#movement design

[machinalclass]

So … just a reminder of how far we've come and how much we've kept and extended from this Machinal in Ten Minutes movement version from Jan. 24. I'd like us to try a version of this at the top of Tuesday's pick-up rehearsal.

[machinalclass]

Notes from Movement Workshop Jan. 22

Tonight we first worked with Maddy one-on-one to find her own vocabulary, to widen her physical range, and to get her to express instead of imploding:

Being suspended on toes à exhaling and landing heels on the ground: is not “letting everything go” it’s more like gathering your strength so you can stand up straighter

Creating more space in the back of your neck

“YOU”, “ME”, “US”, “THEM”, and suspend

For the time period - strength in the arms, the hands out in front allow people to see what you are talking about

Head on the tip of your nose, connecting your arms to your head so they move together

Grounded, moving, finding the laughter somewhere

Play with your hands

Opening up your bubble

Little air under your armpits

Depressed gesture (pressing hands down)

Dab gesture (tapping head)

Slash gesture (horizontal and vertical)

Glide gesture (circular – symmetrical or not)

Scale from 1-10 (1 being the lowest and 10 the highest, 6 opens up and out to the world)

Add in “Mrs. George H. Jones” and then add in Laban movements

The “movement” is there, even when you’re not moving

Minimum (1) à Maximum (10) Scope (6 = when she opens herself up to the world)

Then the other three “core characters” joined us Thomas (George Jones), Mike (Roe), Roxy (Mother):

Maddy Pops: walking, freak out (like an “OH SHIT!” moment), arms sail, suspend, inhale, exhale, inhale and check in, exhale and keep walking

Adding sound to the breath

Individual à Collective

Maddy is in control: When she takes a step, you can choose to either step towards her or away from her

Mike, Thomas, Roxy = standing around Maddy (center)

Mike, Thomas, Roxy are in their own world

The exercise is more about each of their individual relationship with Maddy than their relationship to one another

Mike, Thomas, Roxy can walk closer to/further away from Maddy and she can move closer to/further away from them

Maddy can add in any surprise/”OH SHIT!” moments/breaths

How did we put our play into the play? Our physical vocabulary into the text?...

AT HOME (started on p. 16) 

Compositional Elements to play within:

-        If Roxy and Maddy are ever on the same axis and are both facing out, there can be a moment where it’s like they see each other in the mirror (in the audience) and then they will keep moving

A “Custin Moment”

-       Maddy stands behind Roxy reading her lines

Both are facing the audience

Maddy’s consonants are explosive and they physically affect Roxy in a negative way (make Roxy convulse)

Add: Roxy is allowed to move in a horizontal line and Roxy can make sound

Add: Mike & Thomas walking back and forth downstage of Maddy and Roxy

Mike & Thomas are changing their pace.

When Mike & Thomas pass Roxy, she convulses

Roxy is affected by stimuli in both directions

Maddy & Roxy are working with text, Mike & Thomas are working with sound

Discoveries

There is something very powerful about holding it together while being very angry

Roxy’s shuddering/convulsing can translate to her breathing

Very similar to giving birth

PROHIBITED (p. 42-44): Mike & Maddy:

Compositional elements to play within:

You can be upright/forward/back in your chair

You can change direction/angle

You can move chairs/sit on the table

You can change on any punctuation

-       PEBBLES

Mike’s Energy: Horizontal, Low pitch, Hear the Breath

Maddy’s Energy: Vertical, Wants to go

Discoveries

Mike has to follow through with his thoughts, has to reach her

Maddy needs to be on voice and upright

There is a cat/mouse game that needs to happen rhythmically

HONEYMOON (p. 22-25): Thomas & Maddy

Compositional Elements to play within:

Partner work

Holding wrists or hands and standing your ground

Thomas can separate from Maddy’s grip, but Maddy cannot separate from Thomas’

