Lewis & Clark Moodle

Today Sanaa and I met in the Blackbox to practice the first two minutes of our scene! Before we met for rehearsal we both were feeling very anxious for presenting our work tomorrow. However, after rehearsing for a little less than an hour, we both left the black box feeling more confident than ever. Using this time we were able to make important decisions regarding the layout of our space, blocking, and the overall feeling of our scene. We had some trouble determining how to block our scene because there is little to no stage directions, but after a couple of trial and errors we figured out what may work! Contenting with trial and error is what also helped us to understand the direction and feeling our scene is calling for. Having this firm grasp on the overall theme of the scene made it easier for Sanaa and I to be fully present in our work. We are excited to show you all what we've been working on and hope you enjoy it! 

Our first rehearsal was over zoom last week and it was really fun! Although, at times reading body language through the computer was impossible which made pinch/ouch difficult to utilize at times. We've found this scene to be more difficult but also more fun than expected. We spent a lot of the time brainstorming about what we each really wanted with everything we said. We ended up changing our strategies from our original beat analysis a lot. We also tried to deal with the blocking of the scene, but it was hard! Because of zoom, but also because we're just sitting. There were many moments of random accent use and huge dramatization of the lines because we were trying really hard to up the awkwardness of the scene but sometimes it was just too awkward and the lines can be taken to become very silly. Anyways, we're looking forward to working on the full thing! After watching everyone's wonderful first showings last week we were so inspired and got really pumped to work on ours  

So, this week Ziantae and I met twice outside of class to rehearse for our performance on Wednesday (Thursday and Sunday). It has been a little difficult to meet up and rehearse because Ziantae lives off campus and I live off, but we also have different class and extracurricular schedules. Well, we are still trying to meet as much as we can until our final performance. Looking at our rehearsals so far, I would say our biggest challenge is being able to assert the right the right relationship between the father and son. We are both trying to focus on our objectives, but sometimes it can make it harder to understand the way in which we should say a specific line. Also, another big challenge we are trying figure out is the movements within the scene and how to make them feel and look natural. Our scene is somewhat stagnate, so we are trying to figure out how to add texture and movement. With that being said, I would say, in terms of our lines for Wednesday, we are pretty much memorized, but we are still consistently going over the script. The process has been so much thus far, though!

Libby and I have spent a lot of time looking into the relationship between Sam and Rose and asking ourselves how we can portray the complications between us. We love how subtle the tensions are between Sam and Rose at first, and how they grow in the scene, but struggled at first at understanding each of the characters given circumstances. Some things that really helped both of us better understand our characters have been the beat analysis and taking a moment before the scene starts to bring ourselves into the moment. 

The beat assignment clarified a lot of our emotions in the scene. We are constantly pulling each other in different directions in this moment of the play. There is a lot of confusion, passion, and frustration. Although our characters are confused, we realized that we needed to understand a bit why they were confused. Sitting down and talking about it was really helpful to the building of our work together. We also continued with memorizing lines and blocking out our movements. We will be sitting in two chairs for the scene, so we worked on how to make that feel fluid rather than rigid. Even though we are sitting, we worked on the subtle movements and bodily conversations between our characters. 

Overall, we discovered this week that this scene has so many subtleties and we began to engage with those more to feel more comfortable with our characters and each other. 

Libby and I have spent a lot of time looking into the relationship between Sam and Rose and asking ourselves how we can portray the complications between us. We love how subtle the tensions are between Sam and Rose at first, and how they grow in the scene, but struggled at first at understanding each of the characters given circumstances. Some things that really helped both of us better understand our characters have been the beat analysis and taking a moment before the scene starts to bring ourselves into the moment. 

The beat assignment clarified a lot of our emotions in the scene. We are constantly pulling each other in different directions in this moment of the play. There is a lot of confusion, passion, and frustration. Although our characters are confused, we realized that we needed to understand a bit why they were confused. Sitting down and talking about it was really helpful to the building of our work together. We also continued with memorizing lines and blocking out our movements. We will be sitting in two chairs for the scene, so we worked on how to make that feel fluid rather than rigid. Even though we are sitting, we worked on the subtle movements and bodily conversations between our characters. 

Overall, we discovered this week that this scene has so many subtleties and we began to engage with those more to feel more comfortable with our characters and each other. 

This week, my partner and I worked on analyzing the beats in our script and were able to write what each character was going for in each beat. I feel that although analyzing beats can be an easy concept, my partner and I had some conflict because there were times where I might have thought the shift of beat was changing and my partner did not and vise versa. Overall, we were able to identify where the main beats should take place. We also went through our script and learned a little bit more about each character and the given circumstance. This helped us to get more in the scene and to play the role of the character rather than just acting out the scene. Knowing more about each character and the given circumstance, makes the needs and wants of each character more clear is what we learned. Besides doing tableware with my partner this last week, we also practiced our script which I feel like we're having a hard time memorizing because of the specificity go the situation and because we need to practice more of being in the shoes of the character rather than just saying the lines. 

Mia and I met today at 8:10am in the blackbox for our first rehearsal session. Whew, it was a little early but this was only time that would work for both of our schedules! Initially, I couldn't get into the theatre, but then I quickly realized that I have swipe acess with my student ID. Crisis averted. 

We began our session by discussing our set-up on stage and what props we might need for the performance. We don't have all of these things yet, but it was good to talk about and get on the same page moving forward. Then Mia did a cartwheel, and then so did I. It was exhilirating. Always imporant to get upside down imo.

Once settled down, we began to rehearse our lines. We ran through our scene "off-book" right away just to see how far we could make it. We made it pretty far! However, it was clear that we needed to work on the lines more and also learn the beats together. For the rest of the rehearsal, we worked on finalizing our entrance, memorizing the lines, and discussing the crescendos of the scene together. I'm not sure we have all the lines down yet, but we are making solid progress. All in all, it was a useful and productive rehearsal. Hopefully the showing of our first two minutes goes well!

Wow, you guys! We finally did it! I'm so proud of everyone, and I'm also really proud of myself. Sometimes during performance I feel like it wasn't quite as good as the rehearsal, but I definitely felt like today was the best I had ever done with this scene. I'm especially proud of how disoriented and un-tethered I was able to act considering that Catherine has just finished a conversation with a hallucination of her dead father when this scene starts. I'm looking back and I'm also thinking about how much fun I had with you guys this semester. All of the silly exercises and games we would warm up with. I'm already getting nostalgic! Sometimes this class even felt more like an extra-curricular than an actual class. I had so much fun being here and I'm really going to miss being in a class with you all :'(

Hope to see you around next year!

-Elaine

Hi guys,

I'm so excited to perform this scene today, Nathan and I spent some time rehearsing in the quadrangle, tightening up cut offs and timing of entrances. We also worked on some of the notes Rebecca gave us, so the scene is in pretty good shape. We are gonna work lines and stuff one more time to ensure we have the timing down and think about being grounding and playing the objective during the scene. This is the final strecth and it has been so exciting working with all of you this year in Rebecca's class.

Have a good Winter break!

This is Negasi, signing off.