Stratford upon Avon- detailed

 Devising and structuring playable actions was one of the main components we focused on. We were told there were three elements a person must consider before acting/directing/writing a scene: what’s happening, what should happen and what’s going to happen.  We divided into different groups and we had to create a scene. Our scene consisted of a pregnant woman about to go into labor and trying to catch a taxi to get to the hospital. Another woman that turned out to be her wife joins her, and a dilemma arises because the old fashioned cab driver doesn’t want to let them in. A businessman (me) then enters the scene and argues with the women to get the cab. He fails to do so, and the women finally get in the cab only to find out that the cab driver is died of a heart attack. We were told that the way we devised the play (the normal form) was linear, and we were then challenged to devise it in a non-linear way. We split the scene into four different actions and randomly juggled them around to have a different effect. Then, we did it in reverse, which turned out to look very strange, and difficult to understand (though fun).  Parallel was the next structure we had to follow, and we achieved that by having two discussions happening at the same time: the pregnant woman with the old-fashioned taxi driver and the wife with the homophobic businessman. Finally, we learned that a cyclical plot consisted on the final scene being almost exactly like the first one, in order to make the audience feel like the story loops for eternity. We applied that to our piece, we achieved this by making the taxi driver simply passing out and not remembering who the two women were. Then another businessman appeared and scene would just go on and on.

 Voice for me was one of the most interesting components we covered there.  I think I really liked this area because the exercises we did were amusing and the tips were very helpful for some one like me who struggles in speech. To begin with, we were given the famous line from The Tempest: “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises/ sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not”. We played with tone and volume for a while using this quote and we were taught a way to facilitate finding new ways to say a line. This consisted one a person being between two people, and they both have the same text. Someone begins by whispering one line two the middle person’s ear, and then the other one whispers the second line, and so and on. Every time they whispered a line, they had to change the way they said it. We also spoke about duration, basically the time we had to say a line. We played with extremes (extreme fast and slow) and discussed how it affected the impact of the line. In order to say a line very quickly without interruption, we were taught how to breathe deeply and store our oxygen in our ribs (known as rib reserve). Finally, we spoke about projection and how to direct our voice to different sections of the audience. We placed four people one the corners of the room and the objective was to direct our voice to a single person. If the person thinks the line was directed to him, he turns around. It didn’t always turn out so well but it was fun nonetheless. 

 To my happy surprise, we were taught the basics of miming. These basics (based on the work of Etienne Decroux) consisted on understanding that the human body movement can be divided into three parts: rotation, inclination and translation. We performed the classics of miming such as walking on the spot and exploring an invisible wall. Afterwards, we were taught how to act as a robot and the techniques were to isolate and re organize the three movements. With a balloon, with had two perform in duos a final performance based on any of the things we learned on the course. My partner and I decided to make our performance with the robot and miming techniques, which was a 2 minute scene of a robot couple celebrating their dating anniversary. The male-robot offers the balloon to the lady-robot who forgot to bring a present. She makes a failed attempt to quickly fill up a balloon, and when she gives up, the scene ends with them hugging.