The Seagull: Lesson 4

Warm up: Exercise 7

Today we were given the layout of our performance space, and we learnt that the given space was very large, meaning we had to adapt our pieces to prevent energy being sucked out by the empty space. In order to combat this, our tutor informed us that "every scene is a chase scene", meaning that our objective as intelligent performers was not only to take into account our proxemics in terms of the other actors but to make full use of the space we had been given. This means that a lot of the action is played separately from one another, living in the space instead of using our partner as the only given circumstance. This makes the performance far more vibrant, doing away with the temptation of playing the scene purely in centre stage and instead jumping from area to area, sparking interest in objects and scenery and incorporating it into our playfulness. If the piece is played small in a large space, the energy is drained by the contrast between the living and inanimate.
We spent the second half of the lesson continuing rehearsals, in which I started to play with the energy in my scene; using both pace and power in my voice and in my physicality I increased the energy in my scene dramatically, until it was far over what it should be, in order to experiment how energy can increase the tension and interest of a scene. I found that the naturalistic boundary for this energy was far higher than I had originally gauged it, meaning I had been playing the scene with not enough energy. In order to improve this, I used the breath work we had done in the warm up to add power to my words, as well as opening up my physicality using the work we did on engaging the core. This allowed me to deliver the lines with more power and pace while still portraying the truth behind them, increasing the energy without dampening the meaning.