In this hour long lesson, we explored an abstract, physical way of presenting emotion through sequence.
We began the lesson in groups creating a 30 second scene involving three characters: one that felt a need to be close to another particular character, one that felt a strong fear towards a particular character and one that felt fear in regards to the fact that another character was becoming so uncomfortably close to them, breaking boundaries.We thought we would show these relationships in the form of a wedding dress fitting. The bride-to-be on riser, anxiously smoothing out creases on her dress whilst one of the male wedding guests keeps becoming awkwardly close to her, compelled by a need to be with her and then slightly in the background was the seamstress who had a very strong fear of the bride-to-be and an obvious anxiety regarding the dress. Although this scene was initially realistic, the emotions of each character were still incredibly evident through both the dialogue (or lack of) and the use of proxemics, the way the male wedding guest kept trying desperately to enter the bride-to-be's personal space yet she was on a riser so somewhat unreachable and she kept turning toward the seamstress in a panicked desperation.
After sharing these simple, realistic scenes with the rest of the class, we all came together in a circle. First we described, in detail, the physical appearance of the person stood next to us, everything from hair colour to shoe style. Music was put on and we then proceeded to put actions to these descriptions, creating a sequence using the full length of the body. With more and more repetitions of this sequence, it soon became very fluid and natural, especially while complimented with the surreal music that was playing. Then the music continued to play and each of us experimented with different speeds and sizes of our short sequences, each repetition creating different effects: the large, over exaggerated, more abstract sequences reflecting a bold, confident yet conflicting character whilst the small yet dynamic ones showing a more introverted, anxious personality.
Once everybody felt comfortable with the short dynamic sequences they had created, we were asked to go back to our naturalistic scenes from earlier in the lesson and do them again yet without speech and constantly looping the physical sequences we had just created. We were able to show our specific emotions by the style, speed and size of our movements. As i was a timid, anxious character, my movements were quite fast (slowed down at times of ease) and quite frantic, as though it was almost a nervous twitch at times. We interacted in the same way with one another yet just communicated with our body language and facial expressions.
I think the product of this exercise was really effective, the final pieces, although we only had minutes to improvise them, were really interesting and the every performer used their sequence to a different effect was, visually, very stimulating.
The work created in this lesson was inspired by the work of Frantic Assembly, a theatre company based in Britain that creates incredible pieces of drama with amazing amounts of energy and pristine choreography. Linked below is a trailer for a Frantic Assembly production of Othello set in what seems to be a bar. I found this during my research of Frantic Assembly and was completely in awe of it! The way they have taken the Shakespearean script and paired it with such fluid, dynamic movements makes such an interesting piece of physical theatre.
We began the lesson in groups creating a 30 second scene involving three characters: one that felt a need to be close to another particular character, one that felt a strong fear towards a particular character and one that felt fear in regards to the fact that another character was becoming so uncomfortably close to them, breaking boundaries.We thought we would show these relationships in the form of a wedding dress fitting. The bride-to-be on riser, anxiously smoothing out creases on her dress whilst one of the male wedding guests keeps becoming awkwardly close to her, compelled by a need to be with her and then slightly in the background was the seamstress who had a very strong fear of the bride-to-be and an obvious anxiety regarding the dress. Although this scene was initially realistic, the emotions of each character were still incredibly evident through both the dialogue (or lack of) and the use of proxemics, the way the male wedding guest kept trying desperately to enter the bride-to-be's personal space yet she was on a riser so somewhat unreachable and she kept turning toward the seamstress in a panicked desperation.
After sharing these simple, realistic scenes with the rest of the class, we all came together in a circle. First we described, in detail, the physical appearance of the person stood next to us, everything from hair colour to shoe style. Music was put on and we then proceeded to put actions to these descriptions, creating a sequence using the full length of the body. With more and more repetitions of this sequence, it soon became very fluid and natural, especially while complimented with the surreal music that was playing. Then the music continued to play and each of us experimented with different speeds and sizes of our short sequences, each repetition creating different effects: the large, over exaggerated, more abstract sequences reflecting a bold, confident yet conflicting character whilst the small yet dynamic ones showing a more introverted, anxious personality.
Once everybody felt comfortable with the short dynamic sequences they had created, we were asked to go back to our naturalistic scenes from earlier in the lesson and do them again yet without speech and constantly looping the physical sequences we had just created. We were able to show our specific emotions by the style, speed and size of our movements. As i was a timid, anxious character, my movements were quite fast (slowed down at times of ease) and quite frantic, as though it was almost a nervous twitch at times. We interacted in the same way with one another yet just communicated with our body language and facial expressions.
I think the product of this exercise was really effective, the final pieces, although we only had minutes to improvise them, were really interesting and the every performer used their sequence to a different effect was, visually, very stimulating.
The work created in this lesson was inspired by the work of Frantic Assembly, a theatre company based in Britain that creates incredible pieces of drama with amazing amounts of energy and pristine choreography. Linked below is a trailer for a Frantic Assembly production of Othello set in what seems to be a bar. I found this during my research of Frantic Assembly and was completely in awe of it! The way they have taken the Shakespearean script and paired it with such fluid, dynamic movements makes such an interesting piece of physical theatre.
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