Thursday 10th September (Rent Street Style Physical Theatre Lesson 1)

During this lesson, we discussed 'thug like' movements in the ensemble of Rent, during scenes set on the streets of New York where homeless people or people living in poverty would roam. We talked about the types of movements that they would use and in groups of three, developed small routines using the 'shoal of fish' technique by Frantic Assembly, making sure to walk very closely together as one before adding our street like movements in. We worked on travelling around the room in a way that would create hustle and bustle on stage, but in a random way. We achieved this by making sure not to walk into other groups and spontaneously changing direction, which was difficult at first as we couldn't keep together well, but as we practiced more it was easier to coordinate with each other better. We found it quite easy to do this but as we added our movements it was challenging. My group and I would walk around in threatening way, with our shoulders back, using our facial expressions by squinting at people and turning our noses up slightly. We walked with big confident strides as a company and then broke up in formation as if we were approaching someone, then came back together crossing our arms before dropping to the floor in a crouched position watching others around us intimidatingly. We would then carry o walking in a slightly different formation and repeat this routine with slight changes such as instead of dropping to the floor we would pose in a pose that seems like we are attacking someone on the floor.

This will help us in our final performance because it is giving us an idea of how to play ensemble and smaller background roles, it helps us to keep energy throughout the performance even if we are not the main focus.

Do develop this I think we should try to find a place to fit it into a song and have more than one group on at once, creating more of a busy atmosphere, and make these motifs more natural. We could do this by varying what we do and also blending groups together so that we don't look separate.