Week 9: N2C

N2C

In this weeks N2C we tried to get as much of the play done as possible because it needs to be finished for next week. We started one of the major scenes which is the quiz scene. This scene is a major one as it shows the downfall of one of the main characters and the rise of other. The key to making this scene memorable to the audience is the high energy and the speed that one line is said after the other. The scene is funny at the start but it gradually moves into a more serious to show the downfall of King. 

We also did full run throughs of everything that we had done so that we could apply the speed of the lines to the start which we know everything about.

This is the quiz scene that we started:

https://youtu.be/koic3n7qIFc

Week 9: Classwork

Monday

We used Mondays lesson to explore the scene between Antigone and Haemon, her fiance. We explored the ways that the moment of orientation could be shown. The start of the scene between the two is meant to be awkward as she tried to dress up as her sister, who she sees as the vision of beauty, to make Haemon have sex with her so that she could use that as a goodbye and also as a way of them being married without having to go through the legal process. Also she thinks that it is one of the last times that she will see him as she knows that she is going to go and bury her brother and knows that, if it goes the way she wants, she will get arrested and killed for her punishment. 

We looked at the best way to stage the scene and also how the two should react to each other. We tried many different ways and the one that we found that had a bigger effect on the audience and it also made the atmosphere that more awkward.

Wednesday

In Wednesdays lesson, all the Antigone's and Creon's split from the rest of the group to go through a specific scene between them both. The scene that we went through was towards the end of the play and it involved Creon trying to get Antigone to understand the consequences of her actions and also what her motives were behind her actions.

We decided to section the lines and title so that when we are learning them it is easier to see what way we should be saying them and also as we look at the progression of the titles, we can see the progression of the scene.

As we titled the scene we discussed what both Creon and Antigone would be thinking, so that we would be able to see the contrast between the two and compare them in the way that they are saying their lines. 

After going through the whole scene we found that we needed to change some of the lines as the play is translated from French so in English it didn't make sense. We discussed the fact that Creon might be old and tired but he is very good at his job and we could see that through his approach to Antigone. We found that Creon has many different approaches to Antigone and with each one he hits a wall with her where she won't tell him what has gone on and so he tries a different tactic to try and get her to tell him her motives. At one point he thinks that he has got an advantage on her but then he hits the blank wall and has to change his tactics once again. We see this done very subtly at times which reflects his intelligence and also Antigone is so wrapped up in wanting this scenario to be how she planned it that she doesn't notice the shift in Creon's tone. 

Week 8: Classwork

Monday

During Mondays lesson we explored the scene between Antigone and Ismene who are the sisters in the play. We explored the scene and talked in a pair about how we thought the relationship was like between the two. In my pair we said that at the start of the conversation we thought that the two of them were very close and then as the scene progresses we see that the two of them have opposite ambitions for their lives. 

We tried to show this contrast between the start and end through the proxemics of the piece as at the start they were both on the same level and were sat very close each other almost leaning on each other for support but by the end they were both stood up and at opposite sides of the stage to show that the conversation had separated them.

Wednesday

We used Wednesday's lesson to create a piece of movement that was linked to Antigone that told the whole story but only included 10 lines from specific scenes. In my group, we wanted to make the first and last scene the same but change the character that was in the middle. For example in the first image we wanted to put Antigone in the middle because she was the main character and also when you first read Antigone you think that she is the tragic hero but when you read the play in depth you realize that actually Creon is the tragic hero and that is why our last scene was the same but it had Creon on the chair instead of Antigone.

We wanted to use the chair as a symbol of a barrier between all of the characters as there was always something that held Antigone back from other characters. We tried to make sure that in the majority of the scenes between two main characters the chair was in between them as both a physical and mental barrier.

The lines that we used were to symbolize the relationships between characters and we specifically wanted Antigone not to say a line till the very end to show that it was her fault that all of this happened. The line that we made her say reflected this because she said "You are alone now, Creon" which shows that he is alone at the end and everyone around him has left him because of the stubborn decisions that Antigone makes.

https://youtu.be/-GHCxH78JVw

If we were to do the sequence again, I think that we should have slowed the movement down so that the audience would have a better understanding of what was going on and also if we included sticks/poles to visually show the restrain of Antigone and many the restrain that Creon has to put on himself to try and show Antigone that he has enough power to go against his own laws.

