Lewis & Clark Moodle

This week Tuse and I sent time together looking at short clips of Detroit on Youtube. We also sent a lot of time practicing our lines as well as developing our characters because we both have monologues. This week we found ourselves struggling because Detroit is a "comedy." We are not completely sure how to make our scenes funny because the conversations our characters are having are very serious. We cannot wait to perform on Thursday so we can get lots of feedback on how to improve. 

Cheers,

T & T  

For our scene in Proof, we thought it would be best to start by developing a moment prior to when our scene begins. In our scene, Hal walks up to the front door and then wanders around to the back door where Claire answers the door. This gives us an excellent opportunity for physical action before our text. By looking up possible sets this could give us an idea of how we want to lay out our scene. We thought by adding this moment before would help us be more grounded and add more depth to the scene. Also, this would articulate our destinations clearly to our audience.

The picture above is an accumulation of shots from various Proof scenes done in real life. We drew inspiration from these photos and got a key insight on what kinds of things we wanted to incorporate into our scene. Likewise, we got some ideas on how we want to dress to portray our characters. Nevertheless, these images became extremely helpful in adding a more detailed picture of the act Proof by not having only literal examples.

As we are working through the process of memorizing our script, we have become more familiar with our characters. Going further, our goal this week is to build a strong foundation with confidence in our script and with the organization of our scene. From past assignments, we have found that emphasizing familiarity with our lines is important to be able to start incorporating physical actions and utilizing information from our beat analyses to expand our scene into a moment that is believable and authentic.

Medford Oregon is not considered racially diverse by most of the people who live there. It is predominantly white, with nearly no population of color other than the large hispanic population. This is a trend which is easily explainable. Medford's economy is based largely off of farming. Seasonal workers came to work on the many pear orchards and vineyards that make up the farming industry around Medford. These seasonal workers eventually stopped being seasonal and became legal citizens in Medford, and many of their children now work at lower income jobs in Medford, although some still do work in the orchards or as day laborers. It is clear where redlining has occurred when a map of Medford outlining different people of color live. The gentrification of many of Medford's neighborhoods is obvious when you visit these redlined areas. There are cops patrolling the streets at all hours of the day and night, houses are deteriorating,  people are smoking on lawn couches, and theres a high school for troubled teens in the center of it all. This is the west side of Medford. My grandpa explained to me that the houses in these areas were once very nice, and that people actually chose to live in these neighborhoods. Now the rich have moved to the East side of Medford. There are private schools, doctors offices, and very little police presence on the East side. The East side is also being newly developed. It is clear to anyone watching how the rich moved from west to east as the poorer minorities moved into the West side of town. This is made even more clear when looking at things such as food stamps, household income, and employment status. The West side has less money, more food stamps, and less employed. It also has more hispanics. Why is this? Just as African Americans went north during the Great Migration in search of a better life, so too did hispanics go north from South America. The same results were sees as in the Great migration, the new minority was taken advantage of financially. This created an even greater disparity in wealth and eventually a physical divide between the poor and the rich. 

Rehearsing our lines

Over and over again

Ugh no end in sight

I take on a role

To create a new being

Character arrives

Callie loves Sara

Two women who don’t know how

To be together

Becoming Callie

Is about understanding

Her struggle and life

I am tired and warm

I want to sleep but I must

Keep studying lines

Studying Sara

Learning her quirks and her tics

Becoming Sara

Repeat repeat re

Peat repeat repeat repeat

Repeat Repeat re….

This play is so great

The dialogue is nice, also,

I get to smooch Kaia

Being gay with Trump

Is great preparation for

Being nineties gay

Kaia kicks booty

She’s so good at learning lines

What a great partner

We get to create

A whole world within the text

We are the makers

Acting forces a

New awareness of myself

What do my hands do?

I wish we had props

This is not a pullout couch

I am on the ground

How to imagine

That everything is different

Really it’s all the same

Motivating to

Study lines is like pulling

My own teeth out eeeee

Time flies when you act

In class rehearsal is good

Is there enough time?

Dan and I spent some time on Monday and Tuesday starting work on our scene. We started by doing a read through the whole thing and did some work to memorize our lines for the first half of the scene. Once we got a bit more confident with the text, we went through the scene a few more times to play around with how we said certain lines. It was a lot of fun to experiment with different tones and putting emphasis on different words to see how it changed the dynamic, and also highlighted the contribution of listening and responding for the energy and dynamic of our scene. 

Later on, we went through our beat analyses of the scene to clarify a) where the shifts in energy and action happen and b) what our respective actions are in those beats with regard to our main objectives. This part was a bit trickier, especially finding a specific action contributing towards the objectives for both of our characters in every single beat. One thing that I particularly struggled with for my character was finding active verbs in the beats where my character seems quite passive compared to Dan's Kenny.

A couple things we still need to work on are our setting and our movement. Since the scene calls for us to be on the front steps of a house, we've been talking about using the folding steps, but we still need to work out the specifics of how we'll be using them. Our scene also starts with the two of us sitting down and doesn't specify if or when we should get up and move, so we also need to make decisions about the blocking so that the scene isn't just the two of us sitting and talking the whole time. We're both really excited to move forward from here and explore the different ways to show the dynamic between these two characters though!

