Exploring the Emotions

For this weeks assignment I was told to do something my book suggests. While I was reading, Uta doesn't say in clearly written text "Do this: blah blah blah" that of course would be far to easy. She does though have a chapter devoted to emotional memory, and while I am trying to work on a mime, this helped immensely. While playing a part you should bring in your own experiences to help develop your character, to be able to cry you probably would think of a relative who is gone. The obvious problem is; you have to stay in control. If you character just needs a few soft tears and you are on stage sobbing you will look a tad bit crazy. Or if you aren't able to think of it fast enough or hard enough you are there with a blank look, lost in your own world. So I began working on my emotions, trying to think of things that naturally brought smiles to my face and a few things that in just a few swift moments carried tears to my eyes. The mime I have thought of has death in it, the only problem is while performing a mime you can not cry for real you have to "mime cry". So to think of something that made just my eyes water (the smallest bit) and make my face crumple in disbelief is harder than it sounds and to be able to do it in just a few seconds is terribly frustrating. So Uta suggests using a "release object" one thing that can help you immediately think of that emotion. You can also picture the event in your mind, go into as much detail as possible; the weather, the color of the carpet, or maybe if it occurred outside, the sounds, what they were wearing, the smells that filled the room, etc. So I have bean thinking of different emotions and for instance if I need to be able to bring on the water works the thought of turning over rocks looking for snakes and small buggies is already making me cry.