Skip to main content

N2C Monday rehearsal

 On this Monday, due to a training day we were able to have a full day rehearsal. I was only able to attend the morning because I had lessons at my guest school in the afternoon. However, I was there from 9 till 12 and we were able to block the entirety of the final scene with me and The Boy and by the end of that rehearsal we were able to perform it  without scripts and with a certain sense of realism.

The last scene is really quite violent and graphic, the stage directions of the script direct The Boy to drag the girl around the room by her hair and throws her onto the floor. Our director had decided to go against that and didn't think that it would work with our set and actors so we went for a different approach, one that could easily look believable, create the same tension and dangerous atmosphere and obviously be safe for both of us to act.  So he decided that the boy would  push me up against the door with his right hand, strangle me, throw me onto a chair, still holding me and strangling me whilst I'm on the chair he then throws me onto the floor (which will be covered in wires on the actual set) whilst he says 'you're a slut just like my mother'.  Blocking this scene before making final adjustments to the set was really important because we had to have a specific position for the chair to be in so that when I got thrown from the door to the chair it wouldn't be of such a big distance that it would look clumsy and it wouldn't be too close so that if I went down with too much force it still wouldn't actually be painful.

Our director also had to make quite a few adjustments to the script in this section because there was so much repetition. Throughout the whole play there is a lot of repetition, due to Jon Fosse's extra realism style but in this final section it is particularly obvious and we were really struggling to make it sound realistic and meaningful.  There is one section of mine in particular where I was supposed to repeat the words 'no' 'no don't' 'it hurts'  about three times and I just found it so difficult to act those lines well and for it to sound believable, so we cut that bit down from about 12 lines to 3 so that I just say 'no it hurts, stop it, let me go' - which worked much better. I think it's more believable for my character to have fewer words at this moment because I think she would have been so shocked and stunned by whats happening - as everybody is because the boy is not an aggressive character, shown no signs of being aggressive at all  throughout the whole play- I think the fewer words from the girl really fits the scene better than the long spiel that was in the script.

Another adjustment our director made to the script when we were blocking this scene was the ending. In the script it ends with her saying the 'even if you call me a slut you still love me' lines and the two exiting the space (which is the girl's objective so the play ends the way she wanted it to, even if it wasn't as though she imagined). Our director cut this final bit and ended it at the moment after I'd been thrown onto the floor and I say 'come here', he picks me up from the floor and we hug - that's going to be the final moment.  He has said that if we have time we might expand this scene to the end and do the last little bit which I want to do because I think it circles the plot really nicely having the two enter the room at the beginning and leaving together at the end. I also feel like that last section of dialogue adds another dimension to my character, but I think if I take that section into consideration when I'm acting that dimension can still be there even without that bit of dialogue. But actually that final piece of contact to end the play is actually really nice compared to the horrific violent contact that has taken place. There is so little contact in the whole play, each touch is so important and powerful, that final image of the hug can represent the relationships and the contact made between all the different characters within that room.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stephen Berkoff Research

We have started studying the theatre style of Stephen Berkoff in our drama lessons.  Berkoff's style is non-naturalistic, he focuses much more on the movement of the actor rather than the voice, he states that the only use for the script is to 'minimalise and physicalise' the story;  it enables the story to be told in the simplest, most effective way. His Actor's use techniques such as background movement, repetitive actions and mime.  Berkoff said that it was important  'to see how I could bring mime together with the spoken word as its opposite partner, creating the form and structure of the piece'. This very interesting concept provides the core of his work, the mimelike, staccato movements accompanied by vivid, imaginative language. Berkoff studied at   L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Jacques Lecoq was originally a gymnast and athlete who later found physical theatre after becoming aware of the beauty and rhythm in athletic movemen...

Performance review

On Wednesday it was my performance night. Overall, I was very pleased with the way it went, I have never had such a long rehearsal process so the lines and the staging for each section felt like muscle memory. I didn't have to think very hard about what my next line was and where I was supposed to be on the stage because each scene had been thoroughly rehearsed so I could really focus on embodying the character of Antigone and I had never felt so in character as I did on my performance night. Another element that we could only really engage until performance was the metatheatre element of it because when the chorus says 'she's going to have to play her part right through to the end.' I only really understood that line until that night when the audience was there. It blurred the line even further as to what was acted and what was real because I found that I didn't have to act that gut feeling of what I was about to do and each line the chorus said I slowly got more...

Woman Alone - first impressions, disecting the script

Woman Alone is a short play written by Franca Rame and Dario Fo. It is the monologue of a woman who has been locked inside the house by her seemingly very abusive and controlling husband who is talking to her neighbour across the gardens. It is a very comedic script: full of sexual innuendos, hilarious anecdotes and clever one-liners. However, this comedic language juxtaposes some very serious and sinister themes: domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, self harm, suicide, mental health and murder. Upon first read, I found the extended monologue to be very confusing as the woman changes train of thought very quickly and jumps from subject to subject very often. The language itself is very simple and the anecdotes can be followed easily but her character as a whole is very hard to understand as her intentions seem to change every second and she is constantly contradicting herself. I immediately thought that it was going to be a very challenging script to work with, however for our perf...