Donnellan Notes

. In 1981 he started Cheek by Jowl and has directed 25 plays for them.

. Blocks are big thing he worked with, these are identified as states of mind i.e. I don’t know what I’m doing or I don't know who I am.

. He says the reason for blocks being a issue is that they are a symptom of pride, they affirm (know) something about ourselves (I) instead of allowing us to focus on what we should be focusing on, that which is outside ourselves.

. The Target is what he calls this, one thing we did to explore this was by getting into partners and scrutinising one another’s faces whilst acting a scene, to see what we could discover. We all noticed they looked at something outside themselves.

. Declan Donnellan presented six rules for the target:

1.     There is always a target.

2.     An actor can’t know what they are doing without knowing who they are doing it too.

3.     It can be real or imaginary

4.     It can be tangible or abstract

5.     It can be yourself

6.     An actor can do nothing without a target

. Double takes are another part of his work, this is when you look twice at your target to emphasise its existence.

. To explore this, we got in pairs a did a short scene with a double take.