readings for break

Dear All,

Here is the list of names matched with books. You can find the full bibliographical details on your handouts.

Please read the books completely and write an at least 500-word response and post on this blog. You might want to comment on the book as a whole, or critically engage with a method/tool explained, or make connections with the work we have done so far.

Have a lovely break, a merry Christmas, and happy New Year!!!

g

Jessica B. Barba's Beyond the Floating Islands
Becca C.--Barba's Land of Ashes and Diamonds
Verity--Barba's The Paper Canoe
Alannah--The Viewpoints Book
Julia--Anne Bogart: Viewpoints
Alice--Kumiega's The Theatre of Grotowski
Vanessa--Lecoq's The Theatre of Movement and Gesture
Ali--Richards' At Work with Grotowski...
Polly--Richards' The Heart of Practice
Angela and Becca R.--The Grotowski Sourcebook
Harriet--Slowiak and Cuesta's Jerzy Grotowski
Jessica S.--Staniewski and Hodge's Hidden Territories
Annabelle--Stanislavski's Building a Character
Charlie and Steph--the 2008 ed Stanislavski An Actor's Work
Hannah--Tufnell and Crickmay's Body, Space, Image
Emily Wangh's--An Acrobat of the Heart

moon and darkness and more

dear all

I have put the video in my pigeon hole in the department office. it's in an envelope. you need to write your name and the date when you take it out and return it asap and note again on the envelope that you have returned it.

please also look at julia and becca's report from last week and my comment on it. it's a great start but your responses to it are absolutely necessary.

see you all next Tuesday.

goze

17th November-physical action

_THEATRE MAKING 2: JULIA FRESCO AND REBECCA COLLINGWOOD-BURKE_

We began the class with a collective and simple devised jumping routine,
'the windmill dance'. Göze began the rhythm and the class joined in
mimicking the movement, where some found the combination of rhythm and
tempo difficult to achieve. Stamina was also needed during this routine as
it was repeated for a long time, again people found it difficult to keep
the energy. This was a helpful exercise to help us begin to concentrate on
our centre, and throughout the class 'the windmill dance' appeared
numerous times and became easier to accomplish.

In pairs we developed further our awareness of our centre where one
partner held the pelvic area (centre) of the other, supporting and moving
freely with them as they explored the space. After becoming comfortable
with the exercise, both partners were given the task to trick one another
without losing trust in their relationship. Tricking involved resisting
your partner's movement or grasp and trying to force them to take a
different path, which included varying tempos and heights. After a
substantial amount of time we began to move individually, attempting to
remember the weight of our partner's hands, which helped us become more
aware of our bodies. To many when working on their own they felt their
movements were more fluent. This exercise was enjoyable for its playful
nature, and most of the class found it helpful in exploring the body and
understanding their centre.

A chosen piece of text was to be learnt for this class, and we began using
the text through various vocal styles; abdominal tone (low), through the
chest, top of the head (high, resonant), nasal voice, and croaky throat
(most of the class found this particularly painful – perhaps we were
doing it wrong!). During the recitation of our texts in the styles
mentioned we also began to work on different effort and stress volumes, in
which Göze moved further away and closer to the class. Overall this was
successful in helping us to position our voice in different parts of the
body as we discovered that the body plays a significant role in supporting
the voice.

Finally in our last exercise we spent time working on pulling and pushing
movements/positions in pairs. The task was to find different areas of the
body to pull/push our partner using strength and agility, which for many
resembled wrestling. The objective was to assess the situation several
times, putting emphasis on where the bodies connect, and on finding a
significant position we were required to hold it for a few seconds. The
pulling and pushing exercises aided our understanding of the different
dynamics to which people lean towards, where some were experimental and
collaborative, and others were more passionate and animalistic. Six
positions (three pull, three push) were established between the pairs and
we began to work on them individually, remembering and exploring our
bodies, incorporating our learnt texts. With the guidance of speech we
also focused on percentage levels of status, 3% being extremely passive
and almost static, and 90% being explosive and filled with energy, which
is important to note that the percentage affected both speech _and_
movement. Many found concentration and coordination of text, memory and
movement hard to grasp, either putting too much emphasis on text but
little on movement. To find a balance between these elements was extremely
challenging, and most will find this exercise easier to achieve once fluent
with their text.

In all this class taught us new and challenging techniques, which enabled
us to explore the body in unfamiliar ways. By doing so we discovered our
belief that in theatre it is fundamental to know one's body and the role
it plays in supporting voice, posture, movement and status. We found these
exercises extremely valuable in understanding the limits of our body.

welcome...

...TM2 physical performers!

this will be our site

to document what we have done each week,

to respond to exercises, tasks, readings,

to post and share questions, pictures, ideas...

hope we have fun with it!

the tutor