16/11/10

In this lesson we read a handout about Meyerhold, and the story of the two wives who had a wager that either one of their husbands was more foolish than the other.

We did some warm up excersies including the closed eyes clapping exercise, which is used to help focus your attention, by closing your eyes, everyone stands in a circle and waited for Andy to clap, we then all clap when he does, and stops when he does, by listening carefully to the sound of who is clapping and who is not, concetration and focus in strengthened, which is important in physical theatre.

We also learned the starting and stopping movement, we learnt the 'I' (Preperation) 'Ras' (Movement) and 'Dva' (Stopping) technique. This is used a lot in Meyerholds theatre as it makes sure each individual movement is noticed and well presented. By using 'I' (preperation) the person prepares themselves for the 'Ras' which is the movement. For example, in that lesson, we were told to all walk around the room, and when we were told 'I' we had to prepare to change direction, so this would mean, turning around on the spot, without actually moving towards that direction, when we were told 'Ras' we would then move that way, and when told 'Dva' we would stop. Doing this in physical theatre can help to show the individual movements, it is also useful when exaggurating movement as well, for example, if i wanted to do an exaggurated movement that involved pointing at someone accusingly, i would first prepare myself to do so, i would then, after a pause, move into that action, but the pause allows us to clearly show how exaggurated the movement is (I could point in an over the top way, by raising my arm much higher than needed on the way into the pointing action.)

We watched a video that lesson, which showed us a short performance called 'The Slap' it is a move that consists of many steps, and it is an exaguratted way of showing somebody being slapped, which makes it comical in how over the top it is.

It starts with two people meeting, they both mirror each other at this point, they shake hands, followed by some jumping movements and one person then breaks away from the mirroring and prepares to slap a person, bringing their hand to the other persons face, before then bringing their hand up, causing the other person to flinch, they then slap the person, however, they don't actually physically slap them, just appear to, the other person then claps their hands together, and holds their head in their hands, as if slapped, all in an over the top manner. In performances like these, there will always be an active and a reactive person, someone who seems to hold the power (Person slapping the other) and someone who is over powered (Person being slapped) this can always change throughout performance though, but there must always be someone reacting.

I found some photos on the internet, that demonstrate some of 'The Slap'

We then performed to the group and finished the lesson.