Production Project Blog

Rudolph Laban was born in 1879 - 1958. He was a choreographer and he developed a system on analyzing movement using different movements.
In lesson we did a movement session based on the Laban technique where we had to move around the room in a certain way... This was achieved by having four different factors: Space, Weight, Time, and Flow. These are each affected by different elements which either fight against or flow with. The different effort elements that go against are: Direct, Strong, Sudden, and Bound. And the effort elements that flow are: Flexible, Light, Sustained, and Free.
We had to combine each factor with different elements each time to see how this changes our movement and perhaps develops our physicality.
Personally this strongly helped me with my physicality for 'Bluebottle', as I could explore different ways to move in an extremely contrasting way 

Production Project Blog

Having a class debate on the topics of our play brought several different opinions across. 

We were all debating on whether 'Melchior' was a 'rapist'.

However it is important to remember that in terms of the play, 'Melchior' is only a child and he himself doesn't even know the consequences of his actions. Therefore, I personally believe that it's a bit too far to label that character as a 'rapist'.

When thinking about self-fulfilling prophecies for your own character and others, it is vital to be able to immerse yourself in that play and to become that character (or your own character) so that you wouldn't judge the themes of the play on your own understanding and opinions but in the mind of your character.
Furthermore, I think that it's slightly unrealistic to straight away label a character for one thing, as it doesn't actually say in the book that 'Melchior rapes Wendla', although after that occurrence 'Wendla' is pregnant. Adding to the fact, it would be biased to blame the whole situation on just 'Melchior'.
Overall, it is important to share our thoughts on the play, which is why I believe that having this debate was great for our class, as it allowed us to all understand each others opinions on scenes that happen within the play, and how to come to terms with understanding it as a whole. 

Production Project Blog

In order to make changes to my characters choices (Bluebottle), with the help of the other teachers within the okay, I came to the final decision of making strong physical choices to make the character seem more abstract and weirder.
Because each of the teachers name are weirdly related to either a creature or an animal, as a collective we came to the conclusion that our actions should have some sort of relation.
For example, 'Hammerhead', is also the name of a species of Shark, therefore that character will have sharp and sudden movements, and also be moving her head to the side every so often, as if being hammered.
My characters name is 'Bluebottle' which is also the name of a type of fly. In relation to the name, I imagine that there are several flies buzzing around me. 
At first I made the choice to add buzzing sounds to 'S' sounds during my lines, however it sounded quite similar to 'Logospasm', another teacher within the scene.
Therefore, we chose to make the decision to have the buzzing flies around me to affect my speech. Each time I go to talk, a flu causes me to halt mid-sentence.
I think that making these distinctive character choices is good for my character because I also play the doctor, it is important that both of those characters are noticeably different from each other so it isn't confusing for the audience.
The thing that I and the other teachers need to now focus and improve on is making a strong vocal choice for my character, otherwise it would seem as if we've pushed these great physical choices to an extreme however, our voices aren't pushed to our limit. Once we've figured out these choices our vocal and physical choices will relate to the abstractness of our characters.