We began by working on Act III Scene I today. We worked toward heightening emotions and embracing the language, as well as continuing to focus on keeping Ferdinand and Miranda very young and “puppy-like.” This was stopped short when one of the participants wasn’t feeling well and had to leave, but luckily these two will be able to work on their scenes outside of the group to make up for time lost today. We moved on to Act II Scene ii, and we were all very excited that the participant playing Trinculo has memorized the entire scene. The other two playing Caliban and Stephano are on their way to being off book as well. The entire group was able to see how this made the scene come more alive than any other on which we’ve been working, which I hope will encourage all of them to redouble their efforts at needing their scripts less and less.
This scene is a lot of fun, and we had a blast with it. One of the newer participants also made a really great suggestion to change some of the blocking – she commented that, the way Trinculo and Caliban were lying (parallel to the proscenium) made Trinculo’s voice seem to come out of nowhere when he spoke. She suggested that the two of them lie with their heads toward the audience. This proved to be a great suggestion and made the whole scene work much better.
We played an improv game with the time we had left. Everyone left today in good spirits.