Beautiful Violence

Starting to see the beautiful violence apparent in the form of Greek Tragedy. Fire. Pain. Hate. Fear. Death.

Movement: Did a cool exercise called 'Master & Slave' which involved one person walking (taking the game as Master) and then pointing to where the slave has to walk. Played with rhythms, pace, how high or low you point, whether you look at your slave or not etc. Great for major vs. minor, fixed point, and learning about character choices: i.e. if you point and then drop your hands it makes you come across quite blasé, or if you violently point in a rush it comes across as if you want to appear more powerful than you really are.

Improvisation: I can see after the end of the class that the voice needs to come from deep within - a kind of guttural sound - and shouting is okay. I held back a bit when I went (which was first) but can totally go there. The eyes need to be really engaged (pleasure helps), fixed point is really important, and the body needs to be engaged as well - with a strong base!

Neutral Mask Exercises:

• Grow as a tree - find your roots. Those that when pushed about didn't fall over, were 'selected'.
• The same as before - but the mask is removed once the tree is tall and you have to speak text as if the words are coming from the ground up the roots.
• Stand at the back of the room and walk forward saying a word of text every step. Two students hold down your feet to make the walking a real physical struggle.

Give: "You don't give enough. You keep it to yourself."

Don't worry about being stylistically correct - life is more important: "We don't see the style of something. Good style is less life...Good life - it's beautiful."