The next exercise, “The Great Game Of Power” had us thinking for a bit. We were provided with a table, five chairs, and a bottle. As a group, we had to think of a way to distinguish power between the objects, from high status to low status. A good example would be where the five chairs are lying on the floor around the bottle, which is standing on the table. The chairs could represent slaves, as they are lower and the table as a “throne” for the bottle, representing the higher power. This element of drama, power, can be applied to the actors as well as objects and this was the purpose of the exercise. Power and status can be shown in many ways, and this exercise allowed us to explore the different ways, and is used heavily in ‘The Frogs’. This is mainly due to the great differences in status. In ‘The Frogs’, there are characters who have very high power/status, and some that have none at all. This activity helped us to be able to contrast this difference in power and convey it to the audience.
Our next exercise, called “Explorative Walks” involved us walking around the room and allowing us to explore all the possible ways our characters could walk. At first we would walk as we normally would, then we were told to lead with certain parts of our body whilst walking, such as our nose or chest. This helped us to build characterization of our characters. As my character, Charon, being rather proud and confident, I would lead with my chin, or chest. This can be applied to my character as well, as he is rather stuck up.
This brought us to our next walking exercise, “Symbolic Locations”, however in this exercise we were given certain situations to walk in, such as a theme park, a funeral, and even after you have won an election. Our manner of walking changed as the situation changed, and we could explore these manners of walking quite well. Walking in a situation of a theme park differed greatly to walking at a situation of a funeral, especially in terms of pace, posture, and facial expression. In some cases, there would be some interaction with others, such as shaking hands with others to a polite smile, depending on the situation. The purpose of this exercise was for us, as characters, to be able to show contrasts of feelings when applied to different situations. There are many settings in ‘The Frogs’, so different feelings have to be applied to different scenes, depending on the situation.
The last part of session one was our improvisation piece. Each group was given a slip of paper with a simple phrase in it, and they had to include this line somewhere throughout our act. The elements required in this mini performance were staging, voice, comedy and movement. In the case of my group, we got the phrase, “What’s The Big Idea?” As a group we worked as an ensemble to come up with a good idea for the phrase. After some thought we finally agreed on an idea and rehearsed it. We would give constructive criticism to our group members as we acted it out, and sometimes use forum theatre to do this, so I could watch a group member act, and step in and contribute an idea by acting it out myself rather than just telling them my idea. Whilst performing the play, I had to be aware of projecting my voice out to the audience as well as the movements of other characters as well as myself.
In session 2, we focused on script-based character work. Basically, we worked on our characters from ‘The Frogs’ and explored them in different ways. This helped us to discover more about our characters and we could then use what we learnt in our final production.
In the first exercise, called ‘Character Walk’, we would walk around the class, in character. We then had to think of a situation our character could be in. For example, as Charon, I would imagine myself right before an exciting voyage across the sea. I would walk around the class merrily and with lots of energy. This affected the pace of my walk, as I would be walking relatively fast, as well as my facial expression, which would show joy and cheerfulness. This activity can be applied to “The Frogs” as a lot of my character traits and personality can be deduced from the way I walk and facial expression. A character’s feelings would change throughout the play, and this needs to be shown through different facial expressions and styles of walking.
The second exercise of session 2 was ‘Meet And Greet’. This was another walking exercise, but this time we were required to interact with other characters as we walked. We would acknowledge the presence of others in different ways, depending on our character and introduce ourselves to them. As Charon, I would greet others with a salute since I am a ferryman. We would learn a lot about our characters such as how they react to other characters. As characters we would not greet everyone the same way, as it also depends on their status. For example, a slave would greet their master with respect.
The next exercise was rather interesting, as it required us to be fully in character. We had to think, walk, act and interact with others in our character. We were also able to ‘play’ with our characters and exaggerate them more and more. It required us to show contrast in feelings of our characters, such as being from depressed to happy. The concept was that a group of us, as characters, were at a party and we had to mingle with others. A waiter would then serve 3 drinks, one by one at 5-minute intervals. The drink could affect us in different ways. For example, a really miserable character could slowly become happier after each drink. Another example would be that a happy person could become grumpy. The final drink served was an antidote, which brought our character back to its normal state.