Week 8: N2C

N2C

This week the main aspect that me and Lindsay focused on was the delivery of the lines and also reacting to other peoples lines. Most of my lines are said in response to other persons and we were discussing how Mouse would react to different people on the societal scale.

There is a scene between Jay, Mouse and Elton where Mouse is a bystander on a conversation between Jay and Elton. Me and Lindsay were talking about how she would be reacting to herself but so that the audience can fully see her face.

We said that her reactions should be exaggerated as that is part of the Godber style and so even at the smallest of thing that happened in the conversation she reacted so big that it made it look bigger than it was. 

I came in one lunchtime in the week to discuss with Lindsay how we thought that Mouse would be on stage. We discussed how nervous she would be around new people but she would be proud that she knows more about film than some of the people already working in the Multiplex. I think that even though she has this pride she wouldn't be so outspoken with it but when questioned it would show in the way that she responds.

The Weekend: Day 2

Day 2

After the previous night, we had worked out that all of the characters were in pairs. In my pair there was me and the wife of the man that I had murdered. We worked out that I was the only one in the pair that knew that we were a pair. We discussed our two stories and found that my partner thought that there was no reasoning behind what I did but we came to the conclusion that she was just to oblivious and didn't even know that her husband was abusing their child.

We had to make a moment of orientation, which is part of Stanislavski's methods, between our two characters and we chose a court scene. It was set years after the incident and my character had been found out and was being put on trial for murder.

We found that this scene was very hard to explore because in a court there is specific language that has to be attained during a trial and there wouldn't be any subtext allowed in this scene because everyone is under oath and so has to tell the complete truth.

We swapped the setting to a police station in which the Wife had entered in a hysteric manner in search of the polic officer that had worked on her husband's case, which was my character. The wife was hysterical knowing that her husband was dead and was trying to get someone to notice her and help her. Again, like when we were in the cells, my character had another wave of anger knowing that someone could have such a close connection with a monster that had abused his child. So when the wife tried to ask for someone's help and try and have a connection with anyone. My character instantly rejected this idea and, physically and mentally, distance herself from the wife.

https://youtu.be/L9WkCQ__nq0

Improvements that I think could be added was that when I got pushed that was technically assaulting a police officer and so I think that I could have put her in a hold that would have made her instantly calm down and I would then be in control of the situation. If I had her in a hold on the table both the sound and the physical image would have juxtaposed the high energy from the first scene and then we could have gone in a threatening tone from my character.

Next we moved onto working on the opening of Antigone that we had made earlier on in the week. We wanted to add some of the movements that we had created over the weekend to the fight sequence so that it became more dynamic, sharper and cleaner. We added some of the hand and shoulder partner work that we had done and also making it look more like an actual fight.

We added the rule that we had to follow one end of the opposite persons stick and react to it. So in my pair, my partner's stick comes really close to my face and so with me looking at the end of her stick caused me to move my head out of the way, both to stop me getting hit and also to keep looking at the point on the stick.

I think that adding this rule and the new moves made a huge improvement to the whole choral movement as it looked like a fighting sequence; very frantic and a lot of people moving in different directions, and then a sudden pause when we circled each other. I think that this pause gives the audience time to take in what is going on. The juxtaposition between the frantic movements and the paused has an effect on the audience in which that they get the feeling of it being a fight and also shocking because they aren't expecting us to break out in frantic action. The movement is so frantic that the audience don't know where to look but the break in movement gives them a chance to take everything in before the movement starts again. The movement is choreographed so that it looks effective but not too frantic that the audience stop watching because it;s too busy.

The Weekend: Role Play

Role Play in the Haunted Cells

To begin the role play, we received our characters. My character was called Neena and I found out that she was a police officer who got away with brutally beating a man to death. Her motive was that she found out that he had been beating his child up and his wife was so oblivious of it and so she took matters into her own hands and did what she thought was right. 

