Lesson 2 - 13th September
In today's lesson, we started by doing an exercise in pairs. I was with Sian. We were labelled A and B. A's objective was to get out of the room, and B's objective was to get them to stay. There was no script so we didn't need to speak; we had to have a physical conversation to establish what we want. After a few minutes if this improvisation, we we're then instructed to do exactly the same thing, however we could speak this time. A was only allowed to say No, and B was only allowed to say Yes. We improvised for a few minutes and then were instructed to do all that we have been doing, but to think of a justification - a reason as to why you are having this conversation and to establish the relationship. At the end, we shared our objectives with our partner. My decision was that I'd asked Sian's character to marry me but she had said No. Sian's decision was that she wanted to go out to a party but I wanted to stay in. This exercise was especially useful as you could do a lot of internal work on your character. It also helps you understand that dialogue is not always needed to make an interesting scene. And even when we added dialogue, it was still minimal but very clear. It is a really helpful exercise for developing a character, and really digging deep into something that isn't there initially. This is a method that I definitely with apply when I have to start working on my extract.
After this, we explored Stanislavski's idea of tempo and rhythm. It is an important condition for concreteness and truthfulness in the execution of physical actions and building of truthful character. Must correspond to given circumstances of the scene. We did an exercise based around tempo and rhythm. In a basic form, the tempo of scene is the speed at which the entire scene is moving. If the scene is a busy train station at rush hour in the evening, the tempo of the scene could be pretty fast as there are lots of people around and everyone wants to be somewhere as fast as possible. Rhythm, is a characters personal speed. For example, if there is a character in this rush hour scene who is tired and sluggish, their personal rhythm would be slower than the actual tempo of the scene. On the other hand, if one character is agitated and wants to get home fast, their internal rhythm may be quite high or even faster than the scene's tempo. We did an exercise where we were put into groups and we had to establish a location. My group decided on a train station early in the morning, and that all the trains were delayed. We then had to establish personal characters. My character was a business man who gets slightly agitated when trains are late as I have an important job to get to. A metronome was put on a tempo of 66 bpm. We had to internally decide our personal rhythm and compare it to this tempo as our scene starts to take place. My characters personal rhythm was much higher than the scenes tempo as my character was getting more and more agitated as the train was taking longer and longer to come. Other character decisions in my group consisted of: 2 school kids - friends, discussing rumours from school. Their personal rhythms seemed to be much higher as they are getting more excited as they speak. This is an interesting technique to use for characterisation as you can get a deep insight to your characters tendencies: what irritates them, excites them, bores them etc.. It is very useful to, when blocking a scene, spend some time thinking: "What is the tempo of this scene?" and "What is my character's rhythm?".
In the next exercise we looked at using transitive verbs and physical actions to show literal meanings of characters lines. According to grammar-monster.com, the definition of a transitive verb is: A transitive verb is a verb that can take a direct object. In other words, it is done to someone or something. We used an extract from The Seagull, a scene between Trigorin and Arkadina.
After this, we explored Stanislavski's idea of tempo and rhythm. It is an important condition for concreteness and truthfulness in the execution of physical actions and building of truthful character. Must correspond to given circumstances of the scene. We did an exercise based around tempo and rhythm. In a basic form, the tempo of scene is the speed at which the entire scene is moving. If the scene is a busy train station at rush hour in the evening, the tempo of the scene could be pretty fast as there are lots of people around and everyone wants to be somewhere as fast as possible. Rhythm, is a characters personal speed. For example, if there is a character in this rush hour scene who is tired and sluggish, their personal rhythm would be slower than the actual tempo of the scene. On the other hand, if one character is agitated and wants to get home fast, their internal rhythm may be quite high or even faster than the scene's tempo. We did an exercise where we were put into groups and we had to establish a location. My group decided on a train station early in the morning, and that all the trains were delayed. We then had to establish personal characters. My character was a business man who gets slightly agitated when trains are late as I have an important job to get to. A metronome was put on a tempo of 66 bpm. We had to internally decide our personal rhythm and compare it to this tempo as our scene starts to take place. My characters personal rhythm was much higher than the scenes tempo as my character was getting more and more agitated as the train was taking longer and longer to come. Other character decisions in my group consisted of: 2 school kids - friends, discussing rumours from school. Their personal rhythms seemed to be much higher as they are getting more excited as they speak. This is an interesting technique to use for characterisation as you can get a deep insight to your characters tendencies: what irritates them, excites them, bores them etc.. It is very useful to, when blocking a scene, spend some time thinking: "What is the tempo of this scene?" and "What is my character's rhythm?".
In the next exercise we looked at using transitive verbs and physical actions to show literal meanings of characters lines. According to grammar-monster.com, the definition of a transitive verb is: A transitive verb is a verb that can take a direct object. In other words, it is done to someone or something. We used an extract from The Seagull, a scene between Trigorin and Arkadina.
I firstly started off by finding my characters objective as I thought this would really help me find out what he wants. I then had to add the phrase "I ... you" for every single line, and instead of the ellipsis, there would be a transitive verb. For example: I inform you, I mock you. We also had to add an over the top physical action to this phrase to make sure that it stuck and to secure it to the transitive verb. For example, the line: "Release me then.", I decided that "I resist you" was accurate for this line. My physical action was to get down on my knees and physically beg. This helped me as I could link the physical action and it helps you remember the over the top motivation. After performing it while vocally expressing our transitive verb sentences and doing our physical action, we removed them and performed the scene as it normally would. Subconsciously, while performing, you are actually thinking about all the work you've done on the lines and it really really helps you for when it comes to actually performing it.
Here are a couple of sheets we used to help with this transitive verb exercise:
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