Week 27: Classwork

Monday

Before we began rehearsing, we had a discussion in class about how to show that all people on stage were the same person. We focused on the transferal of who is in control of the body of the woman, which is showing clearly the shifting from one personality in control to another.

We discussed the different ways that would show the transferal of control and we came up with:

• Costume. 

We started by thinking of a variety of the same kind of costume. Like black, trousers and white shirt but with accessories that show the different between the personalities, for example scarves or hats etc.

But the difficulty with this was that it might not be clear enough for the audience and they may lose concentration and also they may not follow what is going on. 

Adapting a base costume might work better. For example, like when people change their school uniform to how they like it, we would change our base costume to fit our feelings so the sexy one would have their shirt unbuttoned and then the housewife would have hers tucked in and more regimental. We could even play around with having some stains on a tshirt, so the housewife could look like she had been thrown up on from a baby and the sexy one could have lipstick stains on her collar.

We also discussed having different colours to represent the feelings, so the psychotic person would have red because that is a harsh colour and red evokes anger and makes the audience slightly disconnect from them because of the harsh colour. On the other hand, the housewife would wear light blue or pastel colours because they are more inviting and the audience would lean towards that personality more and highlight the juxtaposition.

• Unity of lines/movements

Unity of voice could be effective to show the unity of the personalities as the same woman but it might not be enough for the audience to understand and the audience need to be fully engaged throughout the piece for the continuity of the style and the story line.

We thought that intonation of the lines could back up the difference between the personalities because it would juxtapose the reactions from each other and show how many different reactions this one person is having in her head.

In our group, we use an echo as a way of showing the difference between each person and so when I say the line "A kiss?" I do a movement like i was covering my lips and wiping the kiss away. As the housewife, I don't want to kiss the boy who is trying to enter the house and so the hand that goes over my mouse signifies this.

The other characters then say the same line but do their own actions at the same time that I do mine and it symbolizes the unison of the woman's emotions but also the difference between the personalities. We felt that a kiss would be a good line for an echo because she would have mixed reactions to it. The reactions need to be quick in concession of one another as it would have a better effect on the audience and could also emphasis the continuity of the audience being engaged.

•  Physical Contact

A push/pull transition could be an effective way of showing who was speaking as the audience could see the physical connection between the different personalities. We could also use proxemics to help indicate who was in control of the body as whoever was in control could be towards to center and front of the stage so that they would have a closer connection with the audience and they would be able to see their facial expressions clearer which will lead to them understanding and identifying what the different personalities were.

A smaller and easier change that could be added in after we have blocked everything would be just to have a sharp head turn and look at whoever's speaking so that it was slightly clearer to the audience, and also the Berkoff style is snappy as well so as well as making the speaker more clearer it will add to the continuity of the style.

Our group decided that after blocking everything out and getting all of the movements in with the lines, we would begin to focus on the speed of the lines, so that there was hardly any space between the lines, and the clarity of the speaker.

Week 26: Classwork

Monday

After working on the start of Woman Alone last Wednesday, we were given the section of the play that we would be working on to perform later on this month. My group was given the end of the play and so we decided, after reading through the play, that we would begin 5 pages from the end as we thought with synchronized actions and lines added in it would make the extract up to the 15 minutes that it needed to be and if not we could always add in extra lines at the start.

Our group discussed the extra element of her personality that we would add in because there was now 4 of us in our group. We decided on sexy as we wanted all of the elements to be juxtaposing so that it was clearer to the audience but it would also add in a comical element to the piece. With us wanting the different elements to be completely the opposite of each other we wanted to push them to the extreme so:

• Bubbly became extremely excited about everything
• House wife became patronizing and spoke to everyone as though they were a child
• Psychotic became angry at anything whether it was directed at them or not
• Sexy was just trying to be sexual with anyone (and anything)

As we were reading through the lines we discussed what it would be like to have the complete opposite personality to what it really meant saying the lines to add more to the comical value of the piece. For example, the line "Now, then, sweetie pie, I'll get you something to eat," was originally going to be said by the housewife but to add more comedy and juxtaposition the sexy person now says it. 

In the lesson, we managed to divide up all the lines and also decide on some lines and actions that can be done in unison. We made sure that we finished it in the lesson so that on Wednesday we would be able to go straight into blocking the section and then having more time to work on it and also add in any more if the segment is not 15 minutes.

