Sunday, October 30, 2005
Wednesday Group. Actioning and Objectives.
Once again work on the physical actions. Coats, Cardigans and Shoes. We identify Actions and Sub-actions and the physical work is done well, including the contact improvisation. The idea of TACTICS and OBSTACLES has to be prompted a wee bit but the understanding seems no less clear than the Monday group.
We take the Hello/Hello exchanges again as a model for some work on OBJECTIVES and Steve makes it that bit harder by asking the pairs to find their own objectives for the text - a text that contains a million possibilities anyway. However, there is still much good work.
We look at the importance of STAKE in practice. For example, in Arlene and Sam's example we up the stake because Arlene's objective of 'trying to get to know' Sam's protagonist isn't engaged enough. When her objective is to make love to Sam, she becomes physically more focused on him in the process. And the scene is much more watchable.
We talk about how the audience in interested in the scene lasting as long as possible. Not as short as possible. We want to see the theme introduced - and played for all possible variations.
Likewise, Gemma's work with David is much stronger when we make her objective 'to repulse' David's protagonist (as a scene objective to an overall objective or 'super-objective' of seducing him). The trouble was her original playing showed too many of her cards too early. We could tell she fancied him, so it appeared too easy for him. It was too much of a push-over. We wanted to see more of her resistance.
However, we don't do the Duck Pond. Surely, next time. And perhaps we read Max as a reminder to get us started...
Students take home copies of Home to prepare for next time with copies of Max's Letters to George (Nick Hern Books 1990). Steve spends some time talking about Max's method but we do not read the text together.
