Today was another two-class and, for some, two-rehearsal day! But instead of a theme of twos, today’s theme was MURDER! Troilus and Cressida rehearsed in the playhouse in the morning and then attended workshops in the afternoon, while CoE attended workshops in the morning and then rehearsed in the afternoon and evening.
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The first of the two workshops was a stage combat intro led by RDA Jake Raiter. Jake first had campers partner up and choreograph an elaborate handshake including noise, flourishes, and multiple “phrases”. A good piece of fight choreo, says Jake, should be no more stressful than a practiced personal handshake.
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Then he taught the campers basic knaps and slaps, having them stand a safe distance apart and “slap” each other.
Finally, the campers were instructed to layer on acting to their slap, which ranged from audience “takes” to recited lines to full on extended choreographed sequences with murderous intent (for the characters, not the actors – all of the actors stayed perfectly safe!)
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The next workshop was an acting workshop, taught by KP Powell from the ASC. He began with crowdsourcing a list of “actions” – or, as he explained later, things you can play or do to another person.
Then he called campers up in pairs to demonstrate whether actions were playable or not – a playable action, we learned, should be specific, affect someone else on stage, and should be able to be communicated clearly and externally to the audience; we should know when it is completed, or “won”. “To murder”, for example, would be less specific and less playable than “to stab”; “to murder” would make a good objective for the actions to serve.
To demonstrate this, KP gave actors some classic contentless scenes and had them play them over with various objectives and variously-qualifying actions, such as “to wake” “to yell” “to leave” “to guilt” and so on.
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In the evening, while CoE was at the playhouse, most of the cast of Troilus and Cressida played a round of “Body, Body”, an active Among Us-like strategy game that travels over the building and involves lots of simulated murder. Very Shakespearean, if you ask me.
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Tomorrow we look forward to our festival dress rehearsal (or, dresstival), in the Playhouse, as well as some mandatory relaxation time. The kids are gonna need it!