12/01/09

This Tuesday we started putting our myth projects together. I really like the myth we picked and I think it's going to make a good performance. My group wants to add some percussion. I think it's an interesting idea, I'm worried that keeping the rhythm is going to distract us and detract from the movement. I'm a big fan of doing things the simplest way possible. I think some intricacy can be intriguing but if it's so piled on it's not adding to the performance and it's only taking away from it. I think it's just best to just tell the story clearly. Not that it has to be all indicative gestures or anything, but there should be a clear arc and anything that doesn't enforce that is an unnecessary frill. So, I'm also having a little trouble finding a character for my movie monologue. I think I'm gonna go with Rowan Atkinson's character from "The Thin Blue Line." I picked him because my monologue is very eloquent and has a lot of old language and it comes from a really repressed time period and his movements are very unsure and quick and noodly (possessing qualities similar to those of a noodle). He almost never stops moving and almost all of his gestures are awkward or cartoonish. I think it would be a really interesting contrast. Plus he's the first person I thought of when I was trying to think of someone in a fil or a show that I like to watch, and since I became a black adder fan at the age of fourteen his mannerisms that come through a lot of his characters have influenced a lot of my comedic characters and some of my own patterns.

11/24/09

Today we presented our personal warm-ups and I presented my gift piece. To be perfectly honest the warm-up had me at a stand-still for a while. I wasn't exactly sure how to construct a routine that would be the best for me. I don't have many routines, I'm not used to them, my brain doesn't work in them. That's why I'm not that good of a student, I've never had the will to establish helpful routines. So I just started playing with different things during our warm-up time for The Spitfire Grill. I've felt lately like I needed to do something to warm up before performances, but I wasn't sure what would help most. So during Spitfire vocal warm up I would go into the dance studio and think, "okay, tension is here, lets stretch that, alignment needs to be this way lets do this" and I went through different exercises I've picked up in class and from work shops and people who I've seen warm up. I didn't have anything really set until last night when I went through the order of exercises in my mind. I find that when I construct a movement piece I need something for it to hinge on, a task or a goal, or something to hold. I decided my goal with the warm up should be to release tension and loosen myself up. It occurred to me this morning that the key to doing that for me is to pop my joints, so I aimed all parts of my warm-up at relaxation and popping my joints and today in class I felt better and more ready to perform than I have in a long time. I just wish I would have had all this put together for Spitfire. If I had been as loose and relaxed during the run of that show as I was today in class I might not have made all the rookie mistakes I made the last two shows, trying too hard to think of the next entrance, or the next piece of blocking.

I did my gift piece, which I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with. I didn't have as much time to work on it as I would have liked, which is no excuse, because I did have enough time. But even with what time I had I found it difficult to find a jumping off point so it didn't just turn into "A day in the life of Brian Cota." So the best departure point I could think of was my monologue. I decided to do my monologue as Brian. One thing I high lighted a few times in my letter to him was the difference between his movements in real life and on stage. So I put that in the piece by setting it in sort of an audition setting where at first he's just chilling with someone, talking to them, then he's called upon to perform, then he gets done with that and goes back to being himself. I tried to show the way some of his personal habits go away when he gets in his acting zone and some carry over. My biggest worry with today's performance is that it just looked like me being myself doing what I've been doing in class all semester. I hope I put his movement in it to a recognizable degree. I wish he had been there to tell me what he thought of it, but I'm kinda glad he wasn't because if he'd been there there would always be the chance he would think I was making fun of him, which was not my intention. I just wanted to show him what I see when I watch him, in the most accurate way I can.

11/20/09

I apologize for getting so behind on this thing. I've been incredibly busy acting in one show, dressing another and getting ready for company auditions. Now those things have dropped away one by one and I've picked up another project: wardrobe for student dance, which comes off right after Thanksgiving break. So, Movement. I'm really proud of the way my movement piece for my monologue came together. I'm glad people enjoyed it, but I'm really not sure that's helpful to me because I'm not sure how to take the movement I have and put it into the piece in a way that I could really use it for an audition or something. Also I'm struggling to create my warm up. I'm struggling to think of something that helps prepare me to move. I usually do a roll-down and vocal warm-up of some kind but I'm not sure yet what's the best way to to prep myself. Anyway, I got my gift this week. I thought it was really cool. I felt like her assessment of my movement habits was pretty accurate. She said it's almost like I have two personalities, one that's kind of tensed-up and one that's really animated like a cartoon. I think she's right about that. I will sometimes hold tension and stay inside myself until I get comfortable in a situation and then I start performing and unleash the weirdness. She showed that in her movement piece by imitating my habits and then switching to me doing my movement piece, using a lot of fluid out-stretched movements. When she said in her letter that there were two of me I wasn't sure how to feel about that at first. I was like, "so does that mean I misrepresent myself?" but I don't think it's necessarily a bad or good thing. As humans our behaviors are situational and we kind of appropriate or habits to situations, so it's normal, but also I find it kind of comfortable to know what I'm capable of movement-wise; to know that I can be animated and kind of sustain two sets of movement patterns and appropriate them to situations. Knowing that I do that or that I can do that gives me hope that I can do the same with my characters and make them more believable.

