Throughout year one of the program, we learned several approaches to act creation. Before the program my act creation process was picking a song or theme and making a list of moves I liked that fit the vibe. The tricks would’ve been something I learned in class or off Instagram and I would’ve performed them as learned, basically unchanged, maybe I would’ve added a flexed foot. I was never really happy with the acts I’d made, but a few tools I learned in year one really clicked for me in understanding why the acts I was making were unsatisfactory. I’m still no expert in character creation or act development but I learned a few different approaches to act creation from multiple coaches and here are the ones that have stuck with me the most so far:
Creating a story
Our very first act creation workshop last year was with Heidi Coleman. We had an assignment to write down the story of a time we failed. We then had to perform on our apparatus or discipline while either reciting the story ourselves or having it read out loud for us. Another assignment of hers was to write letters to someone we had strong feelings for and we then turned those letters into a story by condensing the points into three things I want them to know. Those three points then correlated to a beginning, middle and an ending. This changed the intention of the act throughout, the beginning of the act may have a different feeling than the end and of course the middle bridges the gap. Once we’d had our end of year acts mostly complete, we re-visited this idea. Using the same concept, we had to perform our act but change our physicality enough between each section that the class could guess the moments that our story transitioned from beginning to middle and from middle to end. For example, maybe your piece is Alice in Wonderland, so you’d start the act with Alice falling asleep and falling into a strange new world, the middle might be that Alice is exploring and the red queen intercepts her path, then ending would be a winning (or losing) a fight with the queen. How does the music or lighting change in these phases to help tell your story? How does your movement quality change? For my own end of year act (which you can see/ read more about here) my beginning was confused and calm, my middle was a growing desperation, and the ending was full fledged panic. Movement quality was how I chose to show these transitions and the method that worked for me is called Laban Movement Efforts.
Laban Movement Efforts
The following is my interpretation of Laban movement efforts after only a couple workshops from a few different coaches perspectives, the full Laban Movement Analysis looks at a lot more factors and can get complex, here’s a more encompassing article if you want to dive deeper
Laban movement breaks down movement into four categories: time, weight, space and flow. These four categories are further broken down into two options each.Time refers to the speed with which you move to your destination or next step, are you moving sustained or quick? Weight is the effect gravity has on this character. Are you moving with heaviness or lightness? Space looks at the route you take to get to the next step or destination, whether its direct or indirect. Do you walk straight to your apparatus? Do you approach cautiously or maybe you dilly dally? Flow can also be referred to as resistance, are you free to move as you please or are you bound and tense? By mixing and matching these traits you can create different characters that can be read across the room just through movement. For instance Glinda from the Wizard of Oz can be described as sustained, indirect, light and free. Snape from Harry Potter is portrayed as sustained, direct and heavy, unless he has a reason to be harried then he might be quick instead of sustained. Side note–there are much more comprehensive Laban tables on google, but here’s my quick reference table.
There are also so many perspectives on movement vocabulary, Laban was just what made the most sense to me and my body and played a huge role in my end of year act creation.
Explorative play time
Change your perspective with your apparatus or prop. Play with your apparatus while its unrigged, play with it as if its a different disciple (ex: my silks are now a tightwire), play with them like they’re your lover or your mortal enemy, tie bustles or add spansets in places you normally wouldn't and see how you can use it! The point is to explore and find something unique that can spark ideas, whether the ideas are for act concepts or choreography in an act you’re already making. If you saw my year one act, this is how I got the idea to be pulled up while I was in a daisy chained silk and my coach (Zoe Sheppard) helped me figure out the logistics later. Give yourself a small time limit, 10-20 min, to come up with a short act with some of your discoveries and record it with no expectations of perfection. Having a short time limit can make it easier to get out of your head and just do something.
Re-arrange your act
After you’ve been working on a concept and have mostly finished the choreography, you can turn it on its head to breathe new life into it. In one of our act creation classes Kristi Alyssa had us a play a game where we wrote out every trick in our act in a list. We then had to draw a number (1-7) for each step of the act. This number then correlated to how many other shapes/tricks/moments we had to find in that trick before we could move on to the next one. This one was a lot of fun and I did end up making some discoveries that made it to stage! The one and only split in my act, I managed to find while playing with this prompt. While I’m sure that split from catcher’s wrap has been done before, I found it on my own so that added a sense of pride to it as well.
Another act creation game from Kristi was slower, faster, more, pause. For this game you’ll need one or two friends to watch your act and they’ll yell one of the above as you’re performing. This can show new moments of pause or change up pacing. You can add more words if you try this more than once, like point and flex or sharp and soft. This game in particular makes it easy for your friends to point out particular moments in your act since it forces you to hold things longer. Especially moments that maybe you normally breeze through since you’re so used to running your sequence in the same speed or pathway.
Presentations & Feedback
If you’re trying to portray a story or evoke a specific feeling, sharing works in progress with your friends or people in the gym and asking for feedback is incredibly valuable. If you’ve listened to your song dozens of times, you know the lyrics front and back and you know exactly what you’re trying to show. Having fresh eyes can show you how things are reading to an audience who has maybe never heard your song and can’t understand the words. They can tell you what emotions they feel or what they’re perceiving from you. One challenge for yourself when presenting is not to give any disclaimers or give any details. It can be so immensely helpful to hear what stories your audience is forming without them knowing your intentions.
There are a million ways to approach act creation and not every act needs to have a deep story or meaning behind, sometimes you just get a gig that wants a sparkly costume and to do some splits. But the acts I’ve always wanted to create are character driven or leave an emotional impression. Learning from as many different people as you can, from as many disciplines as you can will give you, not only more tools to pull from, but a unique perspective. Learning from clowns, actors, comedians, writers and performers outside of circus is so fun! Act creation is a process that grows with you and can only get better if you keep creating! I’m really grateful that I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time learning from so many perspectives last year and if you want to see how implemented these tools, check out my next blog post (here!) about how I created my solo!
Since year two is all about working with guest directors, I’m already learning even more about creation. Huge thank you to all our creative coaches we had last year: Brit Anderson, Kristi Alyssa, Heidi Coleman, Michelle Stein, and Glenn Broderick!