Mike Alfreds

Doing a few exercises from Mike Alfreds book, Different Every Night, was interesting as it got me thinking about how I can use exercises from different practitioners to help me during the rehearsal process of a play or a monologue

Some of the exercises we did that were useful to me were:

Late Train:

• The given circumstances we were given were that we were step-siblings who were waiting for a late train
• I found that the relationship between us developed as the improvisation progressed
• It was easy to carry the improvisation on because we knew the given circumstances and so we could explore a lot more things

Position on chair and had to start an improvisation using those positions:

First improvisation:

• I found this hard to carry on because we were not playing people our age, I played a daughter and Emily played a mum, and I was being told off
• I felt that the situation was resolved quickly and we found ourselves feeling awkward because we had ran out of things to explore

Second improvisation:

• The positions we were in created a scene where we were friends, Emily had been dumped and I had been going out with her ex
• This was easier to carry on as we were playing people our age and it seemed to flow better and we could explore a lot more 
• The emotional journey was exciting, we went from sad to angry to sad to sorry all in one improvisation
• We got information from each other and listened to each other more in this improvisation

This exercise was useful as it gave freedom to the actor and helped them make fast decisions. 

I had to go out the room and Emily had to come up with the situation (where we were and what was happening):

• I found myself becoming quite me nervous going into the room because I didn't know what was happening but I was also excited to see what would happen
• Having to follow Emily's lead was exciting and I found that I had to open myself up completely for the improvisation to work
• Finding out things about my character as we went along was interesting and I had to listen a lot more than I usually would have to, it was exciting to do this as going into an improvisation you usually know you're given circumstances so it was fun to explore this idea of not know in anything

Improvisation is a useful skill to use during a rehearsal process, as it challenges your knowledge of the character and helps you to understand your character in more depth. I can see myself using these exercises in the future

Mike Alfreds