In this lesson we looked at Complicite's 7 states of tension and how it can be used in character development. Our warm up involved us walking around the room exhibiting the 7 different stages of tension from 1 being almost not moving to 7 being very fast and almost panicked. We then looked into our main character from act 1, mine being the Goat, and we tried applying different states of tension to a short passage. We then compared this to our other cast member to see if they had done something similar or different. I decided that I think the Goat is around a 4 or 5 on the scale as he doesn't often get too high or too low. It was useful to think about tension in our character because it adds another stage of development and helps me think more about how my character would be rather than always being the same.
Then we looked at subtext within Act 2. Subtext is the other meaning to what is being said that may contradict the actual text. This may affect the way that the line is delivered. The example I used was Lisa tells Vince that she is doing better to which Vince replies 'Good' Although he is saying good, he may be thinking something like "no you're not". This changes the delivery from being quite happy to having a heavy sense of disbelief and almost sarcasm. We then applied subtext to all of our lines in Act 2 and though about how they would affect the delivery. I found that this was really helpful because it makes you think a bit more in to what the character is saying and not just thinking that what they are saying is what they actually mean.
We then tried to go through Act 2 with just subtext which was quite hard as it quite often wouldn't make sense.
Then we blocked through Act 2 with the actual text but thinking about subtext in our deliveries.
Using subtext and states of tension was really helpful in character development for speech and for movement.
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