When I think of biomechanics, I think of biology and how things work inside the body, and learning about how this is involved in acting, I thought it would be very different to how we looked at it during the workshop. I thought it would be a lot more physical based work and even though there was plenty of it, I felt most of the work we did needed more mental strength than anything else, and I definitely struggled with engaging that. As well as focusing on the physical and mental aspects of these exercises, we had to understand our partners train of thought as well as our own which for me depended on how strong our chemistry was and how well we connected throughout the “scene”, there were many moments with different partners where it felt like our minds were one and I was impressed with how long we managed to keep this up for.
At first, I really enjoyed getting to work with the bamboo stick in our palms as I felt very secure with the position it was in and me and Grace developed a strong chemistry at first, but once another pair dropped their stick I became very aware and I think this affect my mentality as we went further into the task, and I became distracted when we started becoming unfocused and dropped the stick ourselves. I also struggled a lot when we started connecting the stick with our fingers, and I think this is where I started to panic as the surface area was much smaller than on my palm, and I didn’t feel as secure with the stick just on my fingertip, but I shouldn’t have let that overtake my focus. This fear of losing our great connection really affected my mindset over the rest of the task and looking back, and I thought a good way to get back into the flow of the exercise would be by focusing on a specific point in front of me, like Grace’s eyes on listening to my breathing would help calm my anxieties, but I couldn’t find a method that worked for me to get back into it and I kept getting distracted, causing us to lose our rhythm. I now know that I need to work on getting my mental stamina up and find a way that I can check in and ground myself whilst in the middle of an exercise and without taking my eye off the ball.
However, when we started connecting two pairs together to make a long production line, I found it a lot easier to keep up my focus. I was on the end of the line holding onto one stick and I felt more comfortable going into this because I only had to keep control of one stick, but I knew that if I was in the middle keeping hold of two I wouldn’t know where to divert my attention to and how to make that work without letting my anxieties take control. However, if we get the chance to take part in another workshop like this, I would like to take the risk of trying this holding up two bamboo sticks and see how well I cope under that pressure. It may go unsuccessfully but I would like to experiment and see what happens. It felt very easy getting back into the mindset during this task and I worked hard to keep up the eye contact between myself and Mia, the actor on the other end of the stick. I could tell she was quite stressed with having to hold up two sticks and be in control of the group, but I was proud of how I didn’t let this affect me and this was much more successful than the first exercise we did. When the stick was taken away and we had to keep up the energy and the connection even though there was nothing there to hold it together, I struggled at first and kept closing the gap, and when we started to speed up I rushed a bit too much to try and keep up and the connection was broken a few times. After taking a moment and clocking my physicality, I got straight back into it, immersed myself and made sure to adjust the distance between myself and the rest of the group. I was very proud of how I picked myself back up and immediately found a good place to get back into the rhythm.
I struggled a lot with this workshop at first and it took me a while to get my head into the game, but once I was able to find a good focus point and involve my breathing, there was a much calmer energy inside my body. If we were to have another workshop like this, I’d love to attempt some risks and see how I’m able to deal with them!
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