Maddy focusing on consonants & Thomas focusing on vowels

Discoveries

Maddy focusing on consonants allows her to effect Thomas and gain strength

Thomas having a wider stance and becoming more expansive helps him to get what he needs/stand his ground

[machinalclass]

Notes from Movement Workshop Jan. 14

Today we played with Episode #1, “To Business.” We started by playing a game around the ideas of this scene, along with what we knew, wanted to know, and were excited about. Then we started to add in text we remembered which eventually lead to those who had lines picking up the script, with the others observing. Here were the ways we discovered gestures for this scene that we can now use throughout the play and in a range of function to expression:

Actors in scene moved as quickly as they could when they spoke. This helped to understand the momentum needed for this scene.

Actors in scene added an audible inhale before their line. This helped to understand the rhythm and give and take of this scene. 

Actors in scene added moving one arm as much as they could when speaking. This started to add physicality, find gestures, and differentiate between the four office voices. 

Actors who had been observing each paired with an actor who was in the scene and shared what they remembered from that actor’s gestures. The pair started to play with the repetition of gestures. This helped to recognize, establish, and own the gestures within their own bodies, build the gesture minimum to maximum and add sound to the gesture.

The pairs found another pair and started to share/communicate only through the gestures they had discovered. The groups of four then paired which started to create a full physical group gesture vocabulary to play within.

We then returned to the text and had those in the scene stand in a horizontal line. Their original gesture partner stood behind them. As they played the scene, the person in the downstage line did their gestures during and/or between their text. Those in the upstage line echoed their partners movement and added sound. This created a soundscape/atmosphere for the scene and got everyone involved in the play of the scene. It also helped to engrain the gestures and find out which ones wanted to stick as the essential gestures that we could translate to all the other episodes as a starting point for play, finding the essence of the scene, and discovering how it’s dynamic was inherently different from the other episodes.

[machinalclass]

Movement Notes I (Kali Quinn)

From our first workshop/rehearsal Jan. 10

WARM-UP

Stretching/reaching

Walking around the space with and without sound

Zoom In: Observe yourself and others

Zoom Out: Give in and just do it

SUSPEND

MACHINAL’S ENERGY PASS GAME

Passing around the energy in different ways

You can pass around a “MORE”

Refusal of “MORE” = “LET ME ALONE”

Point to anybody and say a number

Throw in the middle: “SOMEBODY”

When someone takes it from the middle: “HOT DOG”

If multiple people get it: they have a “POLITE-OFF” and when someone gets it, everybody praises them

“OH SHIT” moments: Moments when we think we’re not where we’re supposed to be, but we’re exactly where we are Group crazy dance saying numbers and finding ensemble moments of suspension, on the floor, group breath

RELATIONSHIP WORK

Vocabulary

Space bubble

Eyes of your head, chest, pelvis

Head, Heart, Gut

Your body is a mouth that never stops moving

Exercise: Stepping toward/away from your partner

Exercise: Relationship with/transformation of sheet 

EXERCISE: WANT TO SAY

Get into pairs and one person talks and then all of a sudden the person talking switches

MACHINAL VARIATION: Can only speak in numbers (add in words)

Express yourselves through movement, tome of voice, your physical relationship to your partner

Put something in your left hand that excites you about this process and something that terrifies you in your right hand

Move both “things” throughout the body/switching back and forth

Adding sound

Sharing the excitement and fear with somebody else

Pulling these things as far apart as possible

Both of these “things” exist in yourself simultaneously

Puppy dogs in the sand (if you need energy)

DISCOVERIES

EPISODES

TO BUSINESS:

Fast paced

Imitation

Observed

Pressure

Discomfort

Floor

Sleep

Acquiescence (giving in or giving up)

AT HOME:

Full body

HONEYMOON:

Laughter

Expectation

Body with partnership

Pairs

MATERNAL:

Circular shapes

Quiet/Calm

Slow

Cluck tongue (Mike)

Levels (Women went down and Men stood up)

PROHIBITED:

