Principles of acting

Thursday 16th January
Steven Burchoff's aggamemnom


Today we studied Steven Burchoff and how he uses the full potential of his actors and stage, so to understand how useful and effective this is during performances we tried some starter exercises of teamwork and ensemble room exercises.


Frog pad
The key to this exercise is to have good spacial awareness and good eye contact with others. you have to imagine that you are a bunch of frog pads floating on top of the water and that someone who jumps is the frog, when the frog  jumps you must imagine that you the frog pad are in the water and that that jump is going to cause a ripple effect in the water, as a class at first we were slightly slow in some areas but once we kept working together as a class and figuring out when it was our turn to jump it became successful, because we used good listening skills, teamwork and concentration.


The plate
so as a class we had to imagine we were on a plate that was balanced on a stick I was the person on the opposite side of the whole class and wherever I went they had to be opposite of me other wise the plate would drop. this was a fun exercise and really helps you with special awareness, teamwork, communication skills and reacting well in time.


Make a room out of body's
This exercise was hard we had to create a room with our body's this was challenging because we had to think of small details as well for creating a room and as a class we wasn't working together each clique group was doing there own thing while other cliques was also trying  to figure out. but eventually at the end of each one we came together as a group and really thought about what furniture or objects we could be, this helped up more with realising that if we are going to do things as an ensemble then we need to have good team work skills.


After all the exercises Miss. Day gave us a script called aggamemnom and said that Steven Burchoff's version is really good for staging, special awareness and teamwork as actors. Myself and other class mates have been given the part of the chorus that narrate parts of the story. I'm really interested in Steven's style and the script itself and cant wait to see what its going to look like staged and it being acted out.


Overall this lesson was really good to prepare us for the script and the style of how we are going to do it, which will be as an ensemble.
The skills I learnt in this lesson where team work, listening and concentration, this will help me respond and react to others body language or lines physically. like another group piece we are doing called 'A Tell Tale Heart'.