What If...

The what if exercise is a game in which you learn to explore the reaches of your character. We started this game with Ben and to start we were using a familiar setting (our journey to school) and responding in as realistic as possible way to the situations given by Ben. We then split up into groups and responded to the circumstances given by our counter-parts. Although most of those circumstances where clever and interesting to react to, some were a very niche (e.g. Your wearing shorts and you haven't shaved your legs) and some I felt if performing in a naturalistic way would not warrant a reaction (e.g. You have forgotten to wear underpants). Though some were difficult to react to naturally and some I even felt like I would have to limit my natural reaction so that it did not appear to be a melodramatic performance, for example one was a wasp starts to attack you and my number one fear is wasps, so if a wasp were to sting me I would probably go mental. This made me change my attitude towards naturalistic theatre, because prior to doing this I believed that naturalism was, generally, boring and easy to act, though I have now discovered that is far from the truth.