11/7/09

Haven't had time to post this week since I've been crewing Our Town and trying to catch up with spitfire grill. This week we finished presentations, we talked about I think, tai chi and biomechanics and feldenkrais. I'm not a huge fan of tai chi or biomechanics, but I kind of like feldenkrais. I'm still working on my monologue and trying some of the ideas from my movement piece in my Company audition monologue.

10/22/09

So today I presented my movement piece. I was a little worried about how the whole thing with the cloth would play but it played rather well and people enjoyed it. I was really encouraged by the fact that be liked it. I'm a sucker for praise. A lot of people said they could really see the character's journey, that made me feel really good because I felt that was the most important thing to get across. I've been trying for weeks to get the right builds in that monologue, and I felt like this movement piece thing really helped me do that. I thought about doing a lot of really descriptive gestures that described the action words in the monologue but for one thing there weren't many action words and the ones there were were kind of boring. I also thought about doing the movement I would put in the piece normally which would just be a lot of punctuative and identity gestures. But I thought, I need a task, I need something to hold on to, something to do while I say this. I also didn't want to do a lot of gestures that would conflict with the period, since it's a lot of very nineteenth-century language. Plus this is a very subdued character, she's probably thinking a lot about propriety and she's been taught to be very composed and guarded, so I thought maybe she could act out her feelings on a small object like a handkerchief, then I thought, but since this is supposed to be an exaggerated piece, why not change the cloth as the character abandons her fears more and more. I think that choice provoked a lot of things because I'd sit there and think, "Okay, the descriptive word is wild, how do you show wild with this coth," and I'd have to come up with something to do with it, and that would either feel right or not, or sometimes I'd just be thinking the words and I'd find myself doing things with the cloth I didn't really plan. Most of the time I was really concerned that the audience see what the character is feeling rather than provoking that emotion in myself. I probably won't keep a lot of the gestures I used in the piece when I put the words back because realistically my character wouldn't be performing a magic trick while giving this speach, but this excersize connected me with that piece in a way that nothing else could. I think this might become something I'll do to prepare monologues, not necessarily to use when I'm in a show, but for auditon purposes. I'm finding it's really helpful to me to have somthing real and physical to focus on when I do a monologue, like in Acting II when I was doing my God's favorite monologue and Joe was my opposite and he kept walking away from me and I had to try and stop him and I was chasing him around yelling at him and touching him and trying to block his way, and that real frustration it created connected me to the monologue and gave it drive. So I think this excersize could be something I could do to help me prepare when I don't have anyone to be my opposite. All in all I felt super good because people said good things about my piece, and I was really flattered that Anthony said I should keep working with pantomime.

I felt really weird with the mask on, not only because I couldn't breathe freely, but also, I was trying really hard not to change anything because I didn't want it to be a different piece, I wanted it to be the same piece with the mask on. So I tried just to change the things that violated the rules of the mask but there were definitely times when I thought, crap they can't see my face here, I've got to do something with my body to convey what should be on my face. What was really funny was that with the mask on I didn't move my face at all. I thought I was gonna still be trying to do my expressions under the mask, but it really surprised me that when my face was covered I didn't feel a need to move it because I knew they couldn't see it. I also found myself trying not to do things I saw other people doing with the mask on. I saw a lot of people speed everything up when the mask went on. I don't know if that was because they couldn't breathe or because it suddenly made them a little self conscious or what, so I tried to go the same pace as I had before, I also saw a lot of people who when they put the mask on suddenly lost a lot. With some people it felt like when their face was hidden the emotion was gone, and something that was loving or playful before suddenly became hostile, and there were others who you could always tell exactly what they wanted to convey no matter what. I hope I was one of those people.