Our next exercise, ‘Hot Seating’ also required us to be in character. In this, an audience interviewed 5 of us at a time. It was situated as a press conference, where each of us would introduce ourselves, and then questions were open to the floor. This exercise helped build our knowledge of our character, and we were beginning to actually think as our characters and act as them.
Throughout session 1 and 2, we were able to take notice of crucial aspects, such as physical ones like voice and body controlling to drama elements like power and focus. We were also able to build our knowledge of our characters. Personally, this made me feel more confident about my character, and this will help me in ‘The Frogs’.
Part B
Session 3, the final section of the workshop, involved us working in groups to perform an extract from our Greek play, “The Frogs”. All of the techniques, skills and strategies explored in session 1 and 2 were used in this session.
Everything I learnt from session 1 and 2 proved to be useful in improving my character for the full Greek play performance, as well as the extract for session 3. In session 1, physical warm-ups were crucial in relaxing our voice and body so we would not be tense while performing. The other warm-ups done were also just as important, as they taught us to be aware of most of the drama elements. Session 2 helped us in focusing on our own character from the Greek play, and enabled us to develop a better understanding of this character. We were able to find more about our character through activities such as Hotseating, where we were ‘interviewed’ in character. Not only did we find out more about other characters, but also allowed us to find out more about our own character.
We were split up into groups and given a script extract from our Greek play, “The Frogs”. Being able to speak the lines was relatively easy, however adding the drama elements to it proved to be quite difficult. As a group, we discussed how we could implement several drama elements to our performance. In the end we were able to apply symbolism and several tableaus. We used a blue cloth to symbolize water, and several of us had to freeze while the chorus said their lines. We also had to discuss stage directions and props to use. We were also able to show contrast in power between the two characters, Dionysus and Xanthias. Dionysus, being the character in power would have a stronger tone of voice, and would have a proud posture. Staging was used throughout our piece as different levels were used to show the contrast between power, e.g Dionysus would stand on a platform relatively higher than Xanthias to show his dominance over him. Xanthias was also burdened with Dionysus’ luggage, making it clear to the audience that he is a slave. In this scene, Dionysus and Xanthias are searching for someone to sail them down to Hades, and they come across my character Charon, a ferryman, who agrees to take them for a price. Xanthias, being a slave, has to walk around and Dionysus is forced to row the boat and gets more and more agitated from the frogswan singing as he rows. Humour comes into play as these characters over-exaggerate, and make their actions larger than life.
There is some contrast in power between Dionysus and Xanthias, but it is not extreme, despite one being the master and one the slave. This is because Xanthias is a rather witty and playful character. He is not afraid to voice his opinions and backchat at Dionysus, which gets on his nerves at times, adding to the humour of the play. I had to play Charon, a rather stingy ferryman. His opening line, “Yo-Heave-Ho! Yo-Heave-Ho!” had to be projected rather loudly, as I shouted this from offstage. There was also a chorus of frogs included in our extract. They were just as important as the main characters as they set the mood and setting. They also added quite a lot of humour to it. I would freeze when the chorus of frogs sang, creating a tableau. I chose to do this because it directed the audience’s attention more towards the chorus and not me and Dionysus, because we were not the centre of attention at the time.
There was definitely room for improvement in our play. There was not that much time to rehearse, so there were many aspects of it that did not work so well. Timing could have been improved as some of the cues were too slow/fast and this affected the smoothness of our performance. With a little more time, we might have been able to memorise the lines a little better. This would improve the quality as more effort could be spent on facial expressions and body movements rather than looking at the script and just reading it. This applies to the chorus primarily as a lot of movement and expression is needed or it would seem too lifeless and dull. I noticed that some of us were blocking each other, so that could be something to improve on. For example, many of the chorus were blocking us as they came on to the stage, and some had their backs to the audience, which made it unclear for them to hear.