Week 4 Basic Core Awareness and Strengthening; Opposition; Containment/Radiance; Availability; Vocal Action; Refinement
This week Margi and Erika took the group through the standard Magis core workout, folding in Linklater principles. This combination aims at an engaged core for physicality, yet without tension that constricts or impedes free vocal impulse and expression.
The cloud exercise in Physical Training was another way of allowing the imagination to inspire the body to engage in a new way, and cajoling it into allowing opposite impulses to be in the body simultaneously. This physicalization helps open us up unconsciously to those moments on stage when a character might have two conflicting stimuli at the same moment. We also added the Pencil exercise for plasticity with the same aims we discussed last week. At the end, we brought back Containment and Radiance, accumulating energy on the run, containing it in a shape that interacts with the architecture or in free space, and allowing the contained energy to radiate until it provides a new impulse to run again. At the end, we added actions to the containment of energy in the circle: raise, reach, grasp, release, lower... silently, and then with text. The overall aim of the physical training as a whole is to arrive at a new availability to go into our work.
Vocally we continued with the walking out on the sound exercise, stressing the aim of finding the exactness of the space with the voice. In singing we added specific actions/intentions that we were working with the sound.
Our work with the directors took another look at the exercises with the Sarra Coppia Sulam materials and the directors refined the exercises. As an ensemble we gave feedback at the first and most basic level: What did I see?
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Week Three of Basics: Imagination, Core awareness, and Plasticity
This past week, Margi went into the basics of our core training. Introducing some basic vocabulary and concepts, and sketching out one of our basic core building regimens, she and Erika worked with pairs of actors in trying these out and and giving prompts and adjustments to maximize the core engagement while keeping the instrument open and available.
Moving into the Physical training we focused on how engaging the imagination can create an inner life that can coax the body into surpassing what it perceives as its own comfort zone.
Our plasticity training comes out of working with energy flows. Having imagined the energy flows in the blue wave, red wave, both waves together and the Big X, we asked the actors to take ALL the energy they just accessed and localize it between the thumb and first finger. The image I like is a little supernova of energy shining between your closed circuit of the thumb and first finger. Then we anchor this point by imagining a laser going above and below; a single vertical line. From there, we add four more lasers extending to the four compass points, imaginatively creating six chords of energy that anchor this point. Keeping the fingers closed on the point, we ask the actors to keep the point where it is, and let the body/arm adjust to this as we take one step toward the point and one step away, keeping the finger circuit as the fixed point and letting the body move to adjust to it. Then two steps back and forth from the fixed point, then three. Choosing a new point each time and anchoring it in the imagination in the same way, the actor then examines the point from all angles and perspectives... allowing the body to bend, stretch, move, in order to bring our eyes around the fixed point. This is the beginning of "tricking the lazy body" into taking shapes that are demanded by the imagination and getting the body to discover new configurations while conforming to an imagined prompt.
This same principle is involved with the string exercise:
Closing the fingers around the supernova and sending a laser up and down, the actor imagines inclining this string of energy to an angle (first, an angle of about 45 degrees, but this is expanded to include other angles later in the exercise) Then following this "string" of energy, the actor traces the trajectory of the string to the ground, allowing the body to conform to the demands of the exercise, and noticing when the body wants to be "lazy:" taking shortcuts, bending to a quicker endpoint, stopping before reaching the destination.
Then we begin a process of following more strings of different angles and configurations, going from the point as an origin, to the end of its trajectory, obeying the imagination to its end and guiding the body to follow it precisely.
"Commit to your choices," we've often heard in class or rehearsal. This simple exercise asks you to make specific choices: where does the string start? what is its angle? where does the imagination show me its destination? Once the angle is determined by the original impulse of the angle, the body playfully commits to this demand of the imagination.
Then we look at the room full of strings, and in a similar manner go through some webs of strings, over some, under others. Again the body finds itself in interesting shapes merely from a specific imaginative prompt.
Plasticity Variation Two involves moulding walls of clay of various heights and scooping out mouseholes, windows and thin doors, then going through them... as well as the others made by our fellow actors.
Plasticity Variation Three is based on the commedia "bowl of soup" lazzo where the actor carrying a bowl of soup goes into different positions without spilling the soup.
Each of these is a way to expand the vocabulary of the body beyond its normal daily comfort zone. Employing the imagination and allowing it to make demands on the body allows us to play into a more expansive body.
Work with the Director's Lab began our exploration of material about the 17th century Venetian Jewish poet Sarra Coppia Sulam. Peter's work with the actors explored the dynamics of communicating only by letters. How do we express this, how do we show this? Kelley's work was about the boldness of Sarra's individuality and the restraints or conditions that evoke bold action from individuals.
