Chicago- Rehearsal Call Thursday, April 2 ( 5-7 pm)

We will just start from the top, and see how far we get in the first hour that we have everyone.  The second hour we will work on fight choreography  ( old man/young man scene)

Called:
Old Man
Young Man
Stranger
Policeman

* We will add in Elena and Quinland to the chorus scenes at a later rehearsal.  

Tonight we worked on creating our psychological gesture, as well as learning where our characters hold their tensions to better create their physicality.  A few of you asked me to write up a little explanation of what I did tonight:

First I asked you to move around the space as you, the actor, move.  Then, I asked you to notice where you were feeling tension in your body. I slowly asked you to exaggerate that tension until we finally exaggerated to the point of creating a ridiculous cartoon character of yourself.  I then asked you to take note of how you were feeling inside based off the physicality that you created from the tension and asked you to think of a character that you could create based off that.  Then I asked you to introduce yourself to another character in the room.  I then had you shake that off, and walk around as yourself again.  Then, I asked you to find someone in the ensemble to watch ( without letting them become aware of the fact that you were imitating them) and I asked you to slowly imitate their walk. Then, I asked you to exaggerate the part of the body that they held tension until you had built a cartoon version of them.  Again, I asked you to take note of how that made you feel and to think of a character based off how you were feeling .  Then, I asked you to introduce that character to other characters in the ensemble.  I then asked you to shake that off, and move around the room as yourselves again.  I then asked you to, knowing what you knew about your character, find an area of your body that your character would hold tension.  If you didn't know, I asked you to make a choice.  Then, again, I asked you to exaggerate that tension until you had created a cartoon version of your character.   I asked you to take note of how you were feeling emotionally and physically, and then I asked you to say one of your character's lines.  We then worked on Michael Chekhov's technique: a psychological gesture, which is a movement that expresses the psychology, the state of mind of the character, a symbolic representation of the character's feelings.  I told you that this gesture is seldom ever performed on stage, but is a metaphor for your character's psychology and can help you get into character by creating an image in your mind to hold onto during your scene.

Please hold on to everything that you created tonight, it was all very compelling to watch.   I want you to continue to work on your character's physicality.

 I also asked you to create a character biography for your character- answering any questions that you can think of that will help you develop your character, making choices about your character's past, etc.  These are choices that you will make, but that no one else needs to know.  It will just help steer you in a particular direction.   Also, create a name for your character, if you dont have one :)

We made some choices about the setting:  we decided that we dont see this as taking place in a particular location or time even, but rather that this is a timeless story as history always repeats itself. We did talk about having this show take place now, but that the clothing would be old, plain, and very conservative.  The characters are just wearing whatever they could get their hands on, and could come from various time periods/locations in the world.

Lauren and Olivia agreed to learn and record the Duncan Sisters song.

We talked about a LOT more, but that is all I am going to re-cap.  Thank you all for your hard work tonight!!

Chelsie