WEEK 1

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Read through :

Reading through the play as our characters helped me to gain a further understanding of the events within the play, as well as how the play may be brought to life on stage. Standing allowed the read through to maintain energy, keeping us engaged and focused. It also allowed me to feel how i may move on stage when saying my lines.
Furthermore, i was able to see who i was speaking to in a scene and who else was in that scene, allowing me to visualise where i would be directing my speech. Discussing the events in the play and what happens when was useful in dissecting what characters were speaking about in each scene. Overall i think the read through allowed us all as a cast to come together over the script and all be on the same page in understanding the play, its events and its themes.

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Laban efforts :

We worked on laban efforts to help us in thinking about our characters movements and which efforts may apply to them. For my character of 'Boy' I felt Dab was the most fitting effort to give him overall as it has a sense of youth in the light weight as well as the sudden movement. Working on this is something i find really useful when coming to terms with a character and understanding their movements. By starting off overplaying the action it allowed me to tone it down enough to create movement that looked believable and everyday.

For my characters walk i felt he would have weak knees, therefore them being bent when he walked. I thought again this created a sense of youth and also a timid nature, which as he works for others and does what he is told, i felt he may have. This exercise has helped me massively in coming to terms with how i may go about tackling my character and using the individual efforts to find points where he is, for example, 'punch' or 'wring'.

In the class seeing others walking as their characters allowed me to have more of a visual on how the piece will look on stage as seeing, for example, the actress' playing Henry V walk in the space as him showed how dominating his presence could be on stage.

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Factory Workers :

We also looked at using laban efforts to create our factory workers characters. For my woman I wanted to use 'float' as i thought it had a child like nature to it that would allow her transition to the character of 'boy' to make sense. Taking the effort into account i imagined she would be very unfocused in her work and her mind would trail off to other things. I also thought she would have a bounce to her step and would be a happy character. I found these efforts again very useful increasing an instant initial character that i can now move forward with and develop.