Animalistic (Chekhov)

During this lesson, we primarily thought of an animal that we felt represented our character from our monologues. Because of the anxious nature of my character, I felt that my character related to a meerkat.  My character is very nervous, yet protective and I felt that this related closely to how a meerkat acts.

Then we were told to focus on becoming 100% this animal. Because of this, I was running round the room with my hands clasped against my chest, stopping frequently to 'adjust my surroundings'. I had to take in the characteristics of the animal and portray them.

After a while of running round as a meerkat, we then had to 'tone down' the animal and rather than doing 100% animalistic characteristics, we needed to do 50% animal and 50%person. This was more challenging than the original as we had to focus on creating a mix between the animal and human. To do this, I began to walk lower on my feet (previously, I had been walking on 'tiptoes' to gain a meerkat look) and I held my hands in front of my chest but rather than holding them up like a meerkat, I clasped them and wrung them. This was the hardest stance to achieve because it wasn't a naturalistic position to be in. 

Finally, after 50%, we decided to move onto 100% human characteristics. However, we were to incorporate the animalistic gestures in a more human way. We took some of the characteristics into our character. For example, I continued to pace nervously and was uneasy on my feet. Also, I decided to include the clasping of my hands that had previously been the meerkats natural stance.

Furthermore, towards the end of the lesson, we had to create two other animals that were different from our original animal. I chose to become a lion and then an owl. Both of these animals are very different from my original meerkat. The lion is a lot more proud and
confident whereas the meerkat was afraid and startled. Also, the owl was angry yet wise which was largely different from my original animal. This helped me to think about opposing animals and opposing characteristics that I perhaps want to stay away from in the future.

Overall, I  believe that this technique was effective as it allowed me to create a more interesting performance visually and helped me to imagine my characters movements, and emotions more clearly.