Fourth Session: Physicality Workshop - working as men

Becoming men/soldiers-
To begin we had to put on and take off our coats, assessing how we did so, but then we had to see how different factors could change how we did it. For example, if it was hot, taking of the jacket could be quite frantic whereas if it was too cold it might be hastily pulled on and zipped up high. We finally looked at how a man might put on the coat different to women, or as though a man or a soldier putting on a uniform. I personally found that putting on the jacket as a man made my movements more sloppy and less refined, not being as accurate as I might normally. Also holding my body in a different way saw me put my arms through a different sleeve first which I found strange but it enabled me to completely embody man-like qualities. 

We discussed what was physically different about men compared to women, talking about them having larger expanses of muscles which means they stand with a broader chest and their arms and legs can be slightly off their bodies, not able to touch it. With a lack of breasts and sensitive tissue males stand a lot more open which is also aided by the appendage between their legs. It was mentioned how they're normally taller and their steps are heavier due to their extra mass, meaning that they often have less fines than women. This meant that to become men we had to embody these qualities and had to really focus on the detail that we observed whilst watching men. With more detail it meant that we could give more a more precise and truthful interpretation. 

The task we were given required us to stand in a clump and quickly move out of the way our of leader, this displayed how some soldiers displayed arrogance towards him and were doing it because they had to, compared to some soldiers willingness to comply and their loyalty to their king. Combined with our men-like forms, saw us begin to get the idea of what it was like to be a solider and gave us tips on how we could develop our own characters. 

Physicalising the factory-
We had to constantly bare in mind that the stage is in traverse, meaning that moves needed to be adapted so that the audience can see. The movements therefore also needed to be exaggerated in order to make them noticeable.

Each group had to create their own set of movements to give the effect of the factory, of which most of us repeated to symbolise the mechanical movements of the machines.
We also had to chose what kind of item we were working on, whether it was something you had to be delicate with like an explosive or needed some strong force like a gun.
For this we chose to each have a different movement that we did to the objects that were passed around, symbolising the different processes that went on in the factories. We found it difficult not to create stylised movements as Rachel had suggested, instead often reverting to more naturalistic moves. It was difficult to create movements for the objects because we were using plastic bottles instead of the guns we would be using so it was hard to imagine what we could do with them, however I found that the movements we chose we reasonably easy to adapt to whatever prop we'd be using.  

Through out this we needed to remember how women from WWI would wear corsets, and to embody this we had to hold the top part of our body straight, seeing how this would affect our work. This saw our movement hindered as it limited the range of movements and strength through the arms but it was easy to forget this when focusing hard on the movements, reverting back to how my body would natural work in a factory.