My starting position was laid on the floor with "blood" on my head and a chair was overturned on the floor next to me. I had blood on my head because I had tried to escape and the masked mad, who was the person that had put us in the cells, had tried to keep me back but I had fought which had led to him hitting me across the head with a chair hence why I was laid on the floor "unconscious."

I was laid on the floor on my own for about 30 minutes before another person entered the room. As I was on my own, I thought about how my character would react to specific other people. I thought about how she would react to children, as she thought that she had saved one and so might see herself as a hero for all other children and so would try and protect them at all costs.

I also tried to think about how she would react to men. She would see them as predators and be very distrustful of them. This reflected how I reacted to the masked man as every time that he walked into a room I made sure that I was on my feet and ready for if anything happened. Especially in the last room that we were all in, I made sure that every time he walked in, I was at the center of the room and in his eye-line at all times. If he ever walked towards anyone I made sure that I also took a step in their direction to make sure that he knew that I was there as a barrier between me and whoever he was walking towards.

I found that I connected with a girl who had been left in a house full of men by her friend. I felt that there was no one to protect her and so saw it as my duty to protect her from anyone whether that was someone she didn't know or the friend that actually left her. When we both realized that we were in the same room as the friend that had left her I found that there was a wave of anger that had washed over me and I felt the need that I had to stand between the two of them at all times to be there as a physical barrier.

By the end of the evening, after we had all been put into a room together, we had to start making decisions on who was going to leave the room and who was going to stay. I made sure that I wasn't the one who was making the decisions because I felt that I was just there to protect people not to decide who was going to be allowed to leave. 

At some points in the room, the masked man was very forceful on some people, for example he forced a Muslim girl to drink wine which was against her religion. I had a fight with myself inside my head because I wanted so badly to take the bottle off of him and get him to leave her alone but on the other hand he had hit me for trying to rebel against him before and so if I tried again there was that feeling that I didn't know what he would do and what extent he would go to, to punish me.

After we had been in character for 5-6 hours, we had to write a paragraph about our character and all of the feelings that we had being that character.

"I beat him, like he beats his own child, his flesh and blood. A small innocent child that has done no wrong in this world. And she just stood there. And watched. I did what I did to protect the child, to save her from him and from his un-nerving nature. What I did was for the child, I was the hero in the fairytale, my own fairytale. I didn't stop. My arm just kept going, taking my anger out on his face, his arm, his chest. He didn't deserve to live. And then I saw her. The mother that didn't lift a finger for her own child. She told me she was looking for a cop. The bitch that murdered her husband. I knew she meant me. I didn't say anything I wanted to see her suffer and pay for what she did. Or what she didn't do. I was going to tell her, honestly. Tell her how I brutally mauled her husband because he's a disgusting prick. I was going to tell her how I was laughing and smiling as I did it because he finally realized the consequences of his actions. I was going to tell her how I enjoyed leaving him there to rot. But I never got the chance and she will never know how I felt. She will be alone with her thoughts, and I will be alone with mine."

I surprised me how in character I actually was because I didn't know that I felt that way about the wife. I also didn't realize how much anger I was holding in the whole night and trying to to take it out on anyone. 

The Weekend: Day 1

Day 1

We went to The Old Nick Theatre in Gainsborough to explore the different aspects of Antigone and loosely work with the themes of the play.

Here's a compilation of some of the pictures from the weekend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3XPv8PBPEQ

Warm-up

One of the warm-up exercises that we explored was everyone stood linked arms and shoulder to shoulder and there was one person in the middle of the circle. The person in the middle's motivation was to escaped the human cage that they were in. We found that the key to getting out was to target the weaker areas of the circle. We thought that this was a physical representation of Antigone's motives and she targeted the weaker areas of the societal system, such as the love that Creon feels for his niece, and work her way out of the example that was set for her as a royal. 

