Skills Used In Unit One

Thursday 4th February

Skills Used in Unit One

In this lesson, myself, Ruby and Max rehearsed our scene, Unit 1 for the first time. 

I play Hippolyta and Ruby plays Theseus, my soon to be wife. The scene depicts when Theseus and Hippolyta see their wedding room for the first time. The atmosphere is excitable. Philostrate (Max) is also in the room organising for the wedding the next day and then exits, leaving an intimate atmosphere for Theseus and Hippolyta.

We used a variety of skills to accomplish this scene and offer ourselves as actors:

• To let objectives flow off each other: for example, my objective of 'to reassure' came very quickly and flowed off Ruby's objective, 'to excite'.
• To use vowels to show emotion: (See Vowels and Consonants post). During this lesson, I understood further that vowels carry emotion. They are open and wide. Therefore, exaggerating vowels in Shakespeare is very important. For example, the French language is seen as a romantic language because it has a large amount of vowels, which open up the word. However, German is seen as a more straight and less romantic and flowing language because it doesn't have as many vowels. Especially because this scene is romantic and emotional, that further enforces why we should exaggerate vowels.  Vowels carry the emotion, consonants carry information.
• To practise the scene different ways each time: during this rehearsal, we practised the scene many times, however each time we used different tactics and choices to get to our objective. This helps us practise the idea of vulnerability and making bold choices each time to offer ourselves as actors. (See how to offer yourself as an actor post)