Leave comments or fill in the blanks for me :)
George
Moving into the Physical training we focused on how engaging the imagination can create an inner life that can coax the body into surpassing what it perceives as its own comfort zone.
Our plasticity training comes out of working with energy flows. Having imagined the energy flows in the blue wave, red wave, both waves together and the Big X, we asked the actors to take ALL the energy they just accessed and localize it between the thumb and first finger. The image I like is a little supernova of energy shining between your closed circuit of the thumb and first finger. Then we anchor this point by imagining a laser going above and below; a single vertical line. From there, we add four more lasers extending to the four compass points, imaginatively creating six chords of energy that anchor this point. Keeping the fingers closed on the point, we ask the actors to keep the point where it is, and let the body/arm adjust to this as we take one step toward the point and one step away, keeping the finger circuit as the fixed point and letting the body move to adjust to it. Then two steps back and forth from the fixed point, then three. Choosing a new point each time and anchoring it in the imagination in the same way, the actor then examines the point from all angles and perspectives... allowing the body to bend, stretch, move, in order to bring our eyes around the fixed point. This is the beginning of "tricking the lazy body" into taking shapes that are demanded by the imagination and getting the body to discover new configurations while conforming to an imagined prompt.
This same principle is involved with the string exercise:
Closing the fingers around the supernova and sending a laser up and down, the actor imagines inclining this string of energy to an angle (first, an angle of about 45 degrees, but this is expanded to include other angles later in the exercise) Then following this "string" of energy, the actor traces the trajectory of the string to the ground, allowing the body to conform to the demands of the exercise, and noticing when the body wants to be "lazy:" taking shortcuts, bending to a quicker endpoint, stopping before reaching the destination.
Then we begin a process of following more strings of different angles and configurations, going from the point as an origin, to the end of its trajectory, obeying the imagination to its end and guiding the body to follow it precisely.
"Commit to your choices," we've often heard in class or rehearsal. This simple exercise asks you to make specific choices: where does the string start? what is its angle? where does the imagination show me its destination? Once the angle is determined by the original impulse of the angle, the body playfully commits to this demand of the imagination.
Then we look at the room full of strings, and in a similar manner go through some webs of strings, over some, under others. Again the body finds itself in interesting shapes merely from a specific imaginative prompt.
Plasticity Variation Two involves moulding walls of clay of various heights and scooping out mouseholes, windows and thin doors, then going through them... as well as the others made by our fellow actors.
Plasticity Variation Three is based on the commedia "bowl of soup" lazzo where the actor carrying a bowl of soup goes into different positions without spilling the soup.
Each of these is a way to expand the vocabulary of the body beyond its normal daily comfort zone. Employing the imagination and allowing it to make demands on the body allows us to play into a more expansive body.
Work with the Director's Lab began our exploration of material about the 17th century Venetian Jewish poet Sarra Coppia Sulam. Peter's work with the actors explored the dynamics of communicating only by letters. How do we express this, how do we show this? Kelley's work was about the boldness of Sarra's individuality and the restraints or conditions that evoke bold action from individuals.
Leave comments or fill in the blanks for me :)
George
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!
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!
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Our First Company Meeting January 20, 2015
Magis work falls into
different modes over the course of an average year. As we welcome new company members, we start with
our “back to basics” mode. It helps build
a common vocabulary and offers a chance for the more seasoned performer to go
deeper into some of the fundamental understandings.
From Margi:
“Last evening's session
was the introduction to the Alexander work that is the base line for the
movement and voice work coming soon.
I would invite the company
to remember and practice the "lie down" or constructive rest
position, to ask their bodies what it is like "not to push" forward,
to let their backs rest and expand. And to be curious about how we balance, pour
weight and receive support from the core of our bodies: the spine! Finally: Who
has your back?”
Margi also handed out a diagram
of the spine, reminding us that the energy we work with flows down the front of
the spine, the smooth weight bearing portion of it, rather than on the boney
spurs on the back.
The physical training
focused on the first of out basic dynamics: opening up energy flows.
We introduced the concepts
of Gravity, Momentum, and Suspension.
Much of what happens in a body that is balancing happens because of how
we harness gravity and put it into momentum, conscious of the suspension points
where energy shifts direction, flow and character.
We examined:
the blue wave- the energy
that comes up from the earth through the body and out the head
the red wave- the energy
that comes from the cosmos down through the head and pours through the body to
the feet
the big X- accumulating
energy in a squat. Containing it in a tuck, and Radiating through the shape of
the big X.
The energy flow through
each succession of actions ought to be thought of as one stream that flows from
one to the other.
This will form the foundation for the physical work as we add on.
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