Chorus, Commitment and Complicity: 25th Novemeber

Todays exercises...

Today's lesson is 3 days before our performance night! And we mainly worked on how we are going to link all four devised groups together in the performance, we also worked on our movement pieces and came up with creative and flowing movements which relate to the sea.

We studied two pieces of text taken from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" performed by Ariel as a song.

These pieces of text were..

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd

The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.

Hark, hark!

Bow-wow.

The watch-dogs bark.



Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell

As a group we all came into a circle and read the text together each having 1 or 2 words each, after this we split in half and studied the text in groups of 7 and performed it to the class, using rhythm and movement.

We all decided that this should be the opening text to our performance La Mer on Thursday evening, we will say the first half of this poem, beginning with "Come unto these yellow sands" and this will be projected in chorus; all together and will establish the sea theme to our audience right from the beginning of our performance. Our setting will be in our four separate groups, sitting together on a beach or by a lake and everyone in unison will perform the first piece of text.

The other exercises we took part in today were movement based, and we in our devised groups, firstly starting off with pairs from each group and then merged into the full group of four.

In my pair I was with Bella, and we worked on our movement piece using three words as a stimulus; BY.THROUGH.ROUND

Throughout our piece we used contact with each other which included, lifts, holding hands, turning in unison and canon and leaning on each other in which I leaned on Bella and she took my weight and I lifted into the air slightly. We had to use six different movements which interpret by,through and round movements and gestures.

The idea of the movement piece was to be connected at all times and always doing things together rather than separately  After we performed our piece, we got into our devised group by joining Izzy and Sophie and both pairs shared their movement pieces an we merged the two pieces together to form one performance which featured all the gestures and movements from both pairs combined. We always stayed in contact with eachother and created movements to flow like water, matching our theme La Mer. 

We decided as a class that each group is going to perform their movement piece before the devised drama piece begins, in order to transition from one piece to another in an alternative way, rather than one group finishing,applause, then another group on stage! When working to such a specific theme I feel transitioning from one piece to another using movement forms which flow nicely and match the theme is so much more interesting and creative than just having one devised after another. The sea theme is such a strong theme and it needs to be expressed in ways other than drama.

Another exercise we learned today within the group was a singing exercise, we were divided into four groups and sang the song…
Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose
Shall I ever see the red?
I marry that thou shalt
When thou art dead…
This song at first I felt was a sad and hard hitting song, but when I actually listen to it and sang the words, I realised it actually means that there is a happy life after somebodies life has ended, death is not such a bad thing as the song writer is portraying how they will love someone and marry someone after their life has ended. It is a powerful and meaningful song, even though it only has four lines.
This exercise is about chorus and working together as a team to create complicity and harmony between one another. Each group started singing ROSE ROSE ROSE ROSE at different beats, so the song was performed in canon between all four groups.
I enjoyed this exercise, as it was different and a nice change, as we have not ever sang in an acting class before.

In today's class, the focus was getting the performance as a whole more structured and creating movement pieces to transition into our own devised drama pieces, slightly in character but more focusing on the movement and the meaning of the movement. I really enjoyed today's lesson as it was different and really creative, it gave me even more ideas and interpretations for my groups devised piece.