Exercises

We participated in an exercise that was where we had to choose three different places around the performing space that were as far away from each other as possible and label them; Fear, Happiness and Anger. Each place made us react in a certain way and you were always being drawn to happiness and trying to recoil against fear and anger but you had to continue the circuit of going between the three and so this exemplified your reactions and moods even more because you were trying to resist but couldn't. This links to Antigone because she feels as though she was going to life but not having any effect which juxtaposes with what we were going through on our own.

We were then paired up and show each other our routes and showing them how each place made us feel and you were there to support the other person in their journey and respect how they were feeling; We started to increase the desperation of us wanting to take each other to our different places which caused us to start trying to drag each other and it almost became a fight between the two to take the other to their happy place. This reflected the relationship between Creon and Antigone because Creon tries to control Antigone's actions so that she is a clear representation of what a Royal should act like.

We had to lay on the floor and think about how that partner was going to turn into a type of safety net and was the only person that you could trust in this world and you wanted to hold onto them and keep them close for as long as possible. We had to find our partner and get as close to them as possible and hold onto them as hard as you could because they were the only person and thing that you could truly rely on and trust and you definatly didn't want to share them with anyone else. This was like Creon as he didn't want anybody else taking Antigone away from him and his son, even if it was her dead brother, and so he fought to keep her under his control.

We were told that there was something in the room that could separate you and your partner and that it would stop at nothing to break you apart which caused us to become even closer with our partners because they were our safety net and they were the only ones in the room that we could put our hold trust into. So when Chipp tried to pull my partner off me, both me and my partner hung onto each other so tightly that he ended up pulling both of us across the floor and couldn't break us apart. Personally, I think this was another physical interpretation of Creon trying to hang onto Antigone and try and keep her sane and in the real world instead of her fantasy world where she wanted to perform the ritual that would bury her brother and send him onto the afterlife.

Once we were tightly bonded with our partner, we started to think about how we'd put all of our energy into this person and keeping them close but what if there was a seed of doubt that this person wasn't who they said they were and would we want to stay with them if they were a false. We allowed that seed of doubt to evolve and it eventually caused us to separate and go isolate ourselves to a point where no one but ourselves could hurt us.

We then had to condense the whole of the past exercises in a 20 second montage that showed all of the parts that we found interesting and were significant to the storyline of Antigone. Using proxemics was the best way for me to show my favourite parts as we used the whole of the space and so i moved from one side to the other to show to amount of moving that we did. Also the use of levels to show how extreme the emotions were, so when my emotions made me feel insecure or isolated I made sure that I was close to the ground, either laying down or knelt.

We then had to become a pair and fit each others movement in with each other and show that there was a connection between the two. Me and my partner decided to show this through eye contact rather than contact because we thought that it would show the separation between the two of us better. We then had to loop the movements so that there was a full sequence of the two movements interlocked.

https://youtu.be/d_xLCuJIzgl

Next we played around with the idea of a banquet and having a master who was being fed by two servants. The master had to act a certain way about the food they were being given and the servants had to give it to them in a certain way. For example, when i was a servant I had to give it to my master with a look of lust and she had disgust so the two reactions juxtaposed very well and also was
very funny trying to get people to eat disgusting food!

After refueling ourselves with food, we moved onto a shoulder and hand exercise. This entailed us to, in pairs, have either our hand or our shoulders touching and allow one of us to guide the other. It was hard at first because we weren't allowed to talk so we had to just respond to the pressure that was on our shoulders. We had to come up with a sequence that involved both hands touching and shoulders touching with turns and height involved. Our sequence had kneels and turns involved and also a clear indication that there was a power struggle.

We thought that this directly linked to the power struggle that is between Creon and Antigone as there is always a switching of who is in charge and control of the situation. We made this clear at certain points of our movement. For example, my partner became Creon and pushed me down to a kneeling position but then I stood up and pushed her down as Antigone because we decided that Creon was the hero of the story because he was always trying to do the right thing for Antigone and she just kept defying him.

On our own we had to come up with a word which represented the reason why she would defy Creon as she did. I decided that my word was going to be Spite because I thought that she would carry on ignoring the fact that Creon was trying to help her due to her wanting to get a reaction out of him and to show that his own family could break his trust and go against his own words.

