Movement With Mandy

Movement class

In my first movement class, we started by warming up with exercises that got us moving and forced us to pay attention. Mandy called out different numbers that meant we had to perform different movements. for example, calling out the number 1 meant we had to sit down, the number 2 meant run, 4 meant freeze in a pose , 7 meant jump and 5 meant change direction and so on.

after this, we watched a video on YouTube of an actor teaching us about Laban Movements. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSuaTj7iQdM

Laban Movement was initially used to help choreographers and dancers find new ways to move but is now used to help actors improve their performances physically.

These are the eight terms used when talking about Laban movements:

• Wring
• Press
• Flick
• Dab
• Glide
• Float
• Punch
• Slash

for each of these named movements, its features will fall into certain categories, these include:

• Direction is either direct or indirect.
• Weight is either heavy or light.
• Speed is either quick or sustained.
• Flow is either bound or free.

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In this lesson we started looking at how we could incorporate what we learned about Laban movements into our identity pieces.

Mandy had us rehearse our performances a few times whilst stopping to show us what we needed to do to incorporate Laban movement For example, delivering a line with the Punch effect would mean making my body language strong and heavy, Using the stage space well and direct engagement with the audience, my energy would need to be bound and pent up. This goes for any Laban movement which adds a bit more depth to the physicality of the performance.

In this lesson we also worked on professionalism and ' corpsing'  which is when you break character and how to avoid it. When someone corpses, it means they are laughing out of character or make it clear they have forgotten a line We practiced keeping a straight face no matter what else was happening in the stage space. We also talked about not breaking character yourself when other actors may corpse.

Also, we worked on the ' imaginary fourth wall' and using the stage space well. This means adjusting our movements and positioning when acting so that it is open to the audience even if it does not feel naturalistic or how we would interact off stage.

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Today, we worked with Mandy on our Dumb waiter piece and rehearsed it with her in the dance studio. We again looked at how Laban movement could be incorporated to make the performance more engaging and bring it to life.

We are spending most of our lessons rehearsing and learning how to make better use of the stage and move more freely. We do this by doing loads of exercises and games that not only help us loosen up physically but also with our confidence and being comfortable with expressing ourselves without any fear or inhibition .

After warming up, we  watched each other perform our sections of the play and were given feedback sheets from Mandy. We had to write down who was performing , what they did really well and what constructive criticism we could give them. However, beforehand we spoke about extending our language beyond words like " good " or "bad" and n o "but's" so that we could give feedback that was unique and accurate to what we saw rather then generic or negative.  Some of the feedback given was not saying lines without acting them out first, learning lines completely and having emotional inflections in the voice.

It helped watching the others perform and also giving and receiving feedback because it made us consider which bits of advice and feedback we could use to enhance our own performances.

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Recently in lesson, we have been looking at how our movement classes 

correlate to our drama lessons and how they benefit us as actors. We began by splitting into groups and coming up with a list of physical abilities and traits that as actors we may need and why. For example, an actor may require strong fitness skills or strength if they are going to undertake their own stunts or perform in a fight scene or an actor may need to be good at running and have good stamina for a chase scene or to do multiple takes. 

We  then went round to see what other groups had written down and added to them until we had a big list of all the different physical sides to being an actor. This was good because there were many things that a lot of us didn't realise we may be asked to do and realised the importance of having a versatile range of physical abilities as actors because there could be roles we don't receive not because of our acting ability but because of a required physical aspect of a role. 

After this, we talked about having trust in the physical strength and reactions to the actors around you and working together to support each other in the stage space. We did exercise's involving using certain techniques to lift one actor up in unison which helped us develop the skills we talked about earlier and develop physical strength, trust and working together.

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Today we talked about what we learned in our previous lesson and how we were going to learn about the physicality's of acting even more today. We started  by taking all of our pulses before any physical exercise to see how many beats our heart did in one minute, mine was fifty-five p/m.

after this,  Mandy taught us an exercise / dance routine that would get our hearts racing and build our stamina up, the routine went as follows:

• 8 bounces ( shifting your body weight from one foot to the other for eight counts)
• 4 ducks  
• 2 air punches 
• 2 air right hooks
• Running  (  from where you are - to  a chosen spot in the room - and back )
• 16 counts of skipping 
• Running 
• Burpees

We did this routine a few times over, with some music in the background and then all sat together to retake our pulses to measure how much it had increased by - my pulse had gone up to ninety-eight beats p/m and after giving it a few more minutes we checked our pulses again and it had gone down even more to sixty-five beats p/m. 

This insight into our current fitness abilities helped teach us that the fitter you are the smaller the spike In your resting heart rate compared to your active heart rate after exercise. The fitter you are the less of a gap there is also between post exercise elevated heart rate and coming down to resting heart rate. This is important for us as actors because we may undertake a role that requires us to be physically active in between lines and therefore we will need a good stamina and physical ability.


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In this lesson we had a break from the physical exercises we have been doing to increase our stamina/ fitness and did some acting exercises.

Mandy split us into groups or pairs and gave us each a picture of a specific fairy-tale that we had to re-enact silently to the rest of the class for them to guess which fairy-tale we had chosen. 

I was partnered with Cinzia and we had to re create beauty and the beast. We started by breaking down some of the key events/ themes in the film - such as Belle moving into the castle with the beast and being afraid, the love of books they shared, belle leaving the castle to see her sick father and finally belle and the beast.