27.1.15

   We were missing quite a lot of people today in class, so we decided to start working on the cage in 4.2., where Feste fools Malvolio to think he is indeed crazy. Siou had told us that she wanted Michael to be very physical, and so the cage should enable movement and freedom to express. We decided that perhaps using the canes would work, since with them it is possible to make any shape we desire with some help from other people. This way the audience could also see Michael's body easily and he will have more room to explore.
   Max suggested at the start point a very extreme kind of cage. So we tried out having Malvolio in the middle and canes keeping him on his place by having them around him all the way, even having canes on this throat and capturing his legs. This looked absolutely fantastic, but it wouldn't give Michael any space to move. After this explored A LOT of different ways to have the cage. We tried having the canes in a circle around Malvolio, but this was way too simple and not clear enough as a cage, This was a problem in most of the suggestions, for example having the canes form a sort of a roof on top of Malvolio. It needs to be clear in this scene that Malvolio is captured and cannot see for the whole scene to be funny. Greta's idea about simply having the canes in a horizontal line was the best idea today, since it was simple but effective. We explored in the ways we could play around with this idea, spacing the canes differently, having them in different distances from Malvolio, but also with the possibility that Feste could perhaps open it and move it during the scene to play around with Malvolio. The only problem with this was that it does require quite a lot of people holding the canes and so takes focus away from Malvolio in the actual cage. We agreed to work on this more once we have Michael present and we can explore more with his movements and the interaction with the cage.

What I need to work on?
   I am still worried about the cage. Doing it with the canes means that there has to be about 4 extra people on the stage holding canes, taking focus on Malvolio and restricting the space. I would like to have Michael here to do the scene with me with some of the different variations of the cage, to see how he moves and how much space does he really need. I also want to be able to do the scene with Michael and the cage to block my movements as Feste and Sir Topas.