My notes are for shit this time around, so here goes (mostly from memory).
We began with a warm-up that was very much within my skill set: improvise as poorly as possible. Owned it. Clunky exposition. Talking about objects. Questions? Negating your scene partner's choice. Leaving. I told my my scene partner she had poop smeared on her forehead. Dicks were whipped out -- by women. Farts were mentioned. People were called gay. Sadly, we forgot to mention Hitler. Schade.
After that shit show, we got down to business. We did two exercises that allowed everybody to have three scenes. All in all, we had a solid class. The first exercise was two people with one of them doing an activity. An activity that takes concentration. Something you do not want to be distracted from, and your goal is to carry on with that activity for the entire scene. Your scene partner, is trying to distract you. Both actors were to strive to be a character. The exercise consisted of two scenes, with the same characters in each scene. In the second scene, the setting would change, and the "doer" from the first scene would be the distractor in the second scene and vice versa.
This was fun. Mario and Kristen did a scene where they were exes trying be "just friends." Yeah, right. Gellman pointed out a cool thing about their two scenes: they were both doing the same activity: moving around old shit (one time in an attic and the other time in a storage facility), which was also reflective of their dialogue. They were having a conversation that they had probably had had many times before when they were dating. Scott and Kris had a very fun scene where they were step-siblings. And they played and drew on Scott's activity from the first of the two scenes: building a house of cards.
This exercise marked the second time in Conservatory where I tried to perform a character based loosely on a good friend of mine. He's distinctive in his voice, diction, and personality. So that helps. It feels almost as if you're cheating when do something like that. There's another benefit too: the person I base this character on is extremely slow to anger and almost always sees the good in people. So, that helps with my anger issues during scene work. I was in the scene with Megan, who gave this overly agreeable nice guy persona great stuff to work with as the home-wrecking next-door neighbor.
A cool aspect of this exercise was that the second scenes were invariably stronger than the first. The second scenes were stronger because the exposition was already out of the way for us, so we didn't feel the need to set the table for the scene. It made the scenes stronger because it was believable that the two characters already knew each other, had a history, and the scene would just begin as if the audience is walking in on a conversation that was already underway.
The second exercise was quite the challenge: two person scene in which you can only speak when you touch your scene partner. And, no, you don't just get to hold onto your scene partner for the whole scene so you can talk whenever you want. This was a great exercise for making silence less uncomfortable and feeling its power while you're in the middle of it. You also have to focus more on your scene partner, his or her facial expression, movement, and location on stage. Really cool stuff. Scott and Elizabeth had an awesome scene where they were mother and son. Scott was a gamer with no friends -- with the exception of the eight people scattered all over the world with he plays his games.
Ultimately, the purpose of these exercises was to get us to do what we should be doing every time we play: be a character with strong needs and wants interacting with his or her environment with honest emotional reactions. Or something like that.
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