An Acting Update...

Today, we worked on acting without acting, so to speak. A bit of background: yesterday, Luke taught us that everything we do is based on some mental goal or objective we have. It could be for people to like us, it could be to get people to leave us alone, it could be to make someone feel angry or depressed or cheerful. I'm pretty sure we all realized, almost right off the bat, that he was right. Back to today: we were given cards with a bunch of these objectives, and worked in pairs to try and achieve those objectives in a given scenario. Since many of the objectives counteracted each other (for example, one person trying to make the other feel better about themselves would be paired with a person trying to make him or her angry at herself), there tended to be a clear winner and loser in these scenarios, and we gave the others feedback on their performances. The point of the whole exercise was to act like you normally act in your day-to-day life when confronted with various scenarios. Luke's pointers were of a great deal of assistance: superimposing a mental image of somebody who makes you feel a certain way, be it overjoyed or furious or anything in between, over your partner completely changes the dynamic of the scene. Picturing physical actions, including punching, poking and comforting, had a similar impact on the nature of the performance. I'm really enjoying working with my fellow actors, and I'm excited for whatever's coming next!