First up today was back into more Shakespeare with Evelyn, and today's lesson was just to finish the initial text connection work with the people who didn't get to go last time. Two of those people were away though, and Evelyn didn't want to move on while we still have that work to do, so we did the remaining three and had a conversation all together.
It was a mixed class for me. By the very nature of the exercise it needs to be very personal and there is a basic requirement to share with the group, but a couple of times today it felt a bit indulgent from some people. It got to the point where they were no longer talking about the text or their connection to it, but just dealing with their personal problems. And that would've been fine if they then take that and put it into the text work. The whole point of the exercise, as I see it, is to get you to a place where you are deeply and truthfully connecting to some part of yourself and to the audience, and then to speak the text from this place. One person in particular got to this place (and stayed there for a while, I might add), but then when it came time to bring the text back in it was like they just stifled everything that was going on. I literally saw them shrug it off and steel themselves to just say the text from a place where there was not a lot going on, and then once the text work was done were they free to be a human again. I found it very frustrating to watch. However, I'm probably being a bit unkind - there was definitely good work done today by the people who got up - I think it's more down to a lack of experience of working in these kinds of ways. Still, it's always interesting to work with Evelyn and watch the way she works people.
In our conversation we then got a chance to talk about what we were taking away from this work. I managed to say something to the effect of I really like how it's about approaching the text from the point of view of humanity and connection, but that you need the other layers on top and other work to stop it just being wallowy-emotional-memory-type work. It was more eloquent and phrased more positively when I said it in class. But Evelyn agreed with me and it turned the conversation in a more productive direction I think.
I got a chance to have a conversation with evelyn after class too, which was really great. we talked about how I could best further my training after this - particularly with reference to Shakespearean work - and she talked of companies and people she knows who she thinks would be great. She also said that she would give me a reference for any of them if I ask her to in future, which is super cool.
Voice/Movement came next, and we started with a game of Hug Tag - which is comforting and exhausting in equal measure. Then into our Fitzmaurice voice work, with a similar progression of exercises each time but becoming a bit more complex. And i'm still finding that my understanding of the work and my ability to experience it fully grows every time - there's always something new to find. And I really feel it has definite benefits and look forward to bringing it back into my work (particularly in terms of warm-up) in NZ.
We then continued our extreme voice use work with a quick lesson on shouting. It was great to be able to achieve a result so easily just by applying basic physical technique. We were all shouting across the room safely at each other in a matter of minutes. It's really just a matter of muscularly emptying your lungs until there's no air left, releasing that muscular effort which causes an effortless and massive inhalation, and then with a lengthened spine engaging muscularly again to produce the sound. It's a sound that you could make all day without hurting your voice. And then we wrapped up with some more laughing, applying many of the same physical concepts as in shouting and the rest of the Fitzmaurice work.
Then onto more work on our Deep South dialect. The first half hour or so was all about just speaking fluently in dialect, so we would all just take turns talking and telling stories and David would stop an correct us where needed. It was great, but somehow all the stories ended up being about people vomiting (the group unanimously agreed that mine was the worst). But it was very helpful to just talk and talk and to hear others talking too, just great to practise. And then we finished with some technical revision ahead of Thursday's quiz. Eeeek. I think this one is going to be a little harder than the IPA quiz in my other dialects class...
Last up was working on the Twelfth Night - straight into the text work. And it was so good to spend the first almost half-hour just discussing all the events that had taken place before the play starts. We clarified all the major action up to that point, everything incontrovertible and then speculation, and then discussed the implications of all this for the characters and the play, and discussed questions that still needed to be answered by the actors in their work. It was very thorough and really great to do it all together, rather than just assume that everyone will do it separately. Then we moved into the actual analysis of the script. And we worked through it so meticulously that we only got to scene two before we ran out of time. It was great. The actors read through, then we'd go back and analyse punctuation, meter, antithesis, references and many many more things to uncover so many layers of meaning. Then, David would get the actors (and sometimes anyone else who wanted to have a go) to read again and put all these things into practise, take them from being just concepts into figuring out how to use them and play them and how they can help you. Again it was very thorough and took a lot of time but I'm really glad we did it, it breaks open the text so clearly and gives you so much to work with as an actor.
Ok, that'll do. I think I need to learn to write less...
No comments:
Post a Comment