Tuesday, February 15, 2011

workshops 6

WE ONLY HAVE 1 MORE DAY!!! :'(

This has been -life changing experience is probably too dramatic but it has taught me a new skill in life. There are so many new ways of thinking I have learned especially in the movement of the human body. I probably won't consciously remember them all at once -for example I can not list them all in this instant- but I'm sure they will come up to me when the moment is right and applicable. For example, one that is coming to me now is the way that mimes have to exaggerate movements and perform things in unrealistic ways so that people.. common Gregg phrase make things so that "your mom can understand."


Sunday, February 13, 2011

Workshops 5

So I'm really excited for this performance we are working on. There is now a purpose to everything we do which makes it easier to learn the moves. Also with thinking of new scenes that aren't really stereotypical mime actions we learn things we might have never done. I love our ideas because they feel really original- not deadly, yes holy. We are performing common rituals in our society but we are acknowledging that they are rituals.  We are miming them and on top of that we juxtapose strong images dead and marriage for example and then there are moods happiness to anger. It's hard to explain.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Workshops 4

Miming today was more interesting than before because we began to "think more like a mime." We started talking about our ideas for our final project performance. This is like writing a play but the main consideration was how the ideas would incorporate into good scenes for mimes. In this way we became real mimes because mimes have to think of things they want to say not just perform little tricks and unconnected routines.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Workshops 3

So today we did another character: robots and scene: fighting.
We spent most of the time on the robot which is actually not as hard as I thought it would be. Which is how I feel with a lot of what we are learning at this point. I really thought it would be harder to grasp a lot of it. I guess there are just basic things that anyone can do. Things that any human body can do. However, one thing that was really hard was walking with one foot by sliding in and out, so I'm guessing there is a lot more that will be so much harder- which explains why people have professions in mime.
The Robot overall was really fun and there is a lot one can do with it with simple practice. It's easier every movement has to be separated into different single movements. This can be difficult to keep still and keep track of things but it is much more straightforward in thinking.
After a while being a robot gets tiring and you want to just be human again. Then there are fighting scenes. We only got to the basic principle that someone makes and action but the most crucial part the is other persons reaction. In fact, it is this the victim who holds the most performance- the funner part because he or she can make the funnier faces.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Workshops 2- First Day of Mime


Today was pretty cool. I was amazed at the fact that we were able to learn so many mime movements in such a short time and actually get them to look like something. We worked mainly on creating a scene. In this way we connected acting and the theatre into miming to an incredible extent. Miming requires acting and acting requires miming. In miming we have to imagine an invisible world and acting there is an invisible world but the audience doesn't really see it through movement but rather through the words and the way things are acted. What I like about miming is that there is a sense of a definite way to do things which in a way makes things easier to learn quickly. If the movement cannot be determined by the audience then it is not being done right. Of course the challenge is to do more interesting and in some cases funnier things. One of the main things we got from today's lesson was that most of physical comedy and the miming performance is done with the face. This concept is already known to me in the form of acting by keeping one's body and face towards the audience and from singing in that the face and mouth always has to be facing the audience in order to resonate better. All in all, I am excited to learn more because we did so much on the first day I wonder what Gregg has in store for the next two weeks!