Lesson 2

In this lesson we did...

Duel In The Dark

• tense
• silent
• battle
• exciting
• weapons
• impulsive 
• can't be recreated 

To start the lesson we played a game called 'Duel in the dark', a game where two people get blind folded and two rolled up news papers are put into the space. The two people have to search for the newspaper and once they find it, they must hit the other person with it and who ever does it first, wins! The whole point of the game is not to amuse the players, but to entertain the audience who is watching them. As an audience member it is very tense to watch because anything can happen. You feel like you have more power than the players, because you know where the newspaper is, who is winning and who is losing, where as they don't. This game was as involving for the audience as it was for the actors, because they were routing for one side and they felt frustrated when something went wrong or happy when someone found the newspaper. This idea links to Artaud's theory that the audience should be as involved as the actors. The game broke the separation between actor and audience and gave the audience just as much, if not more, power than the actor. 

I was also a player in one round of the game. As I was on my hands and knees searching for the paper, I hit my lip on the corner of a table, making it bleed! This proved how unexpected and impulsive this sort of performance is. Me injuring myself proved that by giving this freedom to actor and audience things can go wrong, but this also makes it much more exciting and dramatic than traditional theatre. 

I think that this exercise shows how being impulsive and not planning what is going to happen, results in a very engaging and involving experience for the audience. I think we should try to incorporate this sort of improvised work into our final piece and work on ways to make the audience feel involved in the action. 

Trapeze Movements
The next exercise we did was a series of movements where we lift your arms up in front of us, as if we were about to jump onto a trapeze. then on an out breath we fall forward, as if you have leapt off the perch. Then you come back to standing, raising your arms up, then quickly push your elbows into your ides, as if you were stabbing yourself. 

This exercise didn't have much depth when we first started doing it, but once we stared doing it with music, we reacted to the mood of the music it changed the whole feel of the movement. The music was quite sad and the sequence began to look like someone's descent into suicide. The raising of the arms looked like someone trying to reach for help, but then they dropped, suggesting them giving up and the stabbing motion looked like someone's final moment. 

This showed how powerful physical movement can be without any speech. A whole story can be told just through a sequence of simple movements. However another dimension is needed to set the mood, in this case it was music, but it could be anything - lighting, costume, film etc...

Sound Scapes
We sat in a circle and recreated the sounds of different settings. The first sound space we did was a wood. I was really surprised at how effective it sounded and if you closed your eyes you could image being outside in a wood. I think this one was so effective because everyone did subtle sounds and nobody was too over the top. 

We did another sound scape of being in a fair ground, but this one wasn't as effective because everyone went over the top with their sounds. There was too much screaming, crying and laughing to the point were it became comic and unrealistic. I think this was because we started off too loud, so everybody was competing too be heard instead of listening too each other. This showed us that in order to make a sound scape work you cant be selfish with your sounds, but listen to other people and fit in with what they are doing.