We then had to write that word in the air constantly and once we were put into pairs and one person had to stop the other from writing their word. It was like a fight between Creon and Antigone, as Creon would want Antigone to stop her writing so that she would stop rebelling against him.

We were then put into groups and had to find a word that linked all of our words together and come up with a sequence of movements but all of the moves had to be what we had made throughout the day in the different exercises.

https://youtu.be/-zxP9iel2wM

Week 7: N2C

N2C

This week we worked on a scene between Mouse and Jay. This scene is after Mouse has been slightly scared by two of the other characters that are King's henchmen. Jay has been here long enough to know that there is a hierarchy that needs to be followed and so she is there to tell Mouse how the Multiplex is run.

During the scene, we worked with the idea of proxemics to show status. Whenever Jay would say a line she would push Mouse down to a cross-legged sitting position. We thought that this should show that Jay understands that Mouse is at the bottom of the food chain. The fact that Mouse keeps getting back up and has to get pushed down again reflects her not understanding the societal system and her trying to mess it up.

Me and Lindsay discussed where reactions are best seen by the audience. We said that I can't face the side when I am reacting to Jay because the audience won't get the full effect of the relationship between my character and Jay. We also discussed that my reactions need to be over-exaggerated because that is one of the factors of Godber's style, making all actions big so that they can have a bigger effect on the audience.

We also worked as the whole cast on unison movements and getting them sharp so that they are more effective and add humour to the play which is another aspect of Godber's style.

Week 7: Classwork

Monday

We used all of mondays lesson exploring the scene between Creon and Antigone. It is after Antigone had been found trying to bury her brother and she has been brought to Creon because anyone that was found associating with Porphyron was to be put to death. In the scene, Creon is trying to convince Antigone to let him, hide the fact that it was his own niece who had committed the crime.

https://youtu.be/L_kHsJiZrZU

Me and my partner decided to work on the juxtaposition of the delivery of the lines between Antigone and Creon. We said that Antigone would be quite blunt as we thought that she wanted people to know that it was her that did it because if no one knows it was her then her actions would have no impact. Also we wanted Creon to become increasingly frustrated with Antigone because at the beginning he was trying to show her compassion and she completely ignored this factor and so by the end Creon was grasping at anything that would make Antigone see that he was trying to do the right thing by hiding the crime.

Wednesday

We used Wednesday's lesson to work on the first scene which is between Antigone and the Nurse which is after the first time she tries to bury her brother and she isn't caught. We discussed the nurse being really down to earth and being very scolding, especially about her dirty feet, but in a mothering way. We said that the Nurse would be very mothering as there is no mention of a mother for Antigone so we thought that the Nurse was as close to a mother for Antigone and her actions towards Antigone would reflect this. Even though there was this connection between the two of them, we said that some of the lines should be delivered like Antigone was in her own world as she had just started the massive task that she had set for herself and she had successfully began it without getting caught. 

We also thought that there should be a juxtaposition between the seriousness of Antigone and the humorous tone of the Nurse as we thought that she could bring some funny aspects to the scene with her reactions . There is a line that Antigone says that is "So I took my shoes off and melted into the landscape" which the Nurse replies with "You're going to have to wash those feet before you get back into bed." The delivery of this line is key because Antigone is suddenly in her own world and the audience are very confused by this answer and so are trying to decipher what she is trying to say so if the Nurses reaction is big and quite realistic, such as a gasp and/or a point with a bit of mumbling about how she spends all her time cleaning up after Antigone, then the audience are brought back to reality and out of Antigone's dream world.

The proxemics of this scene could affected the way the audience reacts to both the Nurse and Antigone. For example, we thought that at the back right hand side there would be an armchair which the Nurse would be asleep in before Antigone enters. And there would be a bowl of watermelon at the front and center.

