Day 2 of week 2.
warm ups:
circle of doom stage 2. from yesterday: the sign and the sound with your name (cindy – swoosh with a hand gesture); say your own and then someone else’s. so this tested our memories and our ability to do other people’s stuff with the same level of commitment that they had in creating it.
when we had this down we moved on to saying a name, but someone else’s gesture. the gesture was what got passed (i’d intuit that this was about paying attention to the physical offer).
make up a dance: 7 people on stage, each had to make up 4 beats of a dance, (so eventually we had 28 beats). they learnt it bit by bit, and then as a group came up with the last 4 beats. then they did it for us in the audience.
then, scary bit, colleen made the audience members come up and pay a tribute to the first group by dancing their dance… and we made up our own.
colleen linked this to being on stage and basically mirroring and repeating other people’s actions/ games etc.
good morning fucko: 2 players, they sleep (on 2 chairs). then when colleen said “good morning fucko” they had to get up and start their day. as before, much of who these people were to each other was shown even before they spoke (how they slept, how they got out of bed, what they did first). start your own day but make a choice about how you feel about this, and make this an inspiration for your character.
onion skin – 171 – (space jump) played with 7 layers, no one calls the jump, just a new scene started strongly with an entrance. there was a priority of a good scene over physical justification, which i found hard after years of space jump. that said, in erin’s class they WERE asked to physically justify.
notes from colleen’s wisdom:
this level is all about moving from being cynical adults to embracing and supporting people’s choices
remember to give us a WHY, especially if you’re doing something you hate (running a marathon). that way there’s a why to bring back for the 2nd beat.
when in doubt in a group scene, join in. if someone else is being brave and singing, then you sing too – don’t leave them hanging
there’s more mileage in happily / sadly / magically / lustfully /grumpily doing something than there is in just doing it. don’t just do, do it with an attitude towards it. you can just make coffee at home. on stage make coffee with an emotion or attitude
when you invest in object work you are distracting your analytical brain, so you can be brilliant.
the first 5 seconds on stage is a contract with the audience about who you are.
there’s a difference between agreeing and playing politely; can agree to the scene and still argue – disagreement within the scene while agreeing to the moment
play a heightened version of myself: if you’re anxious and neurotic, be more so on stage. take care of yourself: know who you are (personality / foibles, not role), and how you feel about that. look after yourself = determine your world view
they don’t make sounds for sound effects in scenes – it’s assumed that when you put on the blender, it’s blending, no need to make the blender sound. if you make a blender sound for the blender, then they assume that you’re the guy who makes sound effects, and you’ll have to do it not just for the appliances but for other things (your squeaky shoes, etc)
ucb is find the game of the scene: iO is find the relationship
even if you don’t like the other character on stage with you, you need them for some reason (it’s important that the audience knows why, else why stay on stage, why stay with someone you hate). who are these people, why are they on stage together, what’s their stuff.
as a character you need to know what do i want, what kind of person am i, how do i feel about them