10/15/09

Today we created a movement piece from our monologue. At first I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to do but Anthony said something about maybe performing a task, like baking a cake or something like that. So I decided instead of a task to use an object. I think I mentioned a while ago that my character should be a girl Edgar Allen Poe. So I thought about what young women were like in his time. For the most part they were educated at home, taught more how to run a house than anything else, but they were taught to read, and they would have time for reflection and study. I decided first that she is probably very smart, but very socially bound and she knows that. I wanted this monologue, which is actually a poem, which is a very private communication between the writer and the subject (so private Poe didn't even include the name of the subject in the title) to have a sense that she's tired of holding back how she feels about this guy but she's quite embarrassed about it because it's not socially acceptable and she's very afraid he'll reject her. Her journey is that at first she's very shy about it she tries to avoid his reaction a little, maybe every now and then she gets carried away and then gets embarrassed and pulls back and by the end she doesn't care any more and risks it all. So I thought at first I could have her play with a handkerchief and sort of enact her feelings on it. So I started with the handkerchief and then I thought, maybe the handkerchief could change with the journey too. So I start out playing with a little handkerchief, unfolding it, wiping my face with it, toying with it, wringing it, then as it goes along it gets bigger and changes shape until at the end it's a big blanket spread out for both of us (me as the character and my other) to sit on. I found this really helpful in finding the builds, the little climaxes and falling actions in the whole piece, because I was sort of tied to this piece of invisible cloth, I had to include it in almost everything I did, so I had to find a way to include it which in a weird way informed a lot of my choices. Like at one point I was wringing it and I turned away, and I thought, I've got to show him this cloth, I've got to use this cloth to show him what he means to me. So I had to turn around and I had to move the cloth with the words, which created a build. Plus I was trying to use the action words in the text, and there were a lot (motionless, shivering, arisen, murmur, hangs, speak) so I had to use the cloth to show those things.

I was definitely thinking about how this was going to look and how this would express my character to someone watching it, but I don't think that harmed it much, because every now and then I thought, "Would she really do that?" and I'd think "That's not the emotion I was conveying before, but is this a better choice." It forced me to think about how I was conveying her. It was also really helpful to picture someone actually watching me turning this hanky into a blanket, and that really helped to motivate the embarrassment because I would get carried away playing with it and then think, "oh, he's still watching, this must look silly to him, I better pull it back." Anywho, I'm really excited about this piece and I'm gonna try and find some ways to provoke myself with it more.

10/14/09

Yesterday Britania and I were performing parts of our monologues for each other trying it with different qualities of movement in our gestures. I chose to do the same part of the monologue with different qualities. Of any of them Britania said she thought that flicking looked the best, I thougtht that was odd, because when I think of flicking I think of it as a casual flighty thing, and this monologue is a very heady very weighty monologue. But I think the flicking lent it a sort of nervous
quality that played more interestingly than heavy gestures would. That was probably the most beneficial exercise yet. It helped to see how the qualities played for parts of the monologue and decide which ones were the most interesting choices. It was much easier I thought than trying to identify my character with an element or an animal, although, being a wolf and ferret really did help.

10/8/09

Wow, it's been for freaking ever since I posted last. In my defense I've been very busy with Macbeth and all the usual excuses etc. Now that that's out of the way, here are my insights.

