6th June 2011 - Piecing together the characters

Write - up from today's session.  Please note if you are interested in the background of any of the pictures, I randomly copied them from Google Images to help to describe the sort of things we do, and they are not really an accurate depiction of what we did in the session.


Some very definite and strong characters are being bought to life by the actors, and this was demonstrated today as they worked further on their narrator characters.



Following a physical and vocal warm up, in pairs, half an hour was spent learning a section of "The Tea Kettle", with one narrating and one sculpting.  There were several different techniques being developed, and the two that we will mostly incorporate are the sculptactor and narrator moving at separate times, with the sculpt reflecting the story that the narrator is telling, and the narrator moving around and through the sculpt, so that the two are connected in the performance.

Each pair was instructed during rehearsal to think about voice - tone, pace and rhythm, and level of movement.  As the point of this week was to start to work without script, the purpose was partly to demonstrate how cues from the musicality of the speech and movement of the body can help with remembering lines.  In addition to this, it was intended to show how increased levels and freedom of expression are enabled when the script is put down.  In fact, initially, expressiveness is reduced, as panic sets in and the actor searches in vain for forgotten lines, however over time, confidence begins to grow as does the range and flow of creative expression.

During the performance certain aspects stood out as being very good 
 - Using character voices, or speaking in role as character
 - Narrator moving around especially in a carefully mapped out way    - that is matched with the telling of the story
 - Use of levels to keep audience attention
 - Use of expressive sounds that are not "in the script" (e.g., a laugh)
 - Narrator using the sculpt as a prop.
 - Use of facial expression - eyes very important.

At the end of the session Actors were requested to let the group know if they want to play any particular part, and who wants narrative roles.

Points to note 
 - each story can have one, two or more narrators.
 - different people can narrate each story
 - sculptactors can occasionally come out of the sculpt and narrate.


Movement
 - movement in the style of theatre that we are devising is extremely important.  I have seen over the weeks people become more confident with moving and physical expression.  As we start to map out the stories in the way that they will be finally performed, I will start to ask people to create, practice and learn different pieces of movement in their own time.





Voice
 - similarly, as the vocal style is extremely important, and in order to enhance the levels of improvement in vocal expression and clarity that we have been seeing, people will begin to be asked to practice some of the excersises that we have done during the Monday evening sessions, at home.