Wednesday

We went straight into devising our section and throughout the lesson we focused on the movements that were going with the specific lines. We discussed one of my lines which is "Look, I'm getting to the end of my tether, and if your not careful I'm going to make you really really sorry." and we were thinking about whether I should just do the actions to show that I was in control of the woman's mind and body or whether the whole group should do it and react alongside the actions. We decided on the unison movement but only me saying the line so that the audience's perception of us all being the same woman would be sustained.

Our group took it upon ourselves to limit the amount of set that we would use so that it would force us to us each other for height and it would make the whole performance look more dynamic as we would be forced to pull and push each other which would add to the Berkoff style. We decided to just use the metal base of a riser without the wooden lid as we thought that we could make some interesting visual images with it and we could also use it to separate the different personalities.

One section of the script describes the way she reacts once she has stabbed the boy's hand with a spoon and we decided that during those lines we could use our arms to create the boy's hand. We realized that we can't have one person's hand being the boy who is trying to get in through the kitchen all the way through our piece and so we made sure that the hand was always being brought back in to reiterate that it was still there to the audience. Likewise, we also made a door out of our bodies when she realizes that the boy has actually got his head stuck in the door and so one of us became the boy's head and the others were the door around him.

Week 25: Classwork

Monday

We used Monday as a rehearsal in preparation for us to show them to the class on Wednesday. We had the weekend to work on the lines so some of us knew bits and pieces of lines which meant that we could start focussing on the Berkoff elements more. We tried to get our lines as snappy as we could but some lines were harder than others as they had bigger movements and we were wanted the movements to be right before we added in the lines.

We made sure that we all knew the movements and knew what was happening at all times. We also discussed the fact that all of us needed to be reacting to all lines that were being said as Berkoff's style is very quick and has a fast pace, this meant that we all needed to keep making noises and adding to the atmosphere at all times for the continuity of the style. As the consious this meant that any line that was said by the man in reality, I had to be appalled by as it lead the conversation in completely the opposite direction to which I wanted it to go in.

Wednesday

After putting the finishing touches on the lunch extracts, we then performed them to the class.

https://youtu.be/DOsopKDqAXA

One thing that I think we made clear to the audience was the juxtaposition between the consious' and the actual people and we did this by making sure that they had completely opposite body language and facial expressions. For example, we had the consious' being very closely around the real life people and making physical connections with them, whereas the actual people were very static and weren't interacting with the consious' and sitting in a position that they thought would give a good impression to the other person. We also thought that the facial expressions of the consious' needed to be pushed to the extreme like in the Berkoff style to accentuate the difference between the motives of the the consious' and the actual people.

By the end of the extract, I feel like we added in too many actions for the sake of trying to continue to style but by doing so we lost the motivation for the actions and they became out of place and distracting from what was actually going on. A way that we could have continued the style without having to add in any more actions would be to keep the vocal energy up so we could have reacted to each other as the consious' and then reacted to the words that our real life people were actually saying.

Another element of the Berkoff style was onomatopoeic words, which means making the words sound like what they mean. For example, with the line "burning holes in my back," we tried to make it sound like there was actual holes being burnt and so me and Emily, as the consious', made the sound effect and motioned as though holes were being burnt in the real life woman's back. I think that we could have done this more with other words such as "bees" and "ghost" where we could have made sound effects that would help with the continuity of the style.

The last thing that I thought could be improved was the definition of the moves. I felt like the moves could still be fast pace but needed a clearer start and end. If all the movements were done this way it would mean that the piece would look more finished and also all of the movements would become more defined.

After performing, we were set the task of creating 3 freeze frames of 3 different images of how a woman should be. We did, a good mother, a housewife (so cleaning) and religious, because in some views a woman should be religious and always follow God. I think that this exercise was a good introduction to the play, Woman Alone, as there is obviously only one woman on stage and so we had to think about all the different ways that she could be played or even the different ways that she could portray herself to the audience throughout the duration of the play.

After talking about all the different ways we came up with about how women have been portrayed in the past and how they could be portrayed now, we were given the first 3 pages of woman alone and we begin to read through and label the different ways that she says the lines. 

My first impressions when reading through the script was that the play is funny but covers some serious topics and I actually thought that the Woman had multi-personalities because it seemed that she was nice to the neighbor at one point and then she could be saying the next line very furiously, which also give me the impression that she was delusional. I also got the impression that she was side-tracked very easily but her mind always came back to her husband and so I thought that she had orientated her life around her husband and he was the focal point of her life. 

