Carly
After our last rehearsal last week, myself and Gemma (Red Threaders) went to the pub and over a cheeky pint of cider, created a plan for the first rehearsal to kickstart the week. After an intense warm up of Hep, Rubber Chicken and a Penguin Race, each person in the group had to lead a one hour session. I was the first to kick it off.
I really enjoy using Ariane Mnouchkine techniques at the beginning of a rehearsal process. So we began with a few simple games to focus. We then moved on to connecting with music. Over a few days, I had created a Spotify playlist called "CELL inspiration". From this, I began to play some of Yann Tiersan's music. The rest of the group began to move around the space, pausing when the music stopped, speeding up and slowing down with the tempo and contrasting sharp movements with smooth. Objects where introduced and the interaction with each other. Soon, short scenes began to develop and I quickly scribbled them all down whilst watching.
After a short break, I then taped together each persons fingers and giving them tasks to perform within the same boundaries as the previous task. I got the idea from Professor Paul Allain who works lectures at the University of Kent. The aim, was for the performers to feel for themselves the restrictions that develop over the loss of control and movement with your body's muscles. As they performed their tasks, things became laboured and slower and I could see the frustration on their faces at times. What I did notice though, was how they quickly found another way of completing their task, it may not be how they naturally or originally would approach it, but they did always find a way.
We moved onto to Molly's session. Here, we focused on what we had started the week before with Gemma, developing the Dr's character. Molly structured our movements, repeating motifs and adding in important pieces of text to create a scene that showed the symptoms of MND and a snapshot of a diagnosis.
Will's session focused on the puppet and his character. We specifically looked at a little habit, where the puppet takes off his glasses to rub his eyes and then drops them and how this can be repeated to show a dengeneration. We also explored the deterioration of speech and voice qualities. Although we don't want to use speech, we are considering the use of breath and small noises. In order to protect our voices and to really understand the anatomical structure of the voice and what happens to it when you have MND, we are going to pose a list of questions to Little Cauliflower's associate artist, Voice Specialist, Ross Anderson-Doherty.
Finally, Matt led his session, here we explored 7 levels of irritation where the puppet is at home, reading his newspaper but is distracted by his fish. With this exploration, Matt wanted to A) look at the domestic situation of our puppet and B) start thinking about the character of our puppet. With Molly on the right arm and Will on the head of the puppet, we developed Matt's excerise into a short scene, which we hope to show Gemma tomorrow.
Overall, today was an exciting one. The Smoking Cauliflowers have started to create some material and we can't wait to start developing it!
After our last rehearsal last week, myself and Gemma (Red Threaders) went to the pub and over a cheeky pint of cider, created a plan for the first rehearsal to kickstart the week. After an intense warm up of Hep, Rubber Chicken and a Penguin Race, each person in the group had to lead a one hour session. I was the first to kick it off.
I really enjoy using Ariane Mnouchkine techniques at the beginning of a rehearsal process. So we began with a few simple games to focus. We then moved on to connecting with music. Over a few days, I had created a Spotify playlist called "CELL inspiration". From this, I began to play some of Yann Tiersan's music. The rest of the group began to move around the space, pausing when the music stopped, speeding up and slowing down with the tempo and contrasting sharp movements with smooth. Objects where introduced and the interaction with each other. Soon, short scenes began to develop and I quickly scribbled them all down whilst watching.
After a short break, I then taped together each persons fingers and giving them tasks to perform within the same boundaries as the previous task. I got the idea from Professor Paul Allain who works lectures at the University of Kent. The aim, was for the performers to feel for themselves the restrictions that develop over the loss of control and movement with your body's muscles. As they performed their tasks, things became laboured and slower and I could see the frustration on their faces at times. What I did notice though, was how they quickly found another way of completing their task, it may not be how they naturally or originally would approach it, but they did always find a way.
We moved onto to Molly's session. Here, we focused on what we had started the week before with Gemma, developing the Dr's character. Molly structured our movements, repeating motifs and adding in important pieces of text to create a scene that showed the symptoms of MND and a snapshot of a diagnosis.
Will's session focused on the puppet and his character. We specifically looked at a little habit, where the puppet takes off his glasses to rub his eyes and then drops them and how this can be repeated to show a dengeneration. We also explored the deterioration of speech and voice qualities. Although we don't want to use speech, we are considering the use of breath and small noises. In order to protect our voices and to really understand the anatomical structure of the voice and what happens to it when you have MND, we are going to pose a list of questions to Little Cauliflower's associate artist, Voice Specialist, Ross Anderson-Doherty.
Finally, Matt led his session, here we explored 7 levels of irritation where the puppet is at home, reading his newspaper but is distracted by his fish. With this exploration, Matt wanted to A) look at the domestic situation of our puppet and B) start thinking about the character of our puppet. With Molly on the right arm and Will on the head of the puppet, we developed Matt's excerise into a short scene, which we hope to show Gemma tomorrow.
Overall, today was an exciting one. The Smoking Cauliflowers have started to create some material and we can't wait to start developing it!
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