Tuesday, October 07, 2003
It's Like Taking a Movement Class
Last night, we had the first real rehearsal for the new play, which will be a theater piece about masculinity & femininity developed through improv, using Viewpoints (Anne Bogart), which I know very little about. The cast, which was 8, is down to 6: Nikki, Ben, Seku, Alex, Joey, and Katherine. I will see these people, plus the director, Erin, five days a week for the next 3 months. Weird.
Erin asked me to bring clothes to move in last night, so I wore my one & only pair of cool workout pants & my favorite tee, which says "DANCE" in sparkly letters across the front. We started out by stretching on our own, and then we played "slow motion tag," which was a lot more fun than regular tag as I remember it from when I was a kid because I always had trouble catching someone in regular tag, but it's easier in slow motion. It's actually easier both to never be tagged & to tag someone, & it's more fun when you're tagged.
Then, we played with time by walking on a grid at different tempos, 0 being stillness, 1 being almost stillness, and 5 being as fast as humanly & safely possible. We also played with the length of time we kept each tempo & with how other people affected our desire to change tempo. For instance, if you are almost completely still and someone comes racing past you & just barely misses you, you may have a desire to speed up. Or, you may keep a certain tempo longer than it's comfortable.
We then took different shapes with our bodies as individuals & then as a group, using the entire space, interacting with one another, using different levels (the floor, standing level, and even climbing). Then, we had to do gestures & expressions. A gesture would be a position found in normal life & an expression is a blown-up version of that same gesture, perhaps of the emotion behind that gesture.
Then, we did Alexander Technique massages. Then, we talked about what we got out of it as a group.
I have no idea how my participation in these activities makes me an assistant director or a stage manager (except for Nikki talking to me about scheduling conflicts after rehearsal), but I certainly do feel like I bonded with the group. Today, I'm so sore I can barely walk.
--m
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Last night, we had the first real rehearsal for the new play, which will be a theater piece about masculinity & femininity developed through improv, using Viewpoints (Anne Bogart), which I know very little about. The cast, which was 8, is down to 6: Nikki, Ben, Seku, Alex, Joey, and Katherine. I will see these people, plus the director, Erin, five days a week for the next 3 months. Weird.
Erin asked me to bring clothes to move in last night, so I wore my one & only pair of cool workout pants & my favorite tee, which says "DANCE" in sparkly letters across the front. We started out by stretching on our own, and then we played "slow motion tag," which was a lot more fun than regular tag as I remember it from when I was a kid because I always had trouble catching someone in regular tag, but it's easier in slow motion. It's actually easier both to never be tagged & to tag someone, & it's more fun when you're tagged.
Then, we played with time by walking on a grid at different tempos, 0 being stillness, 1 being almost stillness, and 5 being as fast as humanly & safely possible. We also played with the length of time we kept each tempo & with how other people affected our desire to change tempo. For instance, if you are almost completely still and someone comes racing past you & just barely misses you, you may have a desire to speed up. Or, you may keep a certain tempo longer than it's comfortable.
We then took different shapes with our bodies as individuals & then as a group, using the entire space, interacting with one another, using different levels (the floor, standing level, and even climbing). Then, we had to do gestures & expressions. A gesture would be a position found in normal life & an expression is a blown-up version of that same gesture, perhaps of the emotion behind that gesture.
Then, we did Alexander Technique massages. Then, we talked about what we got out of it as a group.
I have no idea how my participation in these activities makes me an assistant director or a stage manager (except for Nikki talking to me about scheduling conflicts after rehearsal), but I certainly do feel like I bonded with the group. Today, I'm so sore I can barely walk.
--m
