For my character Thomas Clarke’s delusion, I was aspiring to better myself; and so within my delusion I became an astronaut reaching for the stars. We as a company are very focused on contemporary means of performance and wanted to explore as many ways as possible to depict each character’s originality within each delusion. Therefore for my delusion we decided upon showing this through physical theatre.
I have done a small amount of physical theatre, however it was not my forte, luckily several members of the company took part in the module last semester and where a great help in preparing me for such a physical and challenging scene. In preparation for this we watched a lot of tutorial videos by Frantic Assembly, in their workshops for Ignition and clips of their performance Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Time (2012).
We workshopped a lot of these lifts and moves however the scene was still struggling to reach its full potential. However on the 12th May we had our lecturer Diane Dubois come to watch the scene along with Téo Ghil, a lecturer who specialises in physical theatre. Thankfully he was able to give a lot of advice and guidance in how to progress the space walk by slowing everything right down and having a stronger focus on finding my centre and remembering to breathe, allowing for the space walk to appear weightless in anti-gravity.
This took a long time to perfect, in allowing each step to ripple through the rest of my body and carry me forwards, and so I had to regularly do stretches and exercises to build up my core strength and flexibility.
I would do these exercises before and during every rehearsal leading up to the performance and variations of this on days in between to ensure my control and balance over these movements conveyed the weightlessness and elegance needed within the scene.
There was also falls and lifts used within this sequence, one in particular that stuck out for me was the trust fall onto Dwain’s feet. This again took a lot of refinement and luckily we both have a strong relationship where we will push and challenge each other to do better. Therefore by the performance the fall to me seemed to last much longer, in knowing Dwain would catch me, and also in his precision and control that we had perfected in pushing me back up to my feet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7U2g0QKfgA&feature=youtu.be
Bickerdike, E. (2017) Sam and Holly’s fall. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7U2g0QKfgA&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 29 May 2017].
Lomas, H. (2017) exercises 1. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lK9TLXP2RE&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 27 May 2017].
Lomas, H. (2017) exercises 2. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asAXayfMXyo&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 27 May 2017].
Lomas, H. (2017) space man walk. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TqohtIbwaU&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 28 May 2017]
National Theatre. (2015) Frantic Assembly Masterclass: Learning to Fly. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4mXhW7TXQ8 [Accessed 24 May 2017].