February 11 下北沢 Workshop - Soothing

Today's workshop was the sort where our champions just kept trickling in. Fortunately, everybody is comfortable jumping into exercises and activities and we were able to build and build with new faces for each step.

We started out working with what you do when you are uncomfortable. How do you soothe yourself? What do you do if you can't soothe yourself the way you like to? Showing the audience your character's discomfort helps them connect the dots and see why your character is doing what they are doing. Looking to other characters for help making yours feel better is a great way to show tension and energy among all the characters in your drama.

Remember: It doesn't really matter what happens in your scene. What matters is most is why and and that leads you to explore all kinds of hows to make it happen. If you master this, you'll always have scenes and characters worth watching.

After a very quick break, we took on scenes where we could really highlight the characters' discomfort and work on ways for each one to look for soothing. We used scenes from Elf, Ten Meter Tower, and August: Osage County. Whether we were looking at serious drama, comedy, or a simple slice of life, the challenges and opportunities were very apparent and our returning champions got some very good work done.