claim your space. / Wednesday, 24 August 2011 @ 07:41
Today was the second class for theater and we had a few other students join us and a few left for different sections. I was excited to see what Ms Pat had in store for us today. When we gathered round in a circle and took attendance, I was glad to see Reuben and Chris in my class, two good friends I've had since the first semester.

Our first activity was to walk fast around the class room then freezing and introduce our self to someone nearest to us. Then we increased the pace and continued until we were all close to running. Then we were told to make eye contact while walking/running which was really quite difficult to do as we were all almost bumping into each other.

We continued walking but this time in slow motion. We were told to claim a spot in different poses, like a sculpture. As we continued, we had a lot of fun trying to guess what someone looked like while 'claiming' his or her spot. We progressed into getting a partner and using our body parts to depict something. I teamed up with Reuben and we pretended that we were getting into a fight. In the next round, I pretended to be seducing Jing Han. At first I felt quite awkward as I didn't know what I was doing but I ended up having a lot of fun looking at how my other classmates were posing.

One game that I thought was quite nerve wrecking was when we were all standing in a circle and had to make eye contact with another person. Once the person acknowledges you by nodding, you have to move to their spot. The person then must make eye contact with someone else. This game was very amusing yet quite difficult at the same time. This was because I got really nervous when it was my turn, I had to look at someone and try to get their attention before I can take their position in the circle. Ms Pat then explained that being nervous was normal and she explained how to get over stage fright, by taking deep breaths, relaxing our muscles and looking around to be calm again. 

Another activity was similar to one we played last Monday, throwing the ball at someone after calling out their name. Today however, Ms Pat brought in three balls and made us use different styles of throwing and catching the ball. This made us concentrate even harder as there were a lot of balls going around and we had to use different methods to catch the attention of the person we were throwing the ball to. Lastly, we had another activity where we all started by counting 1 2 3 in a circle. Then we replace the number 1 with a clap, then number 3 with a star jump and lastly number 2 with an air punch. This was quite difficult as I felt quite shy and Ms Pat wanted us to express ourselves by jumping higher, or using a different kind of stance when air punching. After a few rounds, we all got the hang of it and learned to coordinate ourselves with one another.

In today's class, I learned that concentration is key to acting, as well as coordinating with your friends in a play. Also, claiming our space and using our body language to express how we felt or a different scene was part of what I learnt today.

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