PHYSICAL THEATRE with MARK HILL

Mark Hill

Physical Theatre Notes:

• Physical Theatre: using action, movement, and violence of articulation to express emotion or story or feeling
• We had learned that the Western influenced theatres were mainly focused on words for expressions, however, asian culture emphasized movement and physical theatre
• This week's main focus were on the works of Anne Bogart, Suzuki, and Bhuto Theatre
• Performed many different activities...
• Keeping grounded and being prepared as an actor to move quickly and swiftly to either the right, left, forward, or backwards. This helped the actors to view which areas they carry tension. 
• Furiously following the finger of your partner. This will teach the actor to keep focus and learn to place interest 
• Standing with five people in line, side-by-side. Having only 2 or 3 people always down, without physical communication. This increased group awareness.
• Practicing the different levels of energy. (1-7) Taught actors to be aware of what level of energy they should always be on stage. 
• We had also spent a great amount of time practicing and learning Spatial Relationships. The different relationships were...

• extreme proximity or kiss or kill
• extreme distance
• body angle
• down center stage
• geometric shape
• diagonal lines
• symmetry
• asymmetry
• Activities with spatial relationships
• We performed a warm up that encouraged the use of spatial relationships by having a group of actors constantly change and create different shapes and images with their bodies as a group.
• We then performed a few images influenced by the most common factors of Greek Tragedies. We had pride, downfall, and revenge. We had to create the three different scenes with our bodies influenced by those three factors. The scenes were all so extremely powerful and impactful, especially when there was music and lighting added onto the images.
• He constantly reminded the actors to not "THINK" too much, to act on our feet and learn to move about based off of our instinctive desires.
• We then moved on to learn Gestures.
• There are three communicative ways to express gestures: expressive emotions, behavioral, cultural
• The next day, we practiced the Suzuki Method.
• We placed a huge focus on Hara. This was the practice of placing emphasis and focus onto the center of your body. This is your core and where you will receive energy and foundation. He taught us to keep our legs and torso grounded, however, keeping your upper body light and relaxed.

• Activities on the Suzuki Method.
• We practiced the Suzuki walk, back and forth from the black box. There we had partners to hold us back in order to emphasize oppositional tension.
• We also practiced the kiss-or-kill in which actors would slowly learn how do the Suzuki walk back-and-forth while keeping the body centered, slow, and focused we would kill our partners that we were crossing from.
• He kept emphasizing the need to "making the hard things seem easy is what makes the audience interested. Keeping that tension."