Yesterday the entire Acting class came together and performed Watering Hole in Studio A. The experience was messy, fun, and exciting - I was subjected to stimulations that my animal, the blue heron, had not yet experienced, so there was always something new to play with. I’ll discuss Watering Hole in terms of what worked, what didn’t work, discoveries I made, and any other thoughts that I have on the work we accomplished yesterday.
WHAT WORKED:
- Exploration. The first aspect of Watering Hole that I really enjoyed was that I got to really explore Studio A. The room was quite different from the way it usually is, and when we walked in the room, we were immediately suggested by Barbara and Ingrid to take in the room as much as we could - to become comfortable in where we were and what there was to engage with in the room. The exploration that I undertook in the first 5 minutes established the “where” for me very well, and I immediately identified the places where the blue heron was most likely to hang out: in or around the water in the middle of the room, or the water near the window. I also found my food sources. What was nice about the complexity of the room is that, as the exercise progressed, I was still able to discover new things about my where even after my focus had shifted away from exploring everything in the room. As the exercise progressed, I found that the heron would always be, in the background, in a state of exploration - the heron is always ready to discover what’s underneath a pile of newspaper or around the other side of a block.
- Keeping focus on the immediate. For much of the start of Watering Hole, I was overwhelmed - so many noises, so many animals, so much movement! A real blue heron would be completely freaked out by 3 elephants and a tiger scampering by. But I found a way to focus my attention so that I could handle what was going on around me and respond specifically and appropriately, and that was by focusing mostly on what was happening within about a 5-foot radius of me. That way, I could have interactions and specific communication with the other animals instead of trying to communicate with every other animal in the room. So, for example, instead of looking to see what Kyle's condor was up to on the other side of the room, I would instead look to see what Jordan's llama was up to right next to me, so that we could have some kind of interaction. In terms of what I learned from this, it became clear to me that in a seemingly overwhelming state of chaos, it is important for an actor to pay specific attention to each thing in turn instead of trying to take everything in at once.
- Maintaining the physicality. For such a long improv (more than 1hr, I believe), I really had to prepare ahead of time how I would occupy my time so that I didn't revert back into my "greatest hits." The biggest thing I found when watching the heron videos and going to the aviary was that a bird spends much of its time in one place, in one position physically, but with perhaps some isolated movement in the head or wings. So I spent much of my time maintaining balance on one leg, or two legs, or enjoying the feel of the water on my talons. I didn't force actions onto the bird, but rather I tried to work from some sense of instinct that I think I've developed over working with the bird for two weeks. Which brings me to my next point on something I tried that worked well, which was:
- Working from reactions. What is interesting about animals is, of course, how instinctual they are - and what that means in practice is that they spend much of their time reacting to their environment. What I found is that I didn't need to think of new actions to play or new things to do as the heron because there was so much to react to in the room. I could simply let it wash over me when I was unsure of where I was at the moment, and let myself listen both physically, visually, and aurally, and respond to that. I think I'm repeating myself a little here, but the main point is that a big thing I learned yesterday was listening to my environment and reacting honestly to it.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK:
- Eating. My beak, despite my best efforts, is simply not up to par with the strength and capabilities of a heron's beak. I've tried to reinforce it with plastic cut from a gallon of milk, but that hasn't done much. So during Watering Hole, I was finding tons of food that the heron would eat, but I didn't have the satisfaction of being able to pick it up and eat it. I mimed it, of course, so I could practice the movements of eating, but it was disappointing for me not to be able to realistically portray the heron eating - especially because I feel like I have the movements down very well after watching so many videos of the heron eating and after practicing it in class.
- Flying. Flying through the classroom was quite difficult for me today because there were so many animals in the room - I wanted to fly over them to get to the other side of the room, but of course I had to use my legs to get there and maneuvering between them was difficult. So I flew, but the flying was not natural or graceful like the bird - it was dodgy and uneven. I wasn't really able to take advantages of the undulations of flying while I was doing it.
- Killing/Being Killed. When we were allowed to start killing and being killed, I immediately looked around and realized something very grave: everyone is a threat. I could no longer be next to a bear or monkey without being afraid that they were going to attack me. Right from the start, I could tell that Taylor was after me, and sure enough she assaulted me about 30 seconds into the killing section. I tried to fly away, but due to a wing malfunction I didn't move very fast and she nabbed my wing, rendering me almost immobile. I ran straight into a herd of elephants who I thought were trying to kill me (turns out they were just trying to push me away), and so I just decided to lay down and die. It was a very anticlimactic ending to the exercise. As the blue heron, I am actually king of my ecosystem, and I was planning on nabbing a naked mole-rat or two before I was killed, but I didn't get the opportunity. However, that initial realization of "Oh my God, anyone can kill me now" was quite interesting because, in one moment, my relationship and method of communication with the other animals completely changed. It's like people who walk around and take everyone else as a threat to their existence - they're not very amicable or fun to be around because they're always on the look-out. I'm not sure to what level an animal is always on the look-out; I think it's a background instinct, part of that background listening that is on the other side of the coin of constantly exploring the environment around you. It's hard to know when you can't get inside the mind of the heron, but I think I can find a compromise in the future between knowing that I could be killed and having the courage to step outside of that and explore my beautiful environment anyways.
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