Hayley Izzard

The Trickster The Child The Innocent The Mother The Hero The Old The Whore - to name a few! These are all examples of sterotypical characters that are easily accessible to portray in theatre. This is easily acheived through playing around with undulations. Undulation is: bending knees, slumping your body over, pushing your pelvis out and returning upright to lean back into your hip joints. In each of these positions a character can be born, for example: in the bending knees and slumped over form, its easy to play 'The Old'. The same for 'The Mother' leaning back can portray pregnancy, and theres so many more. If you lead with your head, you can play 'The Hero', strong and willful. If you lead with your nose, you could play 'The Geek' or even 'The Nosey'. So many possibilities evolve just from playing around with physicality, and which part of the body to lead with. This technique was used as a form of 'Commedia Del Arte...

Ive said about the Arthrometric model in another post but the lesson plan we had today was putting the model into practice I think. We had to work in trios, and experience aswell as giving, with the rocking exercises, gripping the legs, arms and torso area. To Give: When rocking Katie and Janiece the momentums of the rocking were so different. Janiece had a slow and steady pace, whereas katies rocked quite fast, especially when her legs were involved. When the legs were involved on both of them, I noticed the partnership of the other person on the other side would quickly become out of sync, and we had to work together to stop the receiver feeling disjointed. I noticed that katie struggled to let go of weight, especially with the exercise of letting Janiece and I move her muscles, but I think we all struggled with this area. It was either weight was given in the leg or in the arm, never both at the same time. I think Janiece was the best out of all of us in giving weight, you coul...

The second session: In Voice, we were practising the art of carefully pronouncing vowels and consonants. For example, my warm up exercises were: Maa -Faa -So - La - Ti - Wa Bee - Bi - Bick - Boh Shcrap - Mi - To - Da - La We had to say these to the group and recite them over and over. She would individually give us feedback on how we would say certain sounds, which I thought was really good as its almost 1 to 1 feedback. We then had to say a piece of text and she would individually go around the group and listen. Again, we'd recite them; my feedback was to play with tone, but she didn't have alot to say. I think I have quite a neutral voice but I do have a slight birmingham accent, which isn't too big of a problem.

To start the session by melting when a partner nudges you was a nice experience for me; personally, I like moving in this way. It eventually progressed until four of us were doing it, initiating the movement for each other and receiving, which became our own 'nudging dance'. The next exercise reminded me of what we did earlier in the week in theatre, to do with suspending the torso. It's amazing how its so much difference when you suspend your torso and manipulate your weight into different areas of the body and how much difference it makes. Posture looks so much better when lifting, and you find that it actually takes more energy to walk normally than to walk with your weight lidted(torso suspended). It also reminded me of the rib and pelvis work in movement tasks. I was trying to imagine the spaces inbetween my ribs, but I could mainly picture the pelvis. I find it harder to picture the ribs for some unknown reason. I found gliding while the torso was suspended awkw...

Free Writing: Can't explain the words, but I was trying to write without thinking which was really hard. The colours are how I see these words. Lesson Picked 3 objects, put them together with other objects. Rearranged these objects in groups. Put all objects together, started changing around and manipulating the objects to make them into our massive art piece. Picked an object and explored all if its possibilities, the way it moved, the way it can be manipulated. Feedback At the start I was bored with just rearranging the objects. We found we ended up putting things in similar places and my attention span quickly faded. Although it is interesting to see how objects can look in different ways, and how they have endless possibilities on how to rearrange them. Creating our massive art piece was really interesting, loved it. When we focused on one object I was wrapping it around me, letting it float, even dancing alongside it. It has a million and ...

To start the session with practicing moving about with hands and feet firmly on the floor was a great help to me as I got to practice from the previous lesson. I'm definitely finding it's coming more natural to me now. Then we explored with levels, which I'd never really explored indepth before. I always think with 'levels' that it's from upright to the ground, and then to the floor. It's easy to forget that there's so much space inbetween the three. Admittedly, I prefer either upright or the floor, which are the two extremes. They are my comfort zones. This is because I have a long back and the inbetween levels makes it feel awkward and I couldn't stay in these inbetween levels for long. We started at Level 1 (upright) progressing through to Level 10 with hands touching the floor and through to Level 20(on the floor). I found at first that I was moving down more rapidly than I should have and somtimes moving slower than I should have. When movi...

