19.11.14

We started looking at Shakespeare today, but instead of going straight into Twelfth Night, the play we are going to turn into a performance, we started by working on our voice and the way we say Shakespearean text with a text from 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'. We started by only looking at these two lines : "I love thee not, therefore pursue me not" and "You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant". With these lines we did several exercise, such as just trying to say the lines with different inflections and ways. We also tried telling the lines to each other, by only mouthing the words and using our bodies to show our meaning. I personally really found this exercise helpful, since I am not the most physical in my acting. But this way we had to use our bodies and to make our gesture big, so that they can be seen. The follow up to this particular exercise was to start saying the lines, but now, with each word we had to do a gesture either pointing at ourselves, to our counter partner or outside, referring to people and things. Other two exercises we did had more to do with, how the meaning of the text changes as you try different distances from each, moving forwards or backwards, or by touching your partner with each line.  

I felt that today was very important for when we actually start to look at our text, since it taught us different ways we can change and look at our lines, but also to help us understand, what the text is about. With Shakespeare's text, that was written several hundred of years ago, not everyone can simply read it and understand what is going on, especially since the text is in iambic pentameter. But using these different ways of reading the text and responding to it, or by just simply cutting the lines into smaller parts, we can understand the text and the characters easier.