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.
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