07/10/2011 Stan Theory

We began the lesson today with the warm up game 'Mafia' to help our focus. We then did an exercise where we walked round the room at different paces before being told to immediately imagine our selves in a situation, for example, at a funeral or at the stock market. I found it most easiest to put self in the situations that I had some previous experience of. I had been to a funeral before and knew how I would react and how everybody else would, but the stock market is something I had very little knowledge of, which made it difficult for me to believe I was there. We were then told that that was an exercise to help us understand about pacing in a scene. We were then told to imagine that we were anxiously waiting for a phone call from somebody we like. I tried to show signs of anxiety by breathing irregularly and fiddling with my clothes. I behaved similarly in a later scenario where we were late for a meeting and the train had been delayed. I think I was more convincingly anxious in this situation as I had experienced this many times and was genuinely beginning to feel anxious. In the group, we then discussed how we did in the task. Our tutor then explained about Inner Tempo Rhythms and Outer Tempo Rhythms, explaining that the only time they don't match is when someone is being deceptive. In pairs, we did a short performance where one of us was an interviewer and the other was an interviewee. The aim was for the actor playing the interviewee to feel nervous but to try and play confident. As I was the interviewer in this task, I did not have the chance to portray this till later where we were told to swap round. I then took the role of someone who had feelings for the other person, lying to them that their boyfriend had been cheating on them. I found it difficult at first but I eventually convinced myself that I had feelings for my partner. I then found it easy to improvise, giving the impression to an audience that I was lying.