We began working on the first 3 pages and we came up with 3 elements of her personality that we thought the lines could fit into:

• Bubbly
• House Wife
• Psychotic

We began dividing up the lines and performed the first 2 minutes to the class:

https://youtu.be/bot59NzBNAk

Week 24: Classwork

On Monday, we didn't have a lesson because it was a bank holiday but our Berkoff group decided to have an extra rehearsal because we needed to change a lot of the staging and also the representation of Les and Mike. We went through the script and looked at the lines that were being said to help us define who Les and Mike at certain points. For example, the first line I say is "And round the back we went that night, the fog was falling fast, our coat collars were up and our breath like dragon's steam belch forth from our violent mouths," and I am Les at this point because I have introduced the fight that they are about to have and then the other two members of my group would then become Les and Mike and I would become the chorus member. If we had a cast of 5, there could be more of an atmosphere as they could be reacting to all the lines that were being said and then it would highlight the comedic qualities. If we did this as a duologue it would be much clearer who was playing Les and Mike which is why we had two main characters and then the third person was the chorus.

With me playing the chorus this meant that I had to change the wording of some of my lines. For example, one of my lines was "But we could hardly turn back now..."  and this would have been alright if I was playing one of the named characters, so I had to change it to "But they could hardly turn back now."

Wednesday

With all of the little changes that we made, we performed it to the class:

https://youtu.be/uLzS-IjmOP4


After watching all of the performances, we all got given a script called Lunch. I did a little research on the play and found out that it is mainly performed by 2 people; we're performing it with 4. I feel that we actually have an easier way of doing it because if there were only 2 people on stage, you would have to exaggerate your body language even more than your doing so that the audience would understand that you have become the conscious or if you have return to reality.

Our first reading made it clear that Lunch was completely different from East and we now had the consciousness of the man and woman speaking. Initially, the first thing that I found hard was deciphering between which lines were being said by the actual man and which ones were his conscious, as I was going to play his conscious. The lines that we thought were the consious speaking are highlighted in pink.

We decided that we should block some of the movements first and add in what we know about the Berkoff style and then proceed to learn the lines and speed up the gaps in between each line. The first thing that we had to decide was how we should show that the man's conscious and his body were going to look as one at the start. We decided that Sarah, who was to play the man would walk in front of me and I would have my arm around her waist and then we would walk with the same foot first and at the same time until I noticed the woman sat on the bench.

As we progressed with the script, we found that the consious' wanted their conversation to turn sexual which was completely the opposite of what was actually happening in real life. We wanted to show the juxtaposition between the thoughts and the reality so when the man says "Lovely day!" both the man's consious and the woman's consious react with groans and disappointing noises as they both thought that he was going to ask her something more personal or even sexual but instead he asked her about the weather.

Week 23: A Woman Alone

Introduction to A Woman Alone

Before we actually began working on the script, we were asked to buy it and I decided that I would research into previous performances of it and see what my first impressions of the synopsis was. 

A short synopsis that I found about the play said:

"Locked up in a flat, a solitary woman makes her confession. Amid domestic chores, dodgy phone calls, a sex-mad brother-in-law and a forever screaming baby she tells us the story of how her love for a young student led to her imprisonment at the hands of her jealous husband. Through farce to tragedy, her story propels the audience to its shocking climax."

My first impressions of the text was that it would be initially very hard for one person on stage to express the journey of emotions that they go through whilst explaining the story in a way that the audience can understand. I felt that the woman is very head-strong and will stick to her roots and what she knows is right.

I look at this website:

http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/a-woman-alone-etcetera-theatr-14186

And I thought that the photos on this website were a good representation of the roller-coaster of emotions that she goes through. After seeing this pictures I tried to imagine what it would be like for a group of people to perform this instead of one and I thought that it could have it's advantages as you wouldn't have to rely on one person to show all the different emotions and it may be clearer for the audience of the story-line that it going on beneath it if there were more people to look at and identify with.

 I searched for videos on YouTube of clips from performances of A Woman Alone and I found this one:

https://youtu.be/bDs_eFkAWnQ

I found these clips very interesting as it shows how the comedy can be placed in it and because we are thinking about doing it in a Berkoff style, we could emphasise the comedic points. Also if we were adapting her performance into a Berkoff style, we could make her facial expressions more extreme and have her more staccato in her movements so that we emphasise the fact that she is the only person on stage.

