Santiago

Fay took the warm up this morning by running, stretching from head to toe, chewing gum exercise, going up and down the scale by doing raspberries, ga ka une ya vocal exercise and going through the vowels with consonants  in front of them focusing on our pronunciation. She then got us all to lay down and control our breathing by breathing in when she says 4 then out when she says four and gradually we had to hold for longer and finish by getting rid of any access air in out lungs. We had to concentrate on letting it out naturally so you shouldn’t be able to hear us breathing out. We finished with a focus exercise which Adam took, we listened to a song called Santiago by Show of Hands while mirroring with partners. This really got me focused for the rehearsal ahead of us today.

We planned to do a run through of the play, starting where the valley women are doing their washing at the river. We spent the whole day rehearsing in costumes. There was a lot of stopping and starting due to the lighting and music being sorted and if there was any parts of scenes that needed a drastic amount of work done to it, things looking bad or issues with how it looked on stage we did it over and over until it worked. I was happy with this as it meant I could go over my scenes a lot, get into character and not feel like I didn’t know where to stand and improvise but actually become comfortable with what I do in the scenes I’m in.

The first washing scene had a lot of work done to it as we were all directed to respond to Katherina, make movements bigger, make it clearer when ignoring Cecilia so it would be clearer to the audience we had a reason not to like her. The Captains speech now includes the valley women also, who stand downstage left with our faces shown by the lights on the floor beaming onto us. When Alexis is found, I need to remember to either run behind Fay or wait until the conversation is finished to run off stage so I do not block or interfere with what is going on between them. In the first dead body scene we all need to put in more a lot more effort into pulling on the rope to show like it is hard work for us. We do not need to use more force physically, we just need to show it through our posture, body weight, physicality and facial expressions. Therefore a higher level of focus and energy is also needed here too. I need to be ready for my cues in this scene and remember to pull back Alexis from attempting to follow Sophia, his grandmother. In the grinding the grain scene the atmosphere was very intense and because of the argument between Alexandra and Sophia I too felt very much in the moment. I really like this scene as the focus is great, the energy is high and it all happens so well so quickly and is a very important scene in the performance ass Sophia states about all of our men not with us, and asking all us women where they are and claiming that the body found in the river was her father that was taken away and burned, being so adamant about this, when really it could have been anyone’s as the body had no face. This was where we finished today and will complete the run through tomorrow.

I learnt a lot today, starting from the very beginning as, in the breathing exercise I feel I am now gradually learning more about controlling my breathing which is improving my ability for developing the way I speak my character, Mariluz. Today was really fun too as I was constantly on my feet and the day zoomed by as it was such a busy day and there was so much to do! I feel doing the run through benefits me a lot as I come to terms with the order of scenes I am in that I go and familiarize me with every time I run on stage and how I enter and exit the scenes. I feel today was really positive as we worked on a lot, improved a lot and Neil was pleased with the result of the day too.

This entry was posted on 02/10/2007 at 11:41 pm and is filed under Actors Blog (River), Emily, Actors Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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