Lewis & Clark Moodle

Solena and I have been practicing our scene and have even managed to secure some extra time with our teacher in order to improve. We've gotten down our own characters but need to make the text work for us building up to the argument in our scene which is not only heavily layered but a mark of where control is lost between the two sisters.

We're going to visit the prop shop soon as we're trying to sell the 'porch' aesthetic and we're currently debating trying to incorporate some sort of boundary line for the porch, to make a clear limit to the amount of space we can utilize. 

Overall, I think we're in the last part of the long haul. Most of the work is done and al there is to do is practice sand improve the little things. 

Alexa and I have had an amazing time in this class. It has pushed us out of our comfort zones as well as challenges our own abilities. Neither of us have ever done acting before and this has been a great experience. After our second dress rehearsal Alexa and I are feeling pretty confident about our final. We still need to work on and fine tune some things, but we are headed in the right direction. For me, I need to do a better job at hearing my partners lines, taking it in and then responding. I usually rush through a performance because I get super nervous with everyone looking at us, but I am working on it. Alexa needs to work on the opposite. She needs to work on not taking as much time in between lines and having an immediate reaction to my line. We plan on going outside and running around while rehearsing our lines. Doing something active as well as going to a space where we feel comfortable fully yelling our lines. We have some trouble with volume here and there during our performance and want to fix that for our final. 

First of all, DOES ANYONE HAVE CROCS I CAN USE? IF SO PLEASE EMAIL ME (sierragleason@lclark.edu)! I’d like to use them for this scene. The costume shop didn’t have any.

We had a rehearsal this evening in the Black Box, and we just ran the scene a couple of times, because we had a time constraint issue (directing scene rehearsals needed the space). 

Our goals for this rehearsal were to try out the costume and set items that we had, and to get more comfortable and grounded in the scene. I, for one, am having a hard time getting truly grounded in the scene, and I am happy to say that today, progress was made! I think having the set and costumes really helped both of us drop into the scene better. We also learned that the set and costumes work!

We also fiddled with the tempo of the scene, which came up experimentally during the rehearsal. After one of our runs, we both noticed that the tempo of the scene appeared to be very slow, and it drained some of the energy. So for our last run, we decided to pick it up intentionally, and it actually felt better. The pauses that we have developed in our scene make sense, and we both feel good about their placement, but I think that sometimes we were drawing it out. So running the scene at a faster tempo was a good experimental idea, and we will implement this during our rehearsal tomorrow!

Heyyo everyone! I love seeing all of your guys' pictures and videos. Seeing these different processes has inspired some creative ways for me and Zach to really embrace our characters outside of designated practice time. Woohoo, I am so excited!

We met tonight and finally have the whole script down without error. It is exciting to move away from the paper and really get into the specificity of our actions. We are now focusing on adding movement to our scene. It was pretty stagnant before. We have brainstormed a lot of ideas to help the scene come alive. These actions require a bit of a different setup than we had before. We are adding a chair alongside a table that I can set my stuff on. The reason we are doing this is because I now (Kayleen) have a place to go away from Doug but then when I need to get closer to him physically, but also emotionally, I can do so. 

We practiced today in front of my softball teammates which was really fun for me. This was really helpful too. I find that it is easiest for me to be Kayleen when in the black box/ most comfortable being seen acting. But when I am pushing past this comfort, I found it harder to find myself in Kayleen. I think this is because parts of her role hold some emotions that I don't often show around my friends. We have more of a goofy dynamic. Ultimately, it was a nice challenge that we found rewarding. It helped us to really dig deep into finding "Kayleen" and "Doug" when most uncomfortable. 

Zach and I are meeting tomorrow morning, to run through our scene, with our props. It should be really fun! I hope it goes well.  

Oh yes. One other thing that has been pretty fun in this whole process, is the development of Doug's weary weirdness and Kayleen's subtle drunkenness. It makes for a pretty fun but also complex scene. 

Today is the last day of class, Manu and I are performing our final rough draft. In order to prepare, I've written down the transcript of our scene and run lines with friends multiple times. Manu and I have reviewed the script and discussed where we want our physical action cues. Since we haven't practiced in the black box I'm interested to see how these cues transfer from principle to practice. After that, at some point, we will be meeting with Rebecca which should be enlightening.

 Using the black box has been important for us in terms of getting used to the space and making sure we project our voices.

During this rehearsal, we worked on establishing our blocking. This was a process as we would go through part of the scene following our impulses and one or the either of us would stop and say that whatever they just did felt like it didn't work or it was awkward. This helped us a lot because it gives us the room to focus more on our characters, listen/responding, etc. instead of as much on the blocking, but we both want to make sure we leave ourselves open to follow our impulses.

Today, we had an appointment with the costume department. We got chairs, a table, and some glasses for the set of our scene and we're hopeful that it will make it feel a lot more like a home. We also both got character appropriate robes which we're very excited about.

The scene isn't perfect (obviously) and we are still definitely frustrated with aspects of it (i.e. awkward blocking, lines we can't figure out how to say, feeling grounded, etc). However, working together through this has been wonderful and we've made significant strides.