Rehearsals and Amazing Architectures

July 21, 2010

Last night included a visit to The Royal Albert Hall to see a BBC Poms Concert that included works by Mendelssohn, Schuller, and Wagner. We paid 7 pounds for a restricted view and although you could only see a portion of the orchestra, we could easily see the conductor, organist (pretty amazing) and soloist. What wasn’t at all “restricted” was our view of the interior of the building and the people in the audience. Being up in the nose bleed section allowed me to listen to the music, which at any time could be delightful, thrilling, foreboding, soul searching, reflective and silent – the moments of silence were truly magical and at the same time really engage with looking around the splendor of the venue.

Yesterday afternoon we got into the meat of the full ensemble scene. This is a cut version of the beginning of Macbeth just prior to and when Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches. This is a large group scene as there are 22 of us, and Adam, a senior practitioner and our director for this scene, took movement that our movement teacher Gylnn had worked out and then played with it. The basic concepts were very clear to me and one’s similar to what I will often use in “blocking” or finding movement for a scene. Adam took the most important moments, action, relationships in the scene and physicalized those really into very briefly frozen tableaux/pictures and then used movement to go from one to the other adding the dialogue as action that moved the story through. In the case of the witches the movement is stylized and employs changes in tempo and vocal expression that are stylized as well. However Macbeth and Banquo speak, relate to one another and move in a naturalistic way, as two humans would relate to each other. This provides further contrast with the witches showing the relationship between those characters, Macbeth, Banquo and the witches and at the same time providing glimpses into their own unique natures. Well done,

Adam! And (as much of this work with Globe Education has been) nicely reassuring that this way of working can bring about understanding and is a successful process to connect actors, especially student actors with how to use their bodies as well as their voices to tell the story of the play.