This exercise was interesting for me because at first I found it frustrating because I found it really hard to turn the corners sharply and stick to the lines and I also kept on bumping into people but as the exercise progressed I learnt that there were ways to manoeuvre physically to negotiate when I came too close to a person which involved moving in the other direction swiftly which sounds simple now that I'm writing it but in practise was more difficult. I think it may have been because the action had not entered my body yet and my mind was not focused on the activity. As soon as my mind started to focus on the activity, it just made sense to turn a corner when someone might collide with me, this didn't happen when I hadn't warmed my mind to the exercise.
In terms of drawing meaning from the exercise, I felt like the constant moving in different patterns of lines portrayed indecision and it felt skittish when I was doing it. It was similiar to Stanislavski in the sense that we were working from an action to get to an emotion, although in this case it was a somewhat strenuous physical action. When I watched Josh doing the exercise I thought he had a sense of being galvanised behind his movement and it was really interesting to watch, I'm not sure if it was because he was so focussed on the thing that he wanted because by this point we had added the incentive of the thing we really wanted. It almost looked like he was a scientist of some sort looking for an answer to a question because of how motivated he was by it and I guess the same rules go in experimental as physical, one must have a sense of internal motivation for the performance to be engaging.
I only found out afterwards that the stopping and starting of the background music was deliberate in an attempt to annoy and therefore distract us but I found it so difficult to turn the corners to begin with that this didn't really annoy me, I just thought there was difficulty with the sound.
Later on, when we were doing the game where the aim was to tap the back of the other person's knee, things really started to literally heat up. It was during the middle of this game that I actually thought I can't continue. I just found it so tiring and I really wanted to stop but at the same time I didn't because I knew the point of all of it was to push your limits. It's interesting when your physical side is telling you you can't do something and your mental side is pushing you to. I think I like that feeling of struggle because even when I go jogging and I get tired and that same sensation comes over me, I try and do the same thing, I try and mentally pull myself through.
The next exercise we did was by far my favourite because it had objectives for each person e.g to get away from your lover and it gave it a sense of internal justification and it felt very similiar to physical theatre for me. I was with Troy and we were both finding interesting, fluid ways to achieve our objectives. And linking to what I said in the last paragraph because there was that strong internal justification and motivation I managed to pull through despite being quite physically tired.
I understood the meaning behind the letter on the various vertices of the boxes exercise which I think was meant to have a similiar purpose as the exercises above, to generate movement based on internal motivation - especially when we had to spell out meaningful sentences but I found it slightly tedious because it was so difficult to remember where I had put all the letters and so the exercise of touching the letters in an interesting way was difficult. I thought that the group improvised piece we did was good despite this mainly because of Josh's idea to lift me than transition into the "shush" which made it fluid and it worked.
I think one thing I took from the first lesson is although this term is experimental and literally anything goes the experimental piece that you make must be rooted in the ideas of the stimulus. For example in the lesson our stimulus was Antonin Artaud's The Spurt of Blood and I felt that when we were devising and performing our experimental versions of the text and when we saw other groups performances of the text it didn't actually stem from ideas in the text. I think one of the reasons this might have happened is that the text is really difficult to comprehend. Even looking at the text now I still don't understand what the point of it is. But maybe this is because I am looking at things from a naturalistic perspective. I just think all art should be truthful and if you are given a stimulus you should at least root your performance in it. There were interesting uses of space and lighting in all the performances for example when we were seated in rows during Kim's group's performance I thought that worked really well and I thought the spatial dynamics were really well thought out.
I had another idea while we were midway through devising our piece but because we weren't allowed to use words and my idea involved words:
I noticed that on the first page there was a contrast in moods between the sardonic love scene of the YOUNG MAN and YOUNG GIRL and the dark lewd content of the dialogue between the KNIGHT and WET NURSE.
I would have had the Young Man and Young Girl scene occur then after the Young Man's last line I would have had the earthquake happen with the objects like the stars being physicalised with breaks of seconds of darkness in which the YOUNG MAN and YOUNG GIRL would escape out of the door in 905. The people who would physicalise and make a soundscape of the things in the earthquake would still be present and moving even after the YOUNG MAN and YOUNG GIRL left the room even as the KNIGHT and WET NURSE started their dialogue
I only found out afterwards that the stopping and starting of the background music was deliberate in an attempt to annoy and therefore distract us but I found it so difficult to turn the corners to begin with that this didn't really annoy me, I just thought there was difficulty with the sound.
Later on, when we were doing the game where the aim was to tap the back of the other person's knee, things really started to literally heat up. It was during the middle of this game that I actually thought I can't continue. I just found it so tiring and I really wanted to stop but at the same time I didn't because I knew the point of all of it was to push your limits. It's interesting when your physical side is telling you you can't do something and your mental side is pushing you to. I think I like that feeling of struggle because even when I go jogging and I get tired and that same sensation comes over me, I try and do the same thing, I try and mentally pull myself through.
The next exercise we did was by far my favourite because it had objectives for each person e.g to get away from your lover and it gave it a sense of internal justification and it felt very similiar to physical theatre for me. I was with Troy and we were both finding interesting, fluid ways to achieve our objectives. And linking to what I said in the last paragraph because there was that strong internal justification and motivation I managed to pull through despite being quite physically tired.
I understood the meaning behind the letter on the various vertices of the boxes exercise which I think was meant to have a similiar purpose as the exercises above, to generate movement based on internal motivation - especially when we had to spell out meaningful sentences but I found it slightly tedious because it was so difficult to remember where I had put all the letters and so the exercise of touching the letters in an interesting way was difficult. I thought that the group improvised piece we did was good despite this mainly because of Josh's idea to lift me than transition into the "shush" which made it fluid and it worked.
I think one thing I took from the first lesson is although this term is experimental and literally anything goes the experimental piece that you make must be rooted in the ideas of the stimulus. For example in the lesson our stimulus was Antonin Artaud's The Spurt of Blood and I felt that when we were devising and performing our experimental versions of the text and when we saw other groups performances of the text it didn't actually stem from ideas in the text. I think one of the reasons this might have happened is that the text is really difficult to comprehend. Even looking at the text now I still don't understand what the point of it is. But maybe this is because I am looking at things from a naturalistic perspective. I just think all art should be truthful and if you are given a stimulus you should at least root your performance in it. There were interesting uses of space and lighting in all the performances for example when we were seated in rows during Kim's group's performance I thought that worked really well and I thought the spatial dynamics were really well thought out.
I had another idea while we were midway through devising our piece but because we weren't allowed to use words and my idea involved words:
I noticed that on the first page there was a contrast in moods between the sardonic love scene of the YOUNG MAN and YOUNG GIRL and the dark lewd content of the dialogue between the KNIGHT and WET NURSE.
I would have had the Young Man and Young Girl scene occur then after the Young Man's last line I would have had the earthquake happen with the objects like the stars being physicalised with breaks of seconds of darkness in which the YOUNG MAN and YOUNG GIRL would escape out of the door in 905. The people who would physicalise and make a soundscape of the things in the earthquake would still be present and moving even after the YOUNG MAN and YOUNG GIRL left the room even as the KNIGHT and WET NURSE started their dialogue
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