We thought that the entrance of Antigone would have an impact on the audience as well so we had Antigone entering and placing her shoes down next to the sleeping nurse and then slowly walking round her whilst heading for the watermelon. We thought that if Antigone looked at the Nurse whilst walking round her whilst having a warming smile and though she was thanking her through the use of facial expression which would relax the audience slightly so that when the outburst of the Nurse when she wakes up and notices Antigone would be shocking and also funny.

https://youtu.be/qaQin_dFfDE

Week 6:Classwork

Monday

We started Monday's lesson with learning how to push a stick horizontally to one other. If you push sticks to each other instead of throwing them like javelins, if you are all stood in a circle and throwing them there is less chance that they are going to hit each other. Pushing sticks would be useful to use in a chorus action in Antigone because it could symbolize the build up of the fight of the brothers. As you increase the speed at which the sticks are being passed then the tension of the fight builds up.

We then moved on to an exercise where there was a leading stick in the air and we had to follow it with our sticks. We were taken around the room and experimented with what we could do with a group just following one member. This group travelling exercise could also be used in a chorus part as Creon could be the leading stick and the people that are following him are his servants who are trying to please him as he is a very dominant character.

We moved on to a experiment in two groups facing each other as though we were in battle. There was a leader in each group. As one group made an offensive move, the other would make a defensive move with the sticks and it formed a kind of fighting sequence between the two groups. This reflected the two brothers fighting and the opposing sides. The offensive and defensive actions were to reflect the juxtaposing sides as after the fight Creon declared that one of the brothers was right and one was wrong. The offensive group could be the brother that is declared as wrong and so if they were attacking the other group, the defensive group would be seen as doing the right thing.

We moved into pairs and come up with a small sequence of 3 moves that showed the two opposing sides. In my pair, we decided to use levels as one of the elements to our sequence that would show the most chaos and the business of a fight. If she attacked me low and then went down to her level and she would proceed to attack higher up. It allowed our sequence to flow nicely so that we could loop it easily.

Chipp asked us to follow one pairs movement and add sounds like grunts and hisses so that the atmosphere felt like we were in a fight with all the injuries that would be occurring and the atmosphere grew more tense and the louder the sounds got and the faster the movements became. We stood opposite each other and different ends of the room. With every movement that your side did you took a step and made a sound so that it visually looked like a fight. We moved through each other as the groups overlapped and I think that if we were to do the movement again we could increase the difficulty of the movements that we were doing which in turn would increase the tension of the room. Also as we crossed each other we could slow the tempo down. For example, when we were apart the movements would be fast and accurate but we started to cross each other the movements would slow down and become more chaotic and complex.

Wednesday

We started off by experimenting with everyone being in their own box and labeling the corners, floor and ceiling with numbers so that when we were asked to touch a number we could reach a touch the corner with our hands. I think that this box experiment reflected Antigone because she is stuck in a life which is controlled by Creon and she has to live by his every rule. We then had to reach the numbers of our birthday and make it easy to loop. After this, we added a rule that we had to only use our hands and knees to reach the points and be able to loop this as well.

We were put into pairs and had to perform our movements facing each other but not acknowledging one other. There was a rule then added that one person had to move and then the other so our moves were in response to each other and we had to make eye contact as much as possible. One person was given a small stick and the other was given a long stick and we had to make the sequence into a fighting sequence. Still making eye contact we had to then react to one other. So when my partner looked as though she was going to hit me, I reacted by leaning backwards and carried on with the movement.

https://youtu.be/MdjLqZvlO2Q

We then put all of the different paired movements into a small space and see the effect that it would have. We then proceeded to put the movement in context and we started to walk in as though we were warming up for this movement which reflects the idea of metatheatre because we looked like actors getting ready for this performance. Building on this idea, we had to walk into the room as actors with coats and shoes and talk as though we were all relaxed and then we moved into our pairs and began the movement. I think that this juxtaposed the relaxed atmosphere of the entrance and then going straight into the seriousness of the fighting movement. 

We were put into smaller groups that all had some connection between them which affect how we responded to certain people and added a little tension in the air between people that have had arguments.

Adding in a accident between the actors was the next step that we chose to develop. The audience had just seen this really quick movement that has been done with precision and then comes an accident in which one of the actors are injured and it puts the audience on edge as they think that we are trained professionals and then one of us ends up injured.