This is my online diary that describes my participation in the Critical Links Theatre project, supported by the Educational Theatre Association and the Arts Education Partnership.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Words and Actions and Warmups

Recently I've had occasion to observe some other folks warming up before rehearsals near and far. One thing I've noticed is a form of working in a circle that seems to be popular in college theatre. Student teachers have been using the game Zip Zap Zop for a number of years. It's the kind of game that requires strict attention and focus in order to keep the flow running smoothly. According to Wikipedia, it is folkloric in origin. If you know the original source for this game, I'd love to hear it.

Other similar games include passing words and/or actions along the circle in two different directions so that at certain points words and actions cross each other and give one person a very difficult task to handle them at the same time. My current student teacher has been working with our advanced acting class on this one and they are finding it quite the challenge.

Observing a rehearsal in NYC last week, I saw another form of this circle work in which one person ducks while the people on either side clap hands over the top of the ducking person's head. Then the clapper to the right must duck and the clapping is repeated from the person's on either side -- around and around it goes. The goal is to be precise enough to achieve unity in the actions and sounds.

The group I watched playing this game was comprised of high school students and they were very attentive. The focus was intense. It was quite clear that the few fluffs were not amusing or acceptable to the participants. In so many of these games, a miss is cause for merriment rather than renewed focus. I mus say, this group of teenagers were right on the mark with their warm-up.

They also did a neat sound and action vocal warm-up. They tossed invisible baseballs using a "huh" sound to power their actions. After a number of baseball tosses, they moved on to tossing shot-puts which required a stepped up physical action and deeper in the belly "huh" sound. Definitely an exercise worthy of incorporating into a warm-up.

For articulation, a group leader gave them ever-increasing-in-length tongue twisters. As they were about to run through a Shakespeare play, they definitely needed to wake up the articulators. I think they might try adding some actions to the tongue twisters as well. Perhaps walking their character and using the rhythms of the tongue twisters to propel themselves through the space.

What was missing from this warm up was just that -- actors moving in the space. Lots of the circle stuff which is very good for building focus and ensemble energy, yet most plays are not acted around the perimeter of a circle.

"Working the space" is an exercise that can be adapted endlessly for any particular needs. The first task of the actors is to keep the space balanced at all times. That means there are no gaps and no crowds, always bodies moving at approximate equidistant to each other. "Balance the space" is the coaching term that should always prompt actors to be mindful of their actions within the context of the group and the space itself.

Once the group is achieving balance, then coaching can take on the "how" of the bodies moving within the space. Oppositions of qualities are very useful: Thick/Thin; Tall/Short; Sharp/Smooth; Rigid/Loose; Angular/Curved; Heavy/Light and so on. One can spend an entire lesson on taking qualities and working them using a numeric scale. For example 1 being Most Heavy , 5 being Neither Heavy or Light, and 10 being Lightest. It is in this exercise that actors begin to work on nuances brought about by different levels of energy. One can point out the forms of theatre that practically demand extreme actions (commedia, circus) and those that work at more subtle levels (film acting).

There are many other qualities one can explore in the balancing of the space exercise. Younger actors quite enjoy animal qualities. You don't want them to literally act out an elephant, let's say, but rather find the qualities of elephant movement within their actions: heavy, majestic, trunk to tail follow the leader, swaying torso and head etc.

For more work like this, check out this recent book on Grotowski by Akron-based theatre artists James Slowiak and Jairo Cuesta of The New World Performance Lab. The Routledge series of great acting teachers and their theories features a biographical/ theory analysis in the first half and instructional techniques in the second half. Great stuff!