Saturday, October 22, 2016

Experiences So Far and Ensemble Experiences

    I am always amazed at how each show that I am in at STC is different from each of the previous shows. Every show, I learn something new that I have never learned before. This show, we have been focusing a lot about circumstances and how we can apply circumstances to our acting. We have also been focusing on some other very cool things that I am excited to share with all of you!

    The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has been a fascinating play to work on so far! I can already tell that with all of the work that the actors and actresses are putting in that this is going to be a great show. Compliments aside, this show has also served as a portal for many new members to the Story Theater Company community and it has been such an honor to work with all of the new members! I love watching all of the newcomers act, I learn so much from seeing fresh new faces at Story Theater Company! So many things have been going on during rehearsals and I have learned so many new things through the course of this production.

On our read through day, we continued a read through style that we did for some of our more recent productions. When we were in scene, the actors and actresses would go up on the stage and work together to create a scene that went along with the lines that they were reading. This read through style is better than just reading lines for many reasons. One reason is that it gives actors and actresses a chance to lay out a scene’s framework and get ideas out at the beginning of the rehearsal process rather than waiting until the middle of some random day to finally say “Hey, I’ve been thinking...” It is also a great way to build the start of different relationships with different characters. When we just read from a page, it doesn’t build anything other than some line memorization or some honesty practice. When we go out and perform a scene, it builds more things than just honesty and line memorization. The read through was great and gave us a chance to really utilize this new type of read through that we have created and critiqued over a big window of time.

    So far, there have been so many different cool aspects that we have used during the rehearsal process. One of my favorites is the stage combat. Almost every rehearsal we have a specific amount of time allotted for working on our battles during the end of the show. Stage combat hasn’t just taught us how to safely fight onstage honestly, but it has taught us about trust and cues as well. The most important aspect of stage combat is trust. If you don’t trust your partner, you will get nowhere in making a successful stage fight. It’s as simple as that. Trust is the foundation on which stage combat is built upon. Cues are another important part of stage combat. You need to make sure to make your cues big when you are fighting. When they aren’t as big as they should be, the fighting can be unclear and unconstant (and unsafe!). We can apply both of these things into normal acting. It’s surprisingly simple and concise. You have to trust your fellow actors and actresses onstage and offstage and you need to pay attention to cueing and how you cue other people. It’s that simple and that’s why stage combat is a great way to work on trust and cues.

We have worked tremendously on our circumstances for this show. On Wednesday our director told us to discover another circumstance for our character. At first I was a little puzzled. As an ensemble member, I already have so many circumstances for my character, so why do I have to think of more circumstances? Then I remembered somebody saying that day that since Narnia is a fictional world, the circumstances are more extreme due to all of the different things that can take place in a fictional world. Some of my circumstances are that it has been winter for hundreds of years with no Christmas because the witch is in power, the witch’s spies are always watching every move and every decision I make, and the Pevensie children are here to fulfill the prophecy that can save us from the endless reign of the White Witch. Because those circumstances could never be true in the real world, people usually don’t take them as seriously as they need to be. When we acknowledge that these circumstances are more extreme in a fictional world due to absence from the real world, we are able to understand why they are important and apply them better to our story.

Now it’s on to finally discovering a new circumstance. Most people think about the mental circumstances that different characters have, but I feel like some of the overlooked physical circumstances need to be acknowledged as well. As a part of the ensemble, my character has probably been through a lot of battles with the witches spies already. This makes me tired, hungry, thirsty, and physically wounded. I feel that it has been a while since we have been in a battle, but this doesn’t mean that all of our wounds have been treated or all of our needs have been filled.

Something related to physical circumstances are body centers. I remember that my director Kivan really liked to talk about body centers in some past shows that I was in, but lately we haven’t really been talking about them too much. We have talked about them here and there and I’m pretty sure that everyone takes them into consideration, but these relate to our physical circumstances more than most people think. Body centers are points on your body where your character leads in walking and in basic movement. Because Aslan’s army has been through countless battles, our body centers could be towards our head or shoulders to make it seem like we are tired and weary. Because we are proud of our work as soldiers, our body centers could be towards our chest or stomach. We also have to take into consideration our characters physical appearance and mental state while choosing our body centers. Our body centers can also change throughout the story because of our character’s physical and mental state as I mentioned before.

Thinking about all of these things has given me a whole different perspective on how circumstances are handled, how they are applied, and how physical circumstances can be applied to body centers and other aspects. When any theater company takes these aspects of theater into consideration, they can turn their shows from good to great!
Now I should probably stop writing before this blog post takes up another page! If you have read this far you must be very committed. I admire you for reading my long long post.

Ryan Hinderaker
(Battle Boar)

1 comment:

  1. Thank you, Ryan, for a great blog post! We have been discovering so much. Your comment about body centers is something we have neglected in this play, so I will definitely try to apply it. Thanks again!

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