Melissa Mchiney Rehearsal Blog 3: Creating A Scene

In the aim to work better as a class, the class was split into three smaller groups. Each group was formed of people that doesn't usually work together, this was an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with one another and learn from one another different ways to approach tasks given and see different aspects of thinking. My group consisted of myself, Ryanne,Leigham,Matas and Remel.

The task given was to directly show Melissa being persecuted by her peers, keeping in mind our issue based tableau lessons and what we had learn't from them ie; physicality,abstract movement,characterization. What worked well for us was that our creative ideas were flowing well and because of our previous experience of bad time management, we were able to listen to each other and make constructive use of our time. The only two problems we faced was to figure out how to link two ideas together so that it made sense and how to safely execute a lift.The primary idea of our scene was to show Melissa (myself) being her own worst enemy. In the beginning of the short scene she is held captive by her own demons,(Ryanne and Leigham) pulling her arms back, exposing her to the world. Her feet are weighed down by all the taunts (Remel and Mataz holding down my feet) she'd been getting from society. She exhales heavily and her weights insync with her exhale to. As she escapes these weights, she is lifted off her feet and fights to find the ground.She falls lands thinking it is over, she stands and walks to a mirror to see her reflection, however she is frightened as her reflection is extorted (Leigham holds Ryanne wrapped around his waste). This is to show how Melissa now sees herself - a freak. Melissa falls back and is literally kicked while she is down.The scene ends with Melissa lying on the floor, defeated and the demons smiling looking down on her. The reason why the lifts were a problem for us was because when Remel picks me up and I'm meant to land forward falling onto Matas' back however I was worried that it was hurting Matas although he said he was managing I felt that the landing was not steady and may cause an accident. Now the second lift also caused concern because Leigham could not carry Ryanne and in order for it to work Leigham would have to stand strong. The way we approached this was we kept practising, each time mentally logging what was not working or what could be better before approaching it again.Every one had to feel completely safe and comfortable.