Desire

Anger

Sneaky

Chase

Eager

INTIMATE:

Close

Point of no return

DOMESTIC:

Machine (beginning)

Huddle

Return of the acquiescence/more final/point of no return

THE LAW:

Thumping/Rhythm

Hands and feet

Everybody turned in for the first shape

All inter-corporeal

Staccato

A MACHINE

Low (altitude)

Further cement the energy of Law

Everybody ended at the same time

Collective final breath

Repetition

Rhythm (found communally, the rhythm had a shape)

TITLES

Mike & Ashley: Pencils (slower pace)

Tierney & Nikki: I wanna win (jumping off the ground), writing all over the place, new types of technology (sharpie/computer), you don’t even know, creating rules and then breaking them

Roxy & Jessica (& Justin): Can only use one word or number, can only talk with your hands then adding in sounds, became a 3 person machine, “the chase”, Justin told Roxy how to fit into the machine/become a machine, “the boss”, “resistance”, tending to each other/diagnosing, vertebrae/numbers in the spine

Thomas & Maddy (& Cullen & Justin): Playing to the maximum, breaking a word into syllables (syllable quantification), Cullen & Justin shadowing Thomas, keep going with only sound (without language), “you gotta sacrifice a 2”, “non-sensical teaching”, “we’ve all learned this/everybody knows this”, condescending, echo, victim, offer/counter offer, different tactics, Thomas’ “come on” gesture, when numbers are just numbers or when they mean something else, boundaries, “backing off”

Justin & Cullen: no speaking/just sound and movement, whatever your hands are doing – find it in other parts of your body, levels, repeat the gesture or sound, different ways to express the same thing/different sounds for the same movement, what happens if you turn the dial up?, finding movements where you breathe together, teaching/instruction, teacher becomes the student, flipping the script, tattletale, taking the external and making it internal (bottling it up), refusal and defiance, emotional breakdown

OPPOSITES

Group v. Individual

Negative v. Positive

Permanence v. Vulnerability (erasure)

Body v. Space (doing something in/on the body v. doing something in space)

Invasive v. Non-invasive

Invasion v. Impermeability

Bound v. Unbound Energy

Calm v. Mechanic

Explosive v. Implosive

“the diffuser” v. “the bomb”

Guidance v. Domination

Privacy v. Individuality

Idea v. The reality f the ingrained idea

Standing your ground v. Negotiator

Diffusing yourself v. Diffusing someone else

SHAPES

Encapsulate

Seesaw

Orbit (inter-spatial & inter-corporeal)

OTHER DISCOVERIES

Widespread ideas accepted as fact - meme (visual memes) take on a life of their own

Background noise, atmosphere, an unidentifiable tempo

When did the human voice drive the machine, the machine drive the human voice, when were they in competition?

Public realm is naturally machine-like, it is harder to make the private realm a machine

Societal conditioning

Communal behavior (organic want/desire to do something v. machine systematically conditioned to do something – how do we tell the difference?)

Archetype/Stereotype = it’s ok to start with that

How much do you present/perform/wear a mask in public?

What happens when you realize it?

What do you do after you have become aware?

Is it better not to have a voice or have an out of control voice?

What happens when the voice is silenced?

Transitional mood makes a big difference (ex: going from Prohibited to Intimate made you feel sneaky about being intimate)

“Let me alone” became a form of defense/protection – “Let her alone”, then it became a group against one – “Let us alone”

What is true in the physical world is almost always true in the metaphysical world

Different cultural gestures

Awareness

In conflict with what she wants from her mother and what she wants her mother to tell her daughter (who is born and never seen)

Watching people becomes a sport, you end up wanting something to happen/wanting someone to do something

Turning around in a way that gives you power and position rather than cowering

There is something powerful in making/creating space rather than taking away space and moving closer

Isolating the different variables so it was easier to really listen and pay attention to each

You want the audience to not see the technique, but know what’s going on