As a director, outline one way you would get your actors to explore the social status of their characters in a scene.

An important part of portraying the social status of a character is the proxemics between each actor. This can be explored in workshops with LeCoq’s “Emotional Movement with a Stick” exercise, in which I would ask actors to hold the end of a metre stick with their index finger and improvise a scene in which both of them stay in contact with the stick, changing their positioning as they move. I would remind them throughout this of their social status, and the power each character has over another. For example, if one character is of a working class status and is the servant of a character of royalty, the stick can be used by the royal to force the servant to do anything, whether that be pushing them to the floor to kneel, or keeping them at arms length to make sure they know their place in the pecking order. Although this movement is exaggerated, it reminds the actors of the barriers of social status, making their proxemics more believable when we return to a planned, written scene.