Friday, February 4, 2011

Friday, 2-4-11

Friday, 2-4-11

Today in Acting we first met to debrief more about Watering Hole. A lot of interesting things were brought up, branching out from the concept of expectation reversal from Wednesday. For instance, the idea of surrender was discussed. Surrender is completely giving in to the character and to the exercise without self-judgment, and is very important to good acting. Part of what made Watering Hole successful is that everyone had completely surrendered to the exercise. We all bought in, and therefore we functioned incredibly well as an ensemble, and we all felt that. Everyone had a very positive experience with the exercise.

One thing I brought up was that it felt like a “performance.” The term “performing” sometimes has a negative connotation when you say “I could tell you were ‘performing’,” as in, something was disconnected and we could tell you were acting, as opposed to you just inhabiting the role. Watering Hole was not like that. It was the good kind of performance, where everything just clicks together better than anything has before, where the technique and the practice comes together and you don’t have to think about it because it’s in your body.

I was also reminded of the character concept of seeing, reaching, and grabbing. Different characters, and different animals, have different patterns for seeing something they want, reaching for it, and taking it (The jo-ha-kyu of acquirement). Some might spend a long time seeing something, and then reach and grab almost in the same instant. Others might see, immediately begin to reach… reach… reach… reach… and GRAB. Sudden! And whatever pattern it is, that tells you something about the character. How did my flamingo see, reach, and grab? How will Florence see, reach, and grab? I’m not sure I know the answer yet. It’s something to explore.

Another idea brought up in Watering Hole is something we covered in first semester: the concept of status. Different animals have different status compared to others, based on predator versus prey, slow-moving vs. fast moving, big vs. small, etc. A single gorilla might have less status than a single tiger, but give that same gorilla a few friends and the tiger is the one with less status. As a flamingo, I had very little status, which didn’t mean that I couldn’t approach people and be sociable; it just meant that if there was a confrontation, I usually lost. Status takes on a very different spin when we turn into humans. As all of our characters are human, no one’s in danger of being eaten, but it will be interesting to see how status either stays the same or changes between certain characters.

After we discussed Watering Hole, we warmed up and began practicing undulation, efficient movement through space common to the animal world and oddly less common in humans. We then got back into our animal characters, began an improv, and then slowly became more and more human from the feet up. We began by having human feet, and exploring those as the animals. Then we had human calves, human knees, human thighs and a human pelvis… and so on. All the while keeping our animal brains. This exercise was extremely effective because it was a good way of thinking about how our animal really would use human appendages given the chance. And that’s a good foundation for the physicality of our human characters. Florence, I realized would naturally want to flap his arms much more, and keep them clasped at his naval at other times. Florence would also walk with his upper body leaning slightly forward, perhaps leading with his nose.

These exercises were fantastic. Over the weekend, we’re supposed to go shopping for our human character and I’m very excited to come in on Monday to keep working with Florence.

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