Work with the movement director

Tuesday 31st March

Rachel Lincoln - Movement Director,

Rachel is an actor and theatre maker who trained at the 

ÉCOLE INTERNATIONALE DE THÉÂTRE JACQUES LECOQ in Paris.

http://www.ecole-jacqueslecoq.com/en/school_en-000001.html 

The session started with work on clothing.

All the actors worked with their own coat carefully observing how they put their coat on and off, then under different conditions - freezing cold, hot, at speed, slowly.

Then the coat becomes uniform - a soldiers uniform, how dies that effect your movement? 

The body has antennae - these increase your scale, you become aware of taking up more space. Rachel asks the actors to change their rhythm of movement.

Actors reflected on the effect of this work - increasing rigidity in body, taking up more space and this increased status  someone felt they were taking on the quality of the material itself.

Rachel suggested working in costume boots as early as possible. 

Observations about the male and female bodies were discussed including and acknowledging the cliches and stereotypes as a part of this. 

Work was done to explore some of these physical differences and work to access how this might feel in the way one moves and occupies space.

• Transferring weight
• Space in stance - legs
• Pelvis is forward
• Footsteps heavier
• Feet bigger
• Less movement in hips
• More sure footed 
• Space in the chest/shoulders/arms - all one unit

Some time is then spent existing in this body - standing, sitting, walking, running, tying a shoe lace.

Working in the Factory

Rachel asked the cast in groups of 4/5 to create a sequence of movement based on activity that could be undertaken in the factory. Various props were used, bottles, boxes, crates to give the activities purpose. Rachel watched and fed back on each groups work making suggestions about the equality of movement – was it appropriate to the task “are you handling something dangerous?”. Rachel also gave notes about how to open movement up to the audience.

The pieces were run again with music and Rachel stopping and starting individual groups and individuals to create depth and texture to the sequence.

INDIVIDUAL WORK ON THE TEXT

1) Scene Synopsis

What happens in every scene?

Write this out in a grid with the following headings

Act/Scene	Location	Synopsis

2) 2) 2) Paraphrase your scenes

What are you saying?!           

You can use http://www.shakespeareswords.com/ there is a really excellent glossary on this site. As well as the complete works and useful synopses and diagrams that map out all the relationships of every play.

No Fear Shakesepare might also be useful

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/henryv/

3) Line learning

Start learning you lines. Find new ways to do this.

First letter method

O, F A M O F T W A                        Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend

T B H O I!                                     The brightest heaven of invention!

Write out every scene you’re in I this way – maybe in coloured pencil, all on one sheet.

Using hieroglyphs, symbols of you own creation as necessary to jog your memory.

Physicalise line learning

• Learn lines walking around, changing direction on the end of every line.
• Throw and catch a tennis ball in the air, against a wall.
• Walk and throw the ball.
• Tap a rhythm, drum your fingers as you learn
• Run lines regularly with a scene partner or willing volunteer!

Session 3 and 4

Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th March

Shaping the play - rough blocking

In the two rehearsals this week the we start to physically shape the play, roughly blocking and staging each scene. We were fairly swift only occasionally going back over sections. Some scenes and some sections of scenes need more attention than others.

Part of this work included some work on the opening - the women at work in the factory before they start to 'perform' the play of Henry V. We will hopefully develop this work with our movment director.

Some props have been brought into rehearsals and it was useful to start working with these items.

Session 2

The Second Rehearsal

The rehearsal began with a model box presentation from the set design team and a presentation of costume designs from costume designers.

TEXT

The rehearsal then moved on to work on the text use the opening speech of the play spoken by the Chorus.

Standing in a circle each actor speaks one line at a time around the circle, a second reading and each actor gently pushes the actor next to them to pass the energy of the line on. A third reading and this time each actor walks into the centre of the circle before speaking the line and ensuring the speech is energised with no more than a slight beat at each line end.

What was the effect of this reading?  

"There is an energy that runs through Shakespeare an energy that runs through the text which is not a naturalistic one; an energy which impels one word to the next, one thought to the next, one speech to the next, and one scene to the next. I would say that there is really not a full stop until the end of the play"  The Actor And The Text, Cicely Berryp.82 

CHARACTER

The company then worked through the Laban Movement Qualities and then applied these to their characters. First their characters in Henry V and then their factory worker characters.

How was this exercise useful?
What did you learn from the exercise?
What did you discover about your characters?

Session 1

The First Rehearsal

The focus of today's rehearsal was to get familiar with the play, the cast, who was playing what roles.

We did this with a standing/walking read through, with actors entering the space to read as neccessary for each scene.

After each act the company paused to discuss the events of that act to start to get a handle on the story of the play.

Things to think about:

• Why was the readthrough useful (or perhaps it wasn't!)?
• What was the benefit of the standing readthrough?
• What discoveries did you make about the play or your character from reading/listening to it with the company?

The company during their walking read-through