Lewis & Clark Moodle

Olivia mentioned my method acting in the previous blog and I am happy to say that I am out of the hospital and have rejoined the land of the living. We have been meeting every other night to go over lines and rehearse our scene. It is coming together well and we are both nearly off book (we definitely will be by Tuesday!) and have a better understanding of Doug and Kayleen's relationship. This scene is unique because both Doug and Kayleen have to balance being sarcastic and witty with the gravity of the given circumstances. These characters have been through so much together and it is important to understand that when playing both of them to fully make sense of their relationship. There is a balance that we are working on articulating and showing between Doug and Kayleen being playful and lighthearted and the high level of tension that runs through their relationship. It is extremely prevalent in this scene, especially towards the end. We are going to work on this balance because there are some pretty funny moments in this scene, but they cannot take away from the underlying tension and gravity of the given circumstances. We're excited for Tuesday!

I've been really pleased with the way Dylan and I have been making progress in rehearsals. The showing in class was really reassuring, because one of the biggest things I was worried about was memorization. Dylan and I both have a lot of lines that we're working through between Pink Eye and the scenes we're doing for the Directing class. Being so busy with both has made me realize the importance of character specificity. When I'm acting as either Kayleen or Connie (from the directing class scene) I want to make sure I'm building characters that feel completely different, because they are completely different people. One of the best ways to do that, I think, is to think about how they relate to other people. Kayleen and Doug have a very complex and intimate relationship. By focusing both on what makes Kayleen Kayleen and on what makes her relationship with Doug so important, I think I can achieve the specificity I'm aiming for. Luckily, I have an amazing partner in Dylan! We seem to be able to connect really well on stage in a way that translates well to the audience. As we continue to rehearse, I'm confident we can make the romantic nature of Doug and Kayleen's relationship more prevalent in the scene if we find beats that can communicate that. For your viewing pleasure, I've attached an image that shows how intimate our rehearsals are getting. Enjoy! 

And the show goes on... Over the course of the last weekend and this week, Kaili and I have been polishing up our scene, which does not mean we have not have been tackling quite a few challenges. One aspect which we intended to better was our physical movement. I believe we did have the kinesthetic response there in our scene, yet there was something missing to relate it more to our characters' given circumstances. After briefly making more specific decisions about our setting (i.e. the porch in our scene should be a wreck) we were able to have more specific behaviour. Another task was to pinpoint the use of dialogue in relation to our objectives and actions. As we tried to get off book, we realized that the more familiar we were with the script the more we understood how the language affected our characters. For example, for the first few scene run-throughs our sister fight was almost entirely loud and intense (some fellow people from Copeland asked me in E&D if that was me who was yelling at Kaili last evening). However, after more rehearsing, our use of language changed very much and -hopefully- now resembles the more nuanced transitions and beats in our discussion. I hope you look forward to assesing and enjoying our first showing as much as we look forward to peforming.

Today, Zafar and I practiced memorizing our lines. We rehearsed each page at a time, which was similar to the method we used for our first rehearsal but this time we had a more indepth conversation about what we are trying to emotionally and physically accomplish with our characters. We came to the conclusion that Sam is trying to rekindle his friendship with Avery but Avery just came for the projector and move on in his life. Sam understands were Avery is coming from and it creates an awkward tension. This awkward tension can be seen in this scene through the pauses and beat changes caused by Sam. He feels guilty for not helping Avery out when he needed him, when Avery got fired, but tries to make amends with the projector. We only got through the first 5 pages of the script but are enjoying how it is turning out. I have attached a tiny sketch of what I see stage looking like when we perform.  

This Is Our Youth!

The past week we haven't been able te meet due to conflicting schedules but today we managed to meet and rehearse our scene. We mainly focused ond memorizing the lines since we have not been able to rehearse together a lot. It went well and we seem to have good idea on how we want to say our lines. We also started thinking about our outfits and if it would be necessary for us to have an outfit. 

    First of all, thank you for reading, commenting, and giving us advices on our last entry. Sarah and I started off well on the practice for our first final scene rehearsal. But I was still not entirely sure what the character that I am acting is like. So I watched several videos of our scene on Youtube. I was a little bit surprised that even if they are doing the same exact scene, the character’s personality was somewhat different depending on the actor. So I figured out that I could play my character in the way I interpreted it on the script and even include my personality.

    One of our challenges is that we are still struggling with listening and responding. Even after we had essentially memorized our line and felt  confident, there are some still awkward pauses between our lines. For example, sometimes we say our lines right after she or I finished our line however, it would be better if there is a pause. It is getting better and more natural as we practice but we should still work on improving the flow. I think that the only way to solve this problem is to continue practicing together in such a way that our lines come together naturally and we can better deliver during our rehearsal.

During our rehearsal this weekend Kim and I arranged up our set for the first time.  Having the set made it much easier for me to immerse myself in the scene.  Having objects around the room also helped with my physical behavior because it gave me things to pick up or clean.  During our rehearsal we tried to take note of what our set was missing and needed to have added.

Our biggest obstacle right now is being off book but not having our lines completely down.  It is hard to keep our lines snappy and cut each other off in arguments when we are still searching for lines.

In our first round, we mainly focused on learning our lines and getting the overall sense of the story. I think it is important to know the story: to understand the circumstances and be able to adjust mood accordingly. At some instances as the exchange of sentences between two characters in our scene were small; we noticed that we tended to rush. Or we would often forget our lines. Remembering the our given circumstances, it not only helped to remember our lines but also to go by proper pace.

As this is the initial stage of our preparation for final scene, obviously felt that we are missing so much and I think it is a good think because it gives us a sense on what to work on. So for example, when we noticed that the way we are exchanging dialogue is really at one pace and tempo and there aren't that many ups and downs, it reminds of the fact that how mindful we have to be of our beats.

We will memorize all our lines for our next meeting and focus on some of  the issues pointed our above.

Mika and I have used this first round of rehearsals to really focus on the pace of the scene. It is very clear that her lines are longer and more involved at the beginning of the scene, however we were having a hard time pacing the scene in a way that highlighted how annoying Claire is to Catherine, without making it so over the top that it wasn't believable. We ultimately decided that we need to really focus on keeping the energy up without speeding the whole scene up. Something I specifically need to work on is staying alert, aware and fully in the scene even while my character seems checked out or annoyed. This has been quite a challenge for me. 

For everyone else who has seen it performed, in one capacity or another- what can I do to make Catherine more compelling even in her sassy, "checked-out" moments? It seems as though what I am doing right now is just reading the lines rather than actually feeling them and giving them a given circumstance. What can I work on in terms of character development?

Olivia and I met earlier this week to do several run-throughs of our scene and experiment with our set. Last week we were unable to find a time that worked for both of us that the black box theater was available, so we didn't get the chance to actually put the chairs out and decide exactly how many we needed. Originally we were discussing going for something similar to the traditional movie theater and using about 16 chairs, but we realized quickly as we were putting the chairs out to rehearse that this number was for more than was necessary. Four is the absolutely minimum be would need, but eight seemed more appropriate so that we could act out the scene while sitting in the second row. What do you all think? Would more or fewer chairs be most effective here?

Running through our lines repeatedly helped us pinpoint problem areas in the script where we weren't sure exactly what type of emotion the characters were trying to convey. There are many statements that both Avery and Rose make that could easily be interpreted either as genuine or sarcastic and the way we choose to portray them drastically changes the mood of the scene. This is something we will be exploring in the coming weeks.