Archetypes

Archetypes; half-face masks
Theatre class with Glen Noble
5th March 2012

Character consideration / development

At the beginning we had short discussion about archetypes, a quick review about how do we understand i is, what examples we know. I didn't have much knowledge about that, but I think I understood what it is like.
We warmed up walking in the space, added stops, jumps - tried to jump as high as possible without noise coming down and catch the moment after. We tried to jumps like cats do, what I really enjoyed, because I am personally interested in cat's moving quality. POSTURE: Then we worked in a really interesting way - we looked for heighten leading points - knees, pelvic, belly, chest, head - nose, skull, etc.. It was really interesting, when we started to include making/acting characters walking in these different positions. I really enjoyed it, because I found that there is so many ways to create a character or even a number of characters based on these different body part leading positions. For me it was amazing and really powerful experience and practice, because I found it really natural and even gentle or simple way to explore and find possible characters I can build myself. It somehow ruined the barrier in my character making practice, I'd say it was like releasing technique for character building practice. Voice, sounds (actually-unknown language using and playing with voice range) inclusion made the practice more effective and characters more affective.
As soon as we started to improvise using half-face masks we became more concentrated on our body moving quality rather than face. However, half of our faces were still included, the lower side. It was new for me and a bit strange that I had to use my mouth so wide and it became so meaningful. I noticed feeling more free using these masks, because when you have an eye contact, and you can not see faces fully, it is easier to think that you are talking to character, not that particular person. By the way, farce should be avoided.
This is how we explored our acting abilities, but I can not fully reflect yet, or recognize my own ability range of different characters, because I think I need more practice on it and a feedback from side look.

Personally, it was the best and the most impressive work with masks I ever had, even we had some other workshops and opportunity to work with different masks and different methods.

My question - how effective are small movements in our body?
If you were at the same class, could you tell me what goes from me if you noticed? what energy ? (when I am building a character)