Today, in class, we looked at technique called round- by through. Round-by through is a device used in physical theatre, as it is a technique which involves your body movements only and being able to portray your emotions as an actor to the audience without using speech or sound. As we were complete amateurs with this we began by watching a video featuring ‘Frantic Assembly’ (a physical theatre performance company). The video walked us through the steps to create our own round-by through and showed us how by just making slight changes and tweaks to a movement or by adding or taking away tension it can portray a snippet of a story.

Then it was our turn. My character was from your very stereotypical plot of a love story. She’d been through some things ,got hurt and always had love (but not romantically) for her childhood bestfriend,my partner, who wanted and tried to be more than friends with me many times but always ended up getting hurt and built up  a wall between us. However, once there’s love it never disappears fully. So when I grew up I realised he’s what I want but he wasn’t sure at this point.

We began the process by making a flight path like set of movements on eachother where we simply selected points of contact on one another. Then, as in the name we had to take it in turns travelling to each new point of contact by either going round one another, through(under their arm for example) or simply by and just almost taking a step next to them. We then had to “add a little weight” to our movements as we went round, by or through and then “squeeze some of the air out of it”, to make it tighter and add more tension and relations between the two characters. After that, to make it even more physical, we were challenged to find the point of our piece where the strength in our contact allowed us to do a lift or shift in weight. Me and my partner found an opportunity, that I thought worked really well ,where I was able to be fully reliant on him to hold me up as I lent on him for a balance, to show the trust being built and maybe as an ode to how he always supported me and brought me back up. However the thing with physical theatre and techniques like this you have to make sure the audience interpret the piece in a suitable and clear way ,enough for it to fit with the story and make sense, and hopefully even add to it with the understanding of characters more deeply. To help with this we had to think about the 3 universes that the movements go through: the moment before the touch, the moment of the touch and the moment after the touch. This helps you break down the motions and take it more slowly to build up different aspects such as facial expressions to support the movements. It also allows you to really think about how you want each movemt to look and what you want it to represent.

Overall, I thought our round-by through worked very well and helped benefit our performance. I would definitely use one again.