Week 28: Classwork

Monday

Our group decided that we should focus on blocking sections of the piece and getting the basic movements down before we worked on cleaning the transitions up. Because we were still blocking we obviously still had our script in our hands which made it harder for the movements to be shown and restricted us in our body language as well.

We started to block a completely new bit and we originally found it hard because one of the group members wasn't in the lesson and so movements that we found worked in a 3 may possibly not work in a 4 and so we kept having to think ahead and imagine what the image would be like if the whole group was here and then work out whether it portrayed the image that we wanted.

As we began to block to piece we tried to keep last lesson in our heads, which was about making whoever was in control of the mouthpiece, and we tried to choreograph that into the piece more and making sure that, for example, if we turned to look at whoever was speaking it was a big enough movement, so that it was clear to the audience who they should be paying attention to and listening to. To make it even more clearer at points, we had those that weren't speaking bobbing down and whoever was standing up. We thought that juxtaposing the levels of the personalities would add to the audience's understanding of the piece.

Berkoff's is obviously very quick-paced and so to add the speed of the lines and atmosphere we made sure that the other traits were reacting to each other which would reiterate the fact that they are one person and they can be agreeing or disagreeing to what the mouthpiece is saying and, for example, if the psychotic trait didn't agree this could become the motivation behind their actions of taking control of the mouthpiece.

Wednesday

During the lesson it was still hard to choreograph anything new as we were still one member down but we decided not to worrying about the extra person as we had already scheduled other rehearsals that would be used primarily for running over what we have done and for the other member to learn the choreography.

Having this disadvantage we decided that if we blocked anymore it would be really hard to fit in the extra person and so we tried to make the section we blocked on Monday even slicker than before.

One thing that we tried to look at throughout the rehearsal is what ideas we think are key ones, for example, in our piece there is constantly a person at a door but he is not always registered, and so this key idea needed a movement with it to emphasis to the audience that they need to be aware of it. Whereas, there are some smaller ideas that don't need as much attention but can still be highlighted or picked up on by the reactions of the personalities around it.

We performed a small segment of our piece and received some feedback: https://youtu.be/EWAP8a3iLx8

We also had the opportunity to work with our teacher on a small section and this gave us the opportunity to really closely work on one small section and we chose to integrate a prop in our sequence which is a small revolver to use towards the end for the visual representation of the suicide that she could commit. We brainstormed some ideas of how we could get the gun from the back of the stage to the front and we thought about each personality having the opportunity of holding it, showing their reaction out to the audience and then the gun would either be passed on or taken by another person.

We also looked closely at the physicality of the sequence and how we could involve the frame more to give the audience a more visual representation of what we were trying to show. There is a point in the sequence, where the woman takes her brother-in-law out for a walk. He is in a wheelchair and so we decided that the frame could become the wheelchair and so I, as the housewife who thinks this is her job, push the "wheelchair" whilst another traits makes the action of a wheel turning and a squeaking sound. Each of the traits react differently towards both the idea of the walk and the action being carried out which add to the comical value of the piece and also contributes to the continuity of Berkoff's style.