Monday, June 23, 2008
The works of Grotowski and Turning Left
Sunday is called the day of rest, well for me yesterday was a Sunday unlike any other in recent memory as I did an acting workshop with our group, and out tutor Bill Wright, who put us through the mill of punishment ha ha. Actually it was a really good day as in the morning we worked on text and "action" i.e. putting the actions into the text we read, its not as easy as it sounds, but it was great fun to play and do infront of the group. And we were given a scene to do from a play which I acted out with Judith from our group (who is hilarious and very talented I might add) using an actors theasurus book to help us come up with words or intentions to put into the text, this worked quite but only up to a point as we only got so far with coming up with words to use. It was a bit like a crossword for actors. Bored yet?
Anyway in the second of the day punishment came to town in the form physical work, Bill used the methods of the Polish Theatre director, Jerzy Grotowski, and had us basically run round the room in different ways, leaping, jumping, crawling on all fours etc, it was very demanding stuff. Later we had to use the actions we worked on to incorporate them into our text or monologue, I chose to do a scene from the Alan Bleasdale drama GBH and I did find it tough to combine the movements with the text but I think overall I did OK. So suffice to say today I'm feeling a bit done in with cramp in both legs, it was a really good day though I would do it again but not in a hurry.
Anywayyy moving onto the Doctor Who Episode 11, Turn left, which was a rather good episode, Russell T Davies despite having had many ego attacks writing on this show, making it as cheesy and camp as possible, he does best when he writes episodes that challenge the format of the show. Turn Left certainly does that to an extent by taking a "What if" scenario and expanding it into a story, the story being what if Donna never met the Doctor. The result of this of course is the Doctor dies and all the bad things that happen on planet Earth happen because he isn't alive to prevent them. But then Donna receives a strange visitation from a familiar face, Rose Tyler who tells her she will die at some point and the Universe is in danger.
This episode was a nice departure from the norm and to be perfectly honest some of these episodes work better without David Tennant's larger than life Doctor persona all over them (no offence David you still are good!). The real surprise in fact of this episode and this show is actually Catherine Tate as she proves more than anything she can act. This episode is hers and yeah ok there are a couple of typical loud shrill "Donna" moments but she carries this episode on her own. Another fine example of her acting was actually in the Pompeii episode aswell where she begs the Doctor to save the greeks from the Volcanic eruption (OK I degress). But she can handle the emotional serious scenes very well. It was also great to see the return of Rose Tyler, Billie looking great as usual, her scenes with Donna were excellent. But the highlight of this episode had to be the end where that familiar phrase is uttered again "Bad Wolf". Next week's looks very interesting. My only hope is that Russell T Davies doesn't crucify the ending.
Anyway in the second of the day punishment came to town in the form physical work, Bill used the methods of the Polish Theatre director, Jerzy Grotowski, and had us basically run round the room in different ways, leaping, jumping, crawling on all fours etc, it was very demanding stuff. Later we had to use the actions we worked on to incorporate them into our text or monologue, I chose to do a scene from the Alan Bleasdale drama GBH and I did find it tough to combine the movements with the text but I think overall I did OK. So suffice to say today I'm feeling a bit done in with cramp in both legs, it was a really good day though I would do it again but not in a hurry.
Anywayyy moving onto the Doctor Who Episode 11, Turn left, which was a rather good episode, Russell T Davies despite having had many ego attacks writing on this show, making it as cheesy and camp as possible, he does best when he writes episodes that challenge the format of the show. Turn Left certainly does that to an extent by taking a "What if" scenario and expanding it into a story, the story being what if Donna never met the Doctor. The result of this of course is the Doctor dies and all the bad things that happen on planet Earth happen because he isn't alive to prevent them. But then Donna receives a strange visitation from a familiar face, Rose Tyler who tells her she will die at some point and the Universe is in danger.
This episode was a nice departure from the norm and to be perfectly honest some of these episodes work better without David Tennant's larger than life Doctor persona all over them (no offence David you still are good!). The real surprise in fact of this episode and this show is actually Catherine Tate as she proves more than anything she can act. This episode is hers and yeah ok there are a couple of typical loud shrill "Donna" moments but she carries this episode on her own. Another fine example of her acting was actually in the Pompeii episode aswell where she begs the Doctor to save the greeks from the Volcanic eruption (OK I degress). But she can handle the emotional serious scenes very well. It was also great to see the return of Rose Tyler, Billie looking great as usual, her scenes with Donna were excellent. But the highlight of this episode had to be the end where that familiar phrase is uttered again "Bad Wolf". Next week's looks very interesting. My only hope is that Russell T Davies doesn't crucify the ending.
# posted by kenny @ 11:25 am 