Tuesday we started moving like the animals we are like and not like. The animal I picked to be most like me is a wolf. I picked a wolf because I noticed that I lead with my head an wolves obviously follow their noses. Plus I noticed that when I'm just walking around campus I kind of trudge. And even though I bounce when I walk, there's a lot of heaviness to my steps, and yet I move pretty fast. Wolves are the same way, they run and they clip along pretty quickly, but they are very strong animals. The animal I picked that is unlike me is a ferret. Ferrets are really funny to watch because their bodies are so long they have to scrunch up their backs to be able to run which makes them run with this funny bouncy movement. So they're like these long slithery creatures that bounce around like dorks. Their very perky and very dumb. I think intellectually I'm a ferret and physically I'm a wolf. Honestly I thought the animal thing was going to be kind of lame, but I found that when you're trying to mimic that animal it actually informs character choices really well. Saying my monologue as a ferret/person gave it an entirely different meaning than saying it as a wolf/human. I realized as I was being a ferret that I have no idea what ferrets eat, or where they live in the wild. I said to Nerissa, "maybe ferrets are too domesticated, I'm not sure how or if they really live in the wild." she said, "black foot ferrets do" I said, "Oh yeah, but I'm not really sure where they live." she said, "The black hills of South Dakota" as if it were completely obvious. I thought, "Well good for them! I don't know what the hell the black hills of south dakota look like! I don't even know where they are! If you said to me 'forrest' or 'desert' or 'mountains' or 'plains' it would have some meaning for me, but I've never been to south dakota!" That's when I realized I needed to do more research. I don't really think it's necessary to know everything about a species of ferret from where exactly it lives to what it eats and it's genus and philum or anything, just to be able to imitate it but I should be able to at least tell you if a ferret is a forrest or a desert animal.
I also realized on Tuesday that I picked teh wordiest monologue ever. It's really hard to reduce Edgar Allen Poe to grunts and howls but hey, it can be done! And it actually really helped. There's a lot of places in my monologue where the character expresses a lot of vulnerability but reluctantly. And I really got a sense of how that should look and feel when I had to do it as a wolf. Because wolves aren't animals that show vulnerability easily, so the act of relinquishing power as a wolf felt really awkward, but that awkwardness was perfect for the character. Ferrets seem like very shallow animals and in this piece there's a lot of profound emotions and profound ideas. So saying it as a ferret felt like I was a ditzy girl coming out with these insights you would never think she was capable of having let alone expressing in those words. Those were both really valuable approaches and I think it would be really interesting to find a way to combine the two. Now I have to come up with an animal that is like the character in the monologue and one that's not like the character in the monologue. This is difficult because my monologue is actually a poem. I picked it because it was blank verse, it was about the right length and it has a pretty good arc to it, plus it's very classical language. And I thought, "if I can take this and make it accessible it will say something about my interpretive skills." I'll probably never get to use it in a real audition because that's all it's good for, but it's perfect for this. But now I have to pretty much invent a character. It's pretty easy to use Poe himself as a departure point for the character, because they are his words about someone he loved, and it's easier to inform the piece using events from his life than it is to invent them. But I'm a girl, so it's got to be sort of a girl Poe. Its' gonna take time.

9/24/09

Today we worked with space and tension. We played with building tension between people and visualized the rubber band between each other, and we worked with the little box on the floor (I don't remember what it's called. we had to create a beach in that little seven foot box. We tried to create the motion of the tide by walking back and forth subtly. Our plan was to be the waves while Ben sat "on the shore" and eventually we would reach him and wash over him but we never got that far, because the motion of the waves was taking too long. I was a little disconcerted that people laughed at our beach. I guess it probably would look pretty hilarious watching us tip toe back and forth together. But when they laughed at us I thought, "Aw crap, we've blown it, this must not look beach-like at all." That's kind of a thing with me, if people are laughing I've either hit it on the nose or I've royally blown it. I feel like our idea was really original, and captured the feeling of the beach, but we did take too long to figure out what to do. It's hard to think of what to do with your body. It's easier to draw on something like an animal or something but even something like the beach is hard to characterize because it has so many parts that you wonder if you should look like a beach or do what you would do at a beach or characterize the essence of the beach, and how do you do that? How do you move like something you can't see? You can't. You have to pick an action, you have to make yourself look like something you can see, and usually it comes out looking more like the way you think of the thing you're trying to imitate, not really like the thing itself, but maybe it works. It's like how candy flavors don't really taste like the thing they say they're supposed to taste like, but because they taste good and they're the right color we accept it. We suspend our disbelief and say, "Okay this is banana flavored." But in acting the audience doesn't have to walk away saying, "Okay he looked like fire" they just have to say, "this is good."

9/21/09

Man, this blog thing is working out great for me. Too bad I just realized a journal wasn't assigned for stage combat. Oh well, still fun. Plus I sometimes feel like sometimes I learn more about physical acting from stage combat than I do from movement. I mean I'm glad I'm taking movement, I'm learning stuff in movement but, sorry, but stage combat is more fun. So I'm gonna blog about it one last time. Kaitlin and I started to work on character and dialogue and stuff today. The whole commie/nazi fight was a bit obscure, so we're going with like an alias-inspired secret agent sisters thing. It's really good I think, I'm just worried about the technical stuff like falling in the same place every time and making it the same slow as up to speed. But it's gonna be good. Kaitlin's a great partner!

