I’ve got you. You’ve got me.
Look out for each other!
I’ve got you. You’ve got me.
Look out for each other!
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I’ve got you. You’ve got me.
Look out for each other!
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Instructions:
Use of time:
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I’ve got you. You’ve got me.
Look out for each other!
Course Summary
Warm-up (20 min)
Speechwork (70 min)
Juliane – Cleopatra
Brooklyn – Paulina (Consonants)
Yanming – Henry V
Keisha – Luciana
Emma – Joan
Sydney C. – Helena
Time Permitting
Warm-Up (15) by Josh Meredith
Character Effort Workout – A thing to do (10 min)
Presentations: 5 or 6 (50-60 minutes)
85 minutes leaves 15 minutes for sound exercises.
Imagery & Metaphor
Sound exploration:
EXERCISES
Time permitting: hidden stage directions implied in the text.
Alliteration: 1. The commencement of adjacent or closely connected words with the same sound or letter; an instance of this; spec. (in Old and Middle English and other Germanic poetry) the commencement of certain accented syllables of a verse with the same consonant or consonantal group, or with any vowel sounds.
Assonance: 1. Resemblance or correspondence of sound between two words or syllables. 2.a) Prosody. The correspondence or rhyming of one word with another in the accented vowel and those which follow, but not in the consonants, as used in the versification of Old French, Spanish, Celtic, and other languages.
Consonance: 1. Correspondence of sounds in words or syllables; recurrence of the same or like sounds, e.g. in a verse,
CLASS
Announcements
Clear the room
Grounding: Group Grounding
Impulse Circle
Machine.
Tag
Space Substance: (5 min)
A EXPLORATION
Large group (no audience necessary).
Move around the stage, giving substance to space as they go.
SUPPORT AND EFFORT
After the players are in motion and responding to the problem, give a new understanding to the space substance they are contacting.
SIDE COACHING: You are holding yourself up. You would fly into a thousand pieces if you quit holding yourself up. You are hanging on to your arms. Your mouth. Your forehead. (Call out the various parts of the body that the students hold rigid.) Now have the students go back to having the space substance “support” them. Change back and forth until the student actors obviously feel the difference. While calling out parts of the body, help the students to release the muscle holds. (One student who customarily had a tight expression on his face that gave him what might be called a “mean” look first became aware of his rigidity through this exercise.
EVALUATION:
To players: how did you feel when space was supporting you? When you were your own support?
To audience: did you notice a difference between support and no support in the way the players walked and looked.
POINTS OF OBSERVATION:
When players hold themselves together, are their own gravity line, so to speak, some shrink up, some seem to be afraid of falling, while others appear anxious, lonely, and still others look aggressive. In fact, many “character qualities” appear. When, on the other hand, the players lean on space, an expansion and fullness can be noted as they move through the environment. Smiling faces, peacefulness, and an air of gentleness appear. It is as if they know the environment will support them if they allow it to.
“Put your signature in space” is a good side-coaching remark to place the player in the environment. The object is for the player to leave a mark in space – a footprint, the outline of his head, etc. – and then see that mark.
TOUCH AND BE TOUCHED/SEE AND BE SEEN
SIDE COACHING:
POINTS OF OBSERVATION:
Remember to keep players moving and to allow time between each side coaching. Was it difficult to allow yourself to be touched… to be seen? Avoid analysis.
Walk into your character based on how much lighter, heavier, more direct, more indirect, more sudden or more sustained they are than you.
Rhythm Workout
Apart from exploring any rhythms which are alien to you and working with the emotions, as suggested above, it is a good idea to play with all the rhythms regularly so that it becomes easy to access them and to switch from one to another.
When you are playing with rhythms it is important to go back to the chart and check the weight, flow and focus so that you know the rhythms are precise.
Here is my suggestion for a regular rhythm workout.
Working in this way will give you a great deal of flexibility – physically, mentally and vocally – and it will help you access those characters whose rhythms are radically different from yours.
