Thursday the 20th september

Today we worked with a lady called Blandine Martin ; using her art work for the inspiration and use of improvisation within our acting.  We worked with the whole acting course ranging from year one  level 2 to year two level 3. It was very interesting and fun to work with people other than just our class because as me and my group have now known each other for just under three weeks we are comfortable working with each other and now know everybody's strengths and weaknesses; yet when working with people you have never met before was quite challenging at times because you don't know their strengths and aren't as comfortable working with a stranger. Also, the art of improvisation is the spontaneity of it all. You can let your imagination run wild with improvisation but the hardest thing is that you aren't meant to discuss with the other actors before you begin to act on stage.

One exercise we did was called "It's not a book". There were several objects on the stage and you as an actor had to use the suspension of  disbelief , a Brecht technique for making the audience believe in the unbelievable,  to pretend the object was something else than what it actually was. For example , Kieran from my group pretended the marker pen was a dog and the hula-hoop was a dog agility ring. It was quite convincing.

some members of the group got called out to do specific improvisations by the artist and Rob. One most notably was Maya and Ben Taylor's pretend dispute on what happened to Maya's novel. They improvised with the chest and shredded pieces of paper. Ben Taylor memorably tried to convince Maya her novel was shredded by the dog, which Maya pointed out didn't even exist, which added a comical effect that worked really nice.
Another example which sort of tugged at our heart strings was when Pedro improvised using the box. His scenario was that the box was in fact his Granddad's Jack-in-the-box. The Granddad had supposedly passed, so he acted in a hysterics of crying.  It was a well acted out scene , and was especially good because he had only thought about it on the spot.

We then did a series of silent-film acting. In which we improvised only using our actions and facial expressions only to tell the story. When I was on stage me and five other actors had to hold a sheet.This Improvisation exercise. was called "granny's footsteps" in which we had to sneak up on the other actor and put the sheet over her. This was very challenging because a few of the audience members got confused with what message was trying to be conveyed. 

It was a slight interesting but challenging experience. To be able to perform in front of strangers and especially if it hasn't been rehearsed can be quite daunting when on the stage especially if the actor is on their own. Some improvisations in the silent-movie exercises were very confusing and unclear of what we actually doing because we were given the freedom of our own imaginations but sometimes we weren't told what to do and just use our own creativity.

The link below leads you to Blandine Martin's artwork.

https://www.blandinemartin.com/