Lewis & Clark Moodle

So although Emma and I weren't able to find time to rehearse before our meeting with Rebecca, we still made so much progress. Rebecca is just so smart, it's like she's an acting professor or something? Hahaha. During our meeting, Emma and I were able to raise the stakes even more by incorporating that "pinch, ouch" thing that Rebecca always talks about. I even surprised myself at certain times with how much I got into the scene, even Emma could feel it when I yelled at her. Overall, an amazing meeting and I wish we could've had more time with Rebecca.

Emma and I were able to meet up once on Friday in order to get some final practices in before the big performance. All these rehearsals have definitely made me more confident and excited to perform one last time. This has been one hell of a semester and I'm glad I could try out acting for this first and final time.

Good luck to everyone!

Meanwhile in the world of Olivia and Dylan, we just finished the final rehearsal and are feeling really comfortable and excited for tomorrow. Today was all about incorporating Rebecca's notes from the one-on-one, which were all about high stakes and opening up the chest. On top of it all, we're excited for one last run with all of you.

PS. I'm serious about the athletic cup. Does Target or Fred Meyer sell them? Or maybe I could cut up a plastic bottle or something.

As the last week of classes wrap up Lulu and I feel like it is harder to find time to rehearse. As finals approach us there is less free time for us to practice so we need to take advantage of every time we do get to rehearse and make sure we get the things done that we need to. After showing our second round of our scene yesterday I feel confident in the progress we made and where we are going. I felt that we have improved a lot and I feel that we have incorporated the notes that were given to us from our first showing. I am excited to get this 1 on 1 with Rebecca and show the rest of the class our final scene. It's going to be a lot of fun! We look forward to it!

We've been exploring different ways of moving about the space - especially working with our set piece, which is a ridiculously small couch, which forces the characters to sit very close to one another. We feel like the couch acts as a kind of metaphor for the sudden intimacy between them that they don't know how to navigate. We didn't plan on using the couch, but it just happened to be there in the theatre and it has turned out to be really helpful to our scene. 

Also, in running the scene numerous times, we're finding new ways to come at lines and how to give the scene new life each time. It's been fun! 

We rehearsed on Sunday the 27th and explored the space and our set properly for the first time. We both had our lines memorized and we had the basic props we needed to use. We went through the lines multiple times to make sure we both remembered them well enough and then went through the entire scene and tried out movements in the space. Afterwards, we talked about what we liked and didn't like and made decisions on a lot of those gestures and movements. We also spoke about our final prop list and decided on costumes as well. We also found a way to make our bed seem like a sofa bed without moving too many things. We tried a couple of ways for lying on the bed and finally came up with one that we both liked so that we would still be visible to the audience.

This week we worked a lot on further developing our characters. Mika wanted to be sure that she worked more on the annoying Claire/over the top voice. And I have been focusing on the given circumstances of Catherine more as well. I'm really starting to integrate this idea that Catherine is crazy ( or at least thinks she's crazy into the scene). At the beginning of the scene Catherine is obviously thinking about hallucinating her dad last night and about how she might be crazy, but she doesn't quite show it. However, throughout the scene as Claire is interagating her, this unravels a bit, and Claire becomes more and more aware of it, which might inform some of Mika's lines. I think that it is important that Mika and I focus on the beat changes throughout the scene and the obstacles and objectives of our characters but that we also play our super-objectives (mine is to convince myself and my sister that I am not crazy).   

This week began with some significant tweaks to the staging as well as some changes in some of the beats in the script. We added a chair for Olivia to sit in by my bedside and changed some of the blocking so our close yet rocky relationship can be seen better. The second half of our scene was our biggest concern after last week so we spent a significant amount of time on that. We reworked the dancing beat so the emotional connection of Doug and Kayleen could be better shown. We had some time in the Blackbox to mark all of these changes and run it a few times. It is coming along well! There are still some beats we need to work on, specifically clarifying intentions in the first half of the scene. Once we specify and clarify our intentions the given circumstances of Doug and Kayleen's relationship will be clearer going into the awkward and climactic second half. We are both very excited to work in our one on one this week to get more specific notes and have time to really work each beat. Here's to the next (and last) week!!!!!

This past week, Kaili and I worked on the notes from our first showing. Mainly, we worked on raising the stakes of our scene, by implementing better the given circumstances that our characters are in. I think it is safe to say that one could observe this work in our second showing. In our rehearsals before the showing, we realized that our voices could be a bit higher and that our body gestures could complement this. We also noticed that intensifying our dialogue enabled us to be better at listening and responding (somehow, shouting at someone can definitely get you into believing you are having a genuine argument... haha). Having said that, you can see why I believe that our physical behaviour and voices made us much more in sync with not only the context of the scene and our own characters' but also with each other-- something which allows us to portray better our sister relationship on stage. However, the feedback from our second show did shed light on some areas of improvement. Intentions could be a bit clearer, and I agree with this. We have the beats, the voice, the gestures, but we could have more present what our character's intentions are. If we do that, we will be able to show more of the purpose of our characters in the scene, as well as the purpose of the scene as a whole. There were also some suggestions here and there, some tweaks which despite being simple, do add a lot to our scene. (i.e. making me look more hungover by not entering with heels on, Kaili responding a bit more hurtfully when I call her off on a few lines, etc.). I believe that these minor tweaks and focusing on intention and purpose will finally set all of the elements we have been working on this semester and enable us to do a great scene!

Finally, Alex and I got to work in the black box! Certainly, helps when we have our props and furniture around us so that way we can move with purpose. After watching videos on YouTube we realized after the last practice performance that we should not use those videos as a reference, were just going to go with our impulse when we decide how to move on stage and what lines to do what for. But certainly, the videos were a great tool to get us started. On a side note we really do appreciate everyone's comments about our performance I think I speak for both Alex and myself when I say we try hard to take those comments to better improve our performance! For example one of the bigger notes were about how fast we were and how to raise our volume so those two areas are the primary focus at the moment.