Monday, January 19, 2015

January 19, 2015 - January 23, 2015 Weekly Agenda for Acting Class


Monday, January 19th:

No school today to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King


Tuesday, January 20th:

Prep for auditions for Twelfth Night
“I am, I feel, I want!”
Students stand in a circle. Someone steps into the circle and says, “I am_______”, accompanied with a gesture, which everyone mimics while saying the last word of the phrase, “I am ­­­­­­ ________!” The student then says, “I feel_______!” accompanied by a gesture, which everyone mimics while saying the last word of the phrase, “I feel________!” The student then says, “I want________!” accompanied by a gesture, which everyone mimics while saying the last word of the phrase, “I want_________!”

Second part of this exercise:
The actor walks onto the stage and says, “I am_______! I feel_________! I want_________! “ The audience writes down two adjectives describing you and two adverbs describing how you walked on to the stage, how you spoke or how you acted: for example, “She walked on to the stage quickly.”

The audience then shares their impression of you.

Redo: For those who are not satisfied with the audience’s impression of them, they may incorporate the adjustments and redo their “I am, I want, I need.”



Wednesday, January 21st:

Theatre Games
Prep for the Auditions
Very short poems are handed to actors
Actors memorize the short poems
Then walk on stage, introduce themselves and share the poem.

Thursday, January 22nd:

Theatre Games
Prep for the Auditions


Warm-up Exercise:

Five people are on stage. Three people must be standing and two may be sitting at any time, but no one can just stand or sit. They have to change their positions from standing to sitting or sitting to standing at various times.  The actors must stare straight ahead with far focus and cannot look at each other or speak. When the impulse to change position occurs, the actor should act on it, but be aware of it and get in sync with the other actors.  This develops intuitive connection with each other.

Tweak on yesterday’s assignment. When one is speaking or sharing one of the following poems, one must have a perspective. Who are you talking to and why. What do you want to do? Comfort? Instruct? Command?

Milling and Seething: The actors mill around on stage, trying to fill the negative (empty) space on stage. The director tells them to mill at speed #1 (the slowest) then varies it with different speeds (#10 is the fastest or “seething” like a cauldron). Then the director tells the milling actors to stop, look into the eyes of the closest person and say her poem to that person. Start again, milling and seething, then the director tells them to freeze, and now say the poem with a different perspective to a new person, with a different relationship (speaking to one’s mother, etc.) or objective.  Upon the director’s instructions, the actors begin “milling and seething” again, and when told to halt, the actors now sit back to back with a new person and whisper the poem– as if it were a secret – and try to communicate with her back. Then the actors are to mill and seethe again, and then, break,  stand apart and at a distance, try to communicate the poem with a loud voice.

Now, each actor enters the stage separately, introduces themselves and shares the poem with the audience:

Hope
Hope is the thing with feather  That perches in the soul  And sings the tune without the words. And never stops at all.  Emily Dickinson

Life

I celebrate myself , and sing myself. And I assume you shall assume.  For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.  Walt Whitman

Poet

Poet
Write no more about the moon.
Better to be silent
In your yard
And watch it rise.  Rich Accetta-Evans

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.  Emily Dickinson

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.  Robert Frost

Kona – “Poet”
Berlin – “Poet”
Anton – “Hope”



Friday, January 23rd:

Theatre Games
Prep for the Auditions

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