Tuesday, 3-22-11

Tuesday, 3-22-11

Day late again on this one. In my defense, yesterday was pretty rough, what with recovering from food poisoning and everything.

Anyway, yesterday in Acting we did an improv exercise as our characters getting together for the barbecue. I came late, because I was at Health Services, but when I showed up everyone was already working and Matt just said, "Oh look who just came in!" and everyone rushed me. "Jason, my baby!" "Welcome home, Jay," etc.

So that was a nice way to get thrown into the action. I liked this exercise a lot because it didn't give me time to think--I felt like walking into that room and being treated like Jason was nearly all I needed to get there. All the other characters were giving me all the information I needed. The Jacks were a bit distant and formal, Irene (Jason's mother) over-enthusiastic, etc. I myself (though some of this may have been the exhaustion and dehydration) was closed-off and wounded, purposefully preventing myself from allowing myself to be drawn wholly into the family's party. Perhaps recognizing too much of its falseness, or simply with the knowledge of what he has done hanging over him as he struggles to figure out what to do next.

Matt said that he liked this effort of self-control that Kyle and I exhibited as the Jasons, and suggested we go further with it. He also said to look for strong, vertical energy, which I think works well with my idea for the stag.

We spent the rest of class continuing to beat the script. I find it's useful while beating out a script to look at all the other characters for clues to see if a beat has really occurred yet. If even one of the characters is still following the same line of thought as they have been, the beat change has not happened yet.

On Wednesday we're bringing in more costume pieces and we'll do some more on-our-feet work before we finish beating out the script.