SIDE COACHING
PRESS:
PUNCH:
WRING:
SLASH:
GLIDE:
DAB:
FLOAT:
FLICK:
SIDE Coaching:
EXPLORING YOUR CHARACTER’S RHYTHMS PHYSICALLY
This stage allows you to take the rhythm work further by physically exploring the rhythms you have chosen for your character and what clues they give you about the character’s external and internal movement.
Start by taking each of the character rhythms individually and exploring it physically, ensuring that you are committing fully to the specific combination of weight, flow, and focus of that rhythm.
Then, move between the different character rhythms exploring how they work together.
Rest for a while and consider what you have learnt about the character and the way he/she moves, thinks, feels, etc. Make notes or draw images if that is helpful to you.
Then, return to the strong physical exploration of these three rhythms and begin to speak the text, shifting from one rhythm to the next as feels instinctively appropriate.
Always keep the choice of which rhythm you use for which part of the text free, rather than setting it in any way. You are simply exploring possibilities: “What if these were the rhythms I used?”
Working with rhythms is particularly useful when you have to play more than one character.
First, establish the rhythms for each character.
Then, look for the main differences in rhythm between each of the characters you are playing.
Focus on these differences and explore them physically.
Then, still working physically, practice switching from one character to another, slightly exaggerating the rhythmic differences.
As always, this is exploratory work, which you then allow to take care of itself once you are back in rehearsals and performance.
SPEECH WORK
Jordan (Soliloquy: audience)
Alyssa (Soliloquy: day, night, audience)
Mackenzie (Speech; King, Court, the gods or all, or Apollo possibly)
Matthew C. (Speech: Duke, et al.)
Miranda T. (Speech/Soliloquy: Nurse, Romeo, Audience, Tears, Nurse)
Miranda M. (Speech: Desdemona)
Basics: Projection, articulation, grounding, stance
Impulse to speak
Scansion/metre and thought ends.
Phrasing pronunciation
Stakes/urgency/energy
Specificity
Journey
Responsiveness, in the moment…
Objectives:
Soliloquys Speeches Both
Kaylee (Julia) Matthew C. (Jaques) Matthew H. (Macbeth)
Maria (Hamlet) Isabella (Rosalind) Miranda T. (Juliet)
Alyssa (Juliet) Caroline (Antipholus of S.)
Amy (Viola) Miranda M. (Emilia)
Shayla (Petruchio) Zoe (Helena)
April (Juliet) Mackenzie (Hermione)
Jordan (Helena) Anika (Ariel)
Kalie (Richard II)
Sound exploration
EXERCISES
Note: For this exercise the lines may be temporarily broken up so that you can connect with each phrase. In later exercises, however, we will look at flowing each line through.
Move to Efforts: (15 minutes)
For the purpose of further exploration of the 8 Laban Efforts, here they are for your reference.
PRESS: Heavy, Sustained, and Direct.
PUNCH: Heavy, Sudden, and Direct
WRING: Heavy, Sustained, and Indirect.
SLASH: Heavy, Sudden, and Indirect
GLIDE: Light, Sustained, and Direct.
Gateway Actions: stretch your arms out to each side, shoulder level, shoulder blades relaxed, and move like a gliding plane, or as if skating in long strides.Derivative Actions: smooth, smear, smudge.Notice the qualities: its lightness, the fact that you can do it continuously without interruption, that your focus is direct.
DAB: Light, Sudden, and Direct
FLOAT: Light, Sustained, and Indirect.
FLICK: Light, Sudden, and Indirect
Play with speeches
Read speeches
Have a group behind to make sounds.
Do the length of speech exercise.
Break into groups:
1 A lot of short thoughts
2 A lot of long thoughts
3 Roughly equal.
Swithc spots
John Gielgud:
Look at your speech: divide it into sections:
What happens from one of these to the next?
Make sure everyone knows what a syllable is.
Find versions of these in your own speeches
Thump the floor
What do you think it might mean?
Beats –
Objectives
Given circumstnaces
Today
From:
Dividing
Some exercises:
Walking the thought
Walking the punctuation
Good for memorizing: three times through
Physicalizing every word
Sound out the sounds…
Stepping stones.
Reaching the focus.
Everybody read their speeches (3 x 17 = 52 minutes) or 1 hour.
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