Days 11 and 12

16th and 17th July 2019

Activities:

1. We spent two days with Anitha Santhanam, who is a seasoned actor, dancer, and director. She has trained in physical theatre based on Lecoq’s pedagogy and in Bharatanatyam, Yoga, and Kalaripayattu as well. Over our two sessions with Ms. Santhanam, we explored the practice of embodied writing.
2. On the first day, after we warmed our bodies up, we began with a little game: first, we formed a circle, and then any participant had to look at someone opposite to them and say their name. The person whose name was called had to respond with ‘Yes,’ and then the first participant—the one who had called out—had to walk across the circle and take the responder’s place, and the responder had to call out another person’s name and, once they said yes, take their place, and like this the game goes on and on. We continued this game for a little while and then played variations of it; for example, instead of names, we had to refer to each other by our favourite foods, and while calling out the names of the foods, we had to push ourselves to feel the hunger and excitement that comes with food—not merely pretend that we felt hungry or excited, but really try and bring that emotion to fill our bodies and dictate our movements and voices.
3. Then, we all sat in a circle and discussed the feelings that the game had brought out in each of us. Some of us said that knowing we could be called on at any time made us nervous, and others said that, by the end of it, they had begun really feeling hungry.
4. After this, Anitha asked us to think of a character from each of our projects and began the process of embodying them—thinking like them, walking like them. Then, we played the same game again, except this time a responder could say ‘No,’ and the participant would have to keep asking other members of the group until someone said ‘Yes’ and let them take their place. Through this activity, we were able to think deeper about what kind of person each of our characters was and how they responded to different situations.
5. Then, we were asked to perform different physical movements as our characters; first, we walked through the space and tried to think about what our characters’ walks said about the kind of person they were. Then, in pairs, one person had to, in character, push another across a room and see what their character was like when trying to achieve a goal and how they responded to conflict. Then, individually, we had to pretend as though we were pushing something—it could be a physical object (a trunk), or something intangible too (a difficult memory) across the room and see how our character attempted to do that.
6. Like this, we explored the action—both physical and mental—of pushing. By embodying our character, we were able to see how they pushed and reacted to pushing, and through this, gained a deeper understanding of who they were and the role they would occupy in the larger world of the play.
   
7. The next day, we began in the same way: by warming up and easing into the practice of embodiment. We spent the day exploring the action of pulling and thinking deeply about how a pull is different from a push.
8. Like yesterday, we were asked to perform different physical movements as our characters; at first, again, we were walked through the space and behaved as though the walls were pulling us, and tried to respond to this pull. Then, we took time to pretend as though we were pulling something across the room and what that brought out in our characters. Then, again in pairs, one person had to pull another person across the room and see how their character pulled and what tactics and strategies and behaviours they adopted.
9. We spent some time sharing our experiences with one another and talking about what was pulling the character, and whether the character responded more strongly to a push or to a pull. We even took some time to ourselves to try and work on developing these contradictory forces of pull and push within our characters, and to understand what drove them to action and what inhibited them.
10. Then, at the end of the day, Anitha left the floor open and invited any one of us to take up the whole space and, as our characters, chart a journey, marked by pushes and pulls and struggle, from one side of the room to the other.

Questions considered:

1. Who are your characters? What do they like? What do they dislike? What are the pasts they are carrying about with them? What is the future they are moving toward?
2. What physical choices, in terms of movements, convey these character traits to an audience? What does a character’s physicality say about them?
3. How does embodying your characters and their worlds change the writing? Through embodiment, can you imbue your text with physicality and movement?
4. What are the forces acting on your characters? How are they aligned?
5. How does your character respond to a push? How do they respond to pulls? How do they push? How do they pull?