9/18/09

Stage Combat: So, I'm really excited for my fight combo with Kaitlin. We've decided that this is an ideological street-fight from Germany in the 1920's. We came up with it because for reasons that would take too long to explain, Kaitlin and I always wind up talking to each other in Russian accents that sound remarkably German. So I proposed this nazi vs. communist street fight. I got the idea from a documentary we watched in my Hitler and Nazi Germany history class about Hitler's rise to power. They had really nazi and communist party members from the 20's and 30's talking about how the storm troopers and the communists used to through-down in the street. I'm not super sure how well it's gonna play since we're both women and storm troopers were typically men. But hey, it was the age of the female bachelor, who knows, right? I also have an awesome idea for my final fight which I'm really jazzed about but I'm not going to explain it now in case I don't get to do it.

9/16/09

Movement: We worked more with elements of nature today. I don't think this element thing is for me. I feel really lame trying to think of things to do that look like fire. I run out of stuff to do and I feel like I'm falling into cliches and not really staying true to the nature of the thing I'm trying to imitate. Um....I'm not sure what animals I'm going to study. I feel like I kind of trudge when I walk because when I'm walking I'm usually carrying my backpack, or walking a really long way. I also kinda stand with one shoulder lower than the other and all my weight on one side. But if I'm going somewhere in a hurry or I don't have to carry anything I kinda clip along at a choppy pace. I can't think of an animal I can identify that with. I've also noticed (and this has nothing to do with the animal thing) that sometimes I imagine what I look like when I'm walking. Or I'll start thinking of a person or a character and start walking like them, or I'll imagine an objective or destination that's different from where I'm really going and for what reason. And it really informs the way I move and the faces I make. I've done it since I was little and it's one of those weird child-hood habits I never lost. Hm.

9/15/09

Movement: Talked more today about the qualities of movement. Started mixing them with the diagonal scale, we started talking about movement in nature. We did the fire exercise where you imagine yourself as a flame and you burn up a bunch of stuff. At first I was kinda okay with it, but when the fire is supposed to get bigger I sort of ran out of stuff to do. I was sitting there flailing my arms and swaying and trying to remember how fire looks and how it moves and I was pretty happy with what I was doing and I kinda thought, alright, this is it, this is what fire does. No matter the size this is how it looks can I stop now? and I was looking around at everyone and I kinda had a sense that maybe they were like me, they were kind of grasping for stuff to do, and just moving around in what might have been a fiery way, and I thought, should I be doing that? But I didn't just want to make any old slashy flicky movements I wanted to find stuff to do within my pattern, things that were characteristic of fire, not of it's connotations or just words associated with it. But mostly I was kinda self-conscious and I kinda thought, geez we're just a bunch of dorks flailing. So I guess what I'm saying is I still have a hard time suspending my embarassment enough to benefit from some excersizes. But even if I'm alone, imitating fire feels pretty goofy to me though I can see how drawing from nature would be helpful in establishing a set of manerisms for a character.

9/14/09

Stage Combat: Friday we started learning shoulder rolls, we also had to do those killer frog-jump things and then my legs were stiff and hurt all weekend. At one point I had to have my friend Ben help me up off my couch. It's better now, but if this is the way it's gonna be I better have the most amazing legs you've ever seen by the end of this! Hahaha anywho, started learning the great combination today. It's really hard to get the reaction for the slap and make it still look like a natural part of the fight. After the shove they're not really ready to defend the slap so it always takes a while to get their attention and make sure they're ready and it slows the progress of the fight and makes it look kinda hokey. I also find that when I'm getting kicked in the face I tend to move my hands together when I see the other person's foot move, so the nap never comes when it should. I think that's why it's so hard to stay in distance when someone is coming in for the hit, because when you see someone moving toward you you have an instinct to move away. This makes it super important (I think) to practice it in slow motion, so you can get used to trusting your partner, because you know exactly what they're gonna do.

