1. Character development/dynamics with big characters
2. Reactive acting with big characters
Character development/dynamics with big characters
Today we worked on staging a scene with big characters - mapping out how to add dynamics when it feels like the character should be at a high level the whole time, how to milk the beats to make the character even bigger, and how to make a unnaturally big character seem like it is natural and it fits seamlessly in a scene. When dealing with a scene with big characters, the balance and give and take between the characters is extremely important. If one character is at a 9 on a scale of 1-10 on bigness and the other is at a 4 - the scene looks unnatural, and both characters look out of place. The good news is, both characters can feed off of each other as they get further into the scene - mapping out the dynamics with equally as big levels - and make the scene fit perfectly within the constraints we've created. In order to get into mapping out the scene - we made our lists of "creating a more interesting character", making sure that each one of our bullet points was as ridiculous as the character written. A few of the points we added were - Tracy is right in front of Link in the only jail cell in the prison yet, he can't find her. Tracy doesn't recognize Link until he says he's from the TV show even though he's her boyfriend. Then, we took these big things that were going to make our characters big, and assigned specific actions to each of them (walking side to side, pausing, jumping up and down, leaning on the chairs (make shift bars)). With each specific action, both Walker and Ella now had things to do in each beat that would force their character to go or stay big. From there we worked on voice inflection and comedic timing (we'll work more on this next time) to make sure the scene was theatrical.
Reactive acting with big characters
Today we also worked on our reactive acting (acting within a scene - feeding off of each other and delivering your lines based on how other characters are acting vs. disregarding what is actually happening live and focusing on what is written), but with big characters. We first had to match levels - taking both characters up to a big musical theater place. Then, we worked on acting to each other while removing a script. Here we added paraphrasing to help smooth the scene - having both Walker and Ella add things they think the character would ad-lib - further customizing their rolls and making them feel more natural while at the same time making the scene about the acting rather than the lines written.
They both worked SO hard today!!! They did awesome!!