3.06.15

In today's lesson, before rehearsals we relived Michael Chekov's acting techniques as a warm up, in order to become more physical and to play around with our body languages. Chekov uses three qualities or "states" of movement for actors, these are FLOATING, FLYING AND MOULDING. 

Floating movements are very light and free, they are delicate movements which appear very open and not restricting. We started doing an exercise where we had to envision three round objects we could hold and throw to each other, the object for floating was a very precious priceless glass ball, I visualized this as a small sparkly crystal ball, and I could see my reflection, it was not very heavy and could be put inside my pocket. I felt this vision worked well with my movements as they were very light and quite slow, I was in awe of the ball and did not want anyone else to touch it. It really helped me to make the movements more light, as the vision I had was a stimulus for the movement, as if I was not visualizing this I feel the movements would not have been as strong.

The second movement was "flying" which is very high pace, manic and quick. I used small and snappy movements, it reminded me of a rabbit, they move very quickly and sharply, and are always on alert for danger, but they make very small movements. We were asked to imagine we were holding a bomb, which was ticking and could explode at any moment. We all went into a state of tension and shock where we would panic when we had the bomb in our hands and quickly want to dispose of the bomb by throwing it to other people. When I had the bomb in my hands I noticed my movements were very erratic and all over the place, I did not have any structure to my movements I just let my body go into panic and I kept running in circles and screaming, which was funny and I would feel out of breath when I had the bomb in my hand as my body was very tense and this uses a lot of energy I found. The feelings of this quality of movement are very scatty and shocked, all you want to do is get rid of it, or just not hold it at all, and the feelings I felt in this exercise were definitely portrayed in my movements.

The last quality of movement was Moulding, which we have done a lot of work on this year, it requires a lot of detail about what you are doing, and it is the most realistic type of movement out of all of them, it is just more exaggerated. We imagined a canon ball which was very heavy, some people envisioned the ball to be very big, bigger than them, and others imagined it to be small but very heavy, this is how I visioned it. I was imagining a black bowling ball, which was very heavy and hard to hold. I could not throw this ball as it was too heavy, so I passed it with difficulty to someone next to me. Moulding allows you to be very particular about what you are doing, it is obvious to an audience what you are doing, and allows them to vision what you are doing as well, as you are kind of showing them exactly how you are doing something or how you feel. Using moulding, we imagined we were packing a suitcase, and every item we packed was exaggerated, like folding clothes, taking them off the hangers, opening drawers and picking out socks and underwear, and packing shoes. I like moulding as it allows me to create a clear image in my head, and afterwards I feel slightly warn out as it is quite physical, exaggerating and outlining every movement you are doing. 

This exercise was a really good idea as it got us all physically awake before our rehearsals, and it allowed me to think about how MY character(s) would do this exercise, how Betty would pack a suitcase or how Sheet would hold a really heavy ball. This exercise reminded me about Chekov's quality of movements and how important it is as an actor to have quality in your movements and to mix them up, and not stick to the same way of moving. And as I am playing 3 different characters, as are most of us, it allowed me to see that I need to have different states of tension for each of my characters and I will enforce this in our rehearsals. 

We also today looked at scene 15, and the epilogue. We have nearly finished blocking all of the scenes and today we mainly focused on scene 15 & discussed the Epilogue. I have gone into detail about scene 15 on my SCENES blog.

What do we want the audience to think after the show?

This question is a question I have been asking myself since beginning this performance. We had a discussion about this together and shared ideas. I think we all want the play to be powerful and make the audience realise just how corrupt Hitler was, and how corrupt the world is today. With reference to Hitler, Putin, Kim Jong Un, Mugabe and Gidaffi. All these dictators have shown the same traits Hitler had, and they all show corrupt movements and decisions at some point during their reign in power. We want the audience to realise that the world will always be contained with corrupt laws, people and governments. I also want the play to portray positive feelings for the audience, as I do not want them to leave feeling negative. I want the audience to feel they have just watched an intelligent and powerful piece of theatre which contains a lot of real life history and knowledge, as well as humorous characters. We as a group made the decision to use the "Heil Hitler" gest throughout as a repetitive gest, we use this in a comical way at the beginning in the prologue, and as the play develops and Ui becomes more powerful, the meaning of the gest changes and it becomes more sinister and brain washing. I want the audience to feel educated, as some audience members may know more about Hitler than others, and personally before this play I did not know much about Hitler, but now I feel I know a lot and I am quite knowledgeable about him, and I understand the things he did and why he did them. 

