I came in, first thing I saw was two white parallel strips and everyone staring at me, so I sat down quickly. Today what we did was very different! We started off with vocal exercises. Not voice projection, vocals. That means we worked with vowels and consonants and the moving of our jaw. It was 15 minutes later that things changed and got a lot tougher.
Now Julius was going around humming with a high pitch and a volume so low it was hard to match the softness. He wanted to communicate to us using only physical gestures and for us to match his singing and stance. So, he called us up using his hands and used whatever means he could to give signals or propose actions to us. Only when there was no alternative would he give verbal instructions. Thing is, he wanted to form a story through the singing and the proposing, not just have us to follow him. So I managed to play along with him a bit since I had this Bollywood idea. He actually said "good"! A huge change from the "late"s and the "noisy"s that I was so used to hearing. I learnt that it's good to step out and just try something without fear of being judged or laughed at.
Our next activity was to walk/run from one end of the black box to the other, only that there was to be a wall of jelly or any thick medium in between the two strips, so we were to slow down while we were inside that zone. It was harder than it seems because we had to analyze and repeat our motion slowly, giving special attention to the timing of the arms and legs. We became more aware of our bodies and how they move.
After that we walked down the strips first normally then very slowly. We were taught to not move our upper body while keeping our feet in line. So.. we had to maintain a relaxed posture, keeping our body and head straight while slowly moving down the lines, which trained our balance and the smoothness of our motion. We were also not allowed to look at the floor so we had to use our sense of touch or some other methods to make sure we were in line.
Following which we were to think of a simple action, play it out in real time, then deconstruct the actions and after that do it in slow motion. Mine was opening a corked bottle and then drinking from it, spilling some of the wine on myself. Deconstruction I found was very very hard. We have to isolate every separate movement as so: reach out, grab, pick up, insert, twirl, and so on. Also there was one point where I "finished" but no one said anything or continued the lesson so I was very confused and ended up doing some extra actions and left everyone slightly amused. Julius told me that I have to sure where my end point is so when I end, I'm just gonna stone and if no one says anything, so be it.
The two hours went surprisingly fast, our last exercise was simply having to say whatever script we chose, which was about four lines. We were also told to take out our item we were supposed to bring and think of an action to do with it while saying the lines. Personally I didn't prepare that well, so I ended up with a bible quote and an umbrella. I'm not sure how I'm going to link bible verses with an umbrella but I'll surely think of something. Training my improvising skills ah.
Wish me luck.
Isaac Wong
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