I felt myself trying to walk around the room in "interesting ways" instead of really letting my chest lead me. She then told us to make up a sound and gesture to go with the way we were walking. I had noticed that when I followed my chest, my posture was more upright, my head was looking forward, etc. so I began to feel this very pompous air about me. My gesture was me raising my eyebrow and essentially checking someone out, but not in a sexual way, more in a judgemental way. My sound was me laughing pompously, you know...one of those "HA!" types of laughs. We continued to walk around the room, expanding on our character we had essentially created from our chests. My character became Cynthia, the leather messenger bagw with the MacAir carrying, skirt and jacket with stiletto-heel wearing, Wall Street Bitch. I noticed what everyone else in the room was doing with their characters and began to think of how much better my character was than theirs. Rosalie would stop us occasionally to have "conversations" with the other characters in the room, using our sound and gesture. And as I would converse with people in the room, I honestly began to judge them and started feeling better about myself.
After a while we would finally begin to shake-off our characters, begin to unwind, etc. and get back to our neutral selves. We did this exercise twice more, leading with our belly/hip and our heads, respectively.
My second character began as a very self-conscious person, walking slightly turned-out and slowly, kind of just dragging themselves around. As we continued to walk around, I began to lose that self-conscious character and began feeling delight almost. It was an odd path I was taking, but I went with it, just to see what would happen...I wound up with Jessica the "I just had mind-blowing sex with a guy that I truly love and I know he loves me back!" young woman who was so elated and completely enamored that I was walking around basically on Cloud 9. My gesture was fluffing up my hair and reaching my arms up towards the ceiling and my sound was a "mmmm...him!" (I didn't feel right naming the guy...lol!)
My third character was a bit harder to come up with. I felt extremely awkward and anxious about walking with my head leading the way. I wound up with this character (I never got around to naming her) who was jittery and jumpy and was at wit's end. My gesture was me sort of grabbing my head, clenching my fists and throwing them down towards my side and my sound was "Just stop!" It felt odd...obviously I've been to a point in my life where all I've wanted to do (or have done) was to do that exact motion and sound, but this character's motivation was coming from a different place, and I still can't put my finger on where.
I know this was probably extremely in-depth about a silly little acting exercise, but what I got out of it was something really honest and exciting! I've been acting basically my entire life, and I've been emotionally attached to characters before, but usually it's when I'm working on a show or doing a monologue and I've been rehearsing and working with this character for weeks at a time. But today, I made up THREE different characters within a 45-min or less exercise and felt that same intense connection, if not, I felt it moreso today than ever before!! I haven't really explained it to myself yet...but I wanted to write it all down so I can hopefully look back on it later and say "Oh yeah!! Now I know why that worked!!" Like I said, it was a very honest connection...maybe it was because I literally bore these characters myself, maybe it was the environment I was in, maybe it was the muffin I ate for breakfast, but whatever it was...I want to be able to find that connection and be able to recall it so I can use it again!!
The moral of the story...I love my acting class!!
<3
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