Wednesday, 20th February, 2008

These were the lines I chose. I was extremely nervous.

They are underlined here.


We all arrived with our lines learnt by heart and were first simply told to deliver them. Then we spent almost one hour walking back and forth across the hall in an awkward and uncomfortable body position (knees bent, back straight, pelvis pointing forward and neck pulled to the front) first of all just whispering our lines then increasing in volume, but not by saying them louder (???)....We then had to picture this horizon in front of us, this deep blue sea and proceed with the exercise...No emotions. Just delivering the line. Increasing in volume, but from the inside....Not by making it louder...."That which burns" "That which", "The gums..."

After a while, I could concentrate no longer, so just started to make words up because I kept forgetting my own and with everybody whispering or saying theirs out loud I couldn't deliver mine properly. It was somewhat frustrating.

Well, we then got in a circle and had to turn around whilst making these simple, rhythmical, but which required a lot of coordination, steps and at the same time had to hum a lullaby, or just a song we could think of. Nobody had thought of a song when he asked us to sing ours out loud. It was impossible to concentrate on the steps and have to sing at the same time but not on the rhythm of the steps, but on the rhythm of the actual song!!!! I remember my song though:

"Boi, boi, boi,
Boi da cara preta,
Leva essa menina
Que tem medo de careta"

Then one person had to go in the middle, without stopping with the funny steps and had to deliver the first sentence of their lines. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 4!!! It was absurdly difficult; everyone tried but no one was managing.....

I decided to try once more; it was all going fine, I had finally learnt the steps, but then he kept on telling me to deliver my line louder:

"That which burns the skin is called water"

Then to change the entonation of the 'That" - MAKE IT STRONGER, SOFTER, NO NO, DON'T SOUND LIKE A TEACHER, THIS IS NOT YOUR SPEECH AS PRESIDENT, AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN, "THAT WHICH", "THAT WHICH, "THAT WHICH", "BURNS", "BURNS", "BURNS", "THAT WHICH BURNS", "THAT WHICH BURNS", "THAT WHICH BURNS", "THE SKIN", "THE SKIN", "THAT WHICH", "THAT WHICH BURNS THE SKIN", "SKIN", "SKIN", "SKIN" and it went on and on and on and on and on......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................


The other exercise I wasn't very fond of. You see, with this first line we had chose we had to give an image to each separate word: for instance - That: rain, which: a tiger, burns: me patting the tiger, the skin: me feeling the raindrops on my skin, is called: the tiger running away, water: me calling for it to come back.

It didn't have to have anything whatsoever to do with our lines, but it was just to start putting some emotion whilst we said them. When I said 'That', I would look up to the sky I notice it had begun raining, with the 'which' I would notice the tiger and point to it, 'burns' represented me patting it, going through its fur with my hand, and so on, depending on the representations given to each word, or group of words.






































































I thought I was doing it completely wrong but he said it was okay. He didn't say much, though. However, I couldn't find out what was the reason behind putting irrelevant images into every single word and acting them out if they had nothing to do with what the words meant. We did this over and over again....I started to feel bored. And hungry.

I found this brochure Jorge and Jade's company members gave to us in the workshop! It talk a bit about them as a theatre group, their performances....very interesting....Click on the following link to have a look!

Hotel Medea [front and back cover]
Pages 1 & 2
Pages 3 & 4
Pages 5 & 6
Pages 7 & 8
Pages 9 & 10