20th September

In today’s session we focused on working with partners and how we can use the other person to create interesting stories through sharing weight and exploring moving as one. I found this really useful as we are working towards solo or duo physical theatre performances and as I am performing in a pair this allowed me to explore and experiment with different interesting ways to work together.

We did various exercises that relied on us being in tune with another person and being connected with them to make the exercise work. One exercise that we did is that we had to walk next to another person and explore how we could connect to one another by simply walking around in time with them and feeling when to stop or turn or start without talking or communicating it, just when we felt the moment. I found this exercise really opened up my awareness to working with another person and it made me think about working as one rather than two separate beings. It also helped me to be able to connect with another person without having to talk about everything but just being able to feel it in our bodies. I think that this is really important when doing physical theatre especially when we are in such a small group. I feel that it allows you to explore more daring and interesting physical movements and pieces, it also creates and builds trust between the two people as you can know that you are connected to them, even if you are not touching or in view of each other. For me personally I think it creates a stronger working bond with the person and this transpires to the performance as there is another layer to the working partnership.

We then developed this walking exercise so that the pair had to be constantly touching with a part of their body and sharing weight with one another. I think that this again develops trust between the pair as you can feel yourself being supported physically and this can transfer to being supported in the performance and as a pair. Furthering this I think that the sharing weight allows you to explore and experiment with physical connecting to another person and what is created out of this and how interesting it can look and what movements it can move into. It also allows you to take the subliminal connection to a physical one so that you can start working with one another to learn to move as one body rather than two connected bodies. We also moved this exercise on further so that we looked at moving at different levels connected and sharing weight to do more complicated and interesting movements. I found that not only was it good to explore yourself but also it was really interesting to watch other pairs moving as one as I felt that it started to tell a story and that a relationship was being created through the sharing of weight and the movement. For example one pair had one of them leaning over the others back while the other one crawled; when I watched this I got the feeling of one person emotional carrying the other one and having to support them through something difficult or having to pick someone up when they were down. I thought that this was a really useful thing to have experienced as it made me start to consider more abstract ways of portraying relationships.

We also did an exercise where as a pair we had to come up with a sequence of movements following the markers of around, through and pass. So we had use going around our partner and through them and pass them to create a small section of physical theatre. However we were also given the title of “Goodbye” and the background of WW1, this allowed our pieces to have some context to them and created a story and relationship between the two actors. I found that this was a really good way to start creating a small section of theatre in a really simple way to show an audience the relationship between characters and the time period that the piece is set in. Different pairs focused on different relationships, for example my partner and I looked at a couple separating, while others looked as friends having to say goodbye and others explored a parental relationship, however they all we able to encompass the emotional state of WW1. The pieces that I thought were really interesting to watch and to draw a story out of were the ones that didn’t simply move from around to through to pass but had other movements within them allowing the audience to get a greater sense of the story that was being told. I also liked ones that explored with the floor and different ways of moving through or around their partner rather than the obvious, conventional ways because I felt it was more engaging to watch and it added a more complex layer to the relationship. However the pieces that I like most and thought worked the best were the slightly more abstract ones as it told a really interesting story not only physically but as an emotional metaphor as well, and it really looked at the different ways to tell a story with your body, which as an audience member was a lot more interesting and fulfilling to watch.