9/10/09

Stage Combat: Worked on punches yesterday, started tumbling to get over everyone's fear of spinning and the ground (a healthy fear if you ask me). It surprises me the stuff I can make myself do. I didn't think I'd ever get used to running and doing jumping jacks and all that stuff every day but it's happening. I didn't think I'd be comfortable doing half the stuff I've done in this class, like running and jumping on a huge mat or tumbling across a room with everyone watching me or letting someone lay on top of me while rolling across a floor. And getting used to doing that stuff has made taking risks in other areas much much easier.
Movement: Strangely enough, I'm not as comfortable in movement. Maybe it's because there are so many people or the fact that there's a mirror and I have to actually watch myself do stuff or what but I have a harder time going all out in that class.
Going back to stage combat: I started working a little bit on my first project today and I'm jazzed. I'm doing it on the duel at the end of the Scarlet Pimpernel. I think I can answer all the questions about it, but I'm not quite sure how "why they fight" is different from "why do they continue to fight". Is "why they fight" the same as "why they start fighting"? That's kind of how I'm leaning right now. At any rate, it's gonna be great!

9/9/09

Oooo special! That's the last time we'll see repeated single digits for a hundred years. Anyhow,
Movement: worked with qualities of movement yesterday. They're quite different than you'd think they'd be. Didn't really go all out with the rest of the class. Found it hard to focus on movement, too pre-occupied with other junk. Not a great post

9/4/09

So today we learned slaps. And it kinda reminds me of the one time I actually slapped someone. I was in seventh grade and this kid called my friend a bitch. I told him to stop and he looked right in my face and said, "she's a bitch" so I slapped him. I slapped him a lot harder than I meant to and then I felt really bad. You think it's gonna be like a huge relief just to deck someone, but it's not, especially when it doesn't shut them up, or when they act really shocked or cry or something. Because when you actually hurt someone it's like, "Holy crap, did I just really physically hurt someone on purpose?" That's something to think about with stage violence. It's easy when you're just practicing in class to be all angry and stuff, but when you actually do it you have to think, "why does this piss me off enough that I would actually hit him? And how do I feel aout having done that?"

There's also some interesting psychological insight to that phrase, "the victim has control." You can batter someone and hurt them and manipulate them physically as much as you want to but when you get angry enough to act out on someone it kinda gives them a power over you because they've seen you act rashly and crazily and now they can play the victim card adn gain the advantage over you by making you look bad. I think that's some interesting status play right there.

9/3/09

Movement:
I don't really have any cool new insights to put down today. We went over gestures again and did some Alexander technique with the massage and stuff. I find it really hard to touch people. I don't have like any moral or emotional qualms about it but it's hard to know what it feels like to them so you never know like if you're hurting them or what. I was massaging Meredith and then when she was massaging me I was like, "Is that what this felt like to her?" so yeah, it's weird. But it felt good. I wanna start doing something like that as part of my warm-up. But I don't think I'll be able to find someone to massage me before every show. Maybe I'll pay a swedish guy to do it.

9/2/09

Stage Combat:
Did throws and grabs today. It's really hard to let the victim be in control. I've been thinking lately of a clip from arrested development when this guy comes into Micheal's office and slams him up against the wall and Micheal's all cowering and stuff, and he says, "I'll do whatever you want, just don't hurt me." and the guy says, "actually I'm a stage combat specialist, you're in complete control of the situation." So Micheal just moves out of the choke hold with no effort and suddenly everything's okay. If I could find that clip I'd put it on here but I can't find it anywhere. It's a good gag, but it's so hard to make it look real and let a victim just drag you around, and knowing how much coreography would have to go into that one little clip to keep anyone from getting hurt kinda ruins the joke for me because I sit there going, "there's no way you can give someone control without their knowing about it." But that's also why it's funny I guess. Hahaha, nevermind, still a good joke.

9/1/09

Movement:
I did my movement assignment last night. I don't draw so I had tons of fun printing pictures off the internet and cutting them out and rubber cementing them to the paper. Rubber cement is my friend! Anywho, nothing about the assignment really surprised me. I wasn't sure what to put under what I wanted to learn to do with my body. I put that I want to be stronger and more flexible so I'd have more options. That's kind of a jumping off point for me. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with my body except be strong enough and comfortable enough with myself to take more risks and be able to experiment with a wider range of movement. Under what I like about my body I put "the fact that everything works." Then I couldn't think of anything else. I wrote a couple things I liked but I kinda thought, "Hey, if everything works, that's a pretty good body right there, done and done." Anywho so experimenting with planes. We never really just use one plane. It's like every motion you make uses two or all of them. I was trying to tell a story about a couple who talked to me at work and I was trying to isolate my hands, but there just weren't many things I could do with my hands that would add to the effect of the story without distracting from it. And with each movement plane there were parts of the story where movements in that plane helped and other parts where moving in that plane didn't help. And the parts changed with the planes. It was kinda cool because it felt like a puzzle. Like you could snatch different pieces from different planes and turn the story into a really interesting movement picture that all looks like one image but is made up of differently shaped pieces.

