Acting sessions - Bengaluru SHG - 22/01/2017

Attendees:
Mansi
Bharat
Pramod

Rajkumar
Tarunidhar
Animesh

1) The session started 8:15 AM and with the first three activities that will be our routine exercises for all the next sessions:

1. Warm-up: Warming up your body by doing short and small exercises. The reason being opening up the body points and joints that are generally constricted because of our lifestyle. Taruni(a yoga preacher) also supported and help me get through all the needed exercises. For an actor body is very important and unless body is fully warmed-up or fully active, the acting won't come by so well.
2. Voice exercises: We explored today about breathing from diaphragm(area below the chest), breathing in and out. All of us tried it out, for some it was new and some already knew it. So as an exercise we started to get the hhhh sound when breathing out. And, along with hhh sound we started getting the vowels out. So it would be like "hhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa", "hhhheeeeeeeee"....so on and forth.
3. Played a game, zip, zap, zopp. Focus game and you can search on internet more about it. It was fun and i was the first person to lose focus and so was out of the game :) but otherwise we all had a good time. The game will change from one session to another.

2) We started out with the first assignment that was given yesterday. All of them were told to come prepared with

1. reading of the short story "Yayati"
2. Remember one of the lines from the play. Yayati(by all boys) and Sharmistha(by Manasi)
3. Recite those lines but with adding a purpose and imaginary circumstance

For everyone's benefit, we again went through the story of Yayati as given here:
https://www.shortstories.co.in/yayati/
Also, not everyone was clear what was the assignment, so reiterated and everyone took 5 minutes to remember the lines and come up with imaginary circumstance and adding a purpose. There was a feedback on those who tried, for some it was postponed to next week as they needed time to think. Overall i believe it was a good exercise and if done properly helps great in understanding texts of a play. It will be done again the next week by those who couldnt try.

Pramod remembering the lines of Yayati

Tarunidhar immersed in Yayati

Rajkumar remembering the lines of Yayati

Bharat trying to remember the lines

Mansi engrossed in Shamristha

3) Then we started with the "repetition" exercise. Repetition is an exercise that works on your impulses. For an actor, impulses are the key. The better you react, the more truthful your act looks like. The exercise was quite simple, repeat what the other person says. I did this exercise with everyone. Everytime i gave an opinion about the person and the person had to repeat exactly the same but make it true. For eg. when i did with Tarun:
I said " I like your T-Shirt"
Tarun repeated: "You like my T-Shirt?"

So it went on until the pile-up and then it could be any other line and repetition must continue. We all tried with each other.

4) Before leaving, we tried finding expressions through gibberish. It was tried by everyone and each one had to display an emotion by talking gibberish. Gibberish helps us to focus on emotion rather than lines. It was done well but lot of us need to open up still. Some of us are still shy and haven't really come out of our own mental cage. It will take time but will happen some day.

Next week when we meet there will be three assignments everyone need to come prepared with:
1) Observation: Choose anyone who you know and imitiate that person's behavior, their walk, their talk, any habit of theirs. I would be asking some questions on that person/animal and it will help you improve internalization and externalization of any character.
2) King Yayati's lines - come prepared with purpose and imaginary circumstances for those who couldn't try today.
3) Repetition will be added with concentration - for this we discussed on the things we do that make us get engrossed. For some its watching movies etc.. However we decided on trying out several things. I will also check what all someone can get and then we redo this repetition exercise but adding something interesting to it. I haven't tried myself before, so will be interesting to try and observe.

Regards,
Animesh