Single - Applying Acting Styles - Blog 28 - 16/12/16

As this is our final lesson before our performance date, we decided to focus on our Advice For The Young At Heart scene as this needs a lot more work than People Places and Things. Rob, Hope and I decided that we should just runthrough the entire scene and pick out what we need to fix. Of course with Rob's injury, we couldn't risk choreographing stage combat in case Rob were to actually get hurt during rehearsals or the actual performance so we came up with a method to show the fight scene but remaining very Brecht:

• We'd perform the dialogue before the fight and I would lunge towards Rob. He would turn and grab me by my throat just in time.
• We would then have a blackout and by the time the lights turn back on (about 2 seconds max) I would be lying on my back on the floor and Rob would be on top of me holding me down. Hope would be to the side of us and the dialogue would continue.

This method not only ensures Rob and I don't get hurt through error, but it reinforces our focus on Epic Theatre.

These are the notes we covered on our runthrough:

• For the first section, Rob needs to be more sure on his lines but besides this the beginning section between Rob and I has a lot of energy and expresses the relationship between the pair.
• The section between Hope and I went very well, probably the best it's ever gone but we still need to work on our movement a bit more, ensuring we still show a troubled relationship but also keeping in mind how Brecht wouldn't want the audience to become attached to our characters.
• With the second section between Rob and I, we really need to make sure we know what order each talking point is in as we got all of our lines right but we jumped around the script a bit. Besides this, we performed this scene very well. The fight section was also very believable too and I reckon the audience will be very chilled the way it's been done.