I really liked the idea of the three different types of gestures and I think the next time I do a monologue I'll try it first using all descriptive gestures, then all punctuative (is that how you spell that?) gestures, then all personal gestures so I can see which pieces go where in my little movement puzzle. Same with the plane isolations. Now I'm jazzed!

8/31/09

Okay so here's a post that could count for both a stage combat insight and a movement insight. We were talking in stage combat last time about attacking from different parts of the body and I started looking for what part of the body people used to lead when they talk and I noticed that when I'm at work and I half to give someone bad news like, "No I'm sorry, food isn't allowed in the theatre." I put my shoulders forward and tuck in my chest like when we had to receive an attack from the chest in class. It's like I'm conceding power even though I'm enforcing a rule. I've also noticed that when people are annoyed they pop their hip at me. I'm not sure what's up with that because usually the pelvis expresses a base desire, but the hip pop isn't a sexual thing, it's like a weird condescending attack. I'll have to think about that one.

8/27/09

Movement:

So I was in movement and I got up to stand still for a minute or however long it was, and at first I was like, "oh this isn't so bad" then after about ten seconds I was wishing I had better posture because every time I breathed it made me sway. And I'd feel myself start to fall over and the only thing I could think of to do was tighten my knees, then I thought, "oh crap, they just saw my knees tighten" and then I could feel like every tiny move I made and I could see the girl next to me swaying and then I'd start to sway. So I tried looking at the clock and I could feel my head tilting a little bit, and I didn't dare move it back. And I started thinking, "don't move, don't move" and the more I thought about staying still the harder it was not to move. So I went to my happy place and started singing Two Gallants' songs in my head. That helped a little because I wasn't worried about it but then I thought, oh crap, I'm spacing off. And then it was over. 

8/26/09

First Entry:
I've only been to one movement class so far. I've found out that I am very self-conscious. I'm not a huge fan of people watching me move or wearing black. I'm also not a huge fan of watching myself move, so the mirrors kinda freak me out. I'm really hoping that I can kinda get over some of that stuff and be a little more free about moving. That's really all I can say at this point. It makes it easier when everyone in the room is doing the same thing though. I don't know if this is a crazy idea, but I'm thinking of taking off my glasses when I go to class, because I can see well enough that I don't bum into things, but I think it would remove some of my inhibitions about taking risks because I wouldn't have to worry about breaking them and I wouldn't be able to see everything clearly so I wouldn't know exactly what I looked like, so I wouldn't worry about it as much. I don't know, maybe that wouldn't be too helpful, we'll see.

So in stage combat we talked about anger and how we're not allowed to express it in our society. We also talked about the four reasons why people fight. I like to say it's the four places where violence comes from. I think they were: Greed, Survival, Need and Righteousness. We did the exercise where we had to create a scene with violence based on the three questions, Why do we fight? Why do we continue fighting? and Why does the fight end the way it does? I think there was also a question about why we fight the way we do. I noticed that everyone in every scene fought differently. The way they fought changed not only depending on their reason for fighting but also on their relationship with the person they fought with, and the physical circumstances. I really liked Kami and Meredith's scene where they were strangers and they were lashed together, so they were really limited as to what they could do physically and they didn't have a really personal reason to fight with each other, they just wanted the same thing and each had to get it before the other did. I mean, you fight differently with someone you know than with someone you don't know. But maybe not, maybe by the time you start smacking each other around all bets are off.
So I was thinking of the four sources of violence today. I was at work and one of the guys was telling me how he'd like to strangle one of our co-workers. And I was trying to decide which of those sources his desire for violence came from. The only thing I could think of was anger, but I tend to think that's just a by-product of any of the four. And while this guy is describing his violent fantasies of death and maiming to me I know he'll never do any of the things he's saying. So maybe violence is the first impulse of anger or annoyance but only the four can actually result in it. I don't know, it's interesting to think about.

blog change

This used to be a blog I created as like a cool little inter-web portfolio of all the stuff I've done but I am now changing it's purpose. It is becoming my journaling blog for my movement and stage combat purposes. Last time I had to keep a journal (every time I have to keep a journal) I blew it. So lets see if blogging works better! Enjoy