3/6/14

Describe what you saw in the chairs exercise. What stories and relationships were developed?

Describe your Absurdist extract -> Who do you play and what Absurdist techniques are used?

So, you may remember the 'impulse exercise'. It was either earlier this year or very late last year - I'm pretty sure it was this year. Well, the 'chairs exercise' was very similar to that, only with slight variations. The three actions were different (clap five times, jump on the spot and roll on the ground), the props were now all chairs and could be moved around, and each person created their own goal that they attempted to fulfill. Mine was to turn all the chairs upside down, and as you can imagine, many of the goals clashed with each other and created conflicts.

While I'm sure I was intended to reflect more on the one that I watched (the class was divided into groups that went one at a time), I honestly have a better time remembering the one that I was in. Cody and I certainly had a few interesting moments and negotiations - Cody's goal seemed to simply be to sit on one chair with his feet on another. Of course, this created a problem as every time I turned over his foot-chair He would get back up and turn it over again so as to put his feet back on it. After a couple rounds of this, I came up with a solution: I turned the chair over then picked up his feet and put them back on the upturned chair. Problem solved! We both seemed rather content with this solution. Then Allie came and took the chair altogether for the line she was making in the middle of the stage.

Allie actually seemed to be the main antagonist of the group, simply because her goal was totally incompatible with anyone else's and she would not yield to anyone. Apparently, the chairs even had to be the right way up as well as in a line in the middle, because every time I tried to use the line as a convenient way to turn over multiple chairs in quick succession she shooed me away and turned them all the right way up again. Because of this behaviour, a few temporary alliances were formed simply to get the chairs away from her. Obviously none of the plans were very elaborate because none of us could talk and they mainly consisted of just picking up a chair or two and walking away, but some of them worked (temporarily at least).

Okay, that's probably enough on the chair exercise. Now, the Absurdist extract.

Travis and I are performing a four-page extract from Waiting for Godot (the longest possible performance of the list we were given because why not). I play Estragon, and Travis plays Vladimir. It's... interesting.

The extract makes use of quite a few Absurdist techniques - which is of course to be expected from one of the great Absurdist plays - including a cyclic plot (or at least one that doesn't go anywhere), disconnected words and actions, repetition and pause. So much pause.