September 7

We worked through Act 3 today which definitely helped with some of the stress of how I was doing last night. I feel a bit more confident going through Act 3 today than I did last night and, while I’m still struggling with lines, it isn’t taking me out of the scene as much as it previously was. One of the things that we’ve been working on in rehearsals that I have yet to talk about within my journals are the critical moments in the show that we’ve dubbed poster moments. This has been an exercise in strengthening our point of view and communicating through the silence that I’ve found incredibly helpful in being able to stay present and engaged in the action of the show. Of course the poster moments don’t end up blocking the exact way that we conceptualize them when working through them initially, but it has been a very effective tool in being able to analyze how I’m feeling about each big moment of action and then using that to determine what moments are big for me personally as well as how I am feeling and reacting to the action around me when I don’t necessarily have as strong of an opinion. The days that we have been focused on poster moments (as we were today) have been much more immersive for me and I feel much more integrated into the story and it takes less for me to remain focused on what is happening. The poster moments that my group identified for Act 3 are the vote hitting 6-6, Juror 3 almost stabbing Juror 8, and the vote changing to 11-1. These are all moments in which we all have a big reaction to what’s happening, but it was especially helpful for me to once again go back and use this as motivation for what changes my vote. One of the things I’ve been toying with is that it isn’t Juror 8’s final stupid/smart point that ends up changing my mind but rather the stab and moving into the discussion about the proper use of a switch knife. There is no vote or line that would indicate exactly when I switch, so it’s entirely plausible that I would have changed shortly after this poster moment. This possibility came entirely out of that poster moment and how I react to the critical moment and the part following it. Because of when the vote is situated, I had been assuming that it was the Juror 8 monologue that convinced me of the not guilty verdict, but after reflecting more in rehearsal tonight and spending some time on these poster moments (the second in particular) I now  feel like it is a stronger choice for me to have the seed of doubt planted with the discussion of the proper switchblade mechanic and have the final straw be the inconsistency in intelligence.