Dan and I spent some time on Monday and Tuesday starting work on our scene. We started by doing a read through the whole thing and did some work to memorize our lines for the first half of the scene. Once we got a bit more confident with the text, we went through the scene a few more times to play around with how we said certain lines. It was a lot of fun to experiment with different tones and putting emphasis on different words to see how it changed the dynamic, and also highlighted the contribution of listening and responding for the energy and dynamic of our scene. 

Later on, we went through our beat analyses of the scene to clarify a) where the shifts in energy and action happen and b) what our respective actions are in those beats with regard to our main objectives. This part was a bit trickier, especially finding a specific action contributing towards the objectives for both of our characters in every single beat. One thing that I particularly struggled with for my character was finding active verbs in the beats where my character seems quite passive compared to Dan's Kenny.

A couple things we still need to work on are our setting and our movement. Since the scene calls for us to be on the front steps of a house, we've been talking about using the folding steps, but we still need to work out the specifics of how we'll be using them. Our scene also starts with the two of us sitting down and doesn't specify if or when we should get up and move, so we also need to make decisions about the blocking so that the scene isn't just the two of us sitting and talking the whole time. We're both really excited to move forward from here and explore the different ways to show the dynamic between these two characters though!

Because of the way the female characters in Detroit are written, Tiffany and I ended up taking two scenes from the play and editing them out so that our characters have equal input in the final performance. As a result, both of our scenes include a mini monologue and some dialogue.

Our challenge with having monologues and dialogues in our scene has been making sure we are still listening and responding when only one character is speaking. So in our rehearsals, we're treating the monologues as a dialogue of sorts, where listening and responding is physical as well as verbal.

To help with this, we looked at the set design of different adaptations of the play to help us get a sense of how we can use the black box to create a set that helps us commit to our given circumstances and makes us really grounded in the performance.

Mia and I stayed after our class on Tuesday to continue making progress on the work we started. We were eager to keep memorizing lines and keep adding to the scene. I noticed as the first lines became more engrained, I was able to let the choices, listening and responding, and moment to moment acting happen more. 

We first came out into the middle of the space, and set up the wide black stairs (the ones used in the midterm performance with Mia, Kaia, Tuse, and Aysha). We used the piano bench originally, but the wider stairs seem more like they belong in a choir loft. We are going to keep experimenting with the set, but for the first few rehearsals its nice to have a lot of ability to move around. One thing we haven't practiced with yet that will make a huge difference is using flash lights. The stage directions say that it should be dark, until we each turn on our flash lights, at the beginning of the dialogue. That would hugely change the physical behavior of the piece. 

So far we've had fun just letting the movement be organic and changing every run through. We have been experimenting with "over acting", or really letting ourselves be loud and expressive, and just seeing how it feels. It has helped with the physicality and blocking, because it makes small tendencies and impulses more apparent. 

We are almost all the way off book, which is exciting. We are so excited about this process!! The cake is a highlight, and helps us to have organic behavior and feel grounded in the scene. 

Something I am looking forward to working on is embodying my character, Laney, more. I am so interested in playing Laney, but it has been extremely challenging for both Mia and I to "become" a pretentious fourteen year old, and a sixteen year old "jesus freak", as we like to call her. We are both looking for ways to drop into our characters more. 

For our scene in Proof, we thought it would be best to start by developing a moment prior to when our scene begins. In our scene, Hal walks up to the front door and then wanders around to the back door where Claire answers the door. This gives us an excellent opportunity for physical action before our text. By looking up possible sets this could give us an idea of how we want to lay out our scene. We thought by adding this moment before would help us be more grounded and add more depth to the scene. Also, this would articulate our destinations clearly to our audience.

The picture above is an accumulation of shots from various Proof scenes done in real life. We drew inspiration from these photos and got a key insight on what kinds of things we wanted to incorporate into our scene. Likewise, we got some ideas on how we want to dress to portray our characters. Nevertheless, these images became extremely helpful in adding a more detailed picture of the act Proof by not having only literal examples.

As we are working through the process of memorizing our script, we have become more familiar with our characters. Going further, our goal this week is to build a strong foundation with confidence in our script and with the organization of our scene. From past assignments, we have found that emphasizing familiarity with our lines is important to be able to start incorporating physical actions and utilizing information from our beat analyses to expand our scene into a moment that is believable and authentic.

In order to best rehearse, Sydni and I decided to watch Wellesley College Upstage's performance of Stop Kiss. Attached is a screen shot of the first scene. 

It is interesting to see two people act as the characters Sydni and I are trying to portray; watching them interact and speak their lines and move across the stage makes us realize that there are a million different ways to play these two characters, and it seems like a daunting task to determine the right way for us. As a result, we have been really focused on the "right way for us" idea. 

Our rehearsals have been very organic thus far. We have memorized the lines for the most part, we know the characters and the basic reasons behind the choices we make. At the same time, little of what we've done so far has been pre-determined. Our stage directions are improvised, as is the tone of our voice and the pace of the scene. While there is value to seeing the show performed, it is sometimes difficult to separate their choices from our own. A good example of this comes from our class trip to see Between Riverside and Crazy; the cast acted nothing like how I had imaged while reading the play, but in an amazing way. All of their choices were valid and great, but they just wouldn't have been my choices. It's interesting to consider what we as individuals have to bring to this scene that no one else could.

We're excited to see where the scene takes us.