"Free Write."

          Today, my friends and I made good use of the Meisner technique. For competition, we are preparing a group mime and we thought it would be great to develop the storyline and characters using some of Meisner's techniques. For instance, we utilized a lot of gridwork; this involves all the actors moving in straight lines in an imaginary grid and creating silent "moments" with each other. It is influenced either by someone calling out words as a theme or through music; today, we tried both. I believe this gridwork really helped us come together as an ensemble and we got a lot of incredible moments out of it that will work beautifully in our mime.
          Additionally, we did a few rounds of word association; this is when the actors sit in a circle, one actor starts by saying a certain word, and the rest take turns saying the first word that comes to mind (based off the previous word) until they return to the first word. After the word association is finished, the actors then go back and write down all the words they just said; although this may sound difficult, it actually wasn't very hard to remember everything we'd said. We started off by using themed words that related to our mime, and after writing them all down we chose our favorites. We then went back and used these in our gridwork, and the result was some amazing moments.
          We've basically created the skeleton for our mime, and I can't wait to continue using Meisner techniques to develop it and help us grow together as an ensemble. Critic's choice, here we come! :)


Quote of the week:

"You should do what I do when I practice diving in the Caribbean. I just go! I know it's not easy. It's formidable. Just go! And don't give yourself a reason why you shouldn't! If you want to throw yourself on the floor and chew a leg of that table, it's fine with me. It's undignified, it's unmanly, it's ungentlemanly -- but it's very good for your acting!"