From page to stage. This week’s workshop investigated specific acting techniques that help actors morph into specific characters. How do actors make their characters become alive, which information from the text can they translate into their character and how much freedom do they have to give them psychological depth?
To further the students understanding of movement and blocking, they creatively — and a s team — worked at becoming a bug. Once they had morphed into this bug, they were asked to move as a bug, as one entity. This actually proved to be harder than it sounds.
Another focus was put onto maintaining the energy in a specific scene and, in particular, on giving and receiving. The students lined up, facing each other and then were encouraged to act out specific emotional moments.
The most challenging scene was mother/father discovering their son was changed into a bug. How does the bug communicate with their parent? What are its needs? How does the parent react? Which emotions are displayed, and how? A challenge, which most mastered very well. What the students took away from this workshop was a deeper insight into emotional character development, trying it out yourself, rather than analysing it on the page.
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