Friday 13 of Feb

This lesson we began to seriously work on Meyerhold, a way of acting that involves using physical theatre and using actors bodies' to convey a message, in a way that is not just verbal. to begin the lesson however, we played 'Whoosh' again. It was faster and began the lesson as a warmup to physicalising.

We then worked on counterbalancing against each other, in pairs, with the dynamic of portraying a boyfriend and a girlfriend as we did it. This added facial expression and purpose to the balancing- telling a story through what we thought was just a technique. We were then told to do it in a story like way, using 3 different counterbalancing positions - it looked like a tableau of sorts, since we had to freeze after each one -  to tell a story. Rachel and I did one that began with the girlfriend hanging onto the irritated boyfriend, for him to stay. Then the boyfriend goes up against the girlfriend and becomes aggressive toward her, as she cowers away, and then the boyfriend longingly looks at the girlfriend who is turning away (rightfully so, might I add).

After that we had a look at the script we will be studying; Cagebirds. Another girl and I read through some of the lines as Guzzler and Gazer, two of the original characters in the play. It illustrated to us how boring the play sounds just being read, as the script needs physicalisation to bring it to life.

30/1/15

In our second lesson we continued our intro to physical theatre. The first thing we did was watch a clip about a dance company that incorporates elements of physical theatre into their shows. They are called DV8. The clip showed shorts from their shows, and an interview with the founder of DV8. The show deals with themes of freedom of speech and prejudice. 

Mr Raciti then chose 8 people from our class to get up and begin using their bodies for physical theatre. The 8 of them all sat in chairs in a row, and when someone got up they all had to move, but with one person left out, because there were only 7 chairs.  Then after awhile, Mr Raciti told them to take on the persona of a 40 year old business woman, which changed the way they conducted themselves entirely, with movements becoming more precise, and looking more professional and neutral in general.

29/1/15

Today we had our first drama lesson with Mr Raciti, and an intro to what our first topic in Year 10 drama will be: Physical theatre. We then played a game called 'Whoosh', which helped us to use our hands and actions to convey something to the person next to you.