Lewis & Clark Moodle

This week Hongyi and I focused on memorizing and then blocking the first chunk of our scene. We were having a hard time figuring out how to recreate a hospital bed so (as you can see in Hongyi's beautiful sketch) we are using six big black boxes and two foam mats to make a similar look.  The goal was to figure out a way to have the top part of the bed be at angle, like a real hospital bed with the remote control that changes your angle of sitting, so that it could be less awkward when I talk to her from a laying down position. 

We also worked on putting our beats to actions. We went through our chunk multiple times to see what exact movement feels right on what word or pause or moment. We have a lot of extreme given circumstances (as in I just lost my eye and Kayleen is drunk, covered in mud and in high heeled shoes) so it was also a lot to remember those circumstances and hold them in our bodies throughout the scene.  Hongyi brought her black heels to our rehearsal to practice walking in them as if she were drunk. The affect losing your eye has on your body was very hard to portray as it is me squinting one eye and trying to imagine what it would be like to suddenly have lost vision in one eye. Would I be dizzy? Would I I just be whipping my head around a lot trying to see everything? Would my depth perception be off?  Anyone with experience having lost one eyeball's eyesight (even temporarily)- please comment. 

This week’s rehearsal has been good. At this point we both just really need to work on our lines. We both have a good idea of what each line is supposed to be but they are kind of short quick lines, so it’s easy to stumble over them and try to remember which lines come next. Especially in the scenes where they are arguing because it is super easy to get lost in the commotion of what is going on. We also have continued to have a lot of fun working together and hope that fun can extend into the final performance (in the sense that we want to enjoy while we are performing). Finding a connection to the characters is a continued struggle but we are both working hard on that. Doug and Kayleen’s lives, although may have some similarities to our own, are for the most part, pretty different from ours. So working on finding a connection to the emotion and the thoughts behind each line and action is something we have really tried to discuss together. Overall we are really happy with the work we have put into this scene, and our happy with what we have come up with, but we both agree that there is more work to be done!

Tawayne, checkin in. Sorry to all of our fans out there, but we didn’t get a video this week. Next time we got you though. Dae and I still don’t have all our lines down but we hope to have them completely down by Wednesday this week. What we have been struggling with is that there are a number of pauses and actions throughout the scene from the Flick that we are trying to figure out. We have planned out the different lengths of the pauses so that we can hopefully act them out realistically when it comes to our final performance. Another focus of ours this week is on trying to move moment to moment within the scene and remaining grounded even through all of the pauses and actions. We said “ We need to practice on our sweeping so we should clean our rooms a lot leading up to the final day.” Also, we have learned that is hard to fake laughter so we will really have to work on that to make it seem real. Catch you next week, Gone!  

For the first week due to difficult schedules we've had very few chances to meet outside of class to work on the scene so we've been limited in our progress. Aside from beat analysis and discussion of given circumstances our progress has mostly been focused on individually learning our lines. To do this we each recorded our halves and sent them to each other. I feel we work together well when we can and the main obstacle is time constraints. We're hoping that it'll become easier after this week.

 So far working together has been good. We work together well and we have enjoyed exploring the script together. Learning about who our characters are has probably been the biggest challenge so far. The are both pretty complex and seem to have a lot influencing their lives so figuring out, how and what about them, to show to the audience is difficult. Because the script is an accumulation of the characters lives, we have a nice insight about who they are in relation to each other, but on the other hand, it means we need to really lock into the given circumstances, because there really isn’t a question about what they are, which can be difficult. As we move forward our next step is to explore how the characters are interacting in the space together and using blocking to effectively show what’s going on. 

Update on me and my partners work, coming a long well.

Update on me and my partners work.

This week, Caroline and I spent time finding the beat for our scene. And we talked about the given circumstances, the relationship between our characters and how to reinterpret the script because we decided on gender-blend one of the character from Gruesome Playground Injuries. Because in the play, we have scenes of when the two main characters were 8, 18, 23, 33 and 38, we were able to have a clear sense of each character's upbringing and how their personality came about. Because that there is also a clear love-line going on in our selected scene, we decided to commit to play the gay couple instead of being ambiguous about their romantic feelings toward each other. We also created a background story that would add to this layer of relationship:

"We have been best friends since we were 8, we have always loved each other as friends. Donna starts to think that she may be different around middle school but definitely hasn’t told a soul. When we are 13 we have the practice kiss but Kayleen does not know that Donna is gay yet. Donna tells Kayleen she is gay when they are in high school- around 14- but that she doesn’t have romantic feelings for her because she does not want to scare away her best friend even though she is in love with her and will continue to be forever. Kayleen already kind of knew Donna was gay. In high school, Donna is not out to her friends or family. She knows they are conservative Christians and doesn’t want to risk getting kicked out of her house. " -wrote by Caroline.

We also continued talking about their social status and their emotional strengths and deficits, and what their physical appearance should be. We made clear of what our character's goals were in our scene.

We also talked about how we both don't want to watch Youtube videos about other people's productions on Gruesome Playground because that would probably influence our takes on our characters.

This week, Caroline and I spent time finding the beat for our scene. And we talked about the given circumstances, the relationship between our characters and how to reinterpret the script because we decided on gender-blend one of the character from Gruesome Playground Injuries. Because in the play, we have scenes of when the two main characters were 8, 18, 23, 33 and 38, we were able to have a clear sense of each character's upbringing and how their personality came about. Because that there is also a clear love-line going on in our selected scene, we decided to commit to play the gay couple instead of being ambiguous about their romantic feelings toward each other. We also created a background story that would add to this layer of relationship:

"We have been best friends since we were 8, we have always loved each other as friends. Donna starts to think that she may be different around middle school but definitely hasn’t told a soul. When we are 13 we have the practice kiss but Kayleen does not know that Donna is gay yet. Donna tells Kayleen she is gay when they are in high school- around 14- but that she doesn’t have romantic feelings for her because she does not want to scare away her best friend even though she is in love with her and will continue to be forever. Kayleen already kind of knew Donna was gay. In high school, Donna is not out to her friends or family. She knows they are conservative Christians and doesn’t want to risk getting kicked out of her house. " -wrote by Caroline.

We also continued talking about their social status and their emotional strengths and deficits, and what their physical appearance should be. We made clear of what our character's goals were in our scene.

We also talked about how we both don't want to watch Youtube videos about other people's productions on Gruesome Playground because that would probably influence our takes on our characters.