Learning about Neutral Mask was valuable for me, as I've been intrigued about it since the start of the year, of what it is. It's a training tool for actors, developed by Jacque Copeau. He was a frenchman who wanted to develop readiness for the actors on stage, this involved training the actors to 'neutral act'. Jacque Copeau http://www.landrucimetieres.fr/spip/spip.php?article1403  To do this, there are two masks: a male mask and a female mask. Between the two you can see the massive differences between the female and male facial components.It's similar to normal maskwork as the mask requires you to cut out old habits that you've developed such as, fidgeting or touching your hair/touching your face. If you touch the mask, it stops the illusion of the mask being an actual being. The type of exercises Copeau used to practise with his students were developing the art of neutral acting. For example, an exercise we did were 3 people had to 'don' th...

Task 1: Learning about the Arthrometric model was interesting for me, I tended to notice what movement was coming from my hips and shoulders in the central zone. When running around the room, I was practising articulating my feet (using my metatarsals, hinge joint) and the gliding joints in my feet. I find that knowing the terminology for different parts of your body helps to image them when moving. I didn't fully know what to notice or understand the purpose. Learning about the radial symmetry was informative, ie; elbows and knees are biaxial, cannot alter direction but can offer full range in movement, and the joints from the knees to the ankles are triaxial, as are joints from elbow to hand. It's quite complicated and would take a few physical exercises of exploration, to fully grasp . The Arthrometric Model Source: Andrea Olsen -  Body Stories Task 2: It was interesting to learn about the ribs because I didn't know much about the anatomy of how the rib...

The most significant difference for me this term is Ballet.  After not having done ballet since I was 14 or 15, I couldn't remember even the basics of discipline for moves and I noticed last term that, particularly, when plieing my lumbar vertebrae near my pelvis would collapse underneath me and I think that was because I was being too forceful in trying to get low to the floor. I appear to have corrected that hopefully. One of my personal goals was to try and learn to pirouette, as I love them :) Because of yoga and pilates, my hips and adductus longus muscles (inner top of leg) are so much more flexible and accessible that I can acheive the turnout that I want, rather than my legs caving in as i spin. I'm so happy with my progression. Video of progression coming up soon :)

To me, Improvisation is another word for 'childs play' and it's one of those theatrical areas I find most challenging. In Dance I have so much more creativity and freed up movement, but for some reason with theatre, I can't 'realism act' all that well and tend to go towards over exaggerative action which is more comfortable, but still awkward for me. After a few sessions of this, I've learnt that it's so simple to practice but such a hard art to grasp but can only be obtained and carried out through practice. OBJECT ACTIVITY CHARACTER RELATIONSHIP SCENARIO These are all the key components to grasping scenework, aswell as 'ALWAYS SAY YES!' when improvising a scene, as if you don't then that leaves the other person or people your working with stumped and there's no way the scene can carry on for much longer. The process is a matter of give and take. Personally, Improv is my weakest area (theatre wise) as I'm very much a pe...

'Angel Against the Odds' This 20 minute piece, to me, was my favourite. I loved everything about it. The storyline was showing inside an insane persons head and how he thinks there's a 'bad angel' out to get him, and all unfortunate incidents happen along the way, which eventually leads to the main characters death. The transitions were superb, they were so quick.They could transition from scenes where they were expressing the emotional state of the main character, to the next bad thing to happen to him, ie: all of his hair disappearing due to no reason, or an 'accidental' fire starting with no clue as to what started it. I had genuine chills when watching it because it was very haunting. I was gripped throughout the piece. I can't believe such good work has come from Year 1 students in Term 1. (no name) This group was the 2nd piece that I saw, after 'Angel Against the Odds'. This was when i caught on that I think all of the pieces had a r...

Watching Influx Dance Company countless times was an interesting experience for me. In ways, the performance struck me more as art rather than a dance piece, which shows how inter-linked art is to dance, a cross art form. The artistic elements were: the repetitive and different pitched sounds as they were travelling around the room. There was alot of multi tasking involved where they had a sequence of interlinking actions, repetition and sequences with the stamping of feet. They even used dance in a way of showing teamwork for example, when helping each other to slide under the shelf in the art gallery. This reminded me of a movement you would see when army men help each other to protect each other from bombs and to travel in secret or confined spaces. There were a few mysterious elements which left me thinking: 'Why did they do that?', for example the jumping onto the gym mat in no particular way, what was the reason for it? I think it's good when a piece can leave you...

Walking rolls, lunges and roll downs Practicing walking round the room and rolling into lunges, and roll downs, travelling in different ways has progressed since the start of term. At the start, I never had the confidence and felt self conscious to just roll on the floor and roll down infront of people, which sounds silly but I felt intimidated by others potential. Over the past few weeks in doing this exercise I have opened up loads being able to link lunges, roll downs and rolls into the floor. A sense of it is just not caring about what others think and just focusing on yourself. Roll downs I've learnt that there's loads to consider in roll downs, more than you'd actually think. I think, at the start, I was just letting my body do the action instead of really letting go, for example, letting go of my head has been a task for me. In andrea's technique Ive worked on this and I feel that I really let the head go now, but ive also learnt that imagining how your sp...

Yoga: Since the start of term, i've noticed a few differences. I feel that the elasticity in the back of my legs has loosened so i can extend and lift my leg higher and my pelvis can open more freely, there was a lot of tension there that was through misuse of my body. I'm so happy about this as my main goal for warm ups is to progress with gaining flexibility. I would love to work on getting my feet on the ground now, in positions like the 'downward dog' position, as shown below.  I think to continue to push my boundaries is the way forward. Pilates: I think I've found it hard to know how to engage my core abdominal muscles over the past weeks. I'm glad we've used the rubber bands and the foamers to help naturally engage the core muscles, to get to know what it feels like. I'm not sure if I'm doing it right naturally on my own, I tend to push my ribs down when carrying out exercises, and I do feel the stretch alot more. When using the...

Studying theatre with masks for a few sessions has been a comical and enjoyable experience for me. We started off exploring with expressive movement and how because your character is expressed facially (happy face, sad face, crazy face etc), you have to make more of an effort to make gestural expression, this reminds me of Brechtian technique with his technique of 'Gestus'. It's also using mime, which, when you get the hang of, really brings the mask character to life, and after a while I forgot that there was a person behind the m ask. It's like the mask becomes one with the actor. The Journey of Masks, http://www.giovannifusetti.com/en/workshops-detail.php?nav=1&lang=en&post=28 In the above picture, these are similar masks to what we were working with. To make them look more realistic, people would put their hair infront of it, putting hoodies up. Experimenting with open and closed positions determines what the characters are about, for ...

Feedback from Routine: (Abby and Emma) They could tell I knew what i was doing, fluidity was good. Although, it could be even tighter. Watch out when turning direction, as i tend to move my pelvis to get to the right direction still. MUST PRACTICE THIS. I wasn't rushing through the sequence but the momentum i had was leading me through it, and the fluidity of that comes hand in hand. I was elated about this feedback, simply because in past weeks confidence has been a massive issue for me. Today, I started to feel like a dancer rather than someone wanting to be one, and getting myself into that mindset proves to be very positive.

Learning about the axial skeleton - from the skull down to the coccyx was a pleasurable experience for me, although quite restricting. We had to move with as many different ways that are possible, for the head to meet the pelvis and pelvis to meet the head  At first attempt of it, i found that I moved with alot of contracting and releasing. When standing, I noticed that my head lead quite often, examples of moves were letting the head go, aiming to go down one side of my body then bringing it over and coming up to the other side. Then, we progressed on to constructing our own movement sequence with the score of aiming for the pelvis to meet with the head and the head to meet with the pelvis. Before we did this, we drew our spines as we thought about them now.    BEFORE MOVING: AFTER MOVING: As you can see, after moving with my sequence, my thoughts and feelings of the spine changed dramatically. Instead of just seein...

This page of my journal expresses how i felt during my movement journey in Improvisation. I feel that I really captured my feelings well in displaying pictures in this way. This is a written format of a different movement journey at another time. This focuses more on technical work, rather than expression. This pic displays my progress in ballet. My strengths and weaknesses This is a stimulus from Improv that really interested me in the way of how hidden meanings are contained with art, paintings and stimulus. My progression in Yoga, I really enjoy it and this shows my strengths and weaknesses.