Frantic Assembly Blog

Frantic Assembly Exercise

Chair Duet 

What are we seeing in the Two Videos? 

In these videos there is a clear use of physicality throughout, contact using body parts is clearly a big aspect of these exercises. There is also a heavy reliance on music in the pieces as this often sets the tone of the performance; the use of body weight and weight transference is also prevalent throughout both of these. 

What was your previous knowledge of Physical Theatre?

My previous knowledge consisted of exercises I have performed in the past, which were mainly symbolic pieces that focused on portraying a single emotion instead of a whole story line or a relationship with other characters. We also used music as something of an accompaniment to the piece, instead of something that could completely change the emotion of a piece. 

How did you find some of the practices of Frantic Assembly and their approach to 'building blocks' when creating theatre?

I actually really enjoyed working on Frantic Assembly, physical theatre is something that I generally don't enjoy as much as more script based work however I really enjoyed working on building the story lines of these pieces. Due to my general inexperience in physical theatre I sometimes find it quite daunting when asked to fully develop a physical theatre piece however these building blocks really helped me to devise the piece and gave me much more confidence and is something that I can use in other physical theatre pieces in the future. 

What elements of the lesson would you like to take further? 

I would really like to develop the exercise in which we incorporated lifts into the performance. I really liked using these lifts as part of the piece and these would have been really interesting to develop further, adding more complex lifts into the piece and begin working them into a story line.