I must begin with an apology. My housemates and I made mulled wine this evening and therefore everything is a bit foggy. When I say 'made mulled wine' I mean, of course, that we cut up some oranges and heated up the wine we bought in a wok. Dunno where all the saucepans are.
This morning did not start off well. We had no milk. My cup of tea was rubbish! And my chocolate-chip-wheatabix-mini-bites did not taste overly brilliant doused in honey. I thought honey might be a genius solution- I thought wrong. I then got on the wrong bus thinking I was going to work. I even ran for it. Christ.
However once I eventually got to Liverpool Street, and following my less-than-impressed-with-my-morning-so-far stomp down to the rag factory, the day picked up considerably.
Bikram has come to an end as of Monday, although some excellent little monkeys have kept it up. I am in awe of them. Sadly I have had to work all the hours God gave this week (at least British Gas will be pleased) but I intend to try and make at least a couple of classes next week. It's funny how much you can miss that sweat-fest-room-of-doom.
So (apart from the seemingly unending queue for the toilet) the morning began. We started to warm up and clown about with Steve. After last week, when I think we might have confused ourselves a little, Steve allowed us the time to revisit the things we've looked at over the past couple of weeks. "In the safety of numbers" we explored the archetypes once again, walking around the room together, cranking the various archetypes up to 100% one by one and beginning to bring them back down again. We were also asked to create a character for the archetype and play with that. Imaginations ran wild and people came up with really brilliant, out-of-the-box choices which worked wonderfully. We begin to interact with each other and finally, after finding them physically, we gave our characters a voice which made me very jolly and started to blow off the cobwebs of a long week. (When you are happily sat on stage door minding your own business, I think it is very rude for the dress rehearsal people to demand you isolate the fire panel in the auditorium. Especially when you don't know how to do it and have to read an instruction manual the size of Egypt in about 2 minutes to figure it out) Surprisingly this took us up to lunch time (unless in my mulled wine stupor I have missed something) but it was reassuring to spend a morning calmly refreshing the memory and setting a few things straight.
After a M&S bargain lunch (Georgia and I were feeling pretty smug about this) and a little conflab about the exciting future for fourth monkey, and the unfortunate incident when I stood on the box of blueberries (my socks will never be the same) it was back on our feet and on to the next step: combining two archetypes -- for example 'trixter-mother' or 'devilish-king'. Once more we began with all of us moving around the space finding how these two archetypes could sit with each other, discovering them physically and vocally, and then got together in small groups. In these groups we then worked on that dear old improvisation with the antique chair again, with one person taking on the role of boss clown. In our group this was Stuart who was brilliant. I opted to be a 'heroic-fool' which was quite fun although god knows how successful it was. I feel like the fool is the archetype I have the most affinity with: I have wisely decided not to dedicate too much time wondering why this is - it might be upsetting, but it is interesting to hear where everyone else's affiliations lie. Most people say they still have a struggle with 'the mother' and 'the devil' - although today really helped - creating a character and a situation seems to be the obvious solution to this problem. If anyone 'wins' (not that its a about that -- ensemble remember) at creating back stories -- it's most definitely Maria. Elaborate tales she did tell. I quite want Maria to write me a story (hint!). She was told to be wary of being too clever. What a lovely thing to be told. Especially when I seem to find my happy place lobbing about all over the shop being a fool with a very limited brain capacity... Oh dear
We then moved on to combining two new archetypes PLUS a tension state. Trust me, as a newcomer to this stuff, for a while it hurts your brain. I had to stand very still and clutch my head. It seemed I was not alone in this, so that was okay. Some people were VERY brave and combined some very tough things to great effect. I decided to try to combine things that I thought would sit well with each other, or at least be not impossible to execute at this stage. So I was a 'devilish-queen-neutral' person. They seemed to sit well together. My brain wasn't having to whirr at a million miles an hour to marry the three anyway. We then did an improvisation where we were soldiers about to go over the top. The next group were stealing anything and everything from a warehouse. Everyone steered clear of the tension state rigamortis; for very obvious reasons, as I found out near the end of class. We were reminded that the tension state must be driven primarily by the breath, so I felt I got off very lightly in neutral. Because of this, at the end of the day I decided it was high time I made life difficult for myself.
With a partner we had to choose two archetypes and a tension state to play and begin a conversation. During the conversation a certain word or phrase would make us change our tension state. We had to obviously continue in this new tension state until it changed again. So, paired with Lamb (both of us it turned out playing the 'heroic-lover') I decided to start of in 'one-thought-to-another' as a tension state. This then became 'exhaustion' in which I definitely didn't get enough oxygen, and then going for broke this became 'rigamortis' -- in which I DEFINITELY didn't get enough oxygen. I was concentrating very hard however on trying to tell Lamb that I was so in love with my own reflection in her eyes, fairly impossible when you are frozen and barely breathing. It was therefore only when Steve said stop I realised I was about to fall over. The world was wibbly for a while after that and I had very annoying pins and needles in my hands. Bummer. Don't worry though, I managed let the whole world know about my struggles with an involuntary exclamation of "Oh my God!" so I do apologise for that.
After a quick five minute break, which basically turned into another toilet queue we moved on to movement with Charlene. And another fairly rubbish attempt at the concentration game. We will manage it eventually. I have faith. Poor Charlene. I don't think she does anymore.
We were working on ensemble today, and natural progression from the partnering we did last week. This involved lots of games which required us to work and play together, passing movements around the circle, getting to a point where an onlooker wouldn't realise where the movement had originated, walking across the space, replacing people in the circle and... tying toilet roll around ourselves. Ironic I felt as a lot of the day had been spent in conversation about the lack of toilet roll in the loo. Anyway, half of us had to fix toilet roll to ourselves in some way. I opted for a bandana look. I hoped I looked like a teenage mutant ninja turtle. I'm sure I just looked like an idiot with toilet roll tied round my head but a girl can dream. Us cool kids with the toilet roll then had to fall when Charlene clapped her hands and hope that the non-toilet people would catch us. On the whole they did and many thanks for it. This then progressed to one person shouting 'Earth' (see what we did?) and starting to fall -- everyone would then rush to their aid and stop them from braining themselves. Walking round the space (us not them) Steve and Charlene would then call out someone's name and they would begin to fall, the rest of us had to catch them. It was about knowing where everyone was, and on the whole I think we did pretty well. We are a very trusting bunch of people, and as was mentioned a lot today I think it is with good reason. We then clumped together on the floor and had to move as one with our eyes closed. Apart from a slight misunderstanding about rotating 180 degrees (FYI she meant the entire clump- not an individual swivel) again we helped each other through and I think almost made it. We finished with getting the entire clump of us from one end of the room to the other. Ignoring our unimaginative collective shuffle with which we began, we then dragged and shoved and pushed each other along (with love) with no man left behind. Job done. Bed time.
Not quite. I got home and saw my housemate Hannah do a mad dash away from the kitchen window. I was concerned and mildly apprehensive but I needn't have worried. I opened my door to find them pissing themselves with laughter dressed as Father Christmas (Laura had an epic beard) and an Elf. Is it any wonder I lean towards a fool archetype? I was keen to get in on the action. They had a costume for me too and I spent the evening dressed as Mr Claus decorating our tree and drinking mulled wine. Hannah and I tried to create a grotto when Laura wasn't looking by trying to hang fairy lights from the ceiling but we decided to stop when it became apparent that our plan was shit. Laura is pleased. Han and I will regroup tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment