Viewpoints!

This past week, we as a class worked on theatre viewpoints. The goal of viewpoints is to get the actors to become aware of what their body can do in the given space. We did multiple exercises keeping in mind things like tempo, duration, kinesthetic response, repetition, spacial relationship, and levels. All of these give the actor a heightened awareness of what is going on in their own mind as well as what is happening around them. 

In the beginning of the week, we did a lot of basic viewpoint excerises. We had to do group jumps, turns, and stops while running in a circle, which was hard the first time we did it, but got progressively better at this as the week went on. Similar to this, we all stood in a circle jogging in place, then as a group we would all have to run to the center at about the same time, then jog out of the tight circle at the same time. This acted as a way to get us in sync as a “cast” and see how we interacted on stage. We also walked the space of the stage at about an average speed, and while maintaining soft focus, had to keep 1-3 people in our periferal vision. As the week went on, we took these exercises and added tempo and duration to them to see how fast or slow we could do a movement, as well as how long we can do that movement at that speed for. As an actress, this challeneged my body to really focus on my movement and showed me how extreme or minute I can make my movements. 

Adding on to these ideas, we worked on kinestheic response, which made us as actors have to pay attention to one another and reaction based on what other people were doing. If someone started slowing down their walking pace, that could act as a signal for another actor to start walking a lot faster. Following someone and repeating their actions was another term/aspect of kinesthetic response. There were a lot of different ways that we could play with this, but kinesthetic response made us as actors have to become more aware of what the people around us were doing. 

The part I would consider most fun out of all the viewpoint aspects was shapes and gestures. We had to make sharp and soft angles with our bodies, which really was a good way for us all to see what our bodies can really do and are capable of. Then, we added emotional and behavioral gestures to our shapes, which ended up helping us tell a story when we did open viewpoint sessions. Working on shapes reminded me of contemporary dance, where the movements that we were doing with our body really portrayed a lot of emotion and told a story. It really helped us all experiment with movement and understand how much of a tool our bodies can be to telling a story. 

From a directors standpoint, viewpoints are good because they expose how actors truly react to each other, while still creatively making art with their bodies on stage without even knowing it. By observing people doing open viewpoint sessions, directors can get inspiration about how to stage certain scenes in their show to make it more believable and relatable to the audience. Aside from this being helpful to directors, it’s especially important to actors. After doing all these viewpoint exercises, I definitely think I am a more aware actress on stage in terms of how I move and what I do with my body. It really showed me what my body is capable of, and how effectively my body alone can tell a story and portray emotion.