Week 23: Berkoff

Monday

Today we were introduced to the new practitioner that we will be studying: Steven Berkoff. Berkoff originally studied drama and mime in London and Paris before creating the London Theatre Group in 1968. His plays have been performed in many different languages, in many different countries.
He has worked with a variety of practitioners like Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht and Jacques Lecoq who had similar interest to Berkoff: mime. Berkoff worked alongside Lecoq when he attended Lecoq's school in Paris in 1965, this meant that he was able to understand Lecoq's beliefs in theatre, including mime. Berkoff has clearly taken on board Lecoq's style of mime and made it something unique which was one of Lecoq's beliefs.

Berkoff is completely juxtaposing to the Stanislavski style that we have worked in previously in Antigone as its very eccentric and fast pace whereas we performed Antigone as real as possible because it was true emotion that was behind the lines and we were delivering a story that has actually happened.

We began to delve into Berkovian theatre with an exercise where we had to, initially, make the most over-exaggerated facial expression that you could and show it to the group. We then had to "peel" the face off as though it was a mask and throw it to someone else in the room. The person who "caught" the expression then had to cover their face and reveal the same expression that was past onto them. They then had to change their face into a juxtaposing expression and "throw " it to someone else. I feel like this represented the way that you can have an expression on your face but it's really just a mask that is hiding what you truly feel and Berkoff wanted the actors to extremely externalize their characteristics, for example, if we were doing that exercise with an audience present then they would be able to know what we were feeling and our intentions by our extreme expressions and body language.

We wanted to create a character that we could adopt and so we chose our favourite expression that we could sustain for a long period of time, so that the continuity made the character more believable, and we began to create our character by adjusting our body language first. Lecoq believed that a character's body language could be found by imaging that you have placed your nose on the edge of a wheel and you move your body in order for your nose to remain on the wheel. You then stop yourself at a point where you feel is most comfortable and suits your character, you then adopt this position as your characters body language. This part of process was called physicalisation.

As you walk around and begin to really immerse yourself in your character you feel your voice changing into an accent for your character. Once we had completed the process for getting our characters finished, we then began to put our characters in comical situations. Our first scenario was a blind date so one of the characters had come early and was already sat down. I found the actual act of sitting down very difficult as we had to maintain the character's posture the whole time and that included sitting down! My character was very lazy and grumpy so I had my arm crossed at all times unless I was reaching for something. My walk was on my tip toes with straight legs which meant that when I was sat down my legs were stretched out in front of me. My partner's character was constantly surprised and so when I wouldn't talk and only responded with grunts it became quite comical as the only word that she replied with was "OK."

We were then mixed up again so that we got to see in our characters in different situations and we became 3 aspects of someone's personality. Because I was so laid-back and lazy, I was the person's ambitions which this person obviously had none. Another character was the person's sex drive as she was very creepy and in your face and the last person in our group was the person's family aspect as all she talked about was her life on a farm.

We then put these 3 different aspects of one person in a job interview and decided what we houfht they might say if they were interviewing for a cleaning job in a school.
https://youtu.be/hqV3bgzxcVw

Wednesday

We got given a script of the Berkoff play, East to work on and get used to the Berkoff style.

Our group decided to watch a clip of the play West, which is also a Berkoff play, that was performed by some members of N2C theatre group to help us understand the style more.

https://youtu.be/nFBVRXvXxtQ

After watching the speed of the lines and the movements between the characters we decide to have a go at bringing the script to life.

https://youtu.be/iueZpy2Ybts

I think that we could have made our movements more staccato to accentuate the positions and body language of the appropriate characters more obvious. Also our group made the piece quite like Godber's style instead of Berkoff's as we have previously worked in a Godber style and I think that developing that into Berkoff's style with help us define the characters more and he audience will be able to determine who is playing what's character at which point. It was hard to figure out who was each character at certain points because there is three of us in our group and only two characters in the script so we had to work around that fact and separate the lines up but making sure that it made sense for the continuity for the style.

I also think that when we pause and/or freeze we needed to stick to one facial expression and stretch it to the extreme so that the audience can fully register what is happening and also having blood facial expressions will add to the comical element of the Berkovian style.