Berkoff - Greek - Dinner Part 2

We added Marlon and Maya into the piece in about half an hour from the scene we made before. We kept the chair duet that we made but we added some movements behind us which will be made visible to blogs in future instalments.

We finished the last section of the piece just before "Plotting and dreaming of ruling the world". At this point, as we're all in a line again of varying heights, we look at the person to the right of us so in my case it would be Izzy as she is sat next to me after the chair duet. This was done so that Eddy's dream transcends Eddy's head becoming much more real - as Eddy does ultimately end up ruling a small portion of the world in Thebes - resulting in Marlon and his stance of victory at the end of the line. We then move in canon - stomping - at the next word of "So" which we have since changed to simultaneous standing up as the canon never seemed to work during the rehearsal process. "In a ... flash" - at the ellipsis, we move the chairs that we moved during the chair duet to the edges of the stage using Total Theatre once again and making sure that the space on stage is clear for the following lift and Sphinx scene.

The next small section is where Eddy is saying that he saw his parents in the distance as he left his house. At "I waved to my mum and dad" me and Izzy whilst stood on the chairs - gaining height above Marlon and Maya in the main part of the stage - and waved in the opposite direction to what Marlon and Maya do. This creates a nice wave effect and the slowish movement of this contrasts with the next fast movement done by Marlon and Maya - slightly echoed by myself and Izzy. After the line "wed together like mould on cheese" Maya stands above Marlon externalising a facial expression and creating a sound effect that me and Izzy copy. The next line of "Dad was the mould" certainly needs to show that Eddy/Kathryn is correcting us which is highlighted as Marlon swaps around with Maya in an effective and smooth movement.

We then attempted the following Frantic Assembly style lift shown in the video below at 25-33 seconds in:

This is from a Frantic Assembly workshop that I attended last July and is staccato enough to be involved in a Berkoff style performance. I initially suggested this lift be used in the transition from this Dinner Scene to the following Sphinx scene as it would clearly show that eddy is walking away from home and toward the Sphinx. However, we used this lift when Eddy says "as I reached the end of the road". 

We then transferred it to the lift shown below which I also learnt in the Frantic Assembly workshop. This is much harder to do especially as only four people were holding Kathryn and as we immediately did this lift after the previous one which could make the lift unstable at some points. We also hold Kathryn above our heads with only two people maintaining contact with her as Maya says "and lost the figure" - after this we drop her onto mine and Maya's shoulders which allow for better safety. Kathryn doesn't stay in the air for too long due to the immense pressure that Marlon and Izzy are put under when they hold her above their heads.

The section of speech that we used appears to be somewhat too small for such an impressive piece of movement and I do feel like there is rather an extended period of silence as we lift Kathryn in the air.

When we lower Kathryn down safety we do the following sequence:

Again we do this in a line and simultaneously with a defined point in between each action and phrase. This can't be seen in this particular video because I was trying to remember the lines that other people say in this section. The final bit of "Bye boy" as shown by the hissing and clicking is when we turn into the Sphinx as we needed a transition to get from one section to another.