Run Through and The Impossible Task

The first three Acts work really well. The transitions are smooth, the risks are high and the pressure gauge is increased. Act 4 and 5 are not as high quality as Acts 1, 2 and 3. I think it’s because we lose the energy as the play goes on, so the pressure gauge decreases. 

We meisnered the Sir Christopher scene. This was really useful as we hadn’t meisnered this scene before and we were all struggling with keeping the pressure up in this scene. The relationships that I have with the others in the scene were heightened through meisnering. The importance of the scene was also heightened and we all started to understand how much pressure is needed in this scene. Meisnering meant that we understood the importance of the lines and what was really being said in the scene. I started to understand what the Sir Christopher’s were actually proposing and I also understood the consequences of what was being talked about.

Something that helped us keep the pressure within the Sir Christopher scene was the idea of using the Impossible Task. This is when you choose something to try to achieve that is very hard to complete. This really helped to raise the pressure of the scene as we were all trying to achieve different impossible tasks.

Another scene that the Impossible Task idea helped with was the Alpha Course scene. This helped to bring out the different characters in the scene and also helped the non-speakers in the scene to find their characters. This also helped me to remember that my Terry character is a lesbian so that gave me another dimension to my character that hadn’t thought of before. I found myself trying to get the attention of Ollie throughout the scene. 

The impossible task is a really helpful tool when you know your character really well as it reminds you of ideas that you had forgotten about or hadn’t realised.