WHERE LOYALTIES LIE10 Use of tableaux

Today we began with a game of Samurai, a game requiring focus and concentration as well as group work.

We then did a group warm up using Frantic Assembly techniques. We joined with the year ten drama and business studies groups to allow more interactions with people we do not usually work with. The game consisted of the commands 'walk the space', 'sprawl', 'shell', 'clear the space', 'favourite', 'opposite' and 'original', which all had corresponding movements that we performed. After a few practice rounds, we did this exercise while singing Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. I found this difficult to get used to but it got easier and more comfortable to do as my breathing adjusted. 

In today's lesson we wanted to develop my plot ideas a bit more therefore we set up an exercise in the same style as a previous improvisation game called 'Party Quirks'. Everyone enters a party with their own character/objective. The first one we tried was between Emma, Silvana and James’ characters, where Silvana found out her sister slept with her ex. This was a funny scene, especially James’ reaction as he didn’t know until he was yelled at by both girls.

The second scene we tried out was between me, Amelie and Tristan where Tristan and Amelie left the bar together after my character annoyed Amelie, and Tristan saw it as an opportunity to get close. This scene worked, but it felt forced and unnatural.

The final scene we tried was a split scene between the couple asking to move in with their siblings. There was a conflict between Hugo and Emma as he wants them to stay with Seth, but Emma doesn’t like him.

In the afternoon, we began with a stretching warm up and then we followed up with a game of cat and mouse to re-energise ourselves. After this, we worked on a warm-up we do frequently which is inspired by Frantic assembly. We would walk around the room and chose a certain point we want as our 'favourite' (and we would have to point at this every time the word 'favourite was said'). 

Once we had experimented with this, we developed five tableaux for each plot point we had so far.

For Harry and Meredith’s story, we had this:

1: happy bar scene, arms around each other

2: proposal

3: Tristan trying it on with Meredith

4: Fight, Tristan gets to comfort Meredith

5: Harry ends up alone

We then did these while walking the space, saying what the character is thinking at specific moments.

We did the same for the siblings plot:

1: Bar scene

2: Fight between Hugo and Emma

3: Asking to move in with siblings

4: Emma wants Hugo back

5: Hugo wants Emma back

While this is a very basic plot, it is useful to have a guideline when developing detailed scenes.

While Emma, Silvana and Hugo wrote up the improvisation scenes we have done so far, the rest of us developed and directed a scene between Fred and Marie, whose role I took on for a bit. This scene was about Marie giving Fred an ultimatum of ‘marry her or break up’, and Fred was afraid of commitment.

The good lines were:

- Are the dishes more important than me

- This relationship is going nowhere

- Stuck for 8 years while everyone else is moving on and progressing

- If you don’t want me to leave then propose!

- You know it is the darkest side of things I never want to touch -  I’m the darkest side of things you never want to touch

- Have you ever thought about what I want?

- When have you ever celebrated valentines day with me?

- Do you actually love me?

Here is a script me and Seth wrote for his scene with Hugo. In this scene, Hugo is asking his rich brother if he can stay at his house:

Hugo: Mate hello how are you?

Seth: Pretty good but you haven't spoken to me in the past couple of months. And when you do, you are just asking for money.

Hugo: Yeah sorry about that. Nice to see you though. But yeah, about that money. Jane has been spending all our money and we can't afford to pay rent anymore

Seth: So you need me to help you with rent?

Hugo: No no, you have helped me enough. Except the landlord has already evicted us

Seth: That girlfriend of yours is coming nowhere near my house. You are with a psycho mate. Let me guess, she spent all the money on shoes and clothes.

Hugo: Yeah it's so annoying. Thats all she spends her money on and it's her fault we are currently in this situation.

Seth: Listen, I really don't want her staying at my house. You told me how messy she is. You remember when I visited your apartment that time, and it was so messy. I don't want my house to be like that.

Hugo: no don't worry, she will move in with her sister until we get things figured out

Seth: Alright you can stay for a bit, but I have a couple rules. One, you can't go in any of the rooms upstairs.

Hugo: Okay that's fine. I would be happy sleeping on your sofa. Your sofa is probably bigger than my whole house.