Virginia Swenson

Mia and I experimented with our location a lot last week. We first went to the chapel on campus. Running the scene in the chapel was amazing, and offered a lot of insights into the blocking of our scene. We felt dropped in almost immediately. We were making good progress in the chapel, but we had to leave after only two runs of the scene, because an event was starting. We moved to a classroom in Howard, where we had more interesting challenges for blocking. It was difficult to move from a literal chapel into a classroom, but we managed to stay grounded through the text and our listening and responding. I would recommend that other partners try to find a space that is at least closer to what your setting is, like an apartment or house for the stop kiss groups, or a yard for the Detroit groups. 

Something Mia and I are still really struggling with is the Magic If. We feel like when we are really grounded, we lose our energy, and the ability to act young, because we are grounded in ourselves as young adults in our twenties. By really thinking through how we connect to our characters, we are hoping to find a way to be grounded and high energy.