First Lesson

On Tuesday , we did a rough run through of page 1 - 22. In my opinion the run through went better than I thought. However, before we did the run through we got to briefly meet the TTA team who is working with us on Titus Andronicus. It was nice to meet them as it is the first show at our college where we will be working with TTA.

After this, Ben taught us our warm up that we will do before we ever start rehearsing. Ben told the class to take our shoes off and to clean the whole space. He said the because we should treat the space like its sacridid  and special. Ben also briefly mentioned how this was inspired by Yoshi Oida who I know a little bit about as in year 11 Stuart Worden did an 2 hour yoga exercise that was amazing! Yoshi Oida is a theatre practitioner who believed in cleansing the space and through actors should meditate.  When we were tidying the room it made me realise how messy it actually was and as I never really look closely at the room enough to realise this. When the space was clean the class spread out and started rolling down the spine and moving our weight around with our hands. I closed my eyes while doing this which I think helped me experiment more with how I balanced my weight as I forget there were other people in the room. In addition to this, it made helped me to clear my mind as are I wasn't mentally choosing were to move I was physically moving.  With this part of the warm up I really enjoyed it as it made me physically and mentally warm up without feeling tired or drained but energised and ready to work.

The next part of the exercise was to do side- stretch. This is something I did with Ben in term 1 which I loved but hated at the same time ( if that makes sense). I loved it because of the purpose of the warm up is to control and embrace the pain,  however this is the same reason why I hate because it hurts so much! With the side stretch you have to stand in a warrior pose and lean left to right 8 times. On the 8th go you stop and go to floor in a sit up position and do one sit up. When you have done one sit up you tuck your right hand in and roll to the floor. When your on the floor you lift your arms and legs (in time with one another ) and hold. For this to work you have to look through your legs and just go with it. This is the part of the exercise that is the most effective for me as I am fighting the feeling to let go and give up. I find this interesting that this is the most effective part for me because it is the part that I hate the most. When Ben says we slowly place our arms and legs back to floor as slowly and controlled as we can. When we have done this we carefully do the child's yoga pose , turn our hands over and sit up with our spine slightly curved. Then when fill ready we can stand up. When I stood up it felt so weird because it felt like my body was shouting to stand up and not my brain. Like it was a subconscious decision coming my body and not my brain.  From doing this in term 1 I can definitely see an improvement on controlling my body and allowing a natural instinct to stand up.  The final part of the side-stretch is when everyone is standing Ben needs to shout 'ha' and when he does we instantly jump back into the warrior pose. and do the opposite side to what we began with.  Doing the side-stretch  a second time made my focus improve so much and the second time Ben said 'ha ' everyone instantly jump into a warrior pose.  Overall, I find the side stretch a really helpfully exercise that makes me physically ready.

 The next part of the warm up was to lie on the floor and just let my spines explore the floor. Then are arms, legs and the rest of our body. This was a new exercise that I had never done before and just helped me to stretch out my body as it felt quite sift from the side stretch. In addition to this, it just helped me explore new ways of how I can use my body. Again I had my eyes closed which I think did personally help me to react or copy or what other people are doing. To be honest , this is something that I sometimes do in exercise that if everyone is doing the same similar movement I will do it as well to make myself feel comfortable which is an effective way to warm up.


These are the three exercises that I found the most effective because it changed the way I felt and made me feel a bit more comfortable to do the the run though.

So, after this we did the run through of the show.  If I'm honest I really didn't want to do. The reason for this was because I wasn't confident on my lines at all. even though I knew the first half of them I didn't feel ready to not have a script in front of me. In addition to this, as a first run of the show you would just expect that the director that would allow the actors to have there script and Ben not allowing us was kind of scary.  However, doing a run for act 1 and 2 did actually helped me understand the play and my character Marcus so much more. For example , while I was learning my lines I didn't understand the intention of the line " O Titus , o, see what thou hast has done! In a bad quarrel slain a virtuous son! " however in the  run through something clicked in my brain and I understood that it was about Titus killing Mutius . In addition it made me realise how much character work I need to do and start actioning the scenes that I'm in and I don't have any lines in.  Overall , I think doing the run through was really helpful and I feel bad that I was quite negative about it at the beginning. Furthermore, I have learnt to trust Ben more as if we did just a sit down read through I wouldn't of found it that helpful compared to getting up on our feet and actually doing it.