Body exploration and expression

Description:

Long live mathilda! This week was SHADOW QUEENDOM!! Finally after all those weeks of puppet making, mask painting and rehearsals the play is done. During the week, the puppets, masks, props, scenery were ready. Just a few “fix up here” and “fix up there” were needed. We focused more in the scene changes and the performance. We also did the dress rehearsal and finally the REAL performance.

Analysis:

During the last months we built up everything for THESE three days of performance. As we were getting nearer to the “deadline” I thought there was too much to do, and “little time to achieve it”. From the production point of view I wasn’t worried, puppets were finished, masks were too, there were very few things to improve, but as an actress in the play I was really worried. The last and first scene weren’t ready; some actors didn’t even know their lines.

Knowing the lines is something basic, you need to know the script in order to imagine the character, to be confident to explore while rehearsing the voice and movements of the character, because if you don’t know the lines you cannot go to the next step. I think that the big problem was that the script was sent too late, also there was little initiative of some actors, and without initiative you cannot move forward. It was very frustrating that because other actors didn’t know their lines the work of the other actors was affected. A performance is a group activity as each character reacts to the other. The action, movements a character does is the result of a response to another characters action or 
movement.

Fortunately everybody learned their lines in the end, and the final performance “looked” as if we had finished it a long time ago. The play looked good at the end, complete; but I think that all though we didn’t have much time because of the requirements in production, the script IS the priority. Production tasks must be finished with time so that actors can rehearse with the props, (and in this case puppets and masks) but what is the point of rehearsing with these if the script is not finished, or if even though its finished actors don’t know the lines? I think that if in the beginning the director put more importance in the script, the acting would also improve, as actors could pass lines and explore their movements and voice in their houses or rehearsals. In my opinion the problem with the script was one of the greatest reasons for the lack of characterization.

Another reason for the lack of characterization which lowered the acting level of many actors was that each actor couldn’t explore one character in-depth, as each actor had to explore not only one character but maybe 2 or 3 and even if the character was the same in different scenes, due to the game of the play the character had to change as-well. And … these are the costs of creativity………

With the puppets the problem with characterization was almost the same, many actors did make a great job with vocal characterization but in the physical exploring of puppets, as it was something new to work with, it wasn’t developed as much. The movements sometimes weren’t clear, or sometimes puppeteers just moved the puppets with any clear intention, only with the purpose that it doesn’t stay still, instead of making the puppet look real and transmit intentions with their body expression.

Where I think my acting skills were better was in the shadow puppets scene. In this scene I really explored the movements of my arms and gave a lot of vivacity to the character. The movements also where coherent with the text and precise, they had an intention behind… I think this was due to the working out of the movements with the actual lines we were going to say. I think that in order to have intentions along with what you say, it is better to say the lines first with choreography and then take some movements out or add new ones. This gives more intention to the movements, and it is easier to have precise movements with this technique in my opinion, as they are fixed and are easier to remember. So that the next time you do them they remain the same.

Connections:

In “Mas pequeños que el Guggenheim” characterization was very good. The actions each character did weren’t just precise but each character developed the way of moving depending on the personality. The voice, the movements, the posture of each character, built up their own personality. The audience could pick up the personality of these characters from the physical part more than from the dialogue. It looked as if the dialogue was a complement to the movements and not the movements being a complement to the dialogue. The actions transmitted more than the words.

In “Hebras” for example no words are said, but all the body expression expressed a lot. The audience could recognize feelings, moments, imagine a whole situation without words, just with the body expression.

In “La cocina” for example I think the acting was not very good due to the lack of this body expression. Many characters looked the same, the voice didn’t have much intonation so the “important” words weren’t highlighted or the intentions weren’t clear. To understand what the characters where feeling or how they are it was very important to listen to the dialogue as the body expression didn’t transmit much.

Reflection:

I think that what makes a play attractive is the movements a character does, or even if the character doesn’t move much, the posture and intonation that is given to the words is what makes it attractive. So then is the "game" really what makes the connection with the audience, or is it how attractive the expression of the characters by the voice and physical characterization is? Maybe is the mixture of both...do the plays which don’t have a game make the characterization unreliable as the audience doesn’t “connect" with the play, or is a good characterization enough for the audience to "connect" with the play?