The Impossible Task Exercise

Artaud believed in making the impossible possible. This exercise is one which helps actors to really believe in the impossible task they have to perform. It creates a sense of reality and believe-ability in it as well which they will be able to transfer to the performance.
The Exercise:
Jack got us to write down an impossible task which could only happen in this room on a piece of paper. The task could be eating the lights or shrinking everyone in the room. I chose: become the fire man person on the fire exit sign. We then put our pieces of paper in the middle of the room and had to chose a different one to our own. My task was to fly to the ceiling. Next, we had to go about trying to achieve our task. I started to leap and stretch my arm up to the ceiling, as if I was soaring towards it. We then had to add on a noise which came with our attempts to do the task and exaggerate our movements even more. I found myself really leaping off every object and not thinking about the noise which came from my mouth. I think I made a WWHHHHIIIIISSSSHHHHHHH sound, but I'm not sure. I was alive in the moment. Having said this, I think I could have put more energy into the movement, because even though I felt as if I flew to the ceiling, I didn't stay there for long. 

This exercise helped me to get out of my head and grow as an actor, performing a task which I know I could never achieve, but believing I could and consequently I flew to the ceiling. While watching the others do their task, I noticed that I believed Khai's task the most. He had to turn the lights purple and surprisingly, as he was performing, I could actually see the lights change colour. Whether that was my sense of hope for him or real belief and honesty I don't know, but that fact that I thought the lights had gone purple proved to me that you can make people believe an impossible task.