BEAT

Our first full run of Beat. This run was late at night after several hours of rehearsing the piece. It is extremely rough, but it was so alive in us that night, we were actually scaring ourselves. This run was the first time we put someone in the box. The scream at the end is totally sincere. It is the only time we screamed for the ending. We were legitimately terrified.

Before we even showed it to our class, we were told we could not have it staged like we had it. We needed to create the pressurized environment with our bodies, not with clever placement of the audience and black flats. (Duh! I think to myself now. OF COURSE that is how it should be! I don't need anything other than my body.) After we presented and received our feedback, my group sat down and created a to do list of things we needed to work on in the next two day. This included:figuring out why the friends are coming & their relationship to the killer, spacing, establishing the character of the killer and the victim, to make sure each moment led into the next, figuring out an action for the friends to do when they are in the room, and trying a minimum to maximum speech for the killer. 

The next day, we had the whole day to work on our pieces. Ronlin, Joan and various other teachers were floating around from group to group. After our ritual check in (we huddle in a bear hug and talk about how we are feeling (cheesy, but extremely effective in maintaining a positive group dynamic)), we worked through our entire list. We restaged it and found new moments and some clearer characters. After presenting it again, it was still received poorly. The critique started off with "What is it you think I saw?", I knew it was going to be a rough critique. Tomorrow was our showing and we had barely anything that worked. Our confidence we had just two nights ago when we recorded our piece was gone. We decided to change location. We went outside. Ronlin came out and talked to us a little more and gave us a pep talk. We knew he wanted us to succeed, and if we did ANYTHING other than Beat he would be happy.

This is one of the first runs of Beat. The camera doesn't capture the whole space so there maybe parts where someone goes off camera. I also cut off the beginning because most of it the camera didn't pick up. We had the killer begin by methodically putting on his coat, picking up the victim's sweater, smelling it, throwing it into the box. carefully covering the box with a table cloth, phone rings, he goes to answer the phone (which is down the hallway), beat starts, he disregards the phone and checks out the box, when he opens it the beat stops, phone rings again...i think that should be where the video picks up.  Enjoy!