The chief objective to ‘be’ a realistic, rounded person without judgment.
The first lot of drills involve games, improvs, body-mapping (which I loved!! Eg – Centre of gravity/where you lead from: Top of head – like a magnet is pulling you up to the moon. Character would be a child. Then from the nose out to the horizon line – character an inquisitive person. Chin (aristocrat) shoulders (first one at a time then together – together is kind of mental) Collarbone, chest (breasty lady/body builder,) stomach, hips (again one at a time then together,) front of thighs, knees, shins, then feet (magnet to the floor)
The first personal drill they had me do was cards. Very simply – they gave me a ‘character card’ – a description like: a nurse, a deli worker, a school marm. I sit on a chair (or stand if I wish) and the person sitting opposite me picks up the card and says “ Be a ______” and I then take on whatever that person means to me. If I get “Be a nurse” I don’t have to suddenly be at work – I could be in a waiting room for a job, I could be at home watching TV etc etc. Also, I don’t have to speak and I can do it for as little or as long as I like. When I am done, the person opposite acknowledges I’m created something by saying a repetitive word of their choice ‘Good’ or ‘Thank you’ or ‘Great’ or ‘Awesome’ – they DO NOT elaborate. You then have another go. I imagine you can see what my problem is with lack of critique – how do you know whether it’s good, believable etc. And I would usually just rely on self-critique but they don’t want me to do that either.
Don’t get me wrong – I am enjoying myself and getting things out of it – I just have some questions.
The card drill, once you have practiced, gets added to. (Once you are in character) You then get an emotion card ‘You feel that the world is vast and you want to explore it. You feel endless anticipation at life. You judge others who stay in one place’ – from this you don’t go over the words in your head. You take on whatever feeling that evokes in your character. So I might feel spacey, drugged out or blissfully happy.
More and more things get added. I haven’t got to all of them yet.
We also were given lectures about voice and body impulse. And about reading character in film. The voice and body was great – we used the emotion cards to show whatever the feeling was in our bodies in the space. No voices. Then we sat down, no emotion or physicality used, we would make the sound of the emotion. I liked it – it drew up ideas and new flavours that I might not consider using otherwise.
The film lecture-we watched excerpts from the Godfather and broke down the character through what they wore, their lines, their body language, where they paused etc etc.
The thing I have found most frustrating about the classes is self-drilling. Like a total pain in the ass. And I feel like a dick – and the performer in me can behave like an ass in front of other people, but not so much in front of myself.
One of the other drills that is probably my favourite and you do this with a partner is a sort of a mimic exercise. You go out of the building, find a person in a shop, on the street, in a café, etc – and talk to them. Either you tell them you’re an actor and may you talk to them for a brief moment, or you can just strike up a conversation. I opted to tell them what I was up to as I think that it’s important to be honest. Anyway once you’ve talked to them for a bit, you leave them – go well away from them (and all while your partner is watching – I think it’s more of a security measure than anything else) you ‘Be them’ for as long as you want.
My first person was a nervous Mexican lady who DID NOT wanna talk to me. That was a little boring. And I was nervous too. My first go.
The second was a man who looked like Mum’s friend Peter Sharp in Jamba Juice. He told me his name was ‘Richard’ he’d just been on a hike and we had a chat about various places to hike – one of them has the bat-cave from the original Batman! It was fun ‘being’ Richard.
The third and most interesting was Mr Anonymous. A lonely, slightly crazy perhaps man in the supermarket. He acted like he was doing me a HUGE favour chatting away to me – ‘Well I gotta sit down first and I can’t talk for long. I’m suffering. From arthritis’ - As the conversation wore on I realised he was but I was doing him an even bigger service by talking to him. Every time I tried to close off the conversation, he would fix me with a momentary wounded look and then keep on talking. He talked about the Godfather and the great comedians. He talked about the best movies and the worst. He did not think Sofia Coppola deserved criticism for her performance – ‘people are mean.’ Mr Anonymous was very generous with his time. And I felt glad to have met him.
So finally, to conclude we do these drills, we extend on them.
On my last session there before I went to NYC, I got up to perform in a FLASH performance at the end. It’s entirely improv. I was given a character – we all a scenario. In the lock room at Las Vegas police department. My character was a singer who’d played a huge gig and was pulled up for her expired drivers licence.
It was really fun and I got to work with my friend Diona, a motherly African American woman with a super sense of humour.
And I made people laugh. There’s the critique. Right?
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