WORKSHOP PLAN (Ellie Mulholland partner)

Michael Chekhov warm up:
Pick two contrasting emotions then improv from one to the other. Doesn't matter how you get there just go for it. Teaches them to improvise within the necessities of the play  (lines, stage directions etc)
Meisner main;

In our rehearsals we use Meisner’s copy and manipulate exercise often to help find our character and connect with the other actors on stage by experimenting with their and our own dialogue, and only moving on when we feel a true connection with the words, and feel we have found the best way to communicate the scene. I believe this exercise helps knowing your lines out of dialogue and out of order, but also allows freedom in saying our lines, and experiment, explore, and analyse the different meanings our dialogue could have, and understand subliminal messages we may have missed before.

In pairs.  One decides on a task that they're doing the other gives themselves given circumstances. They have to get emotional cues and behavioral cues from each other

Mike Alfreds believes that the actor is the most sacred thing about the theatre, saying ‘plays need actors…however, [actors] do not need plays’, by this he means as actors we create, devise, mime, improvise scenes and theatre, but for a play to be performed, of course, it needs actors, without them it would merely be a set. Additionally, he believes that actors should never be passive onstage, simply waiting for their cue to speak again or exit, but should be living in the moments when they are not centre of attention. I agree with him, in this context, as actors’ job is to become someone else, another character, and to fully do that you must BE that person; as people we are never waiting for someone else to say something for us to react to, but speak often of our own freewill, and because a thought has provoked that topic.

As a director he has stated that he prefers to let the actors find their character themselves, as it is not something they can be instructed upon or guided each step of the way. But to help them do so, Alfreds has created theories and methods of finding character, developing character, portraying character, and understanding character:

ALLOW TEN MINUTES FOR THIS EXERCISE - Clap-tag: this is an improvisation game where 2 people must enter the space with knowledge of location and relationship, and allowing the scene to flow where it wants to flow, but each actor must always say ‘yes’ – as in allow decisions to be made to keep the scene afloat. Then someone claps and takes the same position while changing the story. I enjoy this exercise as it develops one’s improvisation skills, being able to think on the spot, and anything can happen in the improvisation – it allows the imagination to go wild. The only thing that annoys be regarding this exercise is that I feel as if we are limited to what we can create in certain audiences as they don’t always take a mature stand point on the scene, and so if, for example, someone was to initiate a romantic setting it would become suspicious in reality or hysterically funny – but it shouldn’t be.

WARM DOWN (FIVE MINUTES) – Walking around the space with intention, stretching, and shaking out tension from limbs and body.