Lesson 9 - 20.04.16

Blocking

After doing a very successful Side Stretch, we went straight into finishing the blocking of the show. Since the other classes had already finished blocking it, I felt like our end scenes had to be a bit rushed so that we could catch up.

At the beginning of the blocking, I found myself at the side of the stage watching the action take place. I found it to be quite boring not doing anything however I took this as a good opportunity to learn some lines and run through my scenes again in my head. This all changed when Ben told Gemma and I that we were to be Publius together (Marcus's son) who get Chiron and Demetrius ready for their slaughter. The role of Publius is purely physical. When our cue line is read, we grab Chiron and Demetrius and push them forwards, in a violent way, to where they are to be murdered by Lavinia and Young Lucius. Gemma and I keep a violent hold on them and stuff black handkerchiefs into their mouths (with a blood capsule secreted inside). We then push their heads down and then lift them by their hair. I found it quite hard to make this movement look quite realistic without actually holding Amber by the hair however this shows me an example of what I need to work on in the future. I found this scene to be really effective because I had never really understood it before however it now makes a lot more sense that this scene shows the innocence of Lavinia and Young Lucius disappear when they commit a sin. This really shows the characters' journeys in this play as it shows how their characters' attitudes and behaviours change drastically.

Moving on, there were more scenes blocked after this (including doing the second Hacca again). I can feel this play progressing quickly. Ben took the group of actors who die in the last scene to the side while the rest of us began finding ways to move around the space to show fighting and conflict - This included marching towards people with strong eye contact, falling into each others arms, and also (when reaching a destination) bouncing on our tip toes while looking up, like what we do at the beginning, however with more staccato and sharp moves. The falling back into each others arms looked quite bad, as well as =our movement towards each other, therefore Ben made us do some exercises to improve:

Falling Back

What I found hard about falling back into each others arms was that I didn't know where to fall as I had no body contact with them to begin with. To make us trust each other more, Ben made us go around the room with each partner and either fall or catch them. Since I am weak, I find it quite hard to catch people so I was the one being caught all of the time. After falling into everyone's arms, I became increasingly more trusting as people started to get more skilled with the catching and knew what they were doing so I had nothing to be afraid of.

Running To Partners
For our next exercise, we got into partners and stood in opposite sides of the room, facing each other. I got into partners with Tia.
The first part of this exercise was to run from either side of the room to each other so that it creates the illusion that we were going to run in to each other but we miss each other, purposely, to send the audience into panic and also to show that this is a war type scene. At first I was worried that we were going to run into each other but, once I did it, it was surprisingly easy!

Running and Catching
For the final part of this exercise, we had to run to each other, hold your partner across the chest, step back with their body following, and then push them off to then keep running.
When Ben was explaining the instructions, I was really scared to do it to Tia due to my weakness however, after delaying it for a while, I did it and it was really easy as Tia supported her weight really well.
Leading onto this, when Tia did it to me, I found it really easy to control my weight and fall back in a supported way.
I can really see this being really effective when used in the piece in the final scene.