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Before this unit, I understood movement simply as a way to loosen the body and prepare for characterisation. Now, I view it as the foundation and ongoing presence of a character’s physical identity. Movement is not just a warm-up—it’s a storytelling tool that exists throughout the entire performance.

Stories can be powerfully conveyed through physicality. For example, posture or height can reflect a character’s status, relationships, or internal emotions. This concept is clearly demonstrated in Can We Talk About This by DV8 (2011), where Zena Briggs uses movement and costume to support the weight of the text. Her character’s journey—from being free and fearful to eventually trapped, hidden, and stripped of identity—is shown not just through dialogue, but through how she holds and moves her body.

Natural Movement

Effective movement doesn’t always have to be complex. Often, it’s the subtle, naturalistic gestures—how a character stands, walks, speaks, or shifts their eye line—that create authenticity. These small details are what transform a performance from acting into being someone else.

Practices and Techniques

Throughout this unit, we’ve explored a range of exercises to help embody our characters more fully:

Spinal Rolls
Used to align the body and create a neutral, blank canvas.
“If we understand why we move the way we move, we can change our why and move like somebody else.”

Choreography
This helped us build intention and direction into our movement, and improved our ability to learn and adapt to movement sequences quickly.

High and Low Levels
Exploring different levels of movement within the space allowed us to understand spatial hierarchy and how it reflects character relationships or power dynamics.

Activating Each Body Part
By focusing on the individual sensations in each body part, we gained more control and freedom in using our bodies as expressive tools.

Moving Freely
This exercise involved moving without intention, allowing the body to guide itself. It built trust in our physical instincts and encouraged us to create a safe, judgment-free environment. As actors, it’s essential that we can make any space feel open and accepting, both for ourselves and for our characters.

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Voice

In this unit, we placed a strong emphasis on preparing the voice for performance. We learned how to build our own effective vocal warm-up routines, which I’ve broken down into five essential components: connecting with the body, stretching and breath, organised breathing, face work, and projecting sound from the face. We also explored fast and efficient vocal warm-ups for use behind the scenes when time is limited.

1.

Connecting with the Body

We began by aligning our voice with our physicality. Spinal rolls—with relaxed arms and head, paired with breath and syllables—helped open the front and back of the rib cage and improved connection with the diaphragm.

We were reminded that “your neck is the scaffolding of your voice,” highlighting the importance of spine alignment and posture.

A particularly useful exercise involved standing against a wall while a partner touched each vertebra. This allowed us to isolate and identify the individual parts of the spine, increasing awareness and control.

2.

Stretching with Breath

We combined body stretches with vocal release, often using the sound “Marr” while gently shaking the body to remain loose and free. The stomach should feel similar to the cat’s pose in yoga—engaged but soft.

Alternating between cat and child’s poses created spinal flexibility and core engagement. Additional exercises, such as rib jiggling and body patting, further enhanced movement and looseness.

3.

Organised Breathing

Organised breathing is about control and fluidity. Practising in positions like child’s or cat’s pose helped us stay connected to our breath and sense its release. This kind of breath control supports movement while speaking—a vital performance skill.

We explored vocal range by moving through the lowest, middle, and highest parts of our voice to create fluidity and resonance.

Tongue stretches were key to releasing jaw tension and allowing clearer sound production. Shifting breath patterns also helped us access different emotional states—for example, shallow, high breathing to reflect anxiety.

4.

Face Work

This is particularly useful for screen acting, where facial expressions are key. We used a variety of exercises to build control and responsiveness in the face, including tension-and-release movements like exaggerated smiles or quick lip raises and drops.

Massaging the face with our hands helped reduce tension and bring awareness to smaller muscles.

Props and visualising the staging of BU21 added another layer of depth, helping us connect our facial expressions to the physical world of the performance.

5.

Sound from the Face

These exercises focused on articulation and clarity. We practised projecting specific sounds—particularly plosives and fricatives like P, B, M, T, S, V, and voiced and unvoiced “th” sounds. We also explored sharper sounds like “sh,” “ch,” “ja,” “ka,” and “ga,” improving diction and vocal punch.

Quick Warm-Up Techniques

When time is short, we can fall back on a fast vocal warm-up sequence:

Lengthen the neck

Jaw massage

Tongue stretch

Breathing work

These quick techniques help centre the voice and prepare both body and mind for performance, even with limited time.

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At the start of this unit, I didn’t fully understand the play or its deeper meanings. On the surface, it appeared to be a non-reactive script composed mostly of monologues. This initially made me feel disconnected from the other characters, as there was little to no verbal interaction between them. However, as we continued to develop the piece, I realised that what it lacks in dialogue, it makes up for through emotional connection. The play delves into how a shared catastrophic event becomes a pivotal moment—a “canon event”—in each of their lives. Although the characters have yet to fully acknowledge it, they are able to empathise with each other in a way no one else can.

Portraying this as an actor has been challenging, as it requires us to reflect the characters’ psychological barriers through physical expression rather than relying solely on surface-level delivery. We developed this understanding through several key approaches:

Script Analysis

By dissecting the script, we uncovered the deeper emotions our characters experience between the lines. For example, a character might appear hysterical due to the weight of their trauma, or silently respond to another’s monologue with facial expressions, showing empathy even without words. These subtle, non-verbal moments are what bring realism and emotional truth to the scenes.

Before engaging in detailed script analysis, many of us delivered our monologues with similar pacing and disengaged during others’ speeches. However, once we began to understand the context and emotional weight of the piece—imagining what it would truly be like to sit in this meeting and share such personal stories—we realised the real message wasn’t just in the words, but in the emotions behind them.

One powerful exercise I brought in from a previous unit was reading without words. In this activity, we used a single word, like “okay,” but expressed a range of emotions through it, maintaining the character’s mindset and emotional state. This taught me that acting doesn’t begin with the lines on the page—it starts with the internal world of the character: their thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

Movement

In our movement work, we’ve been building the non-naturalistic elements of the piece. For example, we explored the animal study, which helped us better understand and physically embody our characters’ instincts and behaviours. We’ve also focused on developing specific gestures and movement patterns to deepen our connection to the characters and bring them to life on stage.

Voice

The script tackled heavy and complex themes, which required us to be intentional with our vocal delivery. We developed this through focused voice work.

One exercise we repeated involved walking in a straight line and changing direction at every full stop. This helped us become more aware of punctuation, encouraging us to pause, slow down, and deliver each line with greater purpose. Another effective technique was alternating between reading only the vowels and only the consonants. This helped us understand the texture and weight of the language, and allowed us to speak with more clarity, rhythm, and emotional precision.

Scene and Atmosphere

A major turning point in my performance came when we began developing the atmosphere of our piece. It allowed us to fully immerse ourselves in the world of BU21, placing us in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. We had to consider the physical damage to the environment and setting—such as rusty doors, burnt walls, and a general sense of destruction.

To help build this world, we collected reference images that visually captured the setting and informed the design and tone of the piece. This framing grounded our performances and made the world we were stepping into feel real and lived-in.

We also introduced new elements I had never previously worked with in stage performances, such as layered soundscapes, camera work, and animal-based movement. These techniques expanded my understanding of theatrical storytelling and added depth to the overall experience.