19/09/18 Medea revised

Today we revisited the Medea work we started yesterday. On the way to the lesson I had a few ideas on how to make our part of the script more dynamic. I told our group that they needed to think about their characters motivation, what do you want to achieve by saying your line? This ties into Stanislavski with objectives and super objectives.  We added Daniella pulling Tia into the start of scene to highlight the urgency of the situation at hand and we added a lift to make our opening lines move visually interesting for the audience. On the line ‘She can’t believe it’ we all lent in quickly and at the end of ‘Gone off with a younger woman’ we gasped in unison as we moved out. Breath work is effective because it makes the moment more dramatic. As our final change to the scene on we start bunched together as we’re arguing and as the last line ‘stop her being so stupid’ is said we exploded outwards.

Each group performed their improved scene to the class and received feedback and constructive criticism. Our feedback was:

1.     Really physical, played around with the script to make it more interesting.
2.   Good use of levels.
3. Lovely tableaux.
4. Nice ensemble reaction to the line ‘Gone off with a younger woman’.
5. Took advantage of the performance space.

Our criticisms were:

1.  Some people in our group needed to project more.
2. We need to use different character types to avoid us all having the same reaction to the situation. This will make it more realistic as everyone has a different view of events.

One thing I learnt today was how impactful the use of breath is. It is simple technique but very effective. It adds drama to a scene and repetitive synchronised breathing can build tension. I learnt about breath work during my time working with The National Youth Theatre. Breath work with such a large ensemble creates a surreal atmosphere.