January 21, 2017

Acting sessions - Bengaluru SHG - 21/01/2017

Attendees:
Mansi
Bharat
Pramod
Nishil
Rajkumar
Animesh

The session started 8:15 AM with a bit of discussing objectives and expectations from this workshop. Most of them had communication, confidence as a key expectation of this workshop. Communication and confidence will be dealt with but gradually, it will start to take shape. It cannot happen in a day or two. We also discussed timing and agreed to keep timing as is and also stressing on the punctuality. So with all such discussions, we started our first class.

1) The first point was "What is Acting"? Everyone gave their views. I quoted these lines from Stanford Meisner - "Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances".

2) To demonstrate the definition practically, we all did an exercise. Everyone was asked to walk from one end of the hut to another end.

3) The walk needed to have a purpose, for eg. crossing the road or meeting someone etc. Everyone demonstrated their walk and added a purpose, the reason why they walk end to end. Mansi crossed the road, Bharat - as a soldier walked one end to another hiding from the enemy, Nishil too did something interesting and engaging, Rajkumar opened the door for someone, Pramod  walked to meet his date for the first time,

4) After this to demonstrate a kind of imaginary circumstance, all the actors were sent to the stage and asked to search for an imaginary key and imagine the space as a house. While the search was on, an imaginary knock was introduced to them and they need to open the door and start imagining what's going on. This led them to imagine and come up with a circumstance that can be played with. The task was executed quite well.

5) We spoke about "Observation" as a very important tool for actors. Everyone was asked to observe someone and play that person the next weekend meeting.

Tomorrow we meet again and go little deep into purpose, circumstance and also introduce "repetition" exercise.

2 comments:

Satyendra said...

Ani, some years back, we had talked about something like this for pws.. Nothing happened. And then, lo and behold! your (and mine) dreams are coming true now!
Guys and Gals! This is a wonderful opportunity. Therapy makes you sick (yes, believe me)- theater will not only heal you but TRANSFORM you! Make the best use of Animesh's skils and time..

Animesh said...

Thanks Sachin ji. yes, it was indeed long pending. We have started it well and we have had interesting conversations, exercises so far. Some of us are struggling to open up well, we have that social stigma attached to anything that we do or utter from our mouth, "what would others think". Only when this fades away, the real self starts to show and definitely stammering would then have to take a back seat. We are in progress towards that as theatre makes you get out of that mental prison. I am sure to see some good improvements in everyone.