Principles of acting

Thursday 6th February
Adding movement and stage blocking to our Agamemnon scripts


In the first lesson of adding movement and stage blocking to our script we started with pages 12 and 13. Were all in a triangle formation staring down at our feet and on the first line "this is Argos" Miss day wanted us to look up and say the line all together because we are all narrating parts of the story, so this prepares the audience that this is how the story is going  to be told also its quick and bold which is an effective way on how to start the story. on the line "Agamemnon murdered his own child" The whole of the class turns to Agamemnon and gasps in shock, this really is quite effective because it indicates to the audience what kind of character he is and how they should be feeling. Later on, on page 13 we are still in our triangle formation looking towards the audience, on the line "clawed hate" we reach out then to our sides with both hands at the same time, then on the next line "wings beating they swooped" we swoop down as if we are a bird 'maddened for the prey' we go back to our first positions in a triangle and on the line "they ripped they tore" we reach up and down with our arms across the opposite side of our body as if resembling something being ripped and torn. we again go back to our first positions and on the line "the gods above heard the furore" we look up as if looking at the gods and hold our hands up as if pleading something, we hold this position but then start melting down on the line "and so the house of Atreus swept on to crush the house of Priam" on the word 'crush' we hit the floor so it really gives that melting down effect more of a sound instead of it being silent and boring. After we added these directions to our scripts Miss. Day wanted to go over it again and again to make sure we was all in sync and it was strong and well remembered. This lesson gave an insight to what my character is going to be feeling in this part of the story and just to try different ways of how to show how my character is feeling by going through facial expressions or physicality, I will work on my character and analyse my script to see what I'm meant to be feeling in this first part of the script and how we are going to be setting the scene.