Viewpoints Reflection

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     Over the past two weeks, I have really enjoyed working on viewpoints. I feel like by the end of the two weeks our entire class had become much more comfortable with "walking the space," whether that is in neutral or with different levels and interactions. When we first started with these activities, I was a bit skeptical with how just walking around the stage could be considered a piece of theater. I think that adding levels and vague choreography really brought the concept together for me. I learned about how to add high and low, slow and fast, big and small, etc. levels into a piece in new ways. What I found is that what each of these levels means really depends on how the person interprets the movement. In the beginning of these two weeks, I feel like my movements were usually pretty literal, but as time went on I felt more comfortable making the movement whatever I felt like. We were also given prompts to "walk the space" to; these prompts were usually single words, either emotions, colors, or things. I feel like walking to a prompt may have been the most challenging thing about viewpoints for me. I had a hard time walking with an emotion, especially when my face was covered by a mask. Another thing that was a bit challenging was interactions with other people. I think this was difficult because everyone was kind of doing their own thing and focusing on their own movements, so when we tried to interact our movements didn't often make sense together. I think these contrast made some interesting scenes though. 
    At the end of the second week, we worked on viewpoints outside. I feel like this really changed up the experience because we weren't confined to one flat stage. We were all interacting with steps, hills, trees, tables, and each other all at the same time. I was definitely more self conscious because there were other people walking around that did not know what we were doing. I'm sure to an outsider it looked pretty weird to see a group of kids wandering around making odd gestures. Never the less, it was nice to change it up since we had been doing viewpoints in the black box for two weeks. I think being outside made it even more challenging to interact with others though. When we were all focused on walking around the same outdoor space, we seemed to crowd a bit so I had to be more deliberate with where I was walking. 
    Overall I'm really glad we worked on viewpoints. My favorite activities were directing a choreographed walk to the sound of the air conditioning and a choreographed walk to a song. I think that being comfortable with the stage and the area that you are acting in is necessary for all types of performance and I think working on viewpoints helps an actor become comfortable! 

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