The epilogue is very important in what we want the audience to think as it is the last scene they will see, and the wording of the epilogue is very deep and meaningful. I have read through it a lot of times, and every time I develop a stronger understanding of the meaning and the sub text. We decided to have Sophie perform the epilogue, as she does this in the prologue and it maintains consistency and familiarity for the audience. 

I came up with the idea to have Sophie on stage, dimly lit, whilst all of us are behind the shadow screen, so the audience can see our silhouettes behind her, it creates a unified feeling and shows we support what Sophie is saying. We had different ideas about where Sophie should be, I personally like the idea of her being centre stage, not talking out to the audience directly, but almost like a wise old person, pondering in thought. She is educating the audience on what COULD have been and how different the world would be today if Hitler had not of died. But I also like the idea of having Sophie sitting at a table in the audience, having a drink, and then a spot light comes down onto Sophie and she begins the epilogue, so it is a more casual laid back way to end the show, and the audience members will feel more involved as she will be sitting with them, just like having a normal conversation.

We need to try these ideas out and see which one works best. We also want to create a montage video to be played as Sophie is speaking of famous dictators, the ones I have listed above, giving their powerful speeches, so it shows dictators from over the years and how they have developed and how they have also stayed the same. I think this is visually powerful to the audience and it is interesting for them to watch over the years how things have changed/stayed the same. We are going to find video clips of speeches from dictators, and maybe some clips of wars happening NOW, in Syria, Saudi Arabi and Russia.  

THUS LEARN YOU HOW TO SEE, AND NOT JUST LOOK,

AND ACT INSTEAD OF TALKING ALL DAY LONG;

THE WORLD WAS ALMOST RULED BY SUCH A CRROK!

THOUGH PEOPLE OVERCAME HIM, YOU'D BE WRONG 

TO PAT YOUR BACKS AND THINK YOURSELVES SO CLEVER-

THE OOZE THAT SPAWNED HIM IS AS RICH AS EVER!

The epilogue is a powerful and clever piece of writing. After reading through it, I have highlighted the main points of the epilogue. I feel the first learn is very important, as it is showing the audience/readers how people look at things all the time, but this does not mean you SEE them. People misunderstand situations and feelings all the time, by quickly jumping to assumptions without taking the time to really SEE the real problem beneath. It is very knowledgeable, and everyone can relate to this, as it is happens all the time all over the world people watching things on the news, reading articles, reading tabloids about celebrities, mis judging relationships and peoples feelings, without really doing anything about it or trying to understand the real reason! This again is portrayed in the second line, when it says how people need to ACT instead of talking all day long. People can complain about something all day long, but never actually do anything to change it. This is typical in countries, everyone has a problem with something, but very little people actually act upon this, they just work around problems or just walk away from the problem, instead of solving it or trying to make it better. This is partly because of the society people live in, where there are so many problems people give up trying to change it and just carry on with their lives.

The epilogue clearly indicates the Hitler did die and was not in power for much longer, and it portraying this in a positive way, as it brands him a "crook" which is true in ways, but Hitler did believe in what he fought for, but it was all very corrupt and disturbing. He was very extreme about everything and manipulated everyone to be on his team, he was not fair and did not let people vote for what they wanted, it was either be on his side, or die. 

The last line, is stating that the society who created Hitler, is as rich as ever. Even though Hitler did not reign for as long as he intended and he did die, the society he left behind were happy without him, and society did eventually regain its peace and unity. So society today is essentially better off without him, as we can only imagine how different it would be if he had not of died and gained power over most countries in Europe.

The subtext is very powerful of this epilogue, and it needs to be portrayed very carefully to the audience, as we want them to understand what this play is all about. So Sophie will have to think carefully about how she delivers this speech.

For next lesson I want to carry on with rehearsing the epilogue, and I also want us to start scene 13 as this is the funeral scene of Mr Dullfeet and we have not rehearsed this yet, and it is an important scene. Today I recorded the voiceover for the funeral, we decided that as I am playing Betty Dullfeet it would make sense for me to do the voiceover, but I did not record it in my character, I wanted it to be different, but obvious to the audience that it is my voice.