Lessons based on Frantic Assembly

The last few lessons we have been concentrating on the theater company: Frantic Assembly, this group concentrates on physical theater and movement. This group has made past productions like: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. This group has been known to make incredible productions by just using simple bits of movement.

Warm-Ups

At the start of our first lesson  miss decided to make some sort of Frantic Assembly "Workshop" we did this by doing the warm ups they would do before every Rehearsal. The first activity was really simple: there were three chairs in a simple position (one at the front two at the back) what we had to do is walk to the chairs with two other people at the same time and then sit on the chairs at the same time and then move to the next chair, then the last person would walk down the middle back to the queue; at first this was very challenging as we couldn't confer to each other. After we got the hang of this exercise Miss gave us a scenario- your in the London underground and you need to get on a train as fast as possible to get to a meeting- but when we sat on a chair we needed  to do three simple movements at the same time, in a sense it was easy as we have been given a scenario but doing the three movements and trying to get to the other chair at the same time proved to be very challenging! The point of this exercise was stage presence; you should always have a meaning to do something when you act, (even walking as if your angry and you just stroll to your partner its going to seem like you're not angry any more)!

Our second exercise consist of a partner I picked Lewis Fisher, the point of this exercise is to just focus into our partners eyes and pretend that our eyes were "webbed" together therefore if I moved backwards Lewis would have to move forwards and vice versa. When everybody got the hang of this exercise three year thirteen's had to try to disrupt our focus by popping their head in-between us and if they make us loose our focus our eyes are now "webbed" there's and vice versa. My focus with Lewis was almost perfect until Toby took my attention so I had to follow him. The point of this exercise was to maintain a focus with our partner as if you were in a show and you lost your focus you might lose your character.

Around-By-Through (Across)

Theses are 4 simple movements which Frantic Assembly tend to use to create a bit of movement. With our partners we got told to do a sequence of 8 using Around-By-Through(you can see what this is in the Frantic Assembly Master Class video). After Lewis created our sequence Miss told us to focus on each other, make the sequence speedier and then she put up-beat music on. Instead of our simple sequence just looking normal , it transformed into a fight! I found this really interesting as changing the sped and focus can make a new story! Then miss told us to slow it down and for me to focus on someone else whilst Lewis focused on me then miss put on a slow song, this made it look like Lewis loved me but I was in love with someone else. After this we had to make our sequences "heavy" this gave our a sequence a new layer where we can tell a more detailed and structured sequence. Miss also told us to get as close as we can as it make a more dramatic effect.

Hymn Hands

Hymn hands is just basically putting your hands on your partner at varied speeds, your partner can move your hand and put it somewhere else. The only rule is that you need to keep contact with your partner. Hymn hand can be used to show affection or maybe even healing wounds.Focus is really important with this as it can show your emotions.

Othello scene

We re-created a scene form Frantic Assembly Othello, the scene we re created was where everyone was trying to the guard "Lewis" drunk. we sat on chairs horizontal to each other this was pose number 1 then we had to come out with 7 other random poses around the room after we got the hang of this we didn't stop for each pose so it was more fluent then we interacted with people near by using around-By-Through(Across),and then we had to focus on Lewis and give him funny looks. The end result was really good. And  post it in the my next post.

Duo scenes 

After we learnt some of Frantic Assembly's techniques, we decided to make a small piece.I got paired with Lorna and I we came up with a story were Lorna loves me but I'm cheating on her. The end result was very effective and dramatic.Ill post the video.

I've enjoyed studying Frantic assembly and I've learnt a lot about using Focus to create a story. And also just using simple movements then to layer the movements to tell a story.

I found our lesson on Frantic assembly very interesting as it has varied my knowledge of movement.