really connect to the play as I didn’t understand anything from trying to read it. The way the play was written was difficult to read and managed to pick ever movement and fragment of the plot. Hopefully it would get easier understanding it throughout this semester.