Third Monday
It's Monday. We're back together. Though not Natalie, Claudia or Charlene.
Student A places the back of her right hand under her partner's left palm - and raises it up. A then walks B - blind - round the room. We take care. We listen. We stay in the moment. We hear Claire's too-long jeans shuffling along the floor. I roll them up. We watch a couple of pairs. We look who looks open. Who looks strong. Who looks trusting. Who looks imaginative.
We also learn the value of clothing that doesn't keep revealing your knickers.
We look at the script. In particular The Police Raid. In particular the Pollice Inspector smashing the furniture; how he tears down the curtains by the window out of which the revolutionaries have hung the duplicator. How the revolutionaries try three things to distract him. One jumps up in panic but another orders him to sit down. Pavel tries to distract the Inspector. And Andrei orders the Policeman to pick up the smashed dripping pot. It works. They don't find the duplicator.
We are continuing to work on contact with the audience in our reading. To get more and more comfortable with reading the line on the page, then looking at the audience and finally saying the line. This is not about getting it right first time. Or about getting it wrong first time and then giving up. It's about getting better. Everyone can get better. Wherever you start.
Louise has a hard job. She's playing the Inspector. The Inspector has a lot to say and a strange way of saying it. At first the actor Louise shows too much of it on her face and is asked not to. She colours an adjective. Ditto. Don't paint the adjectives. Let them take care of themselves. When she resumes, she stops showing things on her face but her eyes go dead and she becomes a bit like a speak your weight machine. This is pointed out. She says it is difficult. No one disagrees. But she perseveres. And then there is a definite change. Her body (and spirit) connect with the text and it comes alive in front of us. Her head and neck become free. She begins to swim. She finds the Inspectors enjoyment of his power. His irony. And finally when Pavel cheeks him, his anger.
In fact all make good progress. Egle 'connects'. Luisa, Amir, Josie, Sandra, though she has missed a couple of sessions and at first is a bit adrift from what we're doing. Dean, too, who's already connected well in a previous session.
A similar patten of work with Group B. But a different group. We spend a little more time on the warm-up on TAKING CARE. PAYING ATTENTION. I demonstrate the exercise with Grace and she is very open. But some of the work from the others is careless. Rebecca's work with Hanna looks automatic to me. I try and show with Hanna how you should take care of your partner. Take nothing for granted. Observe. It has to be an act of real empathy. Even tenderness.
We start work on the scene. A mistake on my part, I think, to ask people who were absent on Friday to begin the work in the way that we have been working because they didn't see us working. Slow progress. Well, slower progress than the first group, but progress. Hannah is our inspector and Azuraye acts as her prompter. Azuraye doesn't read loudly enough - or Hannah can't hear and loses her composure. Hannah starts listening to herself because she hears her own Irishness and starts to censure it. She loses confidence and focus. She also colours her adjectives and shows on her face. It appears Hannah, when asked, doesn't think her 'Irishness' works for the Inspector but the audience disagrees - when asked. But finally - painfully - the confidence comes back. We hear the flat text read by Azuraye re-energised by Hannah.
We work on Azuraye's own focus . Her eyes dart about. She is asked to direct her words to one person. We look at her physicality. We also ask her to employ her own energy with regard to the text. Her Stafford mischievousness seems at first almost totally to disappear. She is asked to include it. She does - a little, still not nearly enough. We work with Tom. Christopher. Abigail, a litttle too.
Grace takes over from Hannah as the Inspector. An interesting case in point. Having been so open in the warm-up exercises, she loses trust in herself. Can't allow her own obvious strengh and charisma to shine through. Finds it very difficult to focus. Loses her repose. Looks about. The pressure of 'having to perform' robs her of herself. But even Grace finds some of her grace. With work. She settles down. And when, at the end, we work on the lines in which the Inspector loses his cool with the revolutionaries in failing to find the duplicator, she is quite strong.
Many lessons today. For all concerned. Care needs to be taken.
Student A places the back of her right hand under her partner's left palm - and raises it up. A then walks B - blind - round the room. We take care. We listen. We stay in the moment. We hear Claire's too-long jeans shuffling along the floor. I roll them up. We watch a couple of pairs. We look who looks open. Who looks strong. Who looks trusting. Who looks imaginative.
We also learn the value of clothing that doesn't keep revealing your knickers.
We look at the script. In particular The Police Raid. In particular the Pollice Inspector smashing the furniture; how he tears down the curtains by the window out of which the revolutionaries have hung the duplicator. How the revolutionaries try three things to distract him. One jumps up in panic but another orders him to sit down. Pavel tries to distract the Inspector. And Andrei orders the Policeman to pick up the smashed dripping pot. It works. They don't find the duplicator.
We are continuing to work on contact with the audience in our reading. To get more and more comfortable with reading the line on the page, then looking at the audience and finally saying the line. This is not about getting it right first time. Or about getting it wrong first time and then giving up. It's about getting better. Everyone can get better. Wherever you start.
Louise has a hard job. She's playing the Inspector. The Inspector has a lot to say and a strange way of saying it. At first the actor Louise shows too much of it on her face and is asked not to. She colours an adjective. Ditto. Don't paint the adjectives. Let them take care of themselves. When she resumes, she stops showing things on her face but her eyes go dead and she becomes a bit like a speak your weight machine. This is pointed out. She says it is difficult. No one disagrees. But she perseveres. And then there is a definite change. Her body (and spirit) connect with the text and it comes alive in front of us. Her head and neck become free. She begins to swim. She finds the Inspectors enjoyment of his power. His irony. And finally when Pavel cheeks him, his anger.
In fact all make good progress. Egle 'connects'. Luisa, Amir, Josie, Sandra, though she has missed a couple of sessions and at first is a bit adrift from what we're doing. Dean, too, who's already connected well in a previous session.
A similar patten of work with Group B. But a different group. We spend a little more time on the warm-up on TAKING CARE. PAYING ATTENTION. I demonstrate the exercise with Grace and she is very open. But some of the work from the others is careless. Rebecca's work with Hanna looks automatic to me. I try and show with Hanna how you should take care of your partner. Take nothing for granted. Observe. It has to be an act of real empathy. Even tenderness.
We start work on the scene. A mistake on my part, I think, to ask people who were absent on Friday to begin the work in the way that we have been working because they didn't see us working. Slow progress. Well, slower progress than the first group, but progress. Hannah is our inspector and Azuraye acts as her prompter. Azuraye doesn't read loudly enough - or Hannah can't hear and loses her composure. Hannah starts listening to herself because she hears her own Irishness and starts to censure it. She loses confidence and focus. She also colours her adjectives and shows on her face. It appears Hannah, when asked, doesn't think her 'Irishness' works for the Inspector but the audience disagrees - when asked. But finally - painfully - the confidence comes back. We hear the flat text read by Azuraye re-energised by Hannah.
We work on Azuraye's own focus . Her eyes dart about. She is asked to direct her words to one person. We look at her physicality. We also ask her to employ her own energy with regard to the text. Her Stafford mischievousness seems at first almost totally to disappear. She is asked to include it. She does - a little, still not nearly enough. We work with Tom. Christopher. Abigail, a litttle too.
Grace takes over from Hannah as the Inspector. An interesting case in point. Having been so open in the warm-up exercises, she loses trust in herself. Can't allow her own obvious strengh and charisma to shine through. Finds it very difficult to focus. Loses her repose. Looks about. The pressure of 'having to perform' robs her of herself. But even Grace finds some of her grace. With work. She settles down. And when, at the end, we work on the lines in which the Inspector loses his cool with the revolutionaries in failing to find the duplicator, she is quite strong.
Many lessons today. For all concerned. Care needs to be taken.
posted by Steve at 10:00 AM
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