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
