My favourite scene to perform is Untitled because it’s an opportunity for me to look at a character and style I’ve never worked with before. I was initially very worried about this story because of the heavy dialogue between myself and Grace and there are a lot of words I’ve been struggling to get my mouth around, but having a session with Claire where we looked at creating our characters and adding in the finer details was really helpful with developing the ideas I had for this story and cementing them, I can now focus on understanding the words and becoming more passionate about the artwork my character is discussing. I’ve rarely played upper middle class characters before so I’ve enjoyed experimenting with physicality and heightened RP, but at the moment I’m struggling to keep the accent up the whole way through as I’m thinking too much about the words and losing the character in the process. My main priority after blocking the scene is to go away and learn the words so well that I know them as well as the back of my hand. Apart from the dialogue, I’m really enjoying putting the story together and I love how pretentious it’s become and with the characters me and Grace have created, I’m hoping both the comedy and the seriousness of the scene will go down well with the audience.
Something that has challenged me during this process is heightening my physicality, but I really started to take risks when we were devising Particle Physics. I really liked the new idea of setting the scene in a poker club which we brought to the table, and having the jazz music to work with was very helpful in finding my character. I love being able to open with a routine that's very sensual and sets the mood for the rest of the scene, and now that we’ve polished the routine and the idea of objectifying each woman in the scene, we can work on making it comical and adding in the finer details. I like the inclusion of the masks in this scene to accompany the idea of objectifying the women and having to pick up the mess that the men have made at the end can be very hard hitting for anyone who knows or has experienced something like this, and I like how this relates to to the quote at the front of the play that talks about how no one will have experienced everything in this play, but they may have brushed shoulders with some of the issues inside of it.
Seeing the different stories come to life shows how much of a contrast there is between the levels of craziness in each scene, and Communicating With Aliens is one of the scenes that showcases this the most. I love how bizarre the scene is in comparison to the ones that come before and after, and I like how the levels in energy change coming out of the intensity of The Statement. We started devising the scene by building the type of alien we would play with different components such as sound and physicality. It was really exciting to look at how everyone interpreted their alien character and what ideas we could bring into make this as weird and wacky as possible. Since our first session on this piece, we started to implement props instead of token costumes to signify the difference between who's an alien and who's not in the story, so we gathered some water guns in varied colours for this, meaning we would have to tweak our physicality quite a bit. For my character, I added the wobble that I would’ve used in my arms and transferred it to my legs, and I wanted to keep this a continuing theme throughout my body so I thought of how I could use it in my voice and decided on a tongue wobble. After rehearsing this a few times, we all got into the habit of repeating the word “crikey” after Matt says it as hearing us speak would send him running straight away and gives us more reasoning behind the chase off the stage. I really like how this scene has developed, however, I do feel like using the guns is holding us back from physicalising our characters and making sure the audience can tell that we’re aliens, but I do think it resolves the issues over costume and finding any other props to fill the scene.
A scene that was the most difficult for me was Strangely! And I think the main reason behind this was leaving it till very late into the rehearsal process. It’s a huge scene to tackle and I felt like it didn’t get the time and effort needed to clean it and make each moment as refined as possible, and I don’t think we drilled the soldiers words enough so we could clearly understand the order and make sure each one is said in unison instead of one person picking it up and the others doing a call and response. I like how each moment that the soldiers have is based around the words they are saying, and it’s important that we sort out the timing of each moment so we can marry it with what the directors are saying rather than being a beat behind. I’m feeling very confident with the story inside the scene and what we’re meant to be playing out, but I’m worried that we’re over complicating it for ourselves and we need to keep it simple, as the words are just as important as the physicality. I think we need to take time as a collective to work on the choreography, go over the words in the story and whereabouts they come in.
A scene that I’ve become really passionate about since we started devising is Porno. I really like how we’ve cut the dialogue to end the scene with all the women coming together and defy the men’s orders, for me it’s a really empowering moment in the show and as the actor I’m punching my fist in the air, and I was very sure that would be the perfect end to our show as it conveys the message much more than any of the other stories and wraps up Anne’s journey very well, but now that we’ve looked at The Girl Next Door, I like how the ending is more dramatic but we also get to finish Porno with a big drop in energy ready to go back into the flow in the final story. I’m really enjoying how fake our characters have become during Porno and trying to please the men so much that we get the job, but as the actor, I’m feeling quite uncomfortable about the scene and being as exposed as I am, and I’m struggling to flaunt myself for the men. As I’ve gone deeper into the scene and looking at how the story ends, I’ve decided to embrace this feeling and show this uncomfortableness as the scene develops and the men start shouting at us to flaunt ourselves more, so there's more development in this feeling as we reach the final moment and the audience can feel the tension rise as we build to the end. I was initially very disappointed with how uncomfortable I felt with this scene and I immediately wanted to cover myself up whilst I was in costume, but I was proud of how I was able to channel this feeling into the scene and I’m happy with how much it works and there will be a lot more honesty coming out of the scene if I’m showing how the actor is feeling and finding a way to use it in the character.
A scene that I’ve learnt lots of skills from is The Girl Next Door, and I’ve enjoyed looking at more stage combat to develop this. I found it very daunting using the swords at first as I was worried about someone getting injured, especially if we’re surrounding Stevie a lot during the scene and we needed to take whatever precautions necessary to tell the story, but also make sure everyone is safe and has a good grip on their prop. I like how there are both positive and negative comments being thrown around by both parties in the piece, and there are moments in the story where we are for and against her, which I find very similar to the voicemails Anne is left by different people in All Messages Deleted. I was initially very unsure of how this would compare to Porno as a strong ending to our piece but looking at what we’ve devised, it’s a very dramatic end to the piece and it wraps up the continuing idea that no matter what, a woman will never be taken seriously and even if she tries her hardest, she’ll never be right for the part, and I like how at the end of the scene the men get the part and us ladies congregate by our headshots, representing the idea that Anne is every woman, whether she didn’t get the casting or experienced a different kind of mistreatment.
Overall, I like how each story has its own energy and we go through a rollercoaster of emotions during this piece, but I still feel like there’s not much tying it together and I feel like the audience won’t understand the message. For me, there needs to be a consistent theme of female oppression and it only really comes into the end of the story at the moment, and I hope we’ll be able to come up as a company with a solution to make the penny drop and maybe add more to the transitions to make the men steal the show from the women, which leads to them being given the role in the final story. Apart from this, I’m really happy with the characters I’ve developed and I want to do what I can to showcase how versatile I am, and I want to work on moving from the mindset of one character straight into the next. I’m really enjoying developing this show and I think it has the potential to be an incredible show with a strong message!
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