Exercises

We did two exercises in today's lesson slimy frog and 7 states of tension.

Slimy frog
 This exercise was repeating the word 5 times but slowly getting bigger and exploring more with the world. This exercise helped us learn how to use our body to the sound of the word and allowed us to look stupid and explore the sounds of the words in an environment that gave us the freedom to experiment.

The 7 levels of tension

These are the seven levels of tension and during this exercise we were able to explore different ways of showing the level of tension and we allowed our bodies to move by themselves and not think about it. This exercise was created by Jacques Lecoq who worked a lot on physical movement and mime and has his own school in Paris.


































For both of these exercises we noted down some skills we needed to do them well:

• It doesn't matter what you look like, experiment and live in the moment
• Commit to discovery, change your movements to gain energy, don't repeat
• Don't think or over think you should feel and respond
• Allow the sound and the body to be one, you should experiment and remember the word doesn't have to sound like a word
• Give each other the freedom to experiment and be supportive to allow them to do this
• No critical self awareness - accept what you are doing
• Commitment - give energy
• If your doing level one do level one, if your doing level 5 do level 5, give the right state of tension and play with that level
• Modulate voice - change placement (nose, throat, pitch)
• Improvise - don't rehearse otherwise not in the moment and you are repeating which is boring because it has already happened before

Both of these exercises gets the actors to understand the state of tension and helps them use their voice and body as one. Doesn't have to be used obviously in the performance but it can be used if it is subtle.