Saturday, February 7, 2015

Week Two of Basics- focus on diaphragm, base actions, and approaches to text

This week Margi brought us back to the breath of integration and asked us what makes us disintegrate? (dis-integrate)  Some time spent with opening up a freer breath and using it more wholly as we considered the complex physiology of the diaphragm.
Physical training recapped the energy flows and then put them into basic actions:
Blue wave>> push
Red wave>> pull
Big X>> reach / throw
We considered other actions and objectives and how they might be akin to one of these basic "action families"
Focus on voice added the idea of action/work to the voice.  What is the work that my voice is accomplishing?  How does imagination, objective, impulse work together in the voice?
We broke into three groups with our directors:
Alex worked with the environment of the Seguismundo speech, using the ensemble to embody it.
Peter worked with Chekhov's psychological gestures on a line of text.
George worked with soundscape and choral speaking using the memorized text.
Check the comments and leave some of your own!

2 comments:

Sarah Stockton said...


Feb 3rd was my second full workshop as a new company member!
We continued to delve into the Alexander work with Margi and the Chekhov work with George. Margi showed us an animated video of a ribcage, moving with the breath and rotating slowly to show all angles. It was surprising just how much the ribcage expanded all over, with the in-breath. Touching my own ribcage, I was quite sure mine was not expanding so fully. The trick is allowing the breath to flow freely, in and out, without pushing or exerting effort toward the expansion. Sometimes I just have to gently shake my body out and remind it to relax and simply allow rather than push toward a result.

I was excited to find a deeper connection to the Chekhov work this week. More specifically a connection between the energy work and the text. Although I’ve worked with many methods over the years, much of my acting work in college and grad school was Meisner-based, crafting imaginary circumstance and personalization in order to find the emotional connection to the text. This way of igniting an emotional connection begins in the mind.
It was interesting then, to find an equally powerful emotional connection out of physical work… as we worked with George on energy flow, again we played with the blue and red waves and the big X, then moving that energy flow into the physical acts of pushing, pulling and throwing the net. We then introduced whatever bit of text we’d memorized (from Life is a Dream, Seguismundo’s monologue). Without any emotional preparation, simply from the physical work and the vibrating energy it unleashed in me, when I introduced the text along with it, the emotion came. It was a cool experience and only served to deepen my commitment to exploring this new method.

We then broke into three groups and three really cool performance pieces were created in only 30 minutes time.
In Alex’s group, only one member spoke (a large portion of the text) while the rest of the ensemble physicalized the words, all around her. She was affected by their movements and their movements were informed by her words. The group ebbed and flowed around her, someone noted, like waves in a turbulent sea. It was mesmerizing to watch.
As George mentions in the post above, Peter’s group worked with psychological gesture, each on their own line of text. The piece was great. There was something ceremonial about it, the gestures were strong and beautiful and they seemed to fuel the words that followed; to give them their life.
I was in George’s group and we explored the sounds of the words. We worked in pairs and George encouraged us to notice what bits of text we savored and what parts we tended to blank on and to allow that to affect the way the words came out. There arose out of this, a real sense of play in our pieces, we felt like children discovering language. This work reminded me a bit of the early Meisner work with repetition and being affected by one’s partner. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise!

I’m grateful to be working with such a wonderful group and I look forward to each class, to getting to know everyone, and to delving further into the work!

Unknown said...

This past week at training we began with Alexander work as Margi instructed us to check in with our breathing. We formed a circle and placed our hands on the back of the person in front of us, which personally allowed me to feel supported as a focused on my breathing but also allowed me to feel the ribcage of the person in front of me expanding. After that, Margi showed a video showing what the diaphragm and ribcage look like when one breathes properly. It was fascinating to see just how much the ribcage expanded as if it were a pair of wings preparing to take flight. I had been having trouble translating the instructions that were given to me about breathing properly to what was actually going on inside of me, so seeing this video, especially for a visual learner, opened a door to the art of breathing. This video led to us lying on the floor and partaking in breathing exercises that further explored to the expansion and upward rising motion of the diaphragm and ribcage. When we were instructed to allow a deep breath in and then quietly count to ten as many times as the breath naturally allowed, I noticed that I had a habit of trying to hold in my breath as I exhaled numbers in order to finish counting and that this is most likely what I do when speaking. We later discussed how we often believe that we need more breathe than we actually do while speaking or delivering lines.

We then moved to reviewing the "red-wave", the "blue-wave", and the "big X" that we had explored more in depth during the previous training. However, this time we were asked to memorize lines from one of Segismundo's speeches in "Life is A Dream" and we were able to use these exercises to apply the "push", "pull", "throw", and "reach" actions to the line of text. Exploring the text with different physical actions allowed me to find different meanings within the text and at the same time allowed me to develop muscle memories of what it felt like to "pull" or "reach" during a certain phrase.

After a few vocal exercises led by George, we split up into three groups and I, too, was a part of George's group were we explored the sounds of the text. I was partner's with Tony and once we were clear on the task a head of us, we had a great time exploring our line of text, playing with inflection, tone and tempo. It was a place where we were allowed to make bold choices that didn't have to necessarily make sense with in the context of the monologue, but allowed us to thoroughly enjoy every syllable, consonant, and sound in the text.

I am so incredibly blessed to train alongside such talented